Caught Up and Let Down Gaming Hype

[BruceWayne911]

Have you guys ever drank Kool-aid and believed the hype the gaming industry was pushing on you, only to be massively disappointed? What was the game that really let you down. The first game that always comes to mind was Fable for the original Xbox.

I didn't know who Peter Molyneux was at the time but man this guy was really something else. I believe everything Peter Molyneux and the gaming industry was saying about Fable. I had a Gaming Informer magazine at had a article on Fable. I would read this thing like every other day being mind blown on all the gameplay elements they said Fable would have.

Long story short it was all lies complete falsehoods. They didn't deliver on anything. I bought the game and was so disappointed I couldn't even finish it. There are other games that hot me as well but nothing will ever be as devastating as your first. What game Bamboozled you, Hoodwinked, Led astray, Run amuck? We didnt land on E-3, E-3 landed on us

 

[Seaman]

Have you guys ever drank Kool-aid and believed the hype the gaming industry was pushing on you, only to be massively disappointed? What was the game that really let you down. The first game that always comes to mind was Fable for the original Xbox.

I didn't know who Peter Molyneux was at the time but man this guy was really something else. I believe everything Peter Molyneux and the gaming industry was saying about Fable. I had a Gaming Informer magazine at had a article on Fable. I would read this thing like every other day being mind blown on all the gameplay elements they said Fable would have.

Long story short it was all lies complete falsehoods. They didn't deliver on anything. I bought the game and was so disappointed I couldn't even finish it. There are other games that hot me as well but nothing will ever be as devastating as your first. What game Bamboozled you, Hoodwinked, Led astray, Run amuck? We didnt land on E-3, E-3 landed on us

1) D2 for M2 console.
2) Clock Tower 3: The Next Fear, advertized in '99 magazines planned for/developed by PSX (and probably DC)/Human Entertainment (ASCII Corp.) instead the final retail we got for PS2/Sunsoft & Capcom.

3) Munch's Oddyssey for PS2. iirc this build had features which didn't made the cut for the XBOX. A terraforming system of sorts.

 

[otbr87]

Yeah, it happens every 7 years or so when Sony claims that the next PlayStation will be revolutionary and it always fails to surpass its competition in actually being a better overall product. They're the Apple of video game consoles.

As for games, hmmm, I was really disappointed in Kena Bridge of Spirits. Something that should've been a 9.5 easily and possibly a 10 was closer to a 7.5 or 7.75. Not a bad game but a big let down. I can't think of any other games that let me down drastically cause for example I expected Cyberpunk 2077 to be like a 6/10, so even though it's more like a 3/10, that's no big deal as my expectations were low.

I think majority of games fall in the 6/10 and 7/10 category and that's usually how I receive them, of course the critics constantly give 6s and 7s games 8, 9 and 10 scores but that's why I pay it no attention. Critics are only reliable usually for letting us know if a game is completely broken (Cyberpunk, WWE 2K20 type stuff).

 

[Nathanial Essex]

Kena Bridge of Spirits is the most recent one I remember. I liked the graphics of the game (a breath of fresh air from the usual drab we have) but always thought it looked a little basic gameplay wise. However, it was getting 8 and 9s from the likes of IGN and Gamespot. People on Reddit were also raving about it (and I have since learnt that place is full with people saying such shit for cheap up votes) so I decided to play it. 6/10 game at best.

 

[red]

in the early 2000s it wasn't too bad because you could get a full refund for a game you didn't like.

but one game which stands out was duke nukem forever (2011) - since then, i've never bought a game without checking reviews first.

the game was hyped up and the reviews for that game were held back for about a week . i, like many other people, bought it on day1. unfortunately it was just a terrible game. i never finished it and just sold it.. then conveniently all the bad reviews showed up.

 

[Telekill]

The biggest let down for me was Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness (PS2).

I was a huge fan of the series during the PS1 era staying up to date with the series through the fourth game. Then I was off to college but I did manage to get myself a PS2 before becoming insanely poor. Thus, if I wanted a new PS2 game any time during that 2-3 years of college life, I had to eat nothing but Raman and Mac and Cheese for a month. A MONTH!

Eidos had been full blast pushing the hype train for Angel of Darkness showing incredible snippets of a darker mystery with an emphasis on story for more than two years by the time it released. I was beyond hyped when I got my copy. Then the hype started to fade as I started playing.

- The controls were bad.
- The mechanics of her movement were bad.
- The story was very slow to start.
- It really didn't feel like a Tomb Raider game.

Then the unthinkable... the game was riddled with glitches. At one point, I had Lara side stepping on the edge of a building and she randomly started to float up off the screen. She kept going... and going... and off the screen into digital oblivion. I couldn't take it anymore and returned the game to the store in less than two weeks. I was disgusted.

 

[Jibby]

Cube World. It was supposed to be this procedurally genersted voxel based RPG with near infinite progression.

I followed the dev's blog updates for like 2 years back in the early 2010s and the stuff he was putting out looked amazing. Dude was even offered a job at Mojang but turned it down to keep working on his game.

In 2013 an alpha dropped and it was awesome! A little barebones, sure. But incredibly promising. Played it with friends for months and had a blast.

Unfortunately after releasing the alpha though, the dev basically went into hibernation and never released any updates. Every few years he'd make a random post showing off a load of new features he was working on (and they looked great!). But outside of that was radio silence.

Then in 2019, the dev came out of hiding and announced that the full release was about to come out. To say that the Cube World community (which amazingly still existed) was hyped was an understatement, and I fully bought into it too. People were compiling lists of all of the features that had been teased in the past six years that were finally about to be added to the game.

Except, almost none of those touted big features actually made it into the full release. Not only that, but features and systems that made the alpha so fun had been flat out removed. Aside from the name and art style, it had zero resemblance to the alpha or the teasers. The 'full release' was essentially a completely different game and a bad one at that.

It was pretty much universally panned by the fanbase and since the launch, the dev has gone completely silent again. So it's unlikely that we'll ever get the version of the game that was teased to us between 2013-2019. Still makes me sad. Cube World genuinely had the chance to stand among games like Minecraft, but the opportunity was wasted.

 

[Tomato Convenience Store]

I've had a few games that were disappointments, but not anything that was overwhelmingly terrible or anything (more like the game was hyped as amazing but it was only "ok" in the end)

Fable - I think I got hyped on the same article that @BruceWayne911 mentioned, haha, as well as the IGN coverage. It still turned out to be a pretty good action RPG, but didn't have anywhere near the promised features.

Halo 2 - The campaign was terrible and I didn't like the gameplay changes compared to Halo 1. I think the main draw was that this was on Xbox Live, which was the main reason it was so popular. Halo 1 was one of my favorite games, so all the issues with 2 were a major letdown to me, but I get that people still really like this game.

World Series Baseball 2K1 - This probably won't resonate much with you nerds, but World Series Baseball was a great sim that started on the Genesis and had a few releases on the Saturn that were pretty well regarded. Since NFL 2K demonstrated what an awesome next gen football game could be on the Dreamcast, I was excited to play a baseball game that did the same. I don't have a ton of recollection of all the problems, but the overall gameplay was just poor all around.

 

[BloodyHeartland]

I’m sure there’ve been plenty of times I’ve been sorta mildly disappointed, but only really two stick out in my memory as games with hugely wasted potential that turned out nothing like they really should have, and kind of a funny coincidence that they both share similar acronyms. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

You’d think it might have dulled by now but I think the former stings more with having grown up with that series for far longer and being younger at the time, more naive to bullshit. At least in the end it really just turned out to be “average” rather than horrendous, but still. The Wii port was entirely useless with its waggle and inferior IR based aiming, and yet accounted for at least a year delay, not to mention deliberately not releasing the GC version until a month later. Nonsense. Never mind what was advertised with the overworld, I should have known better but I was expecting something like what we got with BotW from what they showed with early footage. There is almost nothing the final product has in common with all that stuff, likely due to its supposed rocky and overlong development. What really baffles me are those who say it’s the best…it’s watered down and so derivative that it’s just not worth playing. But that’s this series for you, when it’s diverse enough you get all different kinds of fans.

With mgsv I had just finally been able to binge most of the series, so it was really neat that the sorta side story of Peace Walker was getting a full blown big budget sequel. I don’t think I realized quite how rough PW was since I’d gone through most of it in coop, which is just bound to be a good time regardless of the game itself. I certainly didn’t think about how these systems would translate to a single player open world game, especially not one so bland and devoid of anything even remotely close to what the series is known for. I kinda figured most of PW’s issues were because it was stuck being bite sized, but apparently not.

I could go in with all my nitpicks but overall I think when it was announced that the first mission would be sold separately for $40(until they got enough backlash to lower it by ten bucks) I already kinda figured how some of this would go. Little did I know that Ground Zeroes would actually end up being the only decent part of the entire experience. Man, what a dumpster fire to end the series on…much prefer to think of Rising as the last canon installment - and give the actual writers their due credit.

But that’s another issue as well. I’d joined an mgs forum to discuss these things as it was being developed. I was using it for that purpose, to discuss. That’s generally what forums are for, regardless of whether its positive or negative. But no, apparently any kind of critique is trolling. Never mind who we are talking about here, this dipshit who trolls the company he works for for a blank check to just do whatever while they likely are forced to take pay cuts or lay people off. Kojima can suck a dick. It’s really sad with this state of celebrity culture where some garbage heap like Death Stranding can get such praise on name recognition alone. At least I’m glad more and more people are waking up to this nonsense.

So, those are the big two. Certainly are some smaller stuff here and there, but generally things that make sense in retrospect or stuff I take with grains of salt, temper my expectations, and just generally avoid things that promise stuff they can’t deliver.

One example being Stray. Initially thought it would be far more open ended. Would have been neat but don’t see that having worked out with such a small team and trying to tell the story they did. Travis Strikes Again being a sort of spin off, but I was just glad to have more NMH, and then unfortunately NMH3 having a lot of content just simply not being finished or having the budget, but I can respect Grasshopper always knowing how to cut things down and still make it feel like you’re receiving a finished product. Hell, that same thing happened with Killer7 at least and I never would have guessed on my own. A far cry from mgsv for sure. Just goes to show vastly different design philosophies.

 

[Alex_Star]

Elden Ring. As a huge fan of Souls series I had very high expectations but ultimately was disappointed by the game's move to vast open world, it made the game too big, bland, bloated and unfocused for its own good. I still finished it, of course but it's the first Souls game that I didn't immediately start again. And still don't plan to

 

[Telekill]

Second biggest let down for me was Aladdin on the Sega Game Gear:

The let down here was that I really enjoyed the Genesis game and thought the Game Gear version would play similarly. It certainly looked like it did from the screen shots in magazines at the time. I picked it up using some Christmas money when I was 11 or 12 years old. Got it home really excited and beat the game in 30 minutes on the first play through. It was over simplified with little to no collection items and relied heavily on running stages where all you did was run and jump like something from the Atari 2600 days. That was literally half the game if not more. I was pretty angry.

 

[code l name]

Perfect Dark

May seem like an odd choice since I absolutely loved the game and sunk in more hours than I can count but it was also the first time as a kid I got swept into the hype train, following, reading, and digesting every piece of news or information about the game for years before it's release. With years of pre-release material, sky-high expectations no matter how great the game it couldn't quite live up to all my expectations.

 

[Stiz]

True fantasy live online I remember when it was announced and the plans I had with friends and family to play it yup…. Yeah. Zero nada the head of Xbox at the time had it canceled saying it was not going to work out I remember that article.

 

[Stiz]

Have you guys ever drank Kool-aid and believed the hype the gaming industry was pushing on you, only to be massively disappointed? What was the game that really let you down. The first game that always comes to mind was Fable for the original Xbox.

I didn't know who Peter Molyneux was at the time but man this guy was really something else. I believe everything Peter Molyneux and the gaming industry was saying about Fable. I had a Gaming Informer magazine at had a article on Fable. I would read this thing like every other day being mind blown on all the gameplay elements they said Fable would have.

Long story short it was all lies complete falsehoods. They didn't deliver on anything. I bought the game and was so disappointed I couldn't even finish it. There are other games that hot me as well but nothing will ever be as devastating as your first. What game Bamboozled you, Hoodwinked, Led astray, Run amuck? We didnt land on E-3, E-3 landed on us

Though fable did hit hard I remember that…. Peter went silent then posted his apology it I still online to look at LOL.

 

[Seaman]

Though fable did hit hard I remember that…. Peter went silent then posted his apology it I still online to look at LOL.

Fable was epic hit, not too far of that prehistoric simulator "BC" iirc, which looked too incredible. I admit to laugh at the players inhouse joke about Molineux braggering but the truth is the guy has been always just too open about his develepments. Telling things that probably won't do the cut and others devs shut about. Looking for "Magic Carpet making of" we can see him showing the engine at three early stages and in a very open mood as you can check, that was very uncommon at that time. It was industrial secretive times, nothing like devlogs for subscriptors spawning mediocre games (because the profits are in the devlog channel :S) For example, Capcom cut from PSX RE2 handgranades, damage skins, height climbing zombies, etc and we found about all about like 20 years after the release.
So please, don't laugh at Peter Molineux.

Spoiler

Laugh at Hideo Kojima instead, as he wears the hype torch nowadays

 

[Revan]

The biggest let down for me was Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness (PS2).

Yeah, this one really stings for me.

I'm a big fan of Tomb Raider, and after seeing that cliffhanger in The Last Revelation and Chronicles on the Dreamcast in 2001, I was super intrigued by what would happen to Lara on her PlayStation 2 debut.

This game was an immensely ambitious project. Core Design really went all-out with it, they even got The London Symphony Orchestra to do the soundtrack. Murti Schofield, the game's writer, was (and still is) obsessed with Angel of Darkness and wrote so much incredible lore for it. But then the game was awkwardly hacked-apart and forced out the door as a broken, unfinished mess to coincide with the 2nd Tomb Raider film's release.

Embracer Group (Tomb Raider's new owner) have said they would like to do Tomb Raider ports, remakes and remasters. I hope that when it comes to AOD, rather than porting it in its current near-unplayable state, they try to overhaul much of what went wrong with it. I think the game has a pretty good story, just some really rubbish execution.