11 Of The Biggest Disappointments In Video Game History
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We’ve all been there. You rush out to buy the latest PC, Xbox or PlayStation title, hyped with anticipation and months – or in some cases years – of buzz, only to discover it doesn’t quite live up to expectation, and shatters your hopes and dreams in the process.
Like movies, there are hit and miss video games. Some will have expectations of greatness and ultimately fail to deliver. So here are 11 titles that, at one point in gaming history, spectacularly failed to impress players upon release.
Days Gone
With the promise that this engrossing adventure would be akin to The Last of Us – but with hoards of hundreds of zombies chasing you – the stunning pre-release footage looked set to offer PS4 owners a generation-defining game.
Sadly, that’s not what they got, with middling and disappointed reviews across the board, not to mention bugs galore. By no means bad, it remains one of the most underwhelming Sony exclusive in a long while.
Cyberpunk 2077
The most recent and arguably biggest disaster in modern history was this sci-fi first person shooter/role playing game that had gamers salivating over the past few years. Now let’s get one thing straight: Cyberpunk 2077 is a decent game on PS5, but as for its PS4 and Xbox One releases, it was an unplayable mess.
So much so in fact, that its creators, CD Projekt Red, started a refund scheme to accompany the PS Store and a Microsoft option offering users full refunds on digital copies, which was a first.
Fallout ’76
After the huge success and addictive nature of Fallout 4, which by-and-large was a brilliant game, the follow-up was something less celebratory. Not only did Bethesda evolve the franchise into a massive multiplayer online RPG (MMORPG), it was absolutely littered with bugs and turned a massive portion of its otherwise loyal fan base off.
Mass Effect: Andromeda
The fourth, in what was previously a sterling trilogy of sci-fi RPG type epics, meant expectations were high for the new chapter that moved on from Commander Shepherd and his crew we’d grown to love over the years. However, Andromeda was painfully dull, clunky, and had impressively managed to zap all the fun out of what fans had become accustomed to.
The Order 1866
A next gen promise for PS4 that failed to deliver on every level, while the visuals looked tasty enough, it was the sheer shallowness of its gameplay that let itself down. As a game it felt somewhat shoddy, but as a hugely anticipated PS4 launch title it was poor.
Star Wars Battlefront 2
With the first online Star Wars game in this line proving a hit amongst devoted fans and casual gamers alike, the sequel promised more of the same as well as a single player campaign. What players got was a game that relied on micro-transactions, meaning people were forced to spend more money if they wanted to get anywhere.
Naturally, fans rebelled and, over time, the numerous patches and updates for the game removed these elements and surprisingly morphed it into a rather good title almost four years later.
Watch Dogs
Another PS4 exclusive that ultimately left Sony fans deflated was a franchise that promised so much but delivered so very little. Its sequel, Legion, was more of the same, with some improvements but still not up to scratch for a series that seemed poised to deliver dynamic and genre-defining gameplay in an open world setting.
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
Back in the days of Atari, developers supposedly threw this movie tie-in together in little over a month, after the global success of Steven Spielberg’s hit at cinemas.
With projected sales of five million, the disastrous release shifted a mere 1.5 million, with many disgruntled gamers sending their copies back after the rushed job unsurprisingly ended up as one of the worst games ever released.
Daikatana
The most infamous on this list, Daikatana was delayed so long that, upon release in 2000, it was already dated and generally described as one of the biggest flops ever. Now remembered for its painful mediocrity, the game needed to shift some 2.5 million units to turn a profit and ended up selling a measly 40,000.
It’s regarded as one of the most disappointing first person shooters ever, especially as it was held up for so long.
Carmageddon 64
Considering it won 1997’s driving game of the year, the Nintendo 64 version was the absolute pits (pun intended). With the original securing a few million copies under its belt after a slightly controversial but popular release, the Nintendo 64 version launched to a plethora of dire reviews, citing its physics, graphics and general gameplay as god-awful.
NGC Magazine typified the mood of the public with an 8% rating and described it as ‘brain-meltingly awful’.
Perfect Dark Zero
With the excitement of the Xbox 360’s launch, anticipation for the sequel to N64 stone cold classic Perfect Dark was almost more than gamers could take. In reality, what we got was still a good but not the superlative fps that fans expected and, more so, demanded.
The promise of what could have been was far greater than what Rare delivered; with heavy criticism aimed at the appalling enemy AI.
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Topics: Gaming, Cyberpunk 2077, Now, PlayStation, PS4, Sony, video games
