2007's Ten Biggest Gaming Letdowns

Game|Life offers up an anti-top-ten list, noting the three blog authors' biggest disappointments from 2007. Chris Kohler's biggest letdown echoes my own feelings on this topic: "No LittleBigPlanet. PlayStation 3's software library got significantly better this holiday, but there's no killer app. I honestly don't know if LittleBigPlanet would have been one. But I think it's going to be mine. It's going to be the thing that glues me to PlayStation 3... when it ships. I was all ready to start building worlds and sharing them with my friends and generally start being a jackass by now, but it won't happen until next year -- late next year, if you believe the rumors. I hope they're not true. And I do hope LittleBigPlanet sets the planet on fire when it releases." Any gaming 'event' this year an epic fail for you?

Comments

My biggest let down of 2007

[Pojut]

Hands down, without a doubt, would have to be Two Worlds. I mean, the setup was genious. On paper, it appeared to be Oblivion on steroids...I mean come on, a massive, open-ended RPG that you make your own spells and can play co-op over system link on a couple of 360's? My buddy and I were waiting for this one with huge anticipation...only to feel like we had gotten a kick in the nuts. Horrendous menu systems, terrible gameplay, and textures so muddy you couldn't tell what was going on half the time (and this on an HDTV)

Without compare, the biggest gaming letdown of 2007.

Re:My biggest let down of 2007

[Voltageaav]

I have to agree, Two Worlds had a ton of potenial. What makes it soo bad was where they did a lot of really good things with the game, the things they screwed up are things that pretty much everyone else nails down and they were really bad. To the point that I doubt most people would bother playing after 20 minutes. The voice acting, textures, and some of the controls are just so bad it seems like they didn't even try. The menues could use some work, but I can live with them. I did end up finishing the game and I feel that if they had put some effort into those three areas, it would have been a really amazing game.

Halo 3 Easily Biggest Gaming Letdown In 2007

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when Halo 3 was hyped like it was going to decimate Microsoft's competitors and they were powerless to stop it and everyone better just deal with the fact.

Remember when Halo 3 was going to have 1080p next gen graphics?

Remember when Halo 3 was going to be the standard which all online games try, and fail, to live up to?

And then reality hit...

Bungie could only manage to get Halo 3 to run at 640p resolution and not the minimum standard 720p for real next gen games.
Side by side screenshots of Halo 2 and Halo 3 had gamers scratching their heads as to which one was supposed to be the next gen game.
Bungie didn't bother to bring Halo 3 out of the dark ages of online gaming and implement dedicated servers.
And Bungie because of the lack of dedicated servers Halo 3 could only handle 16 players at a time for online games. There are pc shareware games with better online setups.
And because of the lack of dedicated servers Halo 3 games end up being low player count matches that are plagued by lag.

Ok, so even if the online part of Halo 3 is a disaster at least the single player lived up to the hype...

Nope, single player also runs only at 640p with the same last gen looking graphics.
The campaign is incredibly short and linear
The Halo 3 story is easily one of the lamest even by the incredibly low fps genre standard

It was learned the extent recently how Microsoft used their mountains of cash to secure high reviews for the game with 'gift bags' that were sent out to reviewers that were worth some 7-800 dollars or so. You have to imagine that Bungie just didn't see any reason to put any effort into the game at all when they knew Microsoft's marketing types were going to be out in full force buying off reviewers.

Re:Halo 3 Easily Biggest Gaming Letdown In 2007

[grahamwest]

I can totally tell it's at a lower resolution than other games. I think they're also not using the antialiasing in the same way as most games, or something else is amiss, because I can definitely see the hard edges of walls and doors and so on. Mind you I have a 1080p Full-HD television.

It's not like it's a big deal, they made their choice so they could run at framerate and get the lighting they wanted, but at least some of us could tell immediately. By the way, the reason they do this reduced framebuffer size (and it has to be horizontal as well as vertical) is so the whole thing fits in the GPU's embedded memory and they don't need to resolve to main memory during the rendering process.

Re:Some disappointments

[techpawn]

5) ArenaNet slowly turning Guild Wars into a grindfest. The one MMORPG that let me play PVE at my leisure and not "fall behind" decided that it's a much better idea to just go into WoW me-too mode rather than stick with the original tenet of skill over time played. The Eye of the North expansion released this year completed the transformation.

THANK YOU! Finally, someone else that saw that they turned down that path and because of it lost quite a few players. I gave up on it when I came to the realization that the people who just ran from mission to mission where doing much better than the casual players. It's now a subscription free version of WoW. I've gone back of PnP games. Yeah, it's a hassle to get everyone into someones basement for a few hours each week, but it's all in all a far better experience.

Re:Death of the CRPG

[LarsWestergren]

Troika's dead, an Xbox FPS developer has the Fallout IP, and Bioware was eaten by EA before they could squeeze out an uncorrupted Dragon Age.

On the other hand, we have the Witcher, and NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer, which makes it one of the best CRPG years in a long time. Which brings us to my disappointment, mirrored nicely by this article: This was a great year for PC games, the best in a long time, but online media seems only to care about consoles.

Re:Wii

[marvelouspatric]

you know, that's a great point. i was looking at my wii (the only next-gen system i own) and i realized that my favorite games for it come from either nintendo or sega. how crazy is that? if you would have told me 20 years ago, when i was playing my 8-bit master system that i'd being playing sega games on a nintendo and love it, i'd have told you you were a doo-doo head, because i was 8.

(my favorite wii games, right now, are wii sports, wii play, sonic, mario, and nights. just got mario and nights, and they are probably the best two wii-exclusive titles 2007 provided.)

What About The Wii Lineup?

[GaryPatterson]

The article's biggest letdown of 2007 was the poor third-party lineup for the Wii.

The Wii's the only next-gen console my wife and I own, and while we've played a lot of the tennis game, some Zelda, some of the first Rabbids game but no other titles have really grabbed our interest. I bought one of those 'maze in the air' games that came out early on, lent it to a friend and haven't cared to ask for it back.

The lineup (outside Nintendo) seems pretty weak, but I've not paid a lot of attention lately.

Re:Halo 3? Disappointing?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you haven't noticed it's because there's a strong hint of PS3 fanboyism in TFA.

When PS3 fanboyism infects a story, don't expect any amount of sense from it.

Halo 3 was nothing groundbreaking, but that didn't stop it being one of the greatest releases of 2007, if it was a dissapointment to anyone then they're simply expecting the impossible. The very fact it wasn't groundbreaking is because it was simply the best that can be done right now alongside releases like The Orange Box, Bioshock and Timeshift.

Compared to games like Assassins Creed, which frankly I thought was going to become my favourite game ever thanks to the trailers Halo 3 etc. did fantastic at meeting my expectations. AC was my biggest let down simply because it turned out to be "Repetitive Tasks and Wall Climbing Simulator 2007" rather than an interesting, deep game centred around assassinating targets using cunning and skill.

Command and Conquer 3

[ezwip]

When C&C 3 was about to be released as Tiberium Wars I was very excited. Finally, EA games would address my issues with their last versions, Generals and Zero Hour. So when it released there I was one of the first with my limited edition Kane version, an extra 10 bucks for Kane on the cover. I get home and start to play. The first thing I notice is that Kane is on the box, and totally sucks. By far this is the weakest faction. I get online to find that not only is the maphack, money hack, invincibility, and basically every problem that ever existed still there but a ton of new ones. They just changed the units to new graphics, made the maps retarded and small, then sold it all over again as a new version. I played through two patches which never addressed any of the major exploits from the first version they released. By far the biggest disappointment I've ever had because I told myself not to fall for this. I just couldn't believe they would leave them untouched, but they did.

Re:Xbox 360 Hardware And Software

[Doctor_Jest]

I hate responding to trolls.... but.

They took a billion dollar hit to their bottom line to STOP the bleeding of consoles... they admitted (in no uncertain terms) that EVERY console they sold (up to that point) was potentially destined to fail... and fail for the SAME FLAW.

20% not high? 30%? How many consoles have to go back to Microsoft (and how many times), before you admit there's a flaw in the 360 that is VERY troubling and VERY problematic for their goodwill and future as a gaming company.

The failure rate of the PS3 is infinitesimal. Google is your friend. The Wii's also a solid performer. Compared to the 360 the PS2 launch console is more reliable.

You've been nursing Bill Gates' ballsack too long to notice the facts DO support his statement... and it's NOT fanboy rhetoric when the VERY company extends the warranty for a _SPECIFIC_ failure to 3 YEARS, for FREE. That had "class action dodge" written ALL over it, chum.

AC, indeed. Sometimes your asinine insinuations really get to me.

Re:Some disappointments

[Sciros]

It's called *scaling to hardware.* Make it run on old stuff, and look decent on newer stuff. Simple formula, and some dev houses are good at it. Others simply keep the requirements just as low as Blizzard does yet still manage far better graphics (Guild Wars, for instance).

Don't make excuses when there really aren't any to make. You can cater to a broad range of hardware if you put in the effort. Blizzard doesn't *need* to from a business perspective, but I wouldn't be bothered if they tried.

Re:Xbox 360 Hardware And Software

[NanoGator]

I would just like to point out that the 20 percent number is a guess. It originated from a website that ran a poll and they came up with that number after they received the results. It wasn't scientific, and it wasn't based on anything like retail reports. Some people were given a chance to bitch and they did. The warranty is definitely compelling and definitely says there is a problem, but it is also worth noting that Sony has been deluged with so much bad press that it is not surprising they are trying to nip it as quickly as possible. The internet has gotten very noisy in the last couple of years, especially with regards to Sony. All bad news about any system has to be taken with a grain of salt. It is possible that is an admission of a nasty defect, but it is also possible it is MS making a PR move that helps deal with the noisy backlash and makes them look more customer friendly than Sony. Neither you nor I know. There are a lot of people with a chip on their shoulder out there, just waiting to strike. You should keep that in mind when you're presented with a sensationalist number like that.

As for the AC posting, do you really blame the guy for posting anonymously and going against popular opinion? Slashdot's moderation system is not friendly towards those with a different view.