WHICH GAME WAS THE BIGGEST DISAPPOINTEMENT FOR YOU?

I was very disappointed by several recent games.

Dragon Age: Origins really disappointed me. I find it to be a really average RPG. People are defending it's 20 to 30 hours of gameplay when I've been spending that and more only on the first CD of FFVII as a reference. Twenty to thirty hours is absolutely nothing in the RPG world, but because game development company have been releasing games of around 5 hours of gameplay, twenty hours seems a lot to the younger and less hardcore audience. Also it's replayability was pretty null. A distinct introduction for each race or so. Then the rest of the game it's the same story with only slight changes. Very disappointing. The graphics were ok I guess, I'm not a graphic bitch. Music was actually good and I found the story quite linear and boring.

Mass Effect, people had been yelling at me to play to that game. I tried it, graphics and audio were fine. But it just find it very boring and the battles to be weirdly stuck between an RPG and a FPS. I just didn't like it even if technically speaking it was fine.

Final Fantasy XIV. I really love MMORPG and after the horrible launch of FFXI I though they would have learned their lessons and would take the time to release a proper polished game that could rival other big MMORPG. Result is that it's been one of the most buggy, unfinished, quickly-developped-to-quickly-get-money game I've tried in a long time. I honestly don't have much love for Square-Enix since Sakaguchi and Uematsu split from it several years ago, but I was ready to give them one last chance.

Fallout: New Vegas. Several people insisted for me to play that game. I really enjoy post-apocalyptic settings for their atmosphere. So I bought it, installed it and played thirty hours through it. The graphics were quite meh, it felt like an unpolished games. There was quite a few glitches and graphics weren't sharp at all. I found the story interesting during the first hour or so (the you're-a-courrier-get-your-package-back thing) but I quickly understood how it would get. The progression in the story is very bad, it's chunky and you just move through steps in the story in an artifical manner (get out of the doctor, go to primm, get a sheriff for it, go to Nipton, go to Novac, go to Boulder City, arrive to New Vegas). And when I finally arrived to New Vegas, it became too much. It was utterly boring. I just uninstalled.

F.E.A.R 2, the first one is one of my favorite game. It has awesome graphics, great atmosphere, it's violent and it's scary. The sequel had slightly improved graphics, pretty much no atmosphere at all except for a few moments in the game, it was violent and wasn't scary at all. You know there's a problem when in F.E.A.R, a game where it's supposed to be real dark, atmospheric and scary, you get in a giant mecha robot, big heavy metal music starts and you destroy enemies, buildings and everything on your path in a big storm of explosions, dust and smoke. I mean c'mon. I finished the game, it was "fun" enough to go through it even if there was no soul in that game. End sequence was really disturbing and was a good plot twist (best moment of the game) but aside from that, average action-FPS game with no soul.

All the Call of Duty games since the #4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (#4) was awesome. Really beautiful graphics when it came out, balanced weapons, great maps. Everything was perfect. I still play it actively in several clans.
Then Treyarch comes in and uses the same engine and release World at War. Ok I guess it's Call of Duty #4 all over again but during second world war, it's ok I guess.
Then Infinity Ward releases Modern Warfare 2. I mean, ok, what the heck is that shit ? Really average graphics, really unbalanced guns, annoying arsenal of killstreaks that completely change the squad-based tactic and gun oriented game to a missile, robot, airplane nuclear nuke party. Maps are horribly designed as if you don't sit in a corner and wait for people to pass you are disadvantaged, the respawn system is retarded and you could sit in a corner and have someone spawn above you. They also released their IW.net system in which you can't chose the game you join, so hello random hacked servers, laggy servers, impossibility to play with the same people all the game, to create clan. No modding tools, no dedicated servers. Plenty of e-peen things like medal, pictures, ranks and I don't know what else. It's pretty pathetic if you ask me.
Then Treyarch once again (that company always did that) reused the engine of the predecent episode to do Black Ops (I didn't buy that one but tried it) and it's pretty much Modern Warfare 2 all over again but like 20 years before, with more killstreaks, unbalanced guns, bad map and a shitload of 15$ map pack.
And now Activision pulls on the legal leash to bring back Infinity Ward to work on Modern Warfare 3. Forget me, I'm out.

My post could seem very negative. But for every bad game I've encountered this year I've discovered some absolute gems.

Lezales sounds like a very hard to please gamer!

at least he doesnt hate a game based on a character design. like am i missing something here? you could say that about everyone else in the thread who have listed non-obvious disappointments.

A big disappointment implies high expectations. However I never had such expectations for an RM game... Still, I'd say Eyes Without A Face was pretty disappointing because of its length, unexplained plot and the amount of overly positive feedback it has.

Regarding professionnal games, I'd say Wild Arms Alter Code F. It's a remake of an awesome game, but they managed to make it as crappy as AVGN's worst games.

author=Feldschlacht IV
Lezales sounds like a very hard to please gamer!

Is it bad that s/he just sounds like an older version of me? :/

I haven't really played the multiplayer, so I can't speak for that. However, John Marston is a better written character and protagonist than almost any RPG hero. RDR is a wonderful take on the vastness, attitude, and general 'anything goes' aura of the West. And there's so much stuff to do within the game itself!

I would have to say:

Bomberman (DS) I'm one of the few people in the United States that is a hardcore fan of the series, but lately it's gotten downhill from its past glory. With this game, the single-player featured nothing but rehashed, dumb-downed bosses from the original games, uninspired music, and easy-as-HELL gameplay. Not to mention that the item storage idea was terrible, as it just made the game way too easy.
For those who say "Bomberman is about Multiplayer!", the multiplayer isn't even that good compared to previous games. You could not punch bombs to the other side of the screen, the number of powerups were dwindled like crazy (no power bomb, power glove, or line. Just some shitty "power-down" items which serve no purpose) and the revenge bomber sucked.

Sonic Rush It's not a BAD game, but it's just forgettable to me. I at least thought it was a sonic game returning to form, but all it had was speed booster spamming and high-speed crap where I didn't really need to watch out for anything that could get in my way. It felt too easy.

Kirby Squeak Squad Probably the worst game of the entire series, but not in a sense that it was poorly designed or whatnot, more on the fact that it was not intuitive. Even with the ability to store items in your stomach and use them whatever, it still felt like a rehash of Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland, which is emphasized by the fact that it uses the SAME MUSIC from the previous GBA games. It also had the easiest final boss I have ever seen in a Kirby game, and one of the worst "uber" abilites I've seen as well (tri-star).

Catherine. I'm only disappointed because I DON'T HAVE IT YET.

*murder*

The 2nd Mass Effect is fantastic. The first one...not so much.

Terraria.

I love me randomized stuff and side scrolling games.

But its bad, the controls are bad. It might be the greatest game in the world, but everything is so cumersome and tedious. Its like being told to bring a cinderblock with you everywhere.