Disappointments in Gaming

[Apothem]

Topic: Share your tales of disappointment in gaming, be it regarding a specific title, an entire franchise, company or any other facet of the industry at large.

As is customary, I, as the original poster, will kick off the discussion.

My present gripe concerns Phantasy Star Online 2, sequel to the original Dreamcast game from way back in 2000. Best described as Star Wars meets Diablo, Phantasy Star Online, Phantasy Star Universe, and most recently Phantasy Star Online 2 are all SciFi Dungeon Crawlers developed and published by Sega, with PSO2 a free to play game presently in open beta. The game is good fun to play if you can wrap you head around the Japanese interface but it lacks what it's predecessors had in spades: Variety. Even PSO, limited as it was by the Dreamcast, still managed to pack in more content and PSU greatly expanded upon the formula, with mixed results. PSO2, by comparison, has hardly anything to offer. Yes, it's still in beta, with a minor content update on the way, but much of the variety is lacking in the core systems of the game, something which can't so easily be patched. In less then a week, I've already exhausted just about all the game has to offer, and what's on the horizon is simply more of the same.

The game is by no means bad. It is functionally sound, there's just not a whole lot to it and even less to do. If PSO2 is to successfully survive on the F2P microtransaction model it has to hook players with engaging systems and expansive content, neither of which seem to be on offer now or in the immediate future, and with the proposed release date fast approaching the game seems woefully underprepared for the market. Rather than an expansive world for players to cohabit, there is only the small main lobby and shopping mall of the colony ship for players to readily mingle in, serving all the basic needs, from missions to quests, class customization and equipment. Gone are the comparatively large cities of PSU and it's many smaller branching hubs, and with them any sense of exploration. The handful of missions available, the stages, or "dungeons", that you play through, 14 in total, take place between 4 aesthetically different yet functionally identical locations, one of which is only randomly available. All the quests are "Kill X number of Y creature." or "Collect X number of Z item from Y creature." There are only three classes, each with incredibly simplistic, almost useless talent trees. Weapon selection, previously the pride of the series, is limited to 8 total categories and only a handful of unique weapons per. Two of the classes, Ranger and Force, are limited to 3 of those 8 categories, Hunters have 4 different weapon types, and 1 shared amongst all 3 classes. Due to weapon mechanics and imbalance, there is little need to use more than a single weapon type per class, further limiting functional variety. Your character has their own room to decorate, but like everything else, there is very little to work with.

I was a big fan of PSO, and to a lesser extent PSU, and was greatly looking forward to PSO2, hoping it would at least fill the gap until Torchlight and Guild Wars 2 released. At this rate it might hold my interest for, at best, another couple days when the new content launches, then it's off to something else once the game goes stale again. At present, there's just no staying power and that doesn't seem likely to change. I'm grateful that the game's free to play as there's no way I'd pay retail for what little is on offer much less a subscription. All the same, I want a reason to stay, to play and even to pay, if there's anything worthwhile in the microtransactions, but Sega first has to give me an incentive to do so and thus far they haven't done a very good job. I'm sincerely hoping much more is on the way, far beyond what little has been shown of the July update, but with how fundamentally simplistic the gameplay is at it's core, I'm skeptical that any amount of content could keep people playing for long, and that's a shame, because it has the potential to be so much more. Mowing down mobs of vicious creatures with laser swords, rocket launchers and fireballs is great fun. Frantic fights against huge bosses are intense and easily the highlight of the entire experience. Playing with friends is always a pleasure and mingling with others, both fellow English speakers and Japanese who know just enough to get by, can be hilarious and insightful but in the end there just isn't much reason to stick around, and that is truly disappointing.

[HYRUL3]

This is way too easy. I'll go in order, chronologically.

1. Resident Evil 5. Not scary at all, super actiony, lame forced co-op. On top of this, it left a lot of things unanswered. Who was the random blonde chick from the beginning of the game whose head erupts into one of the centipede-esque Plagas? Ugh. I liked Resident Evil 5 but there was so much disappointment.

2. Heavy Rain. Awful WALKING controls? How is it in 2010 you mess up WALKING. The whole game was a series of QTEs, the acting was nowhere near as good as what people were making it out to be, and the fact that you have to make quick decisions, and those decisions are floating around your head on an orbit, with shifting writing so you can't easily see what your options are is stupid. Sure, make it timed, but keep the text still so I can see what choices I have. Didn't like this game at all.

3. Metroid Other M. We all know why. It wasn't an awful game, just not what any of us wanted, or deserved. I'm Batman.

4. Star Wars The Force Unleashed II. This may be, without a doubt, the biggest disappointment I have ever inserted into my XBOX 360. I loved the first one. The second one's story was just stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. They showed trailers touting that this game has Yoda in it, this has Fett in it, etc. Well those trailers showed the only actual scenes those characters were in. No surprises. Just corporate mislead making us think these characters would have substantial roles. Nope. They were thrown in for 5 seconds just to sell more copies. There were no good gameplay additions, and some of it actually played worse than the first one. Then the worlds were awful. The first one had a pretty nice variety of worlds AND enemies, and even when you returned to a planet at least it was a different area that looked different. In FUII, you play on Kamino, Dagobah for all of two seconds, the planet with the bridges, I forget what its called, and a derelict Rebel ship. Then you go back to Kamino. Dull, dreary Kamino. Compare this to Kashyyyk, a TIE Factory, Raxus Prime, Felucia, Bespin, new areas on Felucia, Kashyyyk, Raxus Prime, and finally the Death Star. The first game was at least 10 hours on the first playthrough, and the second was only about 6. I traded this in as soon as I was done.

5. Fable III. Let's simplify the hell out of everything and remove a ton of customization options. The game was fun, but had little incentive to hold on to it after it was completed.

6. Assassin's Creed Revelations. The only AC game that was just... meh. Didn't enjoy it all too much. III looks epic, but Revelations just couldn't get me interested. I pushed through it, but it took a lot.

[Apothem]

So, it turns out PSO2 is launching much sooner than anticipated. On July 4th the game officially goes live, bringing with it 2 new areas which should equate to roughly 8 new missions and hopefully some more interesting boss fights, 3 new story missions, time attacks and an increased level cap of 40 up from 30, expanded costume selection, one of many areas still in sore need of content, new MAG evolutions (it's a PSO thing and a good one at that) and the inauguration of the ARKS cash system, i.e. microtransactions.

So, tl;dr: Official launch, more content, microtransactions. Disappointing? Yes.

Am I just hard to please? Maybe so, but let me explain. The new areas and missions? Cool, but like a weeks worth of new content, tops, and that includes hardmodes. New story missions? Would be cool if I could read a lick of Japanese but I can't so there's nothing there for me, so here's hoping they're at least fun. Time attacks? Interesting. Hopefully I can make some new, competent friends in the game as all my old friends quit, they also better be worthwhile, unlike bosses, which are cool but otherwise a waste of time. Increased level cap? Nice, but still way to low. New Mag evolutions? A good thing all around as they improve your statistics and provide awesome special attacks, nothing wrong there but as with everything else, more variety in both form and function would be nice. New clothing/parts? Finally. Armor is a little odd in PSO2, as it serves more of an accessory purpose aesthetically, the player customizing their characters outfit with various cloths (Humans/Newmans) or parts (Casts [androids]) that provide a uniform appearance without statistical benefit, the present problem being the incredibly limited selection of outfits, resulting in everyone looking like slightly altered versions of one another which should be alleviated somewhat with the new content, though could still use yet more variety.

All that's well and good, certainly needed, but one crucial area overlooked is the depressing lack of variety in the weapon loadouts available in game. New weapons were promised and previewed yet apparently remain undelivered, and when your game principally revolves around repetitiously killing things for ever shinier pieces of loot, you need to provide your players ample means to do so, which is not achieved by limiting their arsenal. PSO2 isn't your standard RPG or Dungeon Crawler. The classes have no unique or special abilities to rely on beyond their weaponry, and when the mechanics of the game effectively limit what little variety there is to ultimately one choice then you, as a designer, have clearly done something wrong. Not only are the existing weapon types in sore need of balance, the game as a whole is in desperate need of new weapon types to help revitalize the otherwise solid combat. You can only blow away so many critters with a rocket launcher, lob so many fireballs or swing so many laser swords before it starts to wear on you. Phantasy Star Universe, released in 2006 initially for PC, shipped with over 20 different types of weapons, all of which were viable combat choices. Some situationally better than others, as it should be, but no clear winner. PSO2 has 8 different weapon types, even the original PSO on the Dreamcast offered more. Further still, if you're a Hunter (melee specialist) you'll predominately utilize the "wired lance" (think Kratos' chain swords) for their excellent power and crowd control. As a Ranger (gun specialist) you'll rely almost exclusively on the rocket launcher as nothing else comes even remotely close to it's raw Damage per Second output. As a Force (spellcaster) your sole weapon of choice is the staff, seeing as how melee strength is meaningless to you and it offers the best boost to your magic. There are other weapons that can most certainly be used, but there's little reason to do so, and you often do to your own detriment. Individual weapon techniques are also in sore need of expansion as most of them are useless, especially gun techniques, and many spells have apparently yet to be added into the game, with two of the six available elemental categories presently empty. In short, there's just not a lot to use.

Last but by no means least is the ARKS cash store. Microtransactions. Having never played another free to play game before, I have nothing to compare Sega's system to. At the very least you can't buy your way to the top. It consists mostly of general services and experience boosts, all well and good, but what I take issue with are some of the services that are locked out. You must pay for access to player housing, to purchase from or set up your own player shop (auction house), to expand your storage (item bank), even for the privilege of trading amongst other players. Worse, you must pay for these services repeatedly. You purchase each for a set period of time, 30 to 90 days, from ~$10 to $15 each. Alternatively you can purchase a monthly subscription for ~$15, which I'd assume grants access to all such services. If you want more than the bare minimum experience you either have to pay out the ass per month or subscribe, just to access faculties, most of which should come standard. I don't quite know how I feel about that. Sega needs to make their money somehow, that I understand, and there is a limited variety (a running theme in PSO2) of one time purchases on offer, but I worry they may lock more behind a pay gate, such as say costumes or even equipment. Perhaps I worry over nothing, but it's still unpleasant having to pay just to buy, sell or trade between my fellow players.

Despite it all, I remain interested in the game. I bitch because I like it and genuinely want it to improve. Problems or no, at the very least it's free. Mostly.

[Outlaw]

Crysis 2. Such an awful game. It went from a more open world, with less scripting and changed for the worse. Linear, and too many scripted events. Complete with a mediocre, buggy, somewhat clone version of CoD's Multiplayer. I don't want to blame the consoles but I will, they probably would have stuck with the Crysis 1 formula if they didn't create the game for consoles as well.

[okey]

Street Fighter 4: It was slow, boring, and complicated in ways that didn't make it more fun (low damage + heavy emphasis on tight links is a bad mix!). It's a love letter to SF2 made by people who don't get what made SF2 good. Everyone looked like a potato man. Music sucked. Animation sucked. The new characters were poorly designed, both mechanically and visually. To add insult to injury the whole first run of SF4 arcade sticks were defective. So I was stuck with a game that wasn't fun and a controller that would break if you wanted to move to the right. At least I got a refund on the stick.

5. Fable III. Let's simplify the hell out of everything and remove a ton of customization options. The game was fun, but had little incentive to hold on to it after it was completed.

Why would anyone bother with Fable after the second game? Goddamn Fable 2 was awful.

Dumping Fable 2 on craigslist was the most interesting thing I did with it. This huge Iranian dude in a suit and sunglasses traded it for Fallout 3 and then drove off in a big black SUV with tinted windows. It was surreal, and probably the only thing keeping either game out of this thread.

[vuk64]

1:Metroid other m (Most disappointing game ever)

2:Red Steel 2 (it was kinda meh.)

3: Golden eye wii (horrendous frame rate a clone of cod and is it just me or did some games in 2001 have better graphics than this.)

4: Mad World (cool art style but besides that this game was overall short and quite repetitive after the first stage yep this is totally a 9/10 according to ign. )

5:Metroid prime hunters (it was okay but i was expecting a bit more.)

6:Zelda skyward sword (great game but just not great in terms of past zelda games.)

7:Starfox Adventures (Do i really need to say anything about this.)

[Chris]

4. Star Wars The Force Unleashed II. I loved the first one.

The first one was awful, I was half expecting it to be a return to the Jedi Knight games but no, was utter crap, force powers were overpowered, I know that was kind of the point of the game with the whole Unleashed name but just made it super dull as nothing really could challenge you, whilst the visuals were nice the actual level design was pertty straight forward and uninspiring and it was very cheap of them to re-use the worlds half way through the game, I uninstalled at that point, just felt like they ran out of ideas and rehashed the first half of the game and called it a do. They even managed to make playing as Vader boring... Why is it so hard these days for devs to make a decent Star Wars game? The last great one was KOTOR.

Other disappointments:

Skyward Sword, didn't really dig the flying business. I was hoping for Skyloft to be an actual world rather than a single town and a few small islands. The motion controls weren't as great as folk made them out to be. Did like the art style though.

Other M, nuff said.

Brink, I don't get how the devs went from making W:ET and ET:QW and shat out brink... All they had to do was find a nice middle ground between their previous two games and they would have been onto a winner, instead we got a dumbed down online FPS that for reasons unknown to mankind focusses on dressing up rather than proving a solid shooting experience.

[vuk64]

4. Star Wars The Force Unleashed II. I loved the first one.

The first one was awful, I was half expecting it to be a return to the Jedi Knight games but no, was utter crap, force powers were overpowered, I know that was kind of the point of the game with the whole Unleashed name but just made it super dull as nothing really could challenge you, whilst the visuals were nice the actual level design was pertty straight forward and uninspiring and it was very cheap of them to re-use the worlds half way through the game, I uninstalled at that point, just felt like they ran out of ideas and rehashed the first half of the game and called it a do. They even managed to make playing as Vader boring... Why is it so hard these days for devs to make a decent Star Wars game? The last great one was KOTOR.

Other disappointments:

Skyward Sword, didn't really dig the flying business. I was hoping for Skyloft to be an actual world rather than a single town and a few small islands. The motion controls weren't as great as folk made them out to be. Did like the art style though.

FINALLY somebody has the same opinion, after so many positive reviews and everybody thinking that skyward sword is one of the best Zelda games.
I thought i was the only person on earth disappointed.

[Apothem]

Apparently you have yet to see out Zelda thread. I didn't hate. Had my fun but was ultimately disappointed in it.

[Thunderchin]

Yeah, I have my disappointments in Zelda as of late. All they do anymore is rehash the same "Link fight bad guy" "Link run around Hyrule" "Link save Zelda", and use the EXACT SAME ITEMS, similar if not identical areas, and then just throw something completely different in there just so they can say it's different. No, Nintendo, who do you think we are, sheep? I can see through your endless recycling. Yes, any post-Wind Waker Zelda game, Metroid: Other M, any 2D Mario game as of late, pretty much your entire catalog.

I can say the same for Nintendo's New Play Control series. Sure, they rereleased seven of the Gamecube's best games, but no Starfox: Assault Wiimake? That's bullshit!

[Apothem]

Just wait for the Wii U. All your favorite Wii games, lazily upscaled to barely HD standards and chuck full of unnecessary tablet controller gimmicks.

[Zynux]

Just wait for the Wii U. All your favorite Wii games, lazily upscaled to barely HD standards and chuck full of unnecessary tablet controller gimmicks.

Sounds like fun!! I'm stoked!!!

[HYRUL3]

Just wait for the Wii U. All your favorite Wii games, lazily upscaled to barely HD standards and chuck full of unnecessary tablet controller gimmicks.

Did you say HD???????????????

I have a small place in my heart for nostalgia towards Nintendo. Lately I have been upset with many of their practices. Occasionally they do awesome stuff (Skyward Sword) but more often than not they don't change enough and dumb things down (also Skyward Sword) for a casual customer base that doesn't actually love them and will jump ship the moment the next big gimmick is announced.

So yeah, you're spot on, that's what is going to happen. Half assed ports. "HD Collections" like Sony is notorious for now.

[rondus18]

I don't know about the HD being all that bad. Nintendo already uses HD assets in their Wii games. That's why they look pretty good in the Dolphin emulator considering they're not supposed to be in HD.

[Thunderchin]

Last but by no means least is the ARKS cash store. Microtransactions. Having never played another free to play game before, I have nothing to compare Sega's system to. At the very least you can't buy your way to the top. It consists mostly of general services and experience boosts, all well and good, but what I take issue with are some of the services that are locked out. You must pay for access to player housing, to purchase from or set up your own player shop (auction house), to expand your storage (item bank), even for the privilege of trading amongst other players. Worse, you must pay for these services repeatedly. You purchase each for a set period of time, 30 to 90 days, from ~$10 to $15 each. Alternatively you can purchase a monthly subscription for ~$15, which I'd assume grants access to all such services. If you want more than the bare minimum experience you either have to pay out the ass per month or subscribe, just to access faculties, most of which should come standard. I don't quite know how I feel about that. Sega needs to make their money somehow, that I understand, and there is a limited variety (a running theme in PSO2) of one time purchases on offer, but I worry they may lock more behind a pay gate, such as say costumes or even equipment. Perhaps I worry over nothing, but it's still unpleasant having to pay just to buy, sell or trade between my fellow players.

Despite it all, I remain interested in the game. I bitch because I like it and genuinely want it to improve. Problems or no, at the very least it's free. Mostly.

It's like Team Fortress 2, then? And I didn't mind TF2 (except that once you paid, you were preemie for life)

after so many positive reviews and everybody thinking that skyward sword is one of the best Zelda games.
I thought i was the only person on earth disappointed.

Oh, I was too. The disappointment was so bad I haven't gotten past the first dungeon, it was just TP all over again!

I don't know about the HD being all that bad. Nintendo already uses HD assets in their Wii games. That's why they look pretty good in the Dolphin emulator considering they're not supposed to be in HD.

Hmmmph. If only Nintendo didn't pussy out of putting a better graphics chip in the Wii. That's another disappointment: their recent consoles (Gamecube and Wii).