10 games that disappointed us the most

In a world where releases are almost every day happenings, video games need to rely on costly marketing campaigns and publicity to help sell themselves to audiences. With tough competition and ever-rising budget costs, it’s sensible for companies to try and oversell their game in order to make the games a success. Unfortunately, just like the premiere of many movies, some video games end up falling short and let our expectations down.The reason may vary from inferior quality, fan expectations, or the makers’ own lofty ambitions and over the years, there have been many games that ended up being disappointments, often both in terms of sales and reception.Here are ten games that were all the more disappointing because they did not live up their promises or the expectations created:

#10 Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Released: 2001

Metal Gear Solid 2 is actually a game with very high quality, sadly it just turned out to be the game nobody wanted. Released for the Playstation 2 in the fall of 2001, the main mistake the developers made was to replace the series hero, Solid Snake with a controversial new character named Raiden, despite using Snake for the promotions. He was in the game, but was never the focus of the game’s plot. The decision to swap the protagonists didn’t sit well with everyone and many fans were let down, even though the Sons of Liberty received critical acclaim for its excellent game-play and, at that time, cutting-edge graphics. And so, while the game still stands as a classic, it remains the black sheep of the Metal Gear Solid series.

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#9 Lair

Released: 2007

Lair was greatly anticipated before its release since it was the launch title for the Playstation 3 and because it was an action game focused around riding dragons. Dragons just make things much more exciting, but the excitement was short lived.

Riding your dragon was almost impossible as the controls were terrible and Sony’s “Six-axis” tilt functionality was not properly worked into its new controllers. Traditional controls were eventually added to the game later, but by then the damage had been done. Lair turned out to be a total failure and even led to the closure of the game’s developer, Factor 5.

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#8 Haze

Released: 2008

Microsoft’s Xbox has always been the dominant force in first person shooter games, mostly thanks to its popular Halo series. To counter this, Sony, after it launched the Playstation 3 in 2006, were eager to have a game to match the quality and popularity of Microsoft’s huge franchise. Talented developer, Free Radical, whose Timesplitters series had shown off their shooter-design strengths on the Playstation 2 were on whom everyone’s hopes were. They came out with, Haze, and it was marketed as Sony’s counter to Halo.

Well, if you’ve come to play with the big boys, you better bring some big guns which, unfortunately, Haze didn’t do. With boring game-play, an amateur story, and below par visuals, It ended up being just another shooter and not a very good one at that.

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#7 Resident Evil 6

Released: 2012

Popular amongst both critics and gamers alike, the Resident Evil series is one of the biggest franchises in gaming. Resident Evil 4, released in 2005, is widely regarded as one of the best games ever created, and the 5th game wasn’t too bad either. So when Resident Evil 6 was released in 2012, it had to contend with some seriously high expectations and compete with its own predecessors.

In a bid to appeal to more players, Capcom focused more on the action than the series’ established survival horror experience, and chose quantity over quality when it came to content. They tried to put everything, into the game. Unfortunately, this did not work and the game had mixed results and feedback. However, one thing was sure and that was that it did not come close to approaching the quality of its predecessors.

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#6 Devil May Cry 2

Released: 2003

The first Devil May Cry was released in 2001 and it caused sensations in the gaming world due to its stylish, over-the-top action and gothic designs. Naturally, the people were expecting the world when it came to Devil May Cry 2.

However, it all came crashing down when DMC2 turned out to be nothing more than a shallow imitation of the first game. They even changed Dante!!! Unbelievable! The lead character, Dante, a self-sure cocky demon-hunter for hire, was a hit in the original game, and for some unexplainable reason, they replaced him with a more serious and dour personality in the sequel. Fortunately, the series got back on track and brought back Dante with the 3rd game a few years later.

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#5 Too Human

Released: 2008

Well if you take as long as Too Human to develop, you can’t be surprised that people’s expectations have also risen. Announced almost a decade ago, the game took 10 years to develop. Too Human was originally planned for the Playstation until finally being released on the Xbox 360 in 2008. It was created by Silicon Knights, who had success on the Nintendo Gamecube with the well-received Eternal Darkness.

What made things worse was how lead designer Denis Dyack, almost turned poetic in description of how incredible the game would be, saying that the game emphasized on the complexity of the storytelling and themes. There was also sequels that were to follow but when the game finally released in 2008, it quickly became apparent that there would be no more of it. Too Human was terribly average and sold poorly.

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#4 Advent Rising

Released: 2005

Another case similar to that of Too Human, Advent Rising was a sci-fi action game planned for the original Xbox and raised expectations sky high. Furthermore it was supposed to be the start of a planned trilogy but Advent Rising didn’t even perform well enough to justify a sequel, let alone 2. Advent Rising sounded like an awesome game. Why wouldn’t it be, it was an original creation, whose story had been written by famous science-fiction writer Orson Scott Card, and on top of all this, it was a 3rd person shooter with exciting-looking acrobatic combat.

On release, the game received decent reviews, but fell short of what people expected because to numerous bugs and glitches, and the game-play that didn’t control as well as it looked.

#3 Sonic the Hedgehog

Released: 2006

Sonic the Hedgehog was a household name, comparable to Nintendo’s Mario, and that’s saying something. However, things got tough for the blue hedgehog after Sega, exited the home console business in the early 2000s. In 2006, looking to restore some of this lost appeal, Sega re-launched Sonic with a promise to return the game to its roots which meant fast and fun game-play.

Sadly, Sonic the Hedgehog ended up doing more harm than good. The game was filled with numerous glitches, the game-play was tedious, and it had a bizarre story featuring a baffling romance between Sonic and a teenage human princess. Sega has released a number of games since, some of them even good, but 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog will always be remembered as a disappointment.

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#2 Duke Nukem: Forever

Released: 2011

Where do we even start? Originally announced in April 1997, it took a full 14 years before Duke Nukem: Forever, finally came out. The Duke Nukem series was very popular in the early 90s, especially when it made the transition from 2D to 3D in 1996’s Duke Nukem 3D. For many gamers, Duke Nukem was one of the first shooters they ever played, so people expected that Forever would be a nostalgic trip back to the series’ golden days.

However, games and the world grew, while Duke Nukem stayed the same from 1997 to 2011, making Duke’s focus on potty humour and outdated game-play feel like a man-child amongst adults. And to top it all, it took 14 years for this. Most definitely not worth the wait and even cherished memories couldn’t save this one, with gamers hardly giving this game a glance.

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#1 Aliens Colonial Marines

Released: 2013

And this was the mother of all. On paper, Aliens: Colonial Marines sounded like a dream come true for both fans of thrilling shooters and the Aliens franchise. It was being developed by Gearbox Software, who had proven they could develop great shooters with the Borderlands series. It was also going to be included in the Alien timeline, thereby legitimizing the game in eyes of the movie fans.

However, when the game finally released on February 2013, gamers were in for a surprise and not in nice way. Aliens: Colonial Marines turned out to be a terrible shooter that stained the Alien name. Fans were very upset as Gearbox had marketed a completely different game and had taken out something else entirely. The game was riddled with broken game-play, terrible graphics, and a pathetically bad storyline. Aliens: Colonial Marines was a sad disappointment for Aliens’ fans and fans of good games in general.

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