There has always been a disconnect between what video game developers believe they are making and what the marketing people believe they are selling. It’s not rare for a game’s marketing to get way, way ahead of what is actually possible and set up expectations for something that is definitely too good to actually be made. Sometimes developers just talk about amazing shit they won’t actually end up doing (*cough* Peter Molyneux *cough*). Sometimes they just run out of time and money.
Whatever the reasons, games tend to be a bit of a crapshoot. I personally refuse to believe that a game I’m excited about is actually good until at least five people I’m on a first-name basis with tell me that that’s the case.
I’m like this because I’ve been burnt before. Games that were, in theory, meant to be beautiful examples of the artform turned out to be complete garbage or, somehow worse, just very, very mediocre. We thought we’d do a retrospective on some of these heartbreaking flops.
Spore
I’m still recovering from the hurt of this one. For over a year, we were promised a game that was going to revolutionise the very concept of games. From the outset, it boasted an unfathomably big universe in which you could watch and guide the evolution of a life form from single-cell organism to space-faring sentient creature.
We were promised an amazing tool for sculpting the changes to your lifeform, we were shown how the game would determine what the creature’s skeleton would look like and how its limbs would grasp objects and interact with its environment. We even got a video of Robin Williams playing the game and doing a series of borderline offensive accents.
What we actually got, though, on September 7, 2008, was an awful tool for stitching a few body parts onto a torso and a series of incredibly dull and repetitive mini-games that let you, eventually, fly around space doing absolutely nothing. Christ this game sucked.
No Man’s Sky
It’s worth acknowledging that what ‘No Many’s Sky‘ does is very impressive and it definitely looks absolutely amazing, it’s just also worth mentioning that ‘No Man’s Sky‘ is incredibly boring.
‘No Man’s Sky‘ gives you an unfathomably big universe full of a diverse(ish) array of alien plant and animal life, the only problem is that it’s a massive drag to get around between planets, and once you do get there, there’s very little to do.
While the alien life is more convincingly diverse than that of ‘Spore‘, after a visit to a dozen or so planets, you’ve already come to recognise all the different shape and parts that an alien can have, nullifying any reason to go to any other planet.
The gameplay itself is a very tedious grind that leaves you feeling like you’re in a pointless treadmill, whose only occasional reward is that you get to discover a new type of wienercrab and name it something like ‘Dickmonsterus Snipsia‘.
As Jake Swearingen said, “You can procedurally generate 18.6 quintillion unique planets, but you can’t procedurally generate 18.6 quintillion unique things to do.“
Duke Nukem Forever
There was very little chance that, after 15 years development, we were going to end up with a good game. The immaculate name of the much-beloved Duke Nukem franchise was trashed by the 2011 release of ‘Duke Nukem Forever‘.
The game was stuck in development hell since 1996 and was variously slated to be released around 1997, 1998 and 2007, before its development studio, 3D Realms, went under. Gearbox Software eventually took over, releasing a game that was named by Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw as the 2nd worst game of 2011.
His review was not pretty:
The only redeeming feature of ‘Duke Nukem Forever‘ is that there’s a video of Tommy Wiseau, the director of ‘The Room‘, trying to play it:
Daikatana
‘Daikatana‘s legacy means it’s probably now more known as a standing joke among gamers than it is as an actual video game. Theoretically, this should have been an amazing game, springing forth as it was from the programming fingers of John Romero, the genius behind ‘Wolfenstein 3D‘, ‘Doom‘, and ‘Quake‘. Unfortunately, what it actually was was an unfortunate nexus of incredible hubris, a horrible marketing campaign, and a really, really shitty game.
The game garnered a lot of attention and controversy for an extremely confident advertising campaign that declared “John Romero’s About To Make You His Bitch….Suck it down“. Despite that bold claim, it turned out that all John Romero was going to actually do was bore you to death with a shitty game that sucked a bunch.
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Straight up, this is not a terrible game. It is, however, a terrible Deus Ex game. The original, ‘Deus Ex‘, was a mind-bogglingly deep and complex combination RPG / FPS that gave you immense control over how you built your character, how you played your character and how you advanced through the storyline.
‘Invisible War‘ also offered that, but to a substantially diminished extent. While it boasted way better graphics, a more interactive environment (but not in a way that mattered), and a proper physics engine, the storyline felt weak, the choices felt very shallow, and the character customisation gave you significantly fewer options than its predecessor.
Luckily, you can pretty much scrub this game from your memory and rejoice in how fucking great ‘Human Revolution‘ and ‘Mankind Divided‘ are.
Final Fantasy X-2
Following hot on the heels of the insanely good ‘Final Fantasy X‘, this was the first time ever that a direct sequel had been made to a Final Fantasy game (generally the games are standalone, set in a one-off universe). Hopefully, it’s also the last.
Similarly to ‘Invisible War‘, this is not a terrible game, per se, but it’s a horrible entry in the franchise. The game felt like it was crudely tacked on to what was established in ‘Final Fantasy X‘ and didn’t really ever match the tone and sense of grandeur you’re meant to get out of a Final Fantasy game.
Again, luckily there are enough of these bastards that you can forget about it and just enjoy the rest of them.
Half-Life 3
It will never be released.
Photo: Maxis.
