Add to favorites Examiner Bio

Letdown: The five most disappointing games of 2008

The face of disappointment is never pretty

2008 had some great games to offer, but for every triumph there was a disappointment. It’s unavoidable that some games will get over-hyped, but some disappoint to such an extent that they deserve recognition for their shortfalls. These aren’t the worst games of the year. In fact, most of the games on this list aren’t bad, just nowhere near as good as they should’ve been. With that in mind, here are the five most disappointing games of 2008.

This only deserves an honorable mention because this is the list of the most disappointing games of 2008, and that is exactly what the Wii did not have. The Wii had a strong year from January to September, with games like No More Heroes, Super Smash Bros Brawl, Boom Blox, Mario Kart Wii, Okami, the launch of WiiWare, Wario Land Shake, and de Blob. But since those last two came out in mid-September, the system became a non-factor for core gamers. The only major releases Nintendo had left were WiiMusic, more a toy than a game, and Animal Crossing: City Folk, which was basically another dose of the same. Third parties didn’t do much to help. The Wii got a bunch of multiplatform games, which were either great but inferior to other versions (Call of Duty: World at War), average (Shawn White Snowboarding), or just plain bad (Quantum of Solace). The exclusive games it got were average at best. The only good point on the system was WiiWare, with the great World of Goo and Strong Bad games, but that’s of little consolation when the 360 and PS3 were getting bombarded with great games. Fortunately the lineup for 2009 looks better (especially the games from Sega), but the end of 2008 for the Wii was a huge disappointment.

Over the last couple of years Electronic Arts has been trying to shed its “evil empire” image. In addition to raising the quality of all of its games, EA has also began to publish new and creative games. One of the key titles in this movement was Mirrors Edge, a game by DICE, creators of the Battlefield series, which puts you in the role of a parkour, running across the rooftops of a major city to deliver packages. The game features a HUD-less interface and simple controls using mostly only the four bumper buttons, all aimed at creating intuitive first-person platforming. Unfortunately, while the game is a thrill to play when it works, the game gets frequently held up by unintuitive level design and frustrating combat.

The platforming in Mirror’s Edge mostly falls into two categories: areas where you know what you need to do and the challenge is actually doing it, and areas where you have no bloody clue what you’re supposed to be doing. The first category is a unique thrill, making first-person platforming enjoyable for possibly the first time ever in gaming. But the further you get into the game, the more the second category takes over, which leads to frustratingly large doses of trial, error, and plummeting to your death. For a game that’s about the thrill of running across rooftops, being put at a standstill kills the fun. Speaking of things that will kill you, there’s the combat. The combat in Mirror’s Edge is frustrating and unenjoyable. You have the option to use guns, but the gun play is terrible, so you’ll likely opt for melee. The melee combat itself is fairly clunky and getting the timing for disarming an enemy, a key part of the combat, is a major pain. The worst part is that there are times, usually a couple of times a level, when the game will set some enemies in front of you and say “No, you cannot run away from these enemies, you must defeat them to progress.” Now it’s not so bad when you’re up against a single cop with a handgun, but when you’re put up against a full SWAT team in full tactical gear with submachine guns and support from snipers on nearby rooftops, the game becomes a massive pain to play.

Mirror’s Edge isn’t a bad game, really, but it’s not a good one. It’s just a shame that a game that’s so much fun when it sticks to its core concept is so eager to deviate from it. 

Star Wars is a universe primed for some great video games, and past gems have shown just how great they can be. Games such as Star Wars: TIE Fighter, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader, and Knights of the Old Republic are classics and must play material for any Star Wars fan. This just goes to show how intense the hype was for Force Unleashed. In spite of all those classics which have stood the test of time, this game was coronated the ultimate Star Wars game by eager fans. It places you in the role of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice during the time between Episodes 3 and 4, and has you tearing through both Rebel and Empire forces using your light saber and force powers in locations such as the Wookie home planet Kashyyyk, Cloud City, and even the Death Star. Unfortunately, what seemed to be a Star Wars fan’s wet dream turned out to be merely an average hack-and-slash game.

The downfall of The Force Unleashed is that it isn’t unleashed. For someone who’s supposed to be a powerful apprentice to Darth Vader, you never really feel all that powerful. Your light saber, rather than cutting through people, seems to kill enemies by bludgeoning them. The force powers, though neat, are hampered by a shoddy targeting system and become ineffective towards the end of the game. The level design which is at best average and at worst unbearably frustrating. The one part of the game that summarizes all the missed potential is the part where you need to destroy a Star Destroyer by pulling it down from orbit with the force. Sounds pretty cool, huh? Well, in the game you do that by using the force to slowly, slowly pull the Star Destroyer in the appropriate direction using the analogue sticks with a ridiculous level of precision, all while being harassed by TIE fighters in a sequence that takes forever. It’s arguably the single most frustrating sequence in any game released this year. The end result is a game that feels more the force neutered than the Force Unleashed.

Too Human certainly had the pedigree to be a great game. It had been in planning for about 10 years, giving it plenty of time for the design to be fine tuned, was developed by Silicon Knights, creators of the excellent games Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, and was being pushed strongly by Microsoft as an Xbox 360 exclusive. Well, since it’s on this list, you can tell it didn’t turn out to be a great game.

Too Human is at it’s core a loot-centric action RPG, like Diablo 2, so it’s important that the game have a good combat system and loot drops. Unfortunately, neither of those happened. The combat is weak as each strike Baldur makes seems to have no impact whatsoever, a problem exacerbated by enemies leveling up with you, effectively neutering the effect of leveling up, and a wonky camera that loves odd angles, which is a bigger problem because combat is controlled not with buttons but by hitting the R-stick in the direction of the enemy. The loots themselves are generally worthless because, with enemies leveling up with you and nearly every loot giving you better stuff than you already have, there’s no connection with your equipment or feeling of reward for getting a better weapon.

Combining with those problems to make the game even more tedious is the dull and drawn out system and the way the game handles death. When you die, which will happen quite a bit, a Valkyrie descends from above, picking up Baldur’s body and rising to the heavens. You then immediately spawn a few feet away and resume combat. The only penalties for death are that cut scene, which drags on and is unskippable, and that if you die enough your equipment breaks, making you weaker and subjecting you to that insufferable cutscene even more. The result is an unappealing, tedious game that fulfills none of the potential promised during the 10 years it took them to actually make this game.

The first Condemned game, a 360 launch title, stands out as a survival-horror masterpiece, casting you in the shoes of FBI Detective Ethan Thomas as he attempts to capture a serial killer. The combat system, almost entirely melee, was unusually well done for a first-person game, the investigation sequences were creative and unique, the atmosphere was creepy, the story unnerving, and it was just a great game whose only shortcomings was a lack of replay value. Condemned 2: Bloodshot promised to solve that with multiplayer, and was throwing in new, expanded investigation sequences where you would have to piece together what happened from the crime scene, and an improved combat system. This promised to blow the first game away, despite the questionable decision to turn protagonist Ethan Thomas into a pale-faced, emo haircut wearing hobo, and it did for the first half of the game. But then things take a turn and begin to go wrong. Very, very wrong.

The first half of the game realizes all the potential promised. The investigation sequences require a thorough studying of the environment, the story will have you constantly guessing what’s next, the melee combat is even better and more brutal than in the first game, and the hallucination sequences are brilliant. Half way through the game, though, I guess the developing staff all quit or died, because the game starts ignoring everything that made it great. The investigations which were so great become less frequent before simply disappearing in the last third of the game. The melee combat begins to be phased out in favor of firearms and other projectile weapons. The environment goes from creepy to generic. The storyline goes completely loopy by introducing an ancient cult with a bizarre backstory and powers. All this leads up to one of the most surreally terrible final stages ever, where you go through a junkyard shooting SWAT team members with an assault rifle, which, for some reason, you can’t reload, before reaching the final boss which you kill by yelling loudly at him. I wish I was just making that up.

The previous two games on this list all promised great things but never really realized them. Condemned 2 is an even worse type of game that actually realizes its potential before going completely cross-eyed and entirely forgetting what makes it good. 

Yes, the most disappointing game of the year is Grand Theft Auto 4, easily the most anticipated game of the year, with a relentless hype machine behind it and mounds of critical praise. The game hyped to deliver the closest thing to a living city in a video game ever. The game supposed to bring a strong, more real story to the compelling gameplay of Grand Theft Auto. All that hype, and what a disappointment the game turned out to be.

The biggest problem with GTA 4 is that, in spite of all its technical accomplishments, the game simply isn’t all that fun to play. While the game starts out with promise, almost all the missions quickly devolve into ‘drive to point X, shoot person(s) Y, escape from cops (optional).’ The whole thing just feels like you’re playing the same mission over and over. There are a few larger, more epic missions, but those are handicapped by the game’s refusal to include mid-mission checkpoints. One friend of mine was reduced to tears by having to do the whole bank robbing mission over and over and over. And all the missions are hurt by the poor driving in the game. The cars in GTA 4 handle like they’re driving on ice, handling poorly and fishtailing all over the place. For a game where driving is such an integral part of the game to have poor driving is inexcusable.

Another problem is the city. While it is, in appearance, the closest that’s ever been done to a real, living city, Liberty City is unfortunately shallow. Beyond the story missions, there’s surprisingly little to do in the city. You can do the stunt jumps, have some ‘random’ encounters with strangers, compete in street races (with the poor driving), steel cars, do police missions, play poor versions of darts, bowling, or pool, complete a few side jobs for your friends, and collect hidden packages, which is done by shooting pigeons around town. Compared to the veritable cornucopia of activities in San Andreas and Vice City, Liberty City simply seems barren. There is some useless filler in there, such as an in game internet which is largely useless and broadcasts you can watch on the TV in your safe houses. Just incase you felt like watching TV in the game you paid $60 for that’s worse than what you could watch for free on the TV you’re the game on. Even the stores and safe houses have been thinned out, leaving much of the city sitting there, looking nice, but not useful for much else.

Also disappointing is the story. One of the big selling points of GTA 4 was the compelling, realistic narrative of Niko Belic and his experience coming to America. The story delivers on that promise up until the main villain, Dimitri, is established. Then, the story just disappears. You spend the next about 75% of the game dicking around doing nothing to really advance the narrative. The game sets up a villain really worth fighting against and then just forgets he exists for most of the rest of the game. That all leads up to an ending which supposedly offers you choice, but the choice in how the ending is turns out to be entirely cosmetic. The ending is effectively the same either way and both endings are entirely unsatisfactory. Continuing the problem with realism is the tone of the game. The game tries to be serious and dramatic, but also tries to be a comedy. The two tones work separately but clash too frequently. You go through a dramatic scene where your cousin’s home and business are destroyed by Dimitri, all while the radio is playing a commercial about how you should buy a set of knives because "Sometimes you gots ta eat people!"

I could go on, but the end result is a game that largely fails to deliver on its potential, all while restricting the sense of freedom and diversity of activities which made past GTA games so great. For such a highly hyped game to fail to deliver on so many levels makes Grand Theft Auto 4, by far, the most disappointing game of the year.

For more info: Check out the 5 best games of the year, for some happier reading.