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.
