Promised Gaming Dream. Anticipated. Delivered. Destroyed.

[Prey]

As gamers we all live in a world in which pure anticipation of something makes up a vast amount of what it is to be a gamer. Something is announced, we get excited, we research, we preorder or we buy - then we wait. The promise of just what game X is going to be and more precisely what it is going to deliver as a pure gaming experience is now out of our hands. Upon getting our copies we could well be set up to play THE game that we have felt that we have waited years of not most of our lives for but it's always with some trepidation that we start it up due to the plethora of things that could instantly mar our first time experience. Sometimes we can get lucky and end up with the odd simplistic niggle that is easily rectified thus saving our entry into our dream game while other times we can be hit with a complete brick wall that stops our dream game being anything but before we have even had the chance to dive in.

What we don't find in one game however we very often then tend to roll it into a ball, stick it in our pocket and move on to the next game that we hope will deliver our dream. In 2017 however I almost feel as though that's all I now do. That ball has been taken out and put away countless times as more and more games fail to deliver not only on the hype they seemingly so well orchestrate prior to release but even on something that is even remotely recognisable as to what was first promised when the game first appeared before us in an announcement video many years before. What I'm trying to say is not only are our expectations built up from the day we learn about a game but very often it is even done in a completely premature manner when a game simply is not ready to even be shown.

Games that instantly come to mind are ones such as Destiny, Watch_Dogs, Evolve, No Man's Sky, Battleborn, Battlefront, Batman: Arkham Knight and Just Cause 3 (well for me at least!). All these games went far beyond reasonable amounts of hype and every single one of them was released to significant amounts of player backlash. More recently Microsoft's very own Crackdown 3 has become a victim of its own hype without even being released as they told us they had regret for showing the game far too early and promising additional 'cloud processing power' and the like in the process. The hype for that game is now all but done as it has been moved into 2018 and will never recapture the original excitement levels some had for it back in 2014 and some four years later I doubt anyone even cares about the game much any longer thanks in kind to Microsoft's very own disastrously mismanaged hype machine that kicked in far too early.

Our very own anticipation levels for newer games have so often been instead replaced with pure levels of scepticism, concern and even anger as more and more developers deliver untruth's and constantly fed play on word tactics to coerce us into buying their upcoming games. Buzzwords and broken promises have very much replaced the trust factor and sense of belief we once held many developers and their own publishers in such high regard with even the very developers themselves becoming embroiled in a war for sales due to the fact the publisher behind their own game completely fucked up the release date window for it ie the sad sorry story that was Titanfall 2's release and one of the only games in recent times that was surprisingly everything I had hoped for once I had got past the technical sound issues it was initially plagued by. I now have 250 hours under my belt on it which I can safely say is the highest play time I've had in any game I ever owned even though it no doubt dwarfs what others have on other games.

So now over to you the ever savvy consumer. What was that one particular gaming dream you remember that was once promised to you that you thought would become the game of games but ultimately failed to live up to or meet your expectations?

[Jez]

Could be a longish list.

The Division - example of recent one

Brink - older one that wasn't a bad game I thought but died very quickly.

All the recent CoD games especially those after MW

All the ones that you mentioned Dave to one extent or other.


On the other side games that surpassed for me:

Battlefield 1 - total shot in the dark purchase that turned out to be the best in series for me.

Prey - loved the original, love the reboot a lot more.

Portal 2 - first was ok bought this on a whim and ended up utterly loving it.

Just some off the head thoughts

[Raid]

I've actually had a fantastic two years in terms of games not disappointing, but I really don't buy many these days. In fact 2016 and 17 are the first two years in a while where I'll have to give GOTY some serious thought (last year was XCom 2, but Doom came exceedingly close). In fact I think I have as many as four contenders this year (XCom WOTC, Zelda BOTW, Sonic Mania, and one other I'm sure I'm forgetting), maybe even five if Heatblur Simulations get their gorgeous looking DCS F-14 Tomcat module out as they say they will.

[NG]

Mass Effect 3.

Spoiler: show

Primarily it was the expectation of my choice of saving the Rachni queen to result in a 'Starship Trooper' all out war with enemy in the finale, but got F all.

I only played ME3 once, where as with ME2 I played multiple times.

[Rusty]

No Man's Sky - obvious that it didn't provide what was promised, I still enjoyed it though. Funnily enough I restarted a new game to try out the big updtaes they've done and I cannot get a decent starting planet. Every single time I have to wipe my save and retry. All of them were hazardous in some way.
Can't think of another one as i tend to be a savvy buyer (well, I think so anyway)

[Mantis]

Just don't let yourself get too excited or believe any of the pre-release material for a game, problem solved. I can't even remember the last game that I was super pumped for but ended up disappointed when it released. Everything that is shown prior to a game's release is chosen explicitly with the intention of trying to sell the game to you, I wasn't particularly fussed about Watch Dogs in the end, but seeing how massively that game suffered from a downgrade following the original E3 footage was the prime example that really made me question everything that gets shown to try and hype a title up. I don't even trust established game review websites that much anymore. I wait for a game to come out then read up a little on the mechanics and watch a few Twitch streams, easiest way to decide whether you will enjoy a title or not and conveniently misses the entire nonsense of pre-release hype.

And everybody, please stop preordering video games. It literally serves almost no beneficial purpose for you as a consumer when you've no idea how good a title is going to be on release.

It's quite a joyless way of looking at your hobbies, but don't let yourself get excited before you actually play something and you'll have a much better experience overall. The only thing I can really think of that I was last super excited for which turned out shite was probably Diablo 3, and that was 2010 I think. -_-

[Lee]

Dragon Age 2... put me off getting hyped for games much to everyone's annoyance when I voice a cynical approach to any game being released now. Even the ones I am genuinely interested I wait till some time after they are released and buy them now. Unless it's under £15.

[Subway Diet]

Really can't think of a time I've been disappointed in a game. At least not to the dramatic levels this thread implies. Like, Strafe was a bit of a mess at launch, but I tried playing it again last week and, you know, they've fixed it up pretty nice. So, even then. my emotional state was saved from being "destroyed".

I guess the "problem", if you want to call it that, is that when a game fail to meet my expectations or capture my attention I don't treat it like a crushing disappointment. It was what it was, and I made the choice to buy it off the best information that was available, and not hyping it up as a dream game in my mind.

I'll certainly make an effort to stand up against shitty business practices, but I'm just not an angry/emotional enough about video games to hold bitter grudges when a game fails to be perfect.

[DjchunKfunK]

Pillars of Eternity is the big one that springs to mind. The developers themselves didn't exactly over-hype the game, but when you hear people who worked on Balder's Gate are making a new isometric RPG I couldn't help, but get excited. Unfortunately the game they made lacked any real soul and I found myself terribly disappointed.

As for pre-ordering games, I think for some titles it is fine, especially a sequel to a series you know you really like. With the cost of PC games nowadays if you want to play the game in release week without paying nearly £40 you need to pre-order. Civ 6 for instance would have cost me £35 if I had waited till the game was out to buy it, instead I got it for £25. I've also got Mario Odyssey and New Order 2 on pre-order as I know I'm going to enjoy both of those.

[Wrathbone]

Unfortunately the game they made lacked any real soul

That's a nice irony given the story of Pillars. I know what you're saying, but Pillars worked for me and I wasn't disappointed at all. I had very high expectations, too.

I struggle to think of any recent major disappointments but going back 15 years or so my biggest disappointment was Black & White, a game hyped beyond any hope of meeting expectations. The promise of your pet/avatar being able to learn from you was true only in the vaguest sense, and the game itself was hindered by the horrible, hateful, impenetrable interface. I desperately wanted to enjoy it but it was futile - B&W was a mess of ideas and ambition that achieved none of what I expected it to.

On the flip-side, has anyone ever been incredibly hyped for a game and then had their expectations exceeded? The most notable example of that for me was Oblivion. I think I was more excited for that over such a long period than any other game I can recall, and those first few hours turned out to be even better than I'd hoped for. Over time of course the magic faded and the clunky bones behind the scene were revealed, and in retrospect Morrowind was the better game, but it remains one of the few instances where the hype paid off.

[Sly Boots]

Agree with Dj on Pillars. To this day I've not finished it.

Same for Max Payne 3. I know a few on here love it, but being a major fan of the first two games, was really disappointed with it. The gameplay felt off and the whole thing was a long, unskippable cut-scene interspersed with short periods of meh action. Another one I've never completed.

[DjchunKfunK]

On the flip-side, has anyone ever been incredibly hyped for a game and then had their expectations exceeded?

I'm not sure if I was really over hyped, but Breath of the Wild is the first game that springs to mind that really exceeded my expectations.

[Sly Boots]

Was hyped for Witcher 3 and even then it blew me away.

I knew less about Divinity OS going in, but that was a very pleasant surprise and one of my favourite RPGs.

[katarn]

I bounced off Pillars initially, but returned to it 2 years later and really enjoyed it, played it for 50+ hours, although I agree it is lacking something. (First time round I think I wanted it to be 'BG4' and any deviation was instant failure in my mind). Certainly a very decent RPG by its own standards though.

I'm struggling to think of crushing disappointments personally. Just Cause 3 probably would have been, but I chose not to buy it based on how disappointing & broken it clearly was. Although the team that made the flawless JC2 went on to make the flawless Mad Max, which was great, so I kind of played the true follow-up game as it were.

Going way back, Double Dragon 2 on my 48k Spectrum was a terrible investment. Utter stinker.

[Snowy]

I think the rise of the big software houses as FTSE companies coupled with the stupidity of the game-buying public has helped cause the current jaded view I have.

Back in the day (granted, a LONG way back), when games were coded from back bedrooms on computers that were pathetic by today's standards, my mind was regularly blown. To name but a few - Elite, Paradroid, Flashback, Impossible Mission, Speedball 2, Bard's Tale. Here were games that eother a solo or a small handful of like-minded programmers had put together with the aim of creating something new that was all it could possibly be.

Nowadays, the primary concern is to keep the withered and bloodied teats of the cash cow pumping. The suits think: "Don't try anything new and exciting as that brings the risk of failure, far better to focus on a tired formula that sells. Level grind, radio towers, collect-a-thons, unlocks, adversarial-only multiplayer, annual revisions on a theme that amount to little more than a re-skin, I mean, the punters love all that right? They keep buying it so they must. They are so stupid in fact, that they will pony up the cash without even knowing whether the title will be good, just promise them something shiny and listen to the wallets slap open. Finally, and most importantly, whatever you think the game should be, ensure that there are nice big chunks cut from it to drip-feed to the proles for more cash. Oh, and while you are at it, loads of different versions, plus skins, maps etc that can all be sold separately. They buy it, we profit from it, so why change?"

I deliver IT projects for a living, and we always look to deliver the minimum to get the job done. It even has a name - minimum viable product. The reason for this is that money does not grow on trees, and what we save in IT development can be used elsewhere to further increase revenue. This is the world, and software houses will largely run in exactly the same way.

Anyhow, games that blew me away?
Elite Dangerous, flawed but great
Witcher 3 completely blew my mind
Ghost Recon Wildlands - not everyone's cup of tea, but I have only played it co-op, and for well over 100 hours, and loved every minute.