| Title | The most disappointing games of 2014 |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Features |
| When | January 9, 2015 |
Calling a game disappointing arguably has more to do with me than the game itself. Disappointment isn't an inherent quality. It can't exist without some sort of expectation in the first place..
Read the full articleI love your lists Tom.
The ones I've played I agree wholeheartedly.
I'd put Watch Dogs on there too. That game I really tried to rein in my enthusiasm for but I just couldn't enough. Some of the mechanics and side stuff were cute but, oh god the plot. Even for a Ubisoft game. And what a way to waste something so topical.
But as you point out disappointment is a very personal thing.
After seeing the cover pic I was ready to come into this comment section and ride or die for Destiny. I guess it doesn't get official disappointment status. I think it was Brandon who put it so well on the podcast, Destiny is the game everyone loves to bitch about but can't get enough of.
Dang, I love playing Sunset Overdirve and I'm surprised that Destiny failed to reach this list. Funny how opinions work
I had completely forgotten that Planetary Annihilation came out in 2014. I guess I was so disappointed, my mind blocked out playing it and setting it aside within a week of launch.
For me it'd probably be Civilization: Beyond Earth (which is much blander and less ambitious than I was hoping, even if it does have some interesting new bits) and Thief (okay, so maybe I should never have had hopes for this, but considering Deus Ex: Human Revolution actually managed to be a semi-decent heir to Deus Ex, if not as ambitious, the idea of a new Thief with similarly respectful sensibilities was a promising one. Alas, that's not what we got.). Possibly Dragon Age Inquisition, but I didn't really have high hopes for the franchise after Dragon Age 2, and it's better than I was dreading it might be, even as it falls far short of the original.
I think if you've been keeping up with Firaxis' non-XCOM games lately, Beyond Earth was exactly what you should have expected. :( For me, it belongs on a different list this year.
There was a lot of pre-release hype for Watch Dogs, wasn't there? Ubisoft certainly did their best to raise expectations!
I don't share your main issue with Civ V (I'm not playing these games for challenge, I just like building empires), so I've rather enjoyed it, more so with the expansions. Unfortunately, Beyond Earth has plenty of other issues all to itself that do bother me quite a bit. :(
Agreed, I feel totally trolled. Funny thing is, as much as I love Destiny, I'd be completely OK with it being on the "disappointment" list, too.
I was trying to forget there was a Sacred 3, Tom. Thanks a lot.
I just picked up Unity for something like 15 bucks on a popular key reseller. It's been okay. I like the story more than I figured I would because I am a sucker for stories about young people finding their way (Arno and Elise are very likeable). Not too far into it yet, though. Also, the damned game wouldn't launch with Ubisoft's own Uplay overlay enabled, and I had to go sifting through undesirable places to fix the SLI issues they introduced in the latest patch. Get your crap together, Ubi, sheesh.
No Dragon Age Inquisition?
You want to tell us that you weren't dissapointed by it?
Well... I believe you. I wasn't either. I always knew it was going to be crap. R.I.P. Bioware...
I disagree about Alien Isolation. It was a pleasant surprise for me.
Sacred 3 was a really bad game, but Sacred 2 and Sacred/Plus weren't that great either. You seem to really love action/rpgs, AKA clickathons. The most brainless and pointless genre ever made... Just invest your time/waste your life and win. No skill and brain required. Or, if you like, we have also microtransactions for you (Diablo III)...
Also, why Red Dragon a dissapointment? Since when Wargame series were good to begin with? A totally unrealistic "war sim" for nerds...
I found Beyond Earth much better than Civ V. For many reasons. Not to say that it is a great game, but it is definitely an improvement over Civ V and with patches/DLC it will become better.
Still the Civ (all versions) formula is old and needs to change. It is not the recent games, the problem is with the main idea that was born out of technical limitations instead of actual good gameplay design.
Too much micromanagement, too much focus on cities instead of empires, too much focus on combat when the most time consuming element is managing cities and qeues... The civ games are wargames that demand from the player to spend 80% of their time doing other things than combat...
The problem is, the Civ formula is "standarized", people have learned that Civ will always be about a bunch of cities that exploit tiles and spawn units, and if they make radical changes there will be outrage. Actually, the fans of the series are responsible for its demise... Firaxis knows these things, they try to somewhat improve them without radically changing the formula, and end up with games that both alienate the "fans" and being not good enough in general...
What game has that screenshot?
They aren't wargames, though. War is just one component, and not even the most important one (notice how a lot of factors that play into real war are abstracted or not simulated at all). It's entirely possible to win later Civ games without fighting at all. They are their own specific thing. Whether or not you enjoy that thing is up to you, but the franchise certainly wouldn't benefit from losing sight of it.
I'm surprised at transistor, a lot of people liked it.
I think the only 2014 game I played was AOW, so I don't have an opinion either way.
Sad trombone.
If you mean the first picture at the top of the article, that white sphere is from Destiny. All of the other screenshots on the list are labeled.
I was really disappointed in Mario Kart 8. That game is amazingly good looking and has all the fan service you'd expect, but Nintendo is still using the same single player mode as the SNES game. The 150cc mode was barely playable thanks to item spam. I never would have guessed that I would rather play a Sonic kart game than the latest and greatest Mario Kart...
