We’ve all had them. You go out, you buy a game, you look at the pretty box as you travel home. You then put it in your system and begin playing. Then you slowly realize that you have spent your hard-earned money on a piece of crap. Below are games I feel are the biggest disappointments I’ve ever played, and they’re here for one of two reasons.
1. The game is so horrible, I cannot fathom what the programmers were thinking.
2. The game had so much potential that my disappointment was only compounded when I realized the game sucked.
Now, let the Hall of Shame be known!
Arcanum (PC)
This may come as a shock to those that know me best, as I have lauded this game many times. It even makes the very short list of PC games I’ve actually finished. But it is for those reasons that it makes the hall of shame. Arcanum is the story of a fantastic concept, implemented in a very poor manner.
Arcanum takes place in a fantasy realm during an industrial revolution. The entire atmosphere screams mid 1800’s. You take the role of a character you customize, whether it be towards magic or technology, or whether you’ll ignore both and go for physical or social prowess. That was the beauty of the game, you could be anything, and you could still make it work.
So why does this game make the Hall of Shame? A number of reasons. First, there are only two musical scores: the battle music and the town music, neither of which were particularly good. Second, your character sprite had no customization whatsoever. The result? Elves and humans looked identical, and at any point in the game, you look identical to a number of NPC’s in the town. There were many items to customize your character such as hats and glasses, which do not work at all.
Third? Glitches. Hundreds and hundreds of glitches. Getting caught in infinite loops, freezing, reaching ‘dead ends’ if you don’t perform certain tasks in the correct order, lots of glitches.
So, summary? Great plot, great mechanics, terrible game. So sad, so very sad. This easily had the potential to be one of the greatest PC games.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (N64)
Why is there a Zelda game on this list? For the simple fact it wasn’t good. You see, a Zelda game is a Zelda game for three reasons:
1. You rescue Princess Zelda
2. You defeat the evil Gannondorf
3. The game is innovative and highly replayable
Now, does this game have any of these features? The answer is no. This is sad, being as this is the first Zelda (other than ‘Adventures of Link’) that had true continuity. You start off as a wandering Link, who has left Hyrule in search of adventure. This is terrific, as a Zelda fan I am gripped right away. And then what happens?
The great Hero of Time is then robbed by a deku kid. Okay, I guess you need some reason why you don’t have all those nice toys from the first game. You are then forced to meander around town for awhile doing fairly mundane tasks, fairly pointless busywork to extend the gameplay time in my opinion.
The game was built on an interesting concept, where you repeat the same three days of existence ad infinitum. The first few cycles are actually rather fun and interesting, every NPC’s movements are catalogued to the second, the whole thing moving like a well-maintained clock (which makes sense being as you’re in Clock Town). You can rest assured that if NPC A walks by a certain street corner at 2:30 in the afternoon on day two on the first cycle, he will do that on every subsequent cycle. Learning the pattern was a charming thing about the game. There’s just one problem…
It gets old. Fast.
So by the time you’re at the end of the game, you’ve already done everything dozens of times, there’s no more wonder or discovery, just repetitious actions. So you never even have a desire to do all the extra end-game quests for cool stuff, you just want out, let alone starting the game anew.
Without the replay value, it just really isn’t a Zelda game, in my opinion.
Let’s touch upon the sense of adventure the other Zelda games have. They’re filled with it. Riding through the decimated fields of Hyrule in Ocarina of Time, fighting insane soldiers and jumping between worlds in Link to the Past, even sailing the Great Sea in Windwaker, they all had it.
This one? Awakening for gangly-looking giants to hold a scowling moon from falling… Playing instruments as different races… Fighting a boss where you basically race him… there is just too much goofiness and not enough action and fighting. Also, you didn’t have a cool, legendary sword to keep you company, you got a gold-plated sword, it just didn’t have the same ‘I’m a great hero’ flair. Ultimately, I think is was the prancing, mincing, child-molesting, cartographer that finally pushed me over the edge.
All in all, if you’re a big Zelda fan and haven’t played it… you can probably still look past this one and not miss anything. This is the game Zelda fans don’t really like to speak about.
Suikoden IV (PS2)
Suikoden is an RPG series with a huge cult following. It is a line of RPG’s which focus war. Instead of the intrepid hero who goes on a quest to destroy evil, you often play the role of a soldier who through the plot, ascends to become leader of his own army. You participate in battles, go on missions, and recruit new members for your army. With a plot that twists around intrigue, ancient magic, and political turmoil, it has truly painted itself as one of the most unique RPG series out there.
Then we come to Suikoden IV, the game that had a lot of good concepts, but apparently was never playtested to assure the game was actually enjoyable. Suikoden IV featured a simplified battle system, voice-overs, and not a whole lot else.
The plot was a bit on the nonsensical side. It had potential, with pirates and an army invading your precious island nations, but so many things are left unexplained. At the end of the game, you still know nothing about the enemy you’ve been fighting the whole time, and the last boss doesn’t even have anything to do with the game. Ready for a spoiler? Its a giant tree. That’s right, for some reason, you fight a giant tree.
So plot aside, was the game decent? For the most part, not too bad. Except you spend 99% of your time sailing. To go to a nearby island, you are required to make a ten minute journey interrupted by dozens and dozens of battles. It makes continuing through the game a nightmare. And when you find out through experimentation that R1 makes you go faster (not mentioned anywhere in game), it just pisses you off more. (admittedly, even with R1, the ship still travels much more slowly than would be fun to any player)
This game not only had potential, but had a reputation to uphold. It failed utterly, and has earned, even among the cult following of the Suikoden series, black sheep status.
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (PC)
I rushed out and bought this when it was released. I loved the previous game in the series, and figured that improved graphics and a plot-based interface would only make it better.
I was wrong.
The game was awesome in structure. The plot flowed smoothly enough, the graphics were nice, the voice-overs were serviceable. So why does this end up in the hall of shame?
This game could have been so awesome… but it chose to be a bug-ridden, rescource-hogging program. The battle is clunky, there’s an abundance of clipping, and some levels make all but the beefiest machines start to wig out. The sound was good, but the music was terrible, the characters were good, but they moved so awkwardly.
Vampire is a prime example of Troika’s (company that produced Vampire) work. Beautiful and ambitious, but ultimately failing in its goals.
UPDATE: After using many user-made patches that fixed a lot of glitches and re-implanted disabled features, the gameplay has improved. Although, even with the improvement, my issues with the game still stand.