2012: Your WORST/Most Disappointing Gaming Experiences

[T-Min]

So there are at least two threads regarding your personal GotY. Come to think of it, I haven't posted in one yet, BUT for the record mine is Kid Icarus: Uprising so yeah.

 

Now, to arouse that extreme pessimism that lies so deep within us all, what gaming experiences did you have last year that...weren't so great? Oh, and this doesn't just include games that came out this year that happened to suck - I'm going to take a page out of meaning that this includes events, specific moments, and games you simply played last year, but that came out some time before 2012.

 

So, as for mine:

 

Repeating the Final Boss of Final Fantasy X God Knows How Many Times

 

Well, this is a party I was more than a little late to, considering that Final Fantasy X is about eleven years old, but hey, when I played it before, I was a young, stupid child who didn't have the patience for a 50-hour long RPG. But sometimes, even all these years later, the patience I've gained from playing these games can be quite thoroughly tested. Don't get me wrong, Final Fantasy X is a good game - far from one of my favorites in the franchise and fairly dated due to being the first installment with such innovations as facial animations, spoken dialogue and in-engine cutscenes, but a fun little game nonetheless with a strong battle system, a great stoyline, a fantastic setting, and great characters...eh, well, three great characters.

 

But that's not the point here. The point is mostly regarding those previously mentioned in-engine cutscenes. Yeah, Final Fantasy X has basically cemented in me a seething hatred of unskippable cutscenes, one of the reasons being the final boss. Prior to the final boss is a cutscene that's actually one of the most well-done and emotionally moving in the game. That's great. Then the final boss kills you. Oh, well, look at that, you get to repeat the last fifteen minutes of gameplay again! The five minutes that included running around collecting gems in a rotating room full of icicles that pop out of the ground right beneath your feet, initiating an enemy encounter! And then you get to watch the five-minute long cutscene again! Oh, what's that? You died again? Aww, that's too bad, WELL BACK TO THE LAST SAVE POINT WITH YOU! This happened to me at least ten times before I finally decided to go back to prepare myself - which, by the way, meant trekking back through almost the entirety of the final dungeon to get back to my airship, constantly being molested by randomly-encountered enemies along the way. By the time I came back, my party was totally composed of powerhouses, because God help me if I was going to sit through all that crap again.

 

And the moral of this story is: unskippable cutscenes are bad and you should probably be a bit more liberal with save points while you're at it. Oh, and speaking of Final Fantasy...

 

Playing Ten Hours of This Piece of $#!7 (self-censoring cuz I've got class)

 

Yep, Final Fantasy XIII-2. We all know it sucks and we all know why it sucks, but I suppose I'll beat that horse just one last time. *ahem* Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a set of videos and images that metaphorically describe the experience of playing Square Enix's RPG, Final Fantasy XIII-2. Enjoy:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA_4myP3fKo

 

Thank you. Oh, and I know that lots of people are going to agree with me on this one:

 

E3 2012

 

Everything sucked except for Ubisoft.

 

Everything.

 

Okay, I guess Sony was okay until they brought out that moronic storybook thing that no one gives a crap about, but for the most part, it was just so...disappointingly weak. For me, there wasn't really anything that incited much excitement, and there were hardly even any massive announcements. I mean, I guess Pikmin 3 and Scribblenauts Unlimited were...things? And Halo 4 was the only even remotely interesting thing Microsoft showed at their press conference. Bottom line, it was so...depressingly meh. And on the subject of depressingly meh...

 

New Super Mario Bros. 2

 

Dear Nintendo,

 

Why?

 

Okay, to be perfectly honest, this is kind of the odd one out in this post. It's by no stretch of the human imagination a bad game - in fact, taken objectively, it's pretty good. The mechanics are solid and the level design is, if nothing else, competent. But Mario is never supposed to be "competent".  Mario games are supposed to be great, and greatness is something that this game...thoroughly lacks. I mean, some would argue that the New Super Mario Bros. series is by its very nature Mario in its most bland and dull incarnation, but New Super Mario Bros. U, released mere months after this game, is easily my favorite platformer of the year. I guess it's true that both games suffer from some of the same problems - both essentially rehash the same tropes and BAH-BAH-tastic music used in previous NSMB games without building onto the gameplay the series' 2-D entries have been milking for more than twenty years aside from adding a few new power-ups, but New Super Mario Bros. U's levels actually had tons of creativity and diversity to them. Almost every one introduced a brand new idea or mechanic, and even the ones that didn't felt meticulously crafted with all of love and effort you'd expect from a classic Mario game.

 

New Super Mario Bros. 2...lacks...any sort of soul, really. I mean, yeah, it has the coin gimmick, but that's literally one of the most worthless ideas to ever have been implemented. The power-ups are kind of cool, I guess, but the coins themselves don't really do anything differently or complement the level design in any way. And the level designs themselves just feel like they were put together without any actual thought to them. I mean, obviously, there was some or else the game would be unplayable, but there's no sense of meticulousness or diversity and genuine creativity is fairly rare. There are a handful of kind of creative levels and even occasional flashes of brilliance, but nothing stands out because the game is insultingly easy, especially compared to its Wii U counterpart. It's incredibly short as well, and while Mario games aren't usually that long, the amount of content generally makes up for it. Here...not so much. Really, it feels like Nintendo just slapped together a 2-D Mario game in half a year just for a quick cash-grab from people who wouldn't be able to buy the game they actually cared about for Wii U. The coin gimmick is basically the perfect metaphor for this game - Nintendo only made this to make money, and it worked because it's freaking Mario. I can't help but feel like Nintendo knowingly put together a mediocre product and shoved it out because they knew people would buy it anyway. I really just can't buy that the mediocrity of this game even compared to some other NSMB installments was just a complete accident. And that's really sad.

 

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

 

There are some people out there who would say that Re:coded completely sucked and is the worst installment in the Kingdom Hearts franchise to date. To that, I say, "hahaha NOPE". I've actually had this game for a few years, but I didn't suffer through the entire thing until last spring because it always bored the crap out of me. Basically, it's a mission-based gross oversimplification of the Kingdom Hearts gameplay with disgustingly repetitious mission design and bosses that test the limits of your patience. It has a great story, though! Which only makes it hurt that much more that everything else is so insipid. It's not one of the worst games I've ever played, but definitely one of the most frustratingly dull.

 

Watching Capcom Continue to Treat Mega Man Like Garbage

 

I don't even know if I can say much for this one. Even Street Fighter X Mega Man, while decent, wasn't exactly much, especially considering that it was fan-made rather than officially made. Let's just hope that 2013 is better, but knowing Crapcom, it probably won't be.

 

Trekking Across Tales of the Abyss's Pointlessly Vast Expanse of Blandness God Knows How Many Times

 

I love this game.

 

I really do.

 

But I hate its overworld.

 

I hate its overworld so, so much.

 

Imagine Hyrule Field in Twilight Princess. That was pretty dull wasn't it?

 

Now imagine four Twilight Princess Hyrule Fields.

 

Imagine having to spend about a fourth of the game in those Hyrule Fields.

 

Now imagine that you don't have Epona.

 

Then imagine that you get some sort of air vehicle, but it doesn't make navigating the heinous geography any less tedious.

 

Imagine that vehicle gets downgraded after you have only had it for about an hour's worth of gameplay so that it can only travel over land and sea.

 

Yep. This was a great game with a fantastic story, an excellent battle system, and quite possibly some of the strongest characters in RPG history, but at times, playing it could be quite the taxing experience.

 

*sigh* And finally...

 

Replaying Sonic 06 For the First Time in Years

 

hoo-ee

 

yeah

 

Basically, I did this so I would have an excuse to review a game I really hated.

 

About six months later, The Great Clement reviewed the game, and did I much better job of it than I ever could or would.

 

I felt bad then.

 

But hey, you know?

 

Life is all about feeling bad, it seems.

 

Life sucks.

 

Everything sucks.

 

Everything...

 

...

 

SO YEAH. What were YOUR worst gaming experiences of 2012, HM?!!

 

Edited January 1, 2013 by The One and Only T-Man

[Wraith]

 

 

So fucking boring.

 

So glitchy 

 

so slow. 

 

Such a fucking waste of disc space.

 

It's unbelievable. THIS piece of shit is the great Assassin's Creed? This is the shit that tops metacritic and dominates game sites and magazines? It's almost fucking unbelievable. When I play a game called "Assassin's Creed", I want to fucking kill people. Not run back and forth doing errands and shit. Fuck that. 

 

And why the fuck does it take 20 years to even see the fucking protagonist? Like what the flying fuck?: And the glitches. THe graphical glitches are just terrible. The game would randomly get blurry as fuck and drop framerate and have texture issues for NO GODDAMN REASON. And the gameplay glitches? I got fucking stuck to walls. Enemies randomly floating and phasing through shit. Fuck this game. It is ass. I got a full refund. Maybe it was porting issues, but I can't imagine even a version that's patched up could be that much better. 

 

Fuck this game.

[Solkia]

Then imagine that you get some sort of air vehicle, but it doesn't make navigating the heinous geography any less tedious.

 

 

You apparently didn't use it right then.

 

 

Anyways, I just bought Sonic 4 this year. It's already been said, but the level design is shit, the physics are shit, the music is shit, and the final boss is complete ass.

 

The Tales of the Abyss 3DS port is pretty watered down, and the 3D is really lackluster (though I feel this way about every 3DS game). It's still Tales of the Abyss, but yeah, it's a poor port.

 

It really annoys me that they went out of their way to recreate the end animation in Okami HD, but didn't bother to get the rights to "Reset". Idiots.

 

And on that that note: Okamiden. What a load of shit. It not only misses the mark, it doesn't even aim at it.

 

Where the fuck is there a Whale in the Zodiac?

 

Why the fuck is there so many children? Did all the gods just have a huge orgy or something?

 

Why the hell are there so many fucking load times?

 

Why was this shit on the DS?

 

Why is it it that most of the bosses suck?

 

Why is the music so poor?

 

Why can't Chibi jump over ledges?

 

They didn't put a single goddamn ounce of effort into this game.

[super saiyan weegee]

Playing Sonic Adventure 2 for the first time was a pretty big dissapointment for me. Don't get me wrong, it's an OK game. But from all the love it gets, I expected much, MUCH more than the meh game I experienced. It was really a let down. Another I could say was a let down is Scribblenauts Unlimited. It's a fun game yes, but they didn't add enough new things to it. Super Scribblenauts innovated the series merely by adding adjectives. Yes, Scribblenauts Unlimited's Object Editor was fun to mess around with, and the creation sharing was indeed cool, but the fun of actually making something didn't last long for me. It is still a high quality game, but the fact that it is merely Super Scribblenauts with HD graphics and an object editor, makes this game sort of disappointing in my eyes, but in no way bad. But who knows, if I mess around some more with the Object Editor, I may begin to like it.

Feel free to hate on this post.

Edited January 1, 2013 by Have a Haden New Year!

[Speederino]

Hmm...well...hmmm.

 

I dunno. I'm careful to avoid any games that I think might be dissapointing, and I can't really think of any specific moments that had me super frustrated. Assassin's Creed 3's optional objectives were a bit infuriating, but nothing I spent hours stressing over. I guess the best stories I can offer relate to some of the absurd difficulty spikes in Skyrim.

 

On one of my last playthroughs, I was a pure-mage. Magic only, no weapons. One of the first dungeons I crawl into just for the hell of it happens to contain a dragon priest. Now, for those of you who don't know, dragon priests are very, very powerful enemies. They have very powerful spells that can kill you in one hit and have a lot of health to boot. Once you reach higher levels they become perfectly managable. But a level 5 weaponless mage? This is the type of experience save states were created for, people.

 

 

Playing Sonic Adventure 2 for the first time was a pretty big dissapointment for me. Don't get me wrong, it's an OK game. But from all the love it gets, I expected much, MUCH more than the meh game I experienced. It was really let down.

 

You're not alone. I would never call it a bad game, but I will never understand why some people consider it to be the best Sonic game ever created. If you ask me, only 1/3rd of it even qualifies as a Sonic game.

[Sly4Good]

Most disappointing game I played in 2012.....hmmm.....I didn't actually play that many bad games....but, if I had to choose one, It would be ModNation Racers. I found it boring, bland, had terrible music, the controls controlled like ass the majority of the time for me, and the plot was rather.....lackluster.

Hell, I've never bothered to get past the 1st race of the Mayhem Tour simply because I never felt inclined to beat it. With Little Big Planet, the series this game was modeled after, I wanted to beat the games, I wanted to stop The Collector, or the Negativitron, I wanted to explore the levels, I wanted to collect everything there was to collect, I wanted to have an experience, an experience this game lacks. You know what's even better, Little Big Planet now has Little Big Planet Karting, which outdid this game in every way.

[FourCartridge]

Now, to arouse that extreme pessimism that lies so deep within us all, what gaming experiences did you have last year that...weren't so great? Oh, and this doesn't just include games that came out this year that happened to suck - I'm going to take a page out of meaning that this includes events, specific moments, and games you simply played last year, but that came out some time before 2012.

 

...

 

...

 

...

 

Nope, not feeling it. This year was actually pretty great for me, I even got a PS3, and I've been missing out on a lot of exclusives(Why did I get a 360 instead - Oh right I didn't have 599 US DOLLARS XD)

 

Uh, finding out the 360 was only backwards compatible with some original Xbox games I guess?

[Conando]

The Tales of the Abyss 3DS port is pretty watered down, and the 3D is really lackluster (though I feel this way about every 3DS game). It's still Tales of the Abyss, but yeah, it's a poor port.

 

Uhhh, did you play it? It's the exact same game, which in itself can be disappointing because it's a lazy port. That's what bothered me about it. I was expecting it to at least be an enhanced port but, it's just the same thing without the multiplayer (which I guess you could use to say it's pretty watered down but, that's the only thing missing).

Edited January 1, 2013 by Kringle Of Awesome

[#AR]

Even though the game wasn't bad at all, I have to say that one of the most disappointing games I've played this year:

 

 

I was really hyped for this game. This game was one of the reasons I picked up a Vita. I got the game and was excited for it. I was blown away at first since the game played really smoothly and looked amazing...but after awhile, it just wore off on me. A lot of things about the game were brilliant. The music, the visuals, and Kat was a charming character. The gravity mechanic was really nice, but it just seemed tedious after playing it through. After awhile, I kinda lost the will to play it. I may pick it up again sometime since it's free on PSN+

[Solkia]

Uhhh, did you play it? It's the exact same game, which in itself can be disappointing because it's a lazy port. That's what bothered me about it. I was expecting it to at least be an enhanced port but, it's just the same thing without the multiplayer (which I guess you could use to say it's pretty watered down but, that's the only thing missing).

Yes I did play it. Did I get a pirate cart or something? The club nintendo code went through, so it must not have been.

 

Rendering is butchered, so much so that 2 of the polygons on Van's head are disconnected so there's a black line between them.

 

Lava textures were replaced with awful looking textures

 

Battles only play at 30 FPS as opposed to 60 like the PS2 version.

 

Skits have horribly choppy animation

 

Voice filters were removed, so when characters are thinking to themselves, it just sounds like they're talking without opening their mouth.

 

Extreme slowdown in the most random of places

 

Are you telling me none of you experienced this?

[Speederino]

Oh wait, there WAS a big dissapointment for me. I've played a few free MMO's. Most of them seem to offer pretty enjoyable experiences regardless of you not paying a dime. You might feel encouraged to buy a couple things from the store, but the big fancy subscription models tend to be aimed towards those who *really* enjoy the game and want to experience everything available. I like to compare it to a club. A club where everyone is admitted and free to enjoy the bar and sample the food, but it also has an exclusive VIP lounge for the regulars. Lord of the Rings Online, DC Universe, Champions, those all gave me this sort of impression.

 

So why in the fuck does The Old Republic, a game that where I'm *actually* a former subscriber, feel more restrictive then any of those other games? Highly reduced XP, I can barely touch the space missions, my character options are pitiful, my inventory space has shrunk, and until recently I couldn't even have more then two quickbars. Again let me stress: I am a former subscriber, meaning I am what's called a "preferred" player. Look, I understand I am no longer subscribing. I *expect* restrictions. But when the basic F2P models of all those other games outshine ToR's system for former subscribers, something is really wrong.  If you want to draw in former subscribers- people who STOPPED paying money, mind you- then locking every little feature behind a pay window isn't really a good way to do it.

 

If ToR is a club, then it's one that begrudgingly lets people mingle on the front lawn and doesn't let anyone in until they pay up. In the meantime, they keep opening the windows and shouting "Mmmm, we're having delicious cake in here. It's so good, and only $3 a bite. If you losers pay up you can have some, you know."

 

And you know what, it wouldn't be so bad if they offered better solutions in the in-game store. I certainly wouldn't mind paying a one time fee of $10-$15 for permanent access to space missions or regular XP gains. Truly. I might even be willing to play ball if this was done on a character-to-character basis. I know the game still needs to make money, I'm willing to spend a few bucks. But instead, they feel like mini subscription fees. You can buy more XP gain...that will last for three hours. You can buy your way into the space missions...for a week. You can buy more access to PvP warzones...also for a week.

 

With the F2P model as it is now, what's the point?

Edited January 1, 2013 by Speederino

[Old dead account]

Here's mine

 

 

Sonic 4 Episode 2

 

Well what can I say? I got this game expecting grand improvements over the first, and it did have those but I still didn't have fun with it. The physics were definitely better but it still felt like a really soulless game with incompetent level design AND you can't even play as Tails! Add to that, the iOS version had game breaking lag so it was even worse. Episode Metal was also disappoint but it was free content so I can't really complain. Worst part is that this was pretty much THE big Sonic game of 2012. I hope they discontinue this shitty episodic series and move on, and let Dimps move on as well.

 

 

New Super Mario Bros 2

 

This wasn't a bad game by any means, but out of all the Mario main platformers 2D or 3D, this one was easily the most meh/average of them all. Everything about it just screams soulless and lazy rehash all over the place. It has a coin gimmick, but that's it. Otherwise it's pretty much the same as the first NSMB without even an attempt at new gimmicks

 

 

Kid Icarus: Uprising

 

Uh-oh, controversy! Before I get lynched, let me just say that this is by no means a bad game. The reason i put it up here is because a lot of people (including here) hyped it up to insane levels claiming that it was the greatest game Nintendo has ever made... when I played it, it's actually pretty fun once you get used to the controls, but the combat feels so basic compared to what I was expecting and the camera is a pain to control on the ground levels. Then I saw people and even some reviewers comparing the flight levels to Starfox 64 and saying that they surpassed even them, but... no, just no. IMO, they didn't even come close to Starfox 64 levels and also felt pretty plain. I don't know, the game just felt so plain compared to what I was expecting. Is the secret in the multiplayer? If so, I've stated my opinion on games that rely on multiplayer, it feels like too much of a crutch. I don't know, it just didn't even make the top 20 nintendo games for me personally despite all the hype and praise.

[Conando]

Yes I did play it. Did I get a pirate cart or something? The club nintendo code went through, so it must not have been.

 

Rendering is butchered, so much so that 2 of the polygons on Van's head are disconnected so there's a black line between them.

 

Lava textures were replaced with awful looking textures

 

Battles only play at 30 FPS as opposed to 60 like the PS2 version.

 

Skits have horribly choppy animation

 

Voice filters were removed, so when characters are thinking to themselves, it just sounds like they're talking without opening their mouth.

 

Extreme slowdown in the most random of places

 

Are you telling me none of you experienced this?

 

Game looked exactly the same to me but, the 30 FPS thing is something I noticed. They should have been able to run the game at 60, considering Nintendo did it with freakin' Mario Kart. Most 3DS games do run at 30, though they tend to look at lot better than Tales of the Abyss.

[Gregzilla]

I can't really say there were many truly bad experiences I've had in games this year.  Ever since Other M disappointed me so badly, I've been pretty stingy about buying games that I'm not sure about.  Because of this, I rarely buy games that I end up regretting purchasing.  I think 2012 just had a severe lack of games that made me give a crap, rather than having actual bad games that I didn't like.

 

But I guess I can try to remember particular games that left me disappointed.

 

First off, Sonic 4 Episode 2.  Ya know why this sucked even more than it could have?  Because it was hyped up as a game that would fix the problems that E1 had.  I.E. the physics.  Which were improved just barely.  They got rid of uncurling, and the momentum was like .01% more noticeable.  It was still nowhere near the level of good controls the Genesis originals had.  The level design was still shit, most of the music was hindered by the synth instruments, the special stages were another re-hash of the shitty half pipe, the list goes on.  Despite this, I still enjoyed this game somewhat, as it wasn't completely devoid of fun moments.  But after playing Generations - which I REALLY enjoyed - this felt just plain lackluster.

 

Next up, the New Super Mario Bros. games.  These are not bad games.  But releasing two of them in one year really made us notice how lazy and uninteresting they really are.  I don't own NSMB2, but I tried it at Best Buy.  It is exactly the same as the DS one, albeit with the coin gimmick.  And the reward for one million coins is utterly pathetic.  I DO own NSMBU, which is a bit better.  It's a fun romp, and the Challenge Mode is great.  However, when playing the main story mode, it still feels like that cookie-cutter platformer with few interesting ideas.  And the few interesting ideas they have usually feel unrealized.  Plus it just feels like less of an adventure; there aren't as many cool secrets as the old games, you still can't bring adult Yoshi to the map, and level tropes are still being effortlessly rehashed.  Super Mario World is still a much better game, and that came out over two decades ago.  Nintendo should be trying to build off of that formula and take it to new, interesting places.  Instead, it just feels like they're going backwards.

 

But to be honest, those games weren't really bad experiences, just ones that could have been a lot better.  The only things that made me really upset this year were regarding upcoming and unannounced games, like:

 

- Rayman Legends - DELAYED

- Pikmin 3 - NEXT YEAR

- Doom 4 - BARELY ANY INFO

- Retro's new game - NO INFO

- New Zelda/Metroid/F-Zero/Star Fox/3D Mario - NOTHIN' YET

 

Yeah, stuff like that.  But to be optimistic about it, this could just mean that 2013 will be that much more impressive, now that we've got this sorta meh year out of the way.

 

Here's hoping the new year brings us a plethora of fun surprises!

[Mogtaki]

It usually takes 4-5 years to make a Zelda and Mario game, but try and take this year's E3 as something that would potentially bring in some info about new ones and not a game that is simply a redux like the Super Mario games are with a terrible suicide button that's right beside the jump button. I understand Zelda, but when people asked Nintendo to do a re-release of Majora's Mask with updated everything and considering how good Ocarina of Time 3DS turned out, I have high hopes that they are working on one. It was the choice between a remake or a new Zelda game when they asked the internet for opinions and people wanted the remake more than anything.

 

I'm going to have to say that I was a bit disappointed over Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale. The makers of the game were obviously making it for their love of Kratos because that guy is horribly overpowered and they're not doing a damn thing about it. There's other characters that are currently too overpowered right now, namely Raiden and Nariko, but not like this asshole. The broken online mechanics are absurd since you get disconnected whenever somebody ragequits (which happens a lot if there's an asshole playing as Kratos/Raiden/Nariko and exploiting their OPness). All I hope is that they fix this game in a future patch like they fixed Sackboy.

 

I can't say I played many games last year though, although I did play a lot of Skyrim and I was not disappointed with that game, it really delivered. I haven't had the money to buy a plethora of games. I have read reviews and what not, but after reading them and watching playthroughs I've managed to avoid the disappointing games.

 

I was a little disappointed with Pokemon Black/White 2 though, mainly because it felt as if you were simply pushed through in a fashion similar to "here's your things, now go catch pokemon! Oh and there's bad guys too, now go this way and train then keep going". It just felt a little lazy and pushy, treating you like a 5 year old at a restaurant with a play pit. The first Black/White game had a little story going with it, but your rival here is just a big sack of predictable character and acting like a little Navi when saying "I'm going to this place! I'll beat you there!...Ohhh no, you beat me here, lets have a battle to test our pokemon!" At least with the other rivals, you had something to win for (pride with Gary bloody Oak and Silver, friendly rivalry with Cheren and Bianca as they worked to explore their pokemon further), but this guy just feels like a generic rival who's trying to be overly friendly but actually hates you but the game will never admit that because he barely has any personality. I liked the little storylines in the last games, but this one just feels pushed and barely existent as it copies from the last games.

[-Mark-]

Paper Mario: Sticker Star by a goddamned country mile.

 

I've repeated ad nauseum why that game was so amazingly disappointing, so I'll save myself and you all the effort of going through it again. 

 

That doesn't mean it was necessarily the worst game I played last year (although it might be, not sure), but I had pretty high hopes for it, and it dashed every single one of them to pieces without fail. 

[Lamor]

To be honest almost all games I played in 2012 were awesome excluding Sonic 4 Episode 2. Yea, everything was improved. I could actually enjoy music, graphics were gorgeous, level tropes were pretty cool too and physics engine was somewhat better. Yes, episode 2 was miles better than episode 1 but I still didn't enjoy this game much. Co-op is a joke. Played it with my friend and all he was doing was pressing right and spamming jump/fly. We actually got through almost all zones using this technique. Oh and lack of replayability once again.

[Carbo]

PS Vita

It had a decent enough launch line-up by current gen standards and it was guaranteed to hold one over for a couple of months until the big hitters came around. It had a solid couple of weeks in sales, and it was pretty good hardware.

Then the sales dropped. The games started coming out at a lesser rate. The only game that had any hype after summer was pretty much the only one that's on the radar, which was an enhanced port of a game from 2008. Sony had to reduce forecasts from 16 million to around 10 million in March and this process was done twice. The panic mode Black Friday bundles didn't kick off in any significant way. It still hasn't sold more than 3 million. It's practically suffering leprosy in Japan where it's second holiday results are abysmal. The only thing Sony seems to want to tout it as is a cross-platform PS3 bridge. I can't think of any kind of technology that looks and is built that good yet no one wants to touch it with a ten foot pole, and what's the only thing Sony has to say about all of this? "It's just hitting it's stride".

And when Sony's hyped "must-have" PS Vita title Black Ops Declassified finally rears it's head? It's turned out to be absolute bile with no redeeming qualities, developed in a matter of five months. How the fuck could something as agonizingly, astonishingly terrible even pass Sony's quality control?

The only thing that's salvaged itself with my purchase of this thing is Persona 4 Golden, which is just that good that it's made me forget most of my buyer's remorse with this thing. Other than that, it is ridiculous how much this console has failed to not even kick off it's own way, but to not even compare favorably to PSP's numbers. It'd take a miracle at this point for it to churn out any really good numbers, but at this point any chance of the Vita becoming that awesome portable everyone wants to get is lost forever.

Which brings me to my next disappointing experience:

Gravity Rush

I had way too much disposable income this summer. I knew I was going to get a Vita eventually despite my cynical assumptions of what the future entails for it. It was two days before Gravity Rush's release, and having played the demo in a kiosk it was the only thing I thought looked good. At the time I wished it were a PS3 title, but I enjoyed it nonetheless and I actually really wanted to play it more. So I bit the bullet and I got the Vita, and I got this game with it. It was the least excited I had ever been walking out from a store with a new console to play, but it dissipated when I knew I'd be playing a game that looked really good and seemed to fit right into prevalent interests of my own.

I was naive preserving that judgement because it was really evident to me that Gravity Rush was one of those "play the demo, now play it thirty more times and you've played the entire game" type of games. I had fun for the first couple of hours when stumbling and fumbling through the air as Kat, but it all soon started to wear out on me. The awful combat, the lack of intuitive gravity puzzles, the fact that the only real pass time is flying throughout the stylized yet totally barren city, that "epic" music that plays in the overworld giving the impression that the game is much bigger and adventure-filled than it really is. The more I slogged through, the more aggravated I became. I was honestly convinced that the only good things about it could only been considered good because, well, it was one of the few Vita games that wasn't forgettable, a port or a rehash of something we'd seen before. But as a game it's a bunch of boring design decisions one after another and I can only hope all of this is remedied in a sequel, because it's insanely frustrating how much wasted potential has gone into the game.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Is it alright to bring up Mass Effect 3 and it's ending, or is that just beating a horse that's already decayed, eaten by maggots, and decomposed into the ground?

[buba]

Sonic Adventure 2

Being the only main series Sonic game that I never played combined with the fact that it is highly praised by Sonic fans everywhere I was pretty excited and had high expectations for the game.

Well for starters if this is what a large portion of Sonic fans call "the best Sonic game ever!" I'm pretty disapointed. I had more fun playing the Master System games than this.

The only stages that are ok by my standards are the "Speed type" ones. Metal Harbor for example was fun to play and City Escape was pretty good for a first impression of the game.

Now the Treasure Hunting and whatever Tails and Eggman stages are where fucking horrible.

Knuckles/Rouge stages where way too big, the hints where misleading as fuck ("In the ghost nose" What ghost nose? Oh! You mean the fucking montain that looks like a pumpkin shaped like a skull? Ok.) and the radar was even worse than the one from Adventure. I mean why does it only detect a Emerald shard at a time?

The Tails/Eggman stages? Fuck them. You just walk around pressing a button that makes a horrible sound for some time then release it to shoot some robots, then repeat this 20 more times until you reach the goal ring.

The story? It was mediocre at its best.

The music? That one I have to say that like in every Sonic game they nailed it.

To resume all this, it was a horrible experience. All those years wanting to play this so called "masterpiece" and what I get is that "thing".

Edited January 1, 2013 by Tmsp

[Candescence]

Is it alright to bring up Mass Effect 3 and it's ending, or is that just beating a horse that's already decayed, eaten by maggots, and decomposed into the ground?

Possibly the latter, but seeing how it was one of the most anticipated conclusions in gaming, I think it's worth repeating. The thought process behind it all is incomprehensible. Nobody was expecting an uber-happy conclusion (though that's basically what the new Synthesis ending is, and it's just fuckn' creepy as hell), but the most devoted of players should at least be able to earn their happy ending. Instead, the war assets didn't count for shit, and we get a deus ex machina that not only breaks the established lore, it also completely contradicts the themes of the series. The Expanded Ending does nothing to solve this, and even adds a "fuck you" for the hell of it.

 

ME3 was, otherwise, absolutely fantastic. How the hell Bioware could fuck up the ending that bad boggles the mind.

[Cola]

I wasn't really disappointed by much, really. Sure, Episode II and NSMB2 could've been great, and they weren't, but I still had fun with them. One was mediocre (I liked it, shut up), the other was just good. Which is weird for a Mario game. That said, those two are only disappointing because they could've been better; I still play them regularly.

 

My biggest disappointment is probably SONIC ADVENTURE 2 HD

 

Now, I lost my GameCube copy years back, so the HD rerelease was the first time I was playing it in literal YEARS. At LEAST 5. So, I booot it up. The game starts out fun, but I finally see the complaints about the Mecha and Treasure hunting stages. Basically, everything past Pumpkin Hill that ISN'T a Sonic stage will make you want to pull your hair out. And it's not even the concept! It's the execution! There are so many design choices that could've - and SHOULD'VE been fixed. But, I digress.

 

The Sonic stages had me grinning like an idiot. There's just something about them. Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe they're just really fun. Whatever it is, I had a blast with them. However, that was before disaster struck. The other day, as I booted up the game, I started in Route 280, rather than where I was supposed to be - Egg Quarters. I thought "Oh no, the game skipped me ahead. Is it possible to beat without upgrades? Do I even have upgrades?!" White Jungle confirmed to me that yes - I had no upgrades. Was this a random glitch? Was it due to the fact that I swapped the voice languages?

 

Either way, after stumbling through the Egg Golem, Sky Rail, Mad Space, and the Knuckles boss fight, I arrived at Cosmic Wall. And I was stuck. It's literally IMPOSSIBLE to complete without it. I mean, sure, that wouldn't be bad if the levels showed up on the map, but they didn't. It was like they never even existed. I haven't really been motivated to touch the game since. To be fair, this was only a few days ago. Maybe I'll start a new save and blow through the game. Only time will tell.

 

Now then, I'm off to finally play Shadow of the Colossus. What a way to start the new year!

Edited January 1, 2013 by Kenstar

[Nix]

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II

 

I expected this game to be better than Episode I.  I mean, that's not too much to ask for right?  A game that's actually kind of sort of competent and almost fun ?

 

But noooooooooooooo.  I don't even fucking know how they did it, but they fucking did.  They made it even worse somehow and that honestly baffles me to no end.

 

Assassin's Creed III

 

This isn't a bad game by any means, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't disappointing as all hell.  It's just... boring.  Connor's a good character, but he's dull.  I understand his motives, his actions; and I like him because he's a bit different from the rest; but he lacks the characteristics that makes him likable and relatable (maybe that's the point, I dunno).  Some of the missions are fun, but a large majority of them just feel like busy work.  Desmond's parts, as should be expected by now, aren't much better.

[Your Vest Friend]

Mario and Sonic London 2012 (3DS)

 

I dunno if anyone else remembers this, or even paid attention to it when it came out. I've got to list this though, if only for two reasons;

 

-The story isn't as well presented as Mario and Sonic Winter DS.

-Those goddamn restrictions on events which mean you can only play certain ones with your favourite character (Want to be Sonic? You have 15 or so events. Want to be Amy? Sorry, you can only have 10. Have the gall to want Knuckles? Fuck you, you don't even get double digits).

 

At least the story itself was pretty nice, and the events are okay overall (although fuck tilt control event).

[Soniman]

 

 

So fucking boring.

 

So glitchy 

 

so slow. 

 

Such a fucking waste of disc space.

 

It's unbelievable. THIS piece of shit is the great Assassin's Creed? This is the shit that tops metacritic and dominates game sites and magazines? It's almost fucking unbelievable. When I play a game called "Assassin's Creed", I want to fucking kill people. Not run back and forth doing errands and shit. Fuck that. 

 

And why the fuck does it take 20 years to even see the fucking protagonist? Like what the flying fuck?: And the glitches. THe graphical glitches are just terrible. The game would randomly get blurry as fuck and drop framerate and have texture issues for NO GODDAMN REASON. And the gameplay glitches? I got fucking stuck to walls. Enemies randomly floating and phasing through shit. Fuck this game. It is ass. I got a full refund. Maybe it was porting issues, but I can't imagine even a version that's patched up could be that much better. 

 

Fuck this game.

This. Hell, Wraith even warned me about this and I still bought this shit. This has got to be the most awful purchase I ever made, nothing about it was fun in the slightest because it's so fucking tedious and boring. The worst part of my experience being I paid 60 bucks for it and when I returned it I got only 14 bucks back from GameShitFucktop essentially shitting 45 bucks down the toilet. Fuck GameStop and fuck this game.