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

Another big let down

[FredFredrickson]

I couldn't get enough people to click myminicity links! What a dumb game.

Personally?

[JK_the_Slacker]

I still haven't managed to beat VI. You know, that console game where the object of the game is to edit a file and then quit? That's a really hard one, and I'm so disappointed that I got so close, but didn't finish it this year. Ah well, there's always 2008.

Re:Personally?

[rk]

You know there's a cheat code that lets you save your progress before you quit, right? Press escape, then type ":wq" and press enter.

Some disappointments

[Sciros]

To begin, I'll echo the biggest disappointment as being the Wii's lack of anything good from companies not named Nintendo. A number of my friends are regretting the purchase of the Wii because of this reason, wishing they'd bought a 360 instead. Surely having both is best but I certainly haven't felt so much of the same sentiment from 360 owners I know.

Anyway, my disappointments:
1) Smash Bros Brawl being delayed until next year. Mr. Iwata personally told me that he was hoping to make this game a release title for the "Revolution" (this was in 2005). We're now more than a year overdue, and for something like Smash that really doesn't imply 6.5 solid years of development time. They were simply slow to start on it.

2) Lack of availability of the Wii. I'm not used to having to put so much work into acquiring a $250 piece of technology one year after its initial release; my mornings are usually quite busy. As a result I still don't have one.

3) FFXII: Revenant Wings (DS). I expected much better than what it turned out to be. Even looking at videos of the game on IGN didn't quite get across the abysmal pacing and unbelievable lack of variety in this game. Its supposed depth doesn't amount to anything in practice.

4) Mario 3v3 Hoops (DS). I think this came out in 2007. If not then nevermind. Anyway this game is a giant turd.

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.

6) Bioware going to EA, Blizzard merging with Activision. Let's just say that these *cannot possibly be good things* considering Bioware and Blizzard haven't exactly been in need of an improvement in any way. (Well, Blizzard graphically perhaps but Activision doesn't help there.)

7) Forza Motorsport 2. Great racing engine, cool graphics, good customization, good online mode. But... what is with no music during races? Or having to play your ass off to unlock even the ability to *purchase* a lot of the cars? This isn't supposed to be a 100-hour RPG, it's a freaking racing game. Nobody wants to spend days driving cars they don't like to get at cars they do; there's no storyline or change in gameplay to keep you interested in the meantime. Seems the developers forgot they were making a *game* rather than a training sim for racing teams to study tracks.

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:Some disappointments

[edwdig]

1) Smash Bros Brawl being delayed until next year. Mr. Iwata personally told me that he was hoping to make this game a release title for the "Revolution" (this was in 2005). We're now more than a year overdue, and for something like Smash that really doesn't imply 6.5 solid years of development time. They were simply slow to start on it.

The problem with SSB Brawl is Iwata made a promise he couldn't possibly deliver. Iwata publicly announced a SSB game as a Wii launch title in late '05, THEN went to the designer of the previous games in the series and asked him to make the game. The guy had left Nintendo a few years prior. So, Nintendo had 1 year to get the guy to agree to make the game, get a dev team for him to work with, and create the game. Once this became public knowledge, it was pretty clear it wasn't going to be a launch game. In the end, it took them a little over two years to put it together, assuming no further delays.

The Biggest Disappointment

[MonkeyCookie]

...was that Duke Nukem Forever wasn't released in 2007. I was sure that this year was the year!

Assassin's Creed

[nuzak]

Boy is it pretty. And smooth. And climbing things is fun for the first half-hour or so.

The voice acting is ... okay. Actually everyone's good except for Altair himself, but I have heard worse.

But seriously, I was looking forward to being immersed in the role of an assassin stalking his target patiently, taking just the right moment to strike, then blazing a bloody trail out of town. But nope, I get to listen to "Thief! I'll have your hand for that!" over and over and over and over and over again until I get sick of it and decide to have my two-dozenth very high-profile swordfight in the middle of the street -- which the guards will mercifully forget all about when I walk away for a couple minutes to climb the next Generic View Point Tower.

Talk about a wasted opportunity.

Wither Spore?

[GaryPatterson]

I remember when Spore was the next huge thing to hit gaming, and every game show had breathless gamers watching previews. Then we waited. And waited. And waited.

Years passed.

Still no Spore! It's an ambitious game, yes, but once you hit the third or fourth year of development, it starts seeming like it'll never get here. Games with extremely long dev times have a history of disappointing. I reckon "No Spore This Year" should be on the list as a disappointment of 2007.

Wither Spore?

Re:Wither Spore?

[LingNoi]

That's why the games industry should only market games that are already almost complete, they're such amateurs. The movie industry doesn't show adverts for a movie that still has three more years of production time. Doing so in the games industry leads to what you just said.