Continuing my current trend of posting long diatribes about video games I bring to you a list of games that I got extremely hyped up about and ended up barely touching. I guess it will also include games that I got excited for but ended up hating or feeling, perhaps undeservedly, disappointed with the finished product. I know... another list. Bear with me for the moment because I'm experiencing a resurgence of writing and this is part of the process. This is a topic that I've seen a fair bit of discussion about in recent times, notably from an interview with Sid Meier.
To be fair a lot of the blame for this phenomenon has to be put on my shoulders, as they should be for any gamer. When I anticipate a game I start building it up to great proportions in my mind. I take any tidbit of information and wildly imagine the most creative interpretation of that data possible. Sometimes that's aided by the type of interview given by the developers (see Peter fucking Molyneux as a perfect example). I suppose leaving some topics purposefully ambiguous before the release cuts down on this somewhat, I still manage to put these games on a pedestal. As Sid Meier said in an interview, we are already playing these games in our head before we ever play them on a screen. Sometimes there are unrealistic expectations by myself and other gamers put onto big name games.
Coming from the other side now we have failing to live up to promises. While we as gamers aren't entitled to make demands on those who make games we have the right to expect a quality product. Don't we? If a game company is listing features and making promises on gameplay then we have a reasonable to expect them to deliver. If they don't we're going to call them on it. You can't slip crap through the cracks anymore. Simply spitting in the gamers faces after the release of a game and saying "Didn't have time" or "That was just an early build" is a douchebag move. The big companies aren't guilty of this very often. It's usually the small indy company or the 'name' developer (like Molyneux) that are guilty of false hype. There are a plethora of reasons, certainly, but what it comes down to is don't make promises you don't intend to keep.
Well that's enough with the rant. There's more I could say and a lot more avenues to be explored. I definitely didn't flesh out my arguments. Well maybe that's for another time. On to the list!
FABLELet's start with the big boy over hype, Fable. There was so much promised in this game that it would have been impossible for them to even deliver half of it at the time. Technically the stuff they were talking about weren't even feasible. Hell most of the stuff they promised then couldn't be (or has yet to be) achieved by now. The basic idea was that this was going to be a world that was alive and that could be changed by the player. Some of the grand ideas were making decisions that had lasting impact on the world, starting trends in fashion and style, placing something that would change the world around it as time passed, and living the entire life of the main character as the world grows with you. In the end none of this was possible. Your impact on the world was nonexistent. The only "change" you could make was moving your morality up and down a slider. Like we haven't seen that done before, and better. The world was static and didn't change at all. True your character grows and ages, but everything else stays the same. It just felt very uninspired truthfully. Almost every one of the grand promises wasn't present. This isn't to say that Fable was a bad game, it just wasn't what everybody thought it would be based on what were told constantly for three years. Huge, huge, disappointment. Fable II made more big promises, which were undelivered. By that time we'd all learned not to listen to Molyneux.
WWF AttitudeThis was really just stupidity of youth. I was a big, big wrestling fan back in 1998. The 'current' game available was WWF Warzone, which was awful and featured wrestlers that had mostly left the company. So when I heard that a new game was coming out I did what any teenage idiot would do, hype the game to unimaginable levels in my head. I imagined what I would be able to do, how I would create dozens of wrestlers in the CAW mode, and the titles I would win with such 'legends' as Gangrel, Brian Christopher, and Thrasher. This was, when it finally came out in 1999, such an uninspired piece of garbage that I barely ended up playing it very much. It utilized a terrible fighting game control scheme in which you had to press button combos to perform moves. It was bad. This was the first in a long line of wrestling game disappointments. Considering that WWF Wrestlemania 2000 and WWF No Mercy came out in the following years, this piece of junk fades into the mists of history as a forgotten relic of wrestling's past. The stigma of this engine wouldn't disappear, however, as ECW put out two games with this exact same play style. To say they were received poorly is an understatement.
SPORE
Here we go again... it's almost like relieving the Fable release. Spore was a game that was long in development and we were introduced to it during a very early stage. This meant we had years to hear about it and listen to the little lies that were being fed to us. Spore was supposed to be the grandest scale game of all time. The game would follow a species from life as a single-celled organism all the way to space faring explorers and everything in between. Extensive creation tools were supposed to give us the ability to craft their culture and look to the most minute details. After years of development it was time for it to be released. Millions were clearly spent on advertising. It was everywhere, it was in the public eye. DRM issues aside, the game delivered... on the creation tools. The rest of the game... meh. It was very, very disheartening to learn that the actual gameplay of the game was meant specifically for casuals. Even less than casuals, non-gamers really. The creation tools were so deep that entire styles of architecture could be created and thousands of unique species of creatures could be created. I personally created more than a hundred creatures. While it was a bit exciting to see your creations show up randomly in the game... there wasn't much else to do with them. The world simply felt lazy. There was no real depth to the gameplay, each stage could be finished in under an hour. The only stage that really interested me was the second stage where you actually walk around, third person, as one of your creatures. Aside from this we get dumbed down 'tribe', 'civilization', and 'space' stages. Gamers like depth. An emotional connection draws people into putting many, many hours into a game. You couldn't have that connection with your Spore creatures since there was no depth. Spore is a mixed bag, excellent creation tools with limited game experience.
Unlimited SaGaDon't mess with what a series is at it's core, people. I would have defended the SaGa series against anybody's insults should the need have arisen. While most people passed over SaGa Frontier's 1 & 2, I played and loved both of them. Romancing SaGa 3 was one of the best games never to get localized (officially). Then I heard a new game was coming out on the PS2 and allowed myself to get excited. What I ended up with was a game that was beyond shitty. For a series that isn't well known to try something so disastrous is foolish, and this game killed the series. Sure they remade Romancing SaGa 1, but in the end we all know there won't be any future SaGa games. Unlimited went so far away from what the series was that it took my interest and smashed it with a hammer. I can still go back and enjoy the older games, but I have little hope for the future.
While researching this article I came across a few games that often appeared on lists of games that failed to live up to the hype. While common amongst those that made the lists, I never got caught up in their hype machines enough to get disappointed. Here's a few of the games that commonly made pundits "Most Disappointing" lists that aren't on mine, and why.
Enter the Matrix - Never got into this game. While I was interested in everything that had to do with The Matrix I wasn't looking forward to this game. What little I played it wasn't terrible, so it's not on my list.
Daikatana - I understand why this game is on other lists. I think others have done a good job outlining the situation surrounding Daikatana. I never even heard of this game until a couple of years ago, so that's why it's not on my lists.
Too Human - Didn't follow the development cycle, didn't care too much for it. I own it and find it decent enough.
S'all.
