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Biggest overhyped disappointment this generation?

AstroLad

Hail to the KING baby
SoE: It was fairly anticipated, and this was one I actually bought the day it came out (something which I don't do for most anything anymore). At first it was semi-cool, but then a few hours into the gameplay I got that "OMG this is actually all there is" feeling.

EDIT: Ah, fuck, meant to edit my last post.
 

Troidal

Member
Super Mario Sunshine - very disappointed. Mario games are supposed to be challenging AND fun. No fun in this one :-/

Legend of Zelda: WW - I liked it while I was playing, but the end fell short. High production value, but lack of epicness. Triforce huntin and all that treasure shit was also cheap.

Beyond Good & Evil - same as above. I personally think its overhyped here.

Riddick - overhyped. Dumbass AI. Pretty repetitious gameplay. The graphics, presentation and stealth stuff is cool though, I liked how stealth was implemented more than Deus Ex. An average game though.

Deus Ex 2/Thief 3 - major disappointments. It's still good, but not as good as their predecessors.

GTA Vice City - bleh. Seemed like a rushed product. Slap on popular actors to do voices and license tons of 80s music, suddenly WOW its got such HIGH PRODUCTION VALUE! San Andreas aint bringing any interest in me either. Thank you, I've had my GTA meal already.

Gradius V - I know its not out in the US. I've praised this game when it first came out, but jesus fuck, when you get to the end of Stage 6, prepare to get raped. I'm no big fan of shmups, call me weaksauce or whatever but the sudden jump in difficulty was a major tunroff for me. *toss*
 

snapty00

Banned
For me, it had to be Super Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker. I don't understand how a series can go from being the extreme top of its class -- and indeed, the top of the entire industry -- to being barely on the radar as far as fun games are concerned. I knew after Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were released, their next-generation sequels weren't going to be as innovative, surprising, or thrilling as their Nintendo 64 counterparts. On the other hand, I thought they'd at least be very fun games, but Super Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker just weren't.

Other than those two, I was also disappointed by the new Rygar. Rygar was one of my favorite arcade games, so I thought the PlayStation 2 sequel would be great, but it was pretty boring.

Final Fantasy X was a disappointment. Man, I used to like Final Fantasy, but the tenth one totally turned me off to the series. It's difficult to even care what they make with the series in the future. Crystal Chronicles was a huge letdown, too.

I thought Advance Wars 2 wasn't as good as it could have been, either. It was a very fun game, but very, very little was added over the first one. Calling it a sequel is stretching the truth.

Metroid Fusion was a huge disappointment. Grr. I'm still irritated by how good that game could've been but wasn't.

Sword of Mana was a boring crock of shit. How Square and Nintendo let that one out of the door is beyond me.

Splinter Cell wasn't very fun, although other people seemed to like it. I thought it was boring, and I thought the control scheme was illogical.
 
Halo. Mediocre FPS that gets praised merely because it is in a starving console genre. Poor level design/variation, and run-of-the-mill enemy design.
 

fse

Member
PS2:
GTA 3 and VC.
Silent Hill 2&3
THPS 3&4
ICO

GCN:
Wave Race : BS (bull shit is what it is)
Mario Sunshine
Metroid Prime
Animal Crossing (no hype...but still :\)

XB:
Halo
Blinx
JSRF
Gunvalkyrie
Enter the Matrix
Sega GT 2002
 

Guileless

Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
I have to go with Wind Waker. As snapty said, just not fun.

I didn't realize the depth of Metriod Prime disappointment.
 

Truelize

Steroid Distributor
clipunderground said:
lol. what a jaded group of fuckers you guys are huh?

IAWTP

Am I the only person here that was disappointed with the newest Tomb Raider game? That was actually a bad game. I don't see how a good game can be called a disappointment. Some people have some pretty amazing expectations.
 

MoxManiac

Member
Yeah, i'm definitely quite jaded. I think i've played way too many games over the course of my life. Ah well, what are ya gonna do.
 

Defensor

Mistaken iRobbery!
Sony's sequels from Playstation 1:

Wipeout Fusion - Good, but not as great as XL or 3 IMHO
Parappa the Rapper 2 - The charm from the first one isn't here
Destruction Derby Arenas - Come on!
Syphon Filter Omega Strain - Without SOCOM-esque controls and random enemy regeneration, it's not as good as SOCOM.
Entire 989 games - Nuff said. But I did enjoy Gameday Wacky Football 2001 :D

There are some exceptions like Twisted Metal Black and Hots Shots Golf 3&4. However most of their new franchises this gen are have been great though.

OH and Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness. Hyped to no tomorrow and final product was worse than any of the previous titles.
 

Future

Member
ZOE2
Devil May Cry 2
Newest Tomb Raider
ESPN Basketball - WTF HAPPENED???
Wreckless
Bikini-less DOA3
GBA + GCN connectivity
GC controller - Not hyped so much but pretty dissapointing to me. The unique design does absolutely nothing but actually make it harder to play some games (fewer buttons than PS2/Xbox controllers, Z-button never felt right)
 

snapty00

Banned
Yeah, I agree with Halo, too. I mean, yeah, it's an okay game, but what it did better versus other games at the time, I don't know. To me, it was just...a shooting game. A good one admittedly, but still a shooting game.

Which brings me to Ikaruga. Yes, it looks nice. Yes, it was made by Treasure. But no, it still wasn't anything more than a modern-day version of the 1980s shooters.
 
In almost all of these posts, the 'dissapointment' is just a personal response - lots of them weren't over-hyped, and lots of them were good.

My personal list of games that failed to live up to their hyped potential or herritage:

Driv3r
Star Fox Adventures
Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
Super Mario Sunshine
State of Emergency
Blinx
Devil May Cry 2
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Enter the Matrix
Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness
Mario Kart: Double Dash
The Bouncer
Fable
Star Fox Adventures
Dead or Alive Volleyball
Syphon Filter Omega Strain


Poor classifications:

a) Games that were never going to be everything to everyone:
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles
Gunvalkyrie
DOA3

b) Games that were 'd00m3d' during development:
Metroid Prime
Grabbed by the Ghoulies
MGS:TTS
Luigi's Mansion
1080 Avalanche
Wave Race: Blue Storm

c) Great games that you didn't like or you overhyped:
Ninja Gaiden
Viewtiful Joe
Splinter Cell
GTA 3
GTA Vice City
Wario Ware
Chronicles of Riddick
Need for Speed: Underground
Ico
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Halo
Theif 3
 

P90

Member
c) Great games that you didn't like or you overhyped:
Ninja Gaiden
Viewtiful Joe
Splinter Cell
GTA 3
GTA Vice City
Wario Ware
Chronicles of Riddick
Need for Speed: Underground
Ico
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Halo
Theif 3

Great being YOUR opinion. I also notice no Nintendo developed GameCube "disappointment" is great, according to you. Ah, the absolute relativism of taste.
 

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
Wow - I think I'm going to risk bringing down the wrath of every American gamer alive and say just one:

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

I don't think I'm a jaded gamer - I find the good in a lot of games virtually everyone else seems to loathe. But my brain just locks up at the cognitive dissonance between KOTOR: the hype, and KOTOR: the reality. I wanna like it, but can't. To me, it's a jumbled mess of nice ideas that aren't really innovative except to narrow audience, feels rushed, some of the worst cut-scenes ever for this generation (in a story-heavy game to boot with tons of cut scenes), and the Xbox version tech quality is shoddy and far below what the Boxen can do. Halo, hell even GTA, isn't force-fed down people's throats as the "BEST GAME EVA!!!" like KOTOR is. I think of every game this generation, KOTOR is the only one I'm honest to God jaded about.
 

firex

Member
Kaijima said:
Wow - I think I'm going to risk bringing down the wrath of every American gamer alive and say just one:

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

I don't think I'm a jaded gamer - I find the good in a lot of games virtually everyone else seems to loathe. But my brain just locks up at the cognitive dissonance between KOTOR: the hype, and KOTOR: the reality. I wanna like it, but can't. To me, it's a jumbled mess of nice ideas that aren't really innovative except to narrow audience, feels rushed, some of the worst cut-scenes ever for this generation (in a story-heavy game to boot with tons of cut scenes), and the Xbox version tech quality is shoddy and far below what the Boxen can do. Halo, hell even GTA, isn't force-fed down people's throats as the "BEST GAME EVA!!!" like KOTOR is. I think of every game this generation, KOTOR is the only one I'm honest to God jaded about.

KOTOR is pretty close for overhyped... along with the Baldur's Gate series. People swear they've saved western style RPGs when the BG series is the most bland, generic western fantasy RPG ever, and KOTOR gets praised for half-assedly doing things that were done years ago on better PC RPGs. It's not that the games are bad, it's that they manage to be average with no major flaws and have mass appeal.
 

drohne

hyperbolically metafictive
i must be jaded, or i must at least have very particular tastes...i dislike all but a handful of the games mentioned in this thread. it'd probably be easier to list the relevant games i actually liked than dispense the full round of "IAWTP's." i dug: halo, vf4/evo, ico, zoe 2, pn03, ikaruga, ninja gaiden, and prince of persia. the rest can burn.
 
P90 said:
Great being YOUR opinion. I also notice no Nintendo developed GameCube "disappointment" is great, according to you. Ah, the absolute relativism of taste.

Loads of Nintendo games are great, but the games in column 'c' were games that were either under-hyped, had no more than usual hype, or that met the hype on every level.

Super Mario Sunshine didn't, Zelda: Wind Waker didn't, Mario Kart didn't, heck, stuff like PN03 and Golden Sun are prime examples of what I'm talking about: games that the Nintendo fanbase went rabid for, but in hindsight were flawed and failed to live up to their potential.

Look at the Nintendo games I stuck in column 'b', those are games that are really good, but only dissapointed people that are either disconnected from the genre, not interested in that type of game, or expected too much.

Taste is relative, but games like Chronicles of Riddick, Theif 3 and GTA 3 had no hype outside of typical game coverage - no years of high-level media coverage during their belated development, no contraversy, and no 'best' ANYTHING tags stuck on them when they first came out.

And since these are the terms of the 'dissapointment', those games are poor choices.
 
The Capcom 5 kept the Nintendo fanbase from committing suicide in the face of ever-declining system sales. When PN03 got released in Japan and later in the US, it was a bitter dissapointment to everyone except the appreciative niche that it was intended for.
 

Phoenix

Member
Windwalker, Metroid prime, Super mario sunshine, Gunvalkyrie, Final Fantasy X, MechAssault, Advance Wars 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Rise of Nations (pasted on RTC sucks).

There are other games this generation that I didn't care much for, but these were the big ones that I felt thoroughly let down by.
 

Tortfeasor

Member
JC10001 said:
Halo. Hands down. End of story. Close this thread.


Halo was fun, but in no way revolutionary. Everything in it has been done on the PC before and with way less gameplay repetition. It was a great game for the xbox, and a great launch title, but come on... It is not a masterpiece. The levels were interchangeable, interactivity minimal, etc...

Don;t get me wrong, this problem plagues all launch cycles. There are always games that are the best at the time of launch that in retrospect were just average games in a sea of crap. Remember Timesplitters?
 
Halo's mission design wasn't new, but it was a refreshing change from the glut of objective-based 'realistic' type FPSs that have plauged the genre since Goldeneye. The best thing about Halo was its approach to combat, which was totally revolutionary.

The integration of melee, weapon, and grenade functions was a big step forward from the clunky design of most PC shooters. With a new focus on combat, the advanced AI and physics systems really stood out, Halo's contribution to FPS gameplay shouldn't be under-valued.
 

Truelize

Steroid Distributor
Ok. How are some people putting Fable in this thread?

We are talking about games that were disappointing experiences considering the amount of hype that the game had pre-release.
Well seeing as Fable has yet to be released I don't see how putting it in this thread is anything but trolling.
Isn't trolling illegal here? :p
 
"Isn't trolling illegal here?"

It depends on who you are. What system you are trolling for is also another consideration. Are you funny when you do it is a big plus I suppose. Also it appears that ass kissing can get you far on this board as it does in real life.
 

iapetus

Scary Euro Man
I've had it up to here with retarded conspiracy theories about trolling being allowed/encouraged for certain platforms. There is no conspiracy. Problem is, if you're a brain-dead fanboy you always think your console of choice is getting the worst of it. You get banned when you cross a certain line of stupidity.

As CrimsonSkies' new tag should demonstrate.
 
For me it'd probably come down to Brute Force...and maybe parts of Mario Sunshine. I was so hyped for both games. I try to look past the disapointments but its painful sometimes.

Another one would be Project Gotham Racing 2- it didn't have its cheat at all costs driving a.i. cleaned up the 2nd time around. Single player turns into massive frustration when trying for Platinum and Golds. Being spun out every time you lock up with a group of cars just kills the experience.
 

Mumbles

Member
KOTOR: Probably the most overhyped game of the generation. Developers from either side of the Pacific have come up with RPGs far superior to this one, yet people will swear that it's the best ever, the end of japanese RPGs, or whatever.

Blinx: This one had a lot of good ideas, but they simply forgot to do the fundamentals correctly.

Parappa the Rapper 2: AS already said, it just didn't have the feel of the first.
 

djtiesto

is beloved, despite what anyone might say
It seems like a lot of games people listed were more along the lines of "games that disappointed" and not "overhyped games that ended up sucking". I don't remember much hype at all for Dark Cloud 1, for instance.

As for me:

Halo and GTA:Vice City... the hype for these 2 games was intense, and both ended up sucking. I heard State Of Emergency was awful, too. And, I'm sure I'll hate that Star Wars RPG, but I'll never play it 'cuz the subject matter doesn't interest me at all.
 
I don't know what it is about Halo that makes so many people scream mediocre. I'm generally really disappointed with most games, but Halo really impressed me. I found it fun, challenging, and engrossing. I've found games such as Goldeneye and Ninja Gaiden highly mediocre, yet thought Halo was something great.

But that's just an opinion, isn't it.
 

AeroGod

Member
For me on my own personal level, Deus Ex: Invisible War. The first is one of my favorite FPS ever and in general, all aspect considered, one of the best games ever created IMO. However. Invisible War is probably the worst sequel Ive ever had the misfortune of playing. It was dumbed down to the extreme to make way for a more friendly console release, the game felt alot smaller in all aspects compared to the original, the story wasnt as good, the design to me was more boring, and the framerates were terrible(for me). I admit I havnt finished it, but why would I want to, every second of playing it was painful. Its so god awful.

Star Wars Galxies is another one. I love Star Wars, I love MMO. I anticipated Galaxies for years, and when I finally played it was totally dissapointed.

Ill also mention KOTOR. I wasnt TOTALLY hyped since I was never a fan of Bioware RPGs or the whole Dungeons and Dragons thing, even though I liked Star Wars. After it got all this praise I was expecting something great but was very disapointed. The story was amazing and the choices of light and dark, but the gameplay I thought was terrible. Combat was totally not fun and really ruined the experience for me.
 
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