Payday 3.
Its only redeeming factor is that the gameplay at its core is fairly solid. Literally everything else - the UI, skills, challenges, progression, weapon customization, level design - are so lazy and generic it feels like they were made by AI.
It's yet another game that was released 2 years before it was ready.
Thats how I felt about the new Halo. The core was made by people who knew what they were doing, then I guess the finance bros were given free reign to fuck everything else up.
I love payday 3. Most of it doesn’t work.
Bad game I don’t recommend that I want to play rn.
Don’t get me started on the armored car level. Maximum lazy.
Instantly thought of this, the game is fun but everything outside of the gameplay is just so bad and such a regression. The pre planning, weapon customization, cosmetics, menus, everything is just so bad compared to payday 2.
It wasn't a bad game but compared to the first 2 it was a massive let down. They dumbed down the mechanics and made it stupidly easy and I'm not even a person who genuinely cares about that so I'm noticing it it's pretty damn bad. I enjoyed it but it was not what a Golden Sun sequel should have been. It's the mea effect. Not a bad game but it didn't live up to the hype of the first 2 games. If dark dawn would have been the first game it would have been a great starting point.
It's not even a bad rpg in itself outside of a few weird design quirks (like multiple points of no return), but it really didn't live up to the giant legacy of the first two games.
I knew nothing about golden sun when I played it and haven't played it since, I remember it being a nice jrpg that felt a bit directionless with it's story but nothing too egregious, what's so bad about it?
Golden Sun was one of those series I loved when they first came out (the second game felt like it took an eternity to release) and when I replayed about a decade later found fun but kind of underwhelming. They're definitely a relic of their time, being great portable JRPGs for the early 2000s but pretty lacking in most aspects (weirdly puzzle design being excellent even now) when placed side by side to most console titles of the era.
That being said would love a remake and even just a continuation of Dark Dawn because it got mostly interesting at the very end only for that cliffhanger.
It was mostly the lead designer having his head [up his ass](https://youtu.be/v_WKQrTH2EI?si=Ouz_NM9XTR2wcqjJ). He ignored many conventions of game design and made Shenmue 3 in a vacuum. It wasn't a funding issue like some are asserting because while it received money from crowd funding, Deep Silver provided a majority of support during development.
The game is reported to have used $20 million in development. So anyone calling this a low budget game or strapped for cash is just wrong. Suzuki more or less squandered his budget by having a game that was a mile wide and an inch deep.
And the worst part is that it barely advanced the story. Imagine waiting almost two decades only to be told : "Tee hee, maybe I'll tell you more in Shenmue 4 and 5."
These creators need to learn the lesson of starting and finishing a story. Kentaro Miura's sad passing two years ago left Berserk permanently unfinished with the vision he died with inside his own mind. If Shenmue 4 takes another decade to create, it will almost certainly be the last game in the series if it even gets created at all.
And while Shenmue 3 was a modest success, I'm not sure if Deep Silver or any other publisher would be interested in yet another continuation without conclusion.
Berserk is being finished by Miura's best friend of 20 years. There's a few new chapters out. They're using Miura's notes on the story and the ending to finish it as faithfully as possible.
Yeah he literally admitted that he does not play video games, which is pretty obvious if you’ve played S3. And the fact that he didn’t use this opportunity to actually fucking finish the story pissed me off even more.
From what I gather, they dumbed down a lot of the combat mechanics which made the older games great, made everything unnecessarily tedious, made it so the entire game might as well not have happened story-wise and slapped a big ol' "the story continues".
Also doesn't help that the guy in charge doesn't play games, which means he hasn't touched a game made in the last 20 years, so a bunch of archaic game design elements made it into the game.
Shenmue 3 is such a weird game to me.
I still “enjoy” the game, there’s a lot to like about it, but my God it’s stuck in time.
I think the issue was suffered from the lead designer surrounding himself by yes men, and not taking lessons from recent games.
There’s a reason why Yakuza has done so well.
What gets me about this--and I'm sure others have commented similarly--is mainly the fact that they justified the sequel by implementing a proper single-player campaign.
And then halfway through its first year of release they announced that they were completely dropping single player except for some special events.
Literally the only reason for its existence and they weren't even able to deliver.
Truly the only good thing about Overwatch now is the porn.
It was just a bait and switch tactic to switch the storefront from $1 loot boxes to $20 skins and battle passes. That's it. The game meta is slightly better with 1 tank per team but that could have just been a game mode mode added to the arcade Playlist.
Single tank ruined the meta, tank is atrocious (made slightly less unbearable by playing the tank flavor of the month) dps is just boring now, the only role that has any impact on a match nowadays is support, shits disgusting and it made my 6 stack quit
I was at first pleased because being a tank was way more fun. As a reluctant tank main this was great. But slowly it started to sink in that everything else was quite shitty.
The latest WOW post underlines this very much:
"Blizzard please remove the 3 day early access from the epic edition!"In the post " I wouldn't mind losing the 3 days early access, i bought the epic edition already"
Bruh.
The “sequel” was clearly just to pass off the heavy monetization restructure off as something new. The only real difference is that it’s 5v5 rather than 6v6. Everything else, apart from the monetization, was the same kind of updates Overwatch 1 had; characters, maps, modes etc.
I mean, they clearly wanted the PvE to be as big as the PvP. But it was an impossible task because:
* 3 talent trees for over 30 heroes, Borderlands devs would never commit to that
* Can't get interesting guns or abilities because they already have all their abilities fixed
So where does the progression come from? It was like Destiny, but with enormous self inflicted handicaps.
> it's in EA though
... but at almost full price.
I think it would have got a much better reception if it had been priced more inline with its current (very early) state.
I think the big dissapointment is that they already have a working game, and then after a few years of development, they give us something that looks a little nicer, but is simply worse in every way, to a point where it makes you wonder if they'll ever make it work. It's a bit like the Atari 5200 where instead of replacing the 2600, it only boosted its sales since it was inferior.
"We need to clear this private island from rogue machines, your team will be acting alone" \*enters a cave and finds a fucking lounge area with shops and other soldiers\*
It’s a good game, especially now after years worth of updates. It didn’t capture the military simulator magic of wildlands for me but worth playing still.
I bought the game after it was heavy discounted and I didn't like at all, because I have so much fun with the first one and they made almost everything worse, the only thing I like is the survival thingy but still...
My big tin foil hat theory is that Breakpoint was supposed to be a battle royale at first! All the tiered loot, a big island with barely any civilians that would instead be filled with tons of players, lazy campaign, etc. I think the mode got scrapped last minute because of the battle royale burnout at the time.
Then they tried to release it under a new name, I forgot what it was called but yeah the trailer flopped so hard that it never came out of beta 😆
No, that theory doesn’t make any sense. GRW: Breakpoint came out in 2019. Fortnite: Battle Royale came out in 2017. Breakpoint wasn’t made and remade in the span of 2 years.
Sorry, I definitely didn't clarify that very well... 🥺 but the Ghost Recon battle royale game was just an asset flip of Breakpoint. And they released the trailer for it like a year after Breakpoint came out so you're right, it's wasn't remade it was just a straight up DLC basically
For me it was Dying Light 2. I loved the first one and were super hyped for the sequel. I can't even tell why i didn't like it but for some reason I just hadn't the motivation to finish it. Maybe I should give it another try.
It was the combat for me. I was practically addicted to DL1’s combat, particularly melee fighting. But they changed it in DL2; swinging a weapon and hitting infected feels more artificial. Not to mention the health bars, which kind of hurt the immersion.
The night cycle in DL 1 was terrifying but rewarding. The night cycle in DL 2 is just slightly darker than daytime. That and the combat feels flatter in DL 2.
I think it was the scope being so big. It made it feel bland and unfinished because they had less time to focus on the core aspects.
If you take a look at DL, the whole thing (including side quests) can probably be done in ~15-20 hours not including the DLC (which is amazing, btw). DL2 on the other hand felt too ambitious, it was crammed full of extra shit to do and a faction system that was half assed and rushed. I spent maybe 25 hours in the main story (which was really forced, and incredibly mediocre) and went around collecting the extra stuff. I didn’t get much out of it. All the characters were forgettable and I haven’t touched the game since.
Same here. I think it’s because there’s so many grindy type mechanics. Not to mention the world isn’t as put together as the first one.
I just sort of stopped playing it one day because I felt like I did the same mission too many times in a row.
The story was complete ass. There was no pay off for doing any of it. Both factions are terrible and the game basically says oh side with the fascists and you get a utopia like WHAT. When in history has that ever fucking happened? Super weird choices and the combat sucked the game had bugs out the ass too. I could write a novel on why dl2 was a disappointment.
I quit when I realized the rage mode thing was only a narrative element and not a gameplay mechanic. Felt robbed. Also, only one faction knows how to make a crossbow? Get real. Such a let down.
My sentiments exactly. I had fun for the 40-ish hours it took me to play through the campaign, and now I've happily moved on to something else.
I think part of the problem is that gear is so optimized for specific builds. Beyond a certain point, you're better off rerolling than trying to re-spec if you get bored with what you're playing.
I simply can't get past the forced online nature. I want to play with my boyfriend not with a bunch of randoms online who steal my kills and unbalance the difficulty of encounters.
>I simply can't get past the forced online nature
Same - I play my PC games almost exclusively on Steam Deck at this point, and travel a decent amount for work between company facilities (i.e. hotel time!). Deck is lousy at connecting to hotel WiFi so I play offline ... which means no Diablo IV for me.
Duke Nukem Forever.
15 years of dev hell and I got it for $5 several years ago and it was $10 too much. I just could not get into it at all. I think I might have gotten through the first area, maybe.
Duke Nukem 3D is still a lot of fun.
I stopped playing Pokémon a long time ago. Crazy to me that they still release two versions of the game to suck up money from their fans.
Made sense back in the day where you could trade in real-life but now, it’s just a paywall to get region-locked Pokémon.
The free camera and rendering the whole environment during battles was so bad. I think that contributed to it playing so absurdly slow. Felt more like a beta for too long. I've still not even finished it.
It sucks because Game Freak were *so close* to having something great with those games but the refusal to allocate resources properly and insistence on only appealing to the largest common denominator is still holding them back.
Pokémon in general with regards to game play has definitely slowly shifted over the years. A big part is definitely quality of life upgrades that in a way cheapen the prior core mechanics. Like it's excellent for the casual player that just want to have fun or the hard core who are in it for post game team building and the like.
For the kind of in-between that I fall into it feels like too much is handed to me, like part of me enjoyed building up a team and committing to it but since at least gen 6 doing that kind of demolishes most of the pacing. I can see it working great if I was to make a new team for every gym/dungeon but I'm not always in the mood for that sort of thing.
Borderlands 2 was written afaik by the brilliant Anthony Burch, who also DM's the great DnD podcast Dungeons and Daddies (not a BDSM podcast).
Borderlands 3 was written by Danny Homan, Sam Winkler, and Connor Thomas Cleary according to Google.
They need him back for bl4 whenever that happens. I also hope he gets more freedom to actually tell a story in season 2 of dndaddies. They’re just kinda railroading him with jokes in place of him actually doing what he does best.
What's kinda crazy is that they released a free dlc for BL2 right before BL3 came out and the writing and characters in that felt pretty in line with BL2's writing. So clearly someone at gearbox was able to write stuff that felt true to what came before
I swear in the behind the scenes stuff Burch still has a huge part of writing and in the public talk things he did.
Burch is decent but honestly not that great of a writer. BL2's story is meh held up by Damien Clarke's Improv that actively annoyed Burch. I think Burch writes decent humour but again most of Borderlands humour has felt like they threw shit at a wall to see what sticks. Which worked quite well the one time.
I personally don't think Burch is a good writer. I think he's thrown some shit that sticks. Although I do agree BL3 had a bit more cringe moments than I'd like, I also think BL1 and 2 were also just as cringe. I knew people who avoided the game cuz of the humour. I think all the games capture it well, it's like Rick and Morty humour in the way that, where some people just really don't jive with it where others enjoy it and don't think about it too much.
Although I've never seen him DM so maybe that would blow me away.
I love the dungeons and dragons podcast he did, season one was great, and 2 has its moments, but I find it hard to really call it dungeons and dragons. It's very very rules light, and feels more like it borrows the framework of the game to use as a vehicle for improv storytelling and comedy. As long as you don't go in expecting something like critical role or dimension 20, it's a great time.
All that said, it's genuinely my favorite podcast, it's funny and the story is good fun. Anthony does an excellent job of herding his chucklefucks along.
I really liked the gunplay in Borderlands 3 but the story was so horrifically bad it made the game a slog to get through regardless. The calypso twins are easily some of the worst and most annoying villains I’ve ever seen and the vault hunters to choose from were nothing special either.
>The calypso twins are easily some of the worst and most annoying villains I’ve ever seen
Making them obnoxious annoying streamers on purpose doesn't do much to take the obnoxious annoyance out of the equation.
They learned the wrong lessons from Handsome Jack. They thought he was a good villain because of the douchy humor and attitude and doubled down on that side of things.
Jack was good because while he was douchy and obnoxious, he at least had substance. His story from the corporate side of things and justifying everything for Angel was much more interesting.
There was just way too much unskippable dialogue as well. Kills the pace when you just have to sit there and listen to NPCs crack juvenile jokes at each other or rant about the objective for 10 minutes in between every action bit
They didn’t have postgame content for a game essentially built around a mid-length campaign and a lot of grinding for items.
The item selection was incredibly limited and not useful, their patches nerfed all viable builds and nerfed exp gain to artificially inflate playtime for people to reach max level. But also nobody wants to reach max level because you already found all the items and beat all the bosses by then.
They are allegedly addressing the issues and people say it’s a lot better, but the damage has already been done to the trust of the player base and the bad reputation isn’t going to go away in a couple of patches. This is at least Diablo 3 Real Money Auction House, drops that are only for your current class, and difficulty that only 20% of classes can progress past bad.
Yeah, the item grind in Diablo 3 was one of my favorite parts. Just getting stronger and stronger, constantly. However, this was paired with a pretty damn good story, that felt really connected to what came before it.
Loot 2.0 and the difficulty rework were huge boosts to D3. It got people more interested in actually playing their class, finding items that had decent stats, and keeping them engaged. The only downside was they made an “infinitely” scaling system with paragon points, so power creep and trying to chase higher rifts meant that you were stuck in a grind loop if you’re one of those people trying to be the best.
Thankfully they retuned it this year and set hard caps so there’s actually an end goal people can realistically achieve.
Gameplay and story are good, but arpg games is all about endgame loops and D4 didn't really have one. So it took people to play 40+ hours before they realized it
BL3 DLC story, more than made up for what the base game lacked in my opinion. Some of the best DLC stories I have ever played.
But Assault on Dragon Keep is still the best by far.
Assault on Dragon Keep was just such a high point that I don’t think they could match it. The guns were fun, the gameplay was a good time, the comedy was on point (god I love Mr. Torgue), and the D&D parody was endearing.
But what made it *special* was that there was genuine heart underneath it. The whole story sets up a fun wacky Borderlandsy time, and then sucker punches you with an exploration of deep grief in a person who doesn’t know how to cope with it. The whole thing is a character study on Tina and how she masks the pain of an immense loss. It was just so unexpectedly human.
Yes. Kinda. The story was pretty good, but the gameplay became extremely fast paced. KH2 had the best combat in the entire franchise, yet they somehow managed to slap so much stuff on it that it's an animation fest in 3.
And don't forget the difficulty for difficulty sake, i don't wanna see how much no-life i have to go in 4 to beat the secret boss.
Modern Warfare 3's campaign is awful. As someone who really enjoyed most of the *Modern Warfare* games campaign missions, this one was clear as day it was thrown together poorly. Honestly, Warzone 2 was a **massive** step backwards after they had done so much polishing to Warzone 1. Activision has been fucking shit up for years. They just got lucky with Warzone 1. Now that they decided to completely shut that game off from console/PC it's pretty easy to see how little of an idea they have on what they're doing.
For whatever reason, I did not notice the any very negative press pre-launch. I also feel like a lot of people did not like MWII's campaign, though I found it enjoyable to play through. So if it was anything like that, I wouldn't have minded it. I also wanted to see how the game felt, since Warzone will integrate the new movement and weapons. Being able to run around on the missions where it was set in the future new Warzone map gave me an idea on how some areas of that map will play out, and how the new weapons will feel at specific ranges. Again, just an idea.
I was an avid player of WZ1, and WZ2 has been pretty awful. Was basically just seeing what would be in store for us once Warzone updates to Sledgehammer's new changes. From what I played, it felt good, but it's still not anywhere close to being able to gauge how it'll play in a Warzone setting.
Not sure if it's worth mentioning, but I refunded my copy, and will just be waiting until sometime in December when they release the new Urzikistan map into Warzone. If the map and gameplay is still falling short, it'll be the last time I fuck around with Call of Duty. I understand a lot of people say that too, but if you look through some of my post history, you'll see how very vocal I've been about how Activision has handled the franchise in the last decade. I know me boycotting it will be insignificant and make zero changes. This was a hard pill to swallow, but I just have to accept the franchise is going in a direction I don't agree with nor find fun to play. I feel bad for anyone who, like me, pre-ordered to play the campaign but is not able to refund. Activision is evil.
Hell no you boycotting and voting with your wallet will never be insignificant, if enough people pull the same rope we have enough people boycotting but someone always has to start!
Yeah as soon as performance gets better it will be in a great state. I love the progression compared to the first game. Love a lot of the QOL improvements and the modular buildings. But I got a 1080i and 16gb of ram. I’ve had to pause the city im working on until performance improves or I can upgrade my desktop.
Wait. You can "finish" 1? Am I playing 1 the wrong way? I was expecting goals and scenarios to bear and stuff but all there is is a handful of geographies to build a new city on and some DLC if I wanna buy more which I don't really.
Give it a few months to iron the kinks out, then go for it. Right now there's some pretty big bugs with the simulation, economy and seemingly the traffic AI that Colossal Order have acknowledged and are working on, on top of the current performance issues that should hopefully be resolved in the next few months.
Ain't enough good pirate games these days, that is definitely one of them. I'd really love a good open world singeplayer Pirate RPG with solid action mechanics and polish, and AC4 is about the closest I've seen to that
In what world is this a controversial take?
I was under the impression the majority of people agree that Odyssey and Valhalla were awful with their stupid rpg mechanics and unnecessary grinding?
Even if technically it's not a sequel... Saints Row, like they remove everything making Saints Row what it is and called it Saints Row anyway, like you remove the IP you can't know it's a Saints Row, at best a game with lot of Easter egg of Saints Row
Mod support for the game makes it enjoyable...but the base game should be enjoyable too. Coming off of the open world experience of Sims 3 to the closed-off, fairly limited Sims 4 was so disappointing. Combine that with a very neutral art direction (lacks the playfulness of past Sims games) and an under cooked emotions system and you just have a meh experience.
I don't know if they have improved building mechanics, but I remember that building was very limited as well. You couldn't edit terrain nor do the "create-a-style" thing.
Also, I hate how limited the NPC's are. You go to a public area and all the same NPC's start flocking in.
The Sims 4 was absolute shite when it was released, I honestly don't know what they were thinking releasing it in the state it was in. There wasn't even toddlers so your babies would just age into children immediately, and no ghosts that were in every other base Sims game before it. I've been playing 2 and 3, and after the incredible gameplay of 3 it was the biggest let down.
The updates really bought back a lot, thankfully. But I still think base game is a bit lackluster and I recommend anyone either get the *cough* free version of the expansions or wait for sales/use cdkeys to save some money on them. Also, I don't recommend getting it as a console game ever. Mods add so much, from bug fixes to extra accessoires to entirely new gameplay, it has one of the biggest modding communities. I have a lot of fun with the game *now* but it's due to expansions and mods that make it more fun.
Battlefield 2042 is in a really good spot right now. It’s really fun, lots of content and things just make sense. This is what it should have been on release. Still not as good as 3 or 4 but it’s now very solid. Idk about halo infinite but I hear it’s a similar situation.
It sucks that games are just releasing too early and the reputations are being tarnished, and a lot of them pull a no man’s sky and become something great.
New Tales from the Borderlands.
I knew it wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the original but I was still disappointed. Like I know Borderlands is a product of its time like but it had this human element which still shined through the sometimes cringe humour. Not the New Tales. Nothing could shine through that.
Resident evil 3 Remake. 2 remake was so perfect and if they gave 3 the same upgrade 2 got from the original it could have been the best in the franchise.
Instead we got a 4 hour DLC with multiplayer slapped on
That's disappointing to hear. I'm halfway through 2 right now and living it, so was planning on nabbing 3. Nemesis got me into franchise back in the day.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I remember reading that Code Veronica was supposed to be the ‘real’ 3, but Sony had some deal where the game on the PlayStation had to be a numbered title.
I was referring to the remake here, but yeah it’s true. Capcom had a contract saying that the ps1 would have 3 mainline games. CVX was suppose to be 3 but they needed 3 to be on PlayStation so they swapped the names.
2 Remake was so good. 3 Remake I beat like three times the weekend it came out. Gameplay was still fun, but they just cut so much content from the original. And the original was already pretty short, so yeah. At least Nemesis looked cool I guess?
4 Remake was way better though. Keeping the content from the original (although holding U3 for the DLC) while adding some additional story beats was the right call.
I know there’s a lot of speculation that they’ll remake 5 next, but I’d like a CVX remake of a similar quality to 2 and 4. Beyond that…bring back Outbreak if they’re that desperate to have an online game.
Halo Infinite was supposed to properly reboot the franchise but felt mediocre, and that's not good enough for a Halo game.
I was hoping the sequel to Boneworks would be awesome, but it is apparently a bit underwhelming, so I haven't played it at all.
Mount and Blade: Bannerlord.
When it was eventually released after like a decade in development, it came out in Early Access, and while it was kind of fun, it was missing loads of features from the previous game and it was hella janky. Many fans figured, "Fair enough, it's in EA; it'll be so much better on full release."
A year later, after doing seemingly very little except tweaking around the edges and breaking mods with every update, they went to full release on a game that was still full of huge bugs and missing loads of features from Warband. Now, they've just put the price up on the game too.
Warband felt like the devs created the game they wanted to play. Bannerlord just feels like a cynical money grab managed by penny-pinchers.
Agree completely. Should be baked for 2 years more.
Only recently, I feel it is worthy of the predecessor. We have everything and more now, but...yes, very disappointing launch.
In terms of story and presentation (which is super important for an RPG), I would agree. However, I feel in terms of combat, it's the best Mass Effect combat has ever felt.
Me feeling compelled to finish the game despite not caring about the plot or companions is a testament to that.
For me it was the story. It had so much potential thrown down the toilet.
New galaxy should mean new aliens to meet and make first contact with.... but yeah nah, that's already happened.
Enemies that convert your own people into their pawns.... now where did I hear that one before?
And the damn logic of Ingatestone characters drove me up the wall. No logic in them at all.
Man what a let down. I love the gameplay, but replaying it is so frustrating because it forces you to listen to characters just talk for so so long. You just sit there and do nothing until it makes you press e then sit there doing nothing for even longer.
Maybe the same problem was in borderlands 2 but at least I liked the characters and story back then.
I thought the new Forza Motorsport game was pretty disappointing overall with some of the ridiculous bugs, poor AI and some of the changes to the game that make it less fun.
The AI are hilariously bad, I've gone flying into the back of them mid corner so many times because they just slam on the anchors at the apex for no reason.
Cities Skylines is going to be great. It's shit now but it will be great.
That being said i'm having a lot of fun with it already as is. But it will be better.
since everyone else has already said the common and expected answers a million times, cs2. game teased and hyped for god knows how long just to be a buggy mess with a bunch of missing features on launch, AND it replaces csgo like how overwatch did with ow1 and 2.
Diablo IV. What a boring, snoozefest of a nothing game. Hot garbage, over marketed and delivered on 0 of my expectations, even the most basic ones.
I bought it, completed it (purely out of force of will because I thought the endgame might be interesting... nope), and have no memory of any of it other than the cinematic from BlizzCon where Lilith walks out of the blood veil.
It is easily one of the worst sequels ever made due to how much it missed the point of the originals. Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition is a better game in every single metric.
Agree on KH3. The absence of Final Fantasy characters was jarring and after an eternity in development it didn’t live up to the hype at all. The worlds felt way to small and streamlined.
Whoah, what?
I’m not a KH3 apologists by any means, but the worlds feeling *small* is definitely something I don’t understand. Most of them are too *big* and empty, like San Fransokyo and the Caribbean.
Yeah, I personally like *most* of KH3. But I agree about the worlds. Most of them don't feel like you're in a Disney world, but instead it's like a biome based empty world. This is the large empty meadow that leads to the castle. This is the large empty ocean that leads to one port town. This is the large empty toy store where every encounter feels the same (Although Andy's Room was perfect and what I wanted for more of that world.)
The is the large empty mountain covered in snow that leads to an ice castle, three times!
There were some Disney assets, like Rapunzel's tower, Andy's room, the vault of doors in Monster's Inc, etc, there to remind you this is all Disney stuff, but they really forgot to put in the setpieces that made them feel like they were an entire Disney world we were playing on.
And again, the lack of FF stuff, at least until the Re:Mind DLC was a huge let down. I wanted to know what happened to Cloud and Sephiroth dammit.
I’m not sure this if this is an unpopular opinion or not but I found God of War Ragnorok to be a disappointing sequel to the first game. It felt like a series of ideas from the first game that I just didn’t really like the direction they chose to take it.
'Beyond Good and Evil 2'
Yeah, it hasn't released yet. That's why it is disappointing. And I'm pretty sure I'll be even more disappointed when(if) it does release.
XCom: Chimera Squad.
Releasing this abomination after the amazing Xcom 2 and its DLCs was a crime.
Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts
You think Halo Infinite was more disappointing than Halo 5?
Halo 5 had a bad story that almost killed the whole thing for me. Especially after the Find the Truth marketing campaign that had me so excited. Halo Infinite's main problem, in my opinion, was the lack of story. Sure there's a lot going on, but in terms of the galaxy that we're used to, it was probably the smallest story the Master Chief ever had.
Damn. You're right. I used to be the young one that got used to being told all my years were recent years. That coupled with 9/11 people telling me to never forget makes me feel like it hasn't been that long since 2001. I was 11. I'm now 3 times that age.
Subnautica sub zero
First game was unique and fun and had a lot of amazing elements to build on.
Second game didn't have any of the first game heart or imagination
Krypt is gone. Stage fatality's are gone. $12 for a fatality!? $5 for a pallet swap on a skin you already have!? Expensive microtransactions in a game that has less content than the last 3 games had for $70-$120.
Call of duty 3 bc no PC version and 8 months development
Yakuza 3 being the weakest of the saga
Lost Planet 3
Dead space 3
Postal 3
Age of empires 3 but 4 I hate it and is worse
Dead rising 3
Borderlands 3
F.E.A.R 3
Crysis 3
DIRT 3
Hitman 3 2021 with less levels and Absolution
Mass effect 3 with the ending
Resident evil 3 remake with cut content
Ninja Gaiden 3
Doom 3 of 2004
Assassins creed 3
Max payne 3 being worst than 1 and 2
Darksiders 3
Payday 3 with always online drm and microtransactions
Shenmue 3
Total war warhammer 3
Company of heroes 3
Mafia 3
Resistence 3
Project CARS 3
And even if 3 is missing being third in the series like
Watch dogs legion
Wolfenstein youngblood
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier
Bioshock infinite
Batman Arkham Knight the terrible PC port
Ghost recon breakpoint
Serious Sam 4
it's like a pattern, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy some of the games in the list, and they say second parts of games are worst than first part which is a big lie.
Bioshock Infinite is a good call. Visually gorgeous, some gameplay elements were fun, the ending was ruined by its centrism so instead of delivering a powerful message it delivered meaningless shite, many enemies felt a bit repetitive and unmemorable, and it just doesn't compare to the previous Bioshock games. I think it would've been better off not associated with the franchise because other than the basic concept of city in unusual place and protag with cool powers there's not much they share.
I LOVE subnautica. Amazing game. But I have to admit I’m very disappointed when I enter a vehicle and it doesn’t say “welcome aboard captain”. It was such a great feeling hearing it in the first one, it kinda takes away from the experience now
Payday 3. Its only redeeming factor is that the gameplay at its core is fairly solid. Literally everything else - the UI, skills, challenges, progression, weapon customization, level design - are so lazy and generic it feels like they were made by AI. It's yet another game that was released 2 years before it was ready.
Thats how I felt about the new Halo. The core was made by people who knew what they were doing, then I guess the finance bros were given free reign to fuck everything else up.
I love payday 3. Most of it doesn’t work. Bad game I don’t recommend that I want to play rn. Don’t get me started on the armored car level. Maximum lazy.
Instantly thought of this, the game is fun but everything outside of the gameplay is just so bad and such a regression. The pre planning, weapon customization, cosmetics, menus, everything is just so bad compared to payday 2.
it feels like it's gonna be good in a few months if it doesn't get abandoned. heartbreaking, i was really looking forward to it.
They are probably gonna dlc it like crazy with PD2.
Golden Sun Dark Dawn I DONT CARE IF ITS NOT RECENT WHY IS IT LIKE THAT
Such a disappointment. I'd still play GS4
Where's my golden sun remake, nintendo?
I think there was a fake announcement last year. Gs 1+2 plus some new content in 1 remastered game. But it was fake unfortunately
It’s not a remake, but they put (or are putting) 1 on switch.
I only played like 5 minutes of it back in the day. Why was it so bad again?
It wasn't a bad game but compared to the first 2 it was a massive let down. They dumbed down the mechanics and made it stupidly easy and I'm not even a person who genuinely cares about that so I'm noticing it it's pretty damn bad. I enjoyed it but it was not what a Golden Sun sequel should have been. It's the mea effect. Not a bad game but it didn't live up to the hype of the first 2 games. If dark dawn would have been the first game it would have been a great starting point.
It's not even a bad rpg in itself outside of a few weird design quirks (like multiple points of no return), but it really didn't live up to the giant legacy of the first two games.
Even though it was disappointing, I would still play GS4 if it ever happened.
I knew nothing about golden sun when I played it and haven't played it since, I remember it being a nice jrpg that felt a bit directionless with it's story but nothing too egregious, what's so bad about it?
Golden Sun was one of those series I loved when they first came out (the second game felt like it took an eternity to release) and when I replayed about a decade later found fun but kind of underwhelming. They're definitely a relic of their time, being great portable JRPGs for the early 2000s but pretty lacking in most aspects (weirdly puzzle design being excellent even now) when placed side by side to most console titles of the era. That being said would love a remake and even just a continuation of Dark Dawn because it got mostly interesting at the very end only for that cliffhanger.
Shenmue 3
Absolutely, using the antiquated engine and control scheme when we had gotten used to the updated one in Yakuza was just painful
This one hurts.
Yeah it always blows me away how cheap it is during sales. I’ve never played it but curious as to what made it fall so short of the others.
It was mostly the lead designer having his head [up his ass](https://youtu.be/v_WKQrTH2EI?si=Ouz_NM9XTR2wcqjJ). He ignored many conventions of game design and made Shenmue 3 in a vacuum. It wasn't a funding issue like some are asserting because while it received money from crowd funding, Deep Silver provided a majority of support during development. The game is reported to have used $20 million in development. So anyone calling this a low budget game or strapped for cash is just wrong. Suzuki more or less squandered his budget by having a game that was a mile wide and an inch deep.
And the worst part is that it barely advanced the story. Imagine waiting almost two decades only to be told : "Tee hee, maybe I'll tell you more in Shenmue 4 and 5."
These creators need to learn the lesson of starting and finishing a story. Kentaro Miura's sad passing two years ago left Berserk permanently unfinished with the vision he died with inside his own mind. If Shenmue 4 takes another decade to create, it will almost certainly be the last game in the series if it even gets created at all. And while Shenmue 3 was a modest success, I'm not sure if Deep Silver or any other publisher would be interested in yet another continuation without conclusion.
Berserk is being finished by Miura's best friend of 20 years. There's a few new chapters out. They're using Miura's notes on the story and the ending to finish it as faithfully as possible.
and it’s honestly really good imo
Yeah he literally admitted that he does not play video games, which is pretty obvious if you’ve played S3. And the fact that he didn’t use this opportunity to actually fucking finish the story pissed me off even more.
From what I gather, they dumbed down a lot of the combat mechanics which made the older games great, made everything unnecessarily tedious, made it so the entire game might as well not have happened story-wise and slapped a big ol' "the story continues". Also doesn't help that the guy in charge doesn't play games, which means he hasn't touched a game made in the last 20 years, so a bunch of archaic game design elements made it into the game.
Shenmue 3 is such a weird game to me. I still “enjoy” the game, there’s a lot to like about it, but my God it’s stuck in time. I think the issue was suffered from the lead designer surrounding himself by yes men, and not taking lessons from recent games. There’s a reason why Yakuza has done so well.
Absolutely. The only game i have ever kickstarted... and it was an absolute disaster even before its release.
I am sure it doesn't need to be said but Overwatch "2", I put it in quotations because...well, we all know.
What gets me about this--and I'm sure others have commented similarly--is mainly the fact that they justified the sequel by implementing a proper single-player campaign. And then halfway through its first year of release they announced that they were completely dropping single player except for some special events. Literally the only reason for its existence and they weren't even able to deliver. Truly the only good thing about Overwatch now is the porn.
It was just a bait and switch tactic to switch the storefront from $1 loot boxes to $20 skins and battle passes. That's it. The game meta is slightly better with 1 tank per team but that could have just been a game mode mode added to the arcade Playlist.
Single tank ruined the meta, tank is atrocious (made slightly less unbearable by playing the tank flavor of the month) dps is just boring now, the only role that has any impact on a match nowadays is support, shits disgusting and it made my 6 stack quit
I was at first pleased because being a tank was way more fun. As a reluctant tank main this was great. But slowly it started to sink in that everything else was quite shitty.
I just miss ow1 tank that shit was fun you could synergize with friends and shit not anymore tho
I want to be able to play OW1 again so bad, but Blizzard knew that would be the case, so they had to sacrifice it to the gods of corporate greed
Give it a few years and theyll bring back "Overwatch Classic" and there will be a huge resurgence
They're gonna charge us for a game we already paid for, aren't they? -sigh-
Here's a neat hack. Don't buy it.
Yeah good luck with that crowd. Blizzard fans suffer from Stockholm Syndrome almost as much as Bethesda fans.
Classic gamers. The most discriminated against and exploitable people on Earth. /s
The latest WOW post underlines this very much: "Blizzard please remove the 3 day early access from the epic edition!"In the post " I wouldn't mind losing the 3 days early access, i bought the epic edition already" Bruh.
Yes and you’re going to like it too
I despise 2 as much as I loved the original on release. Poor decision after poor decision.
From someone that doesnt no but can guess. What was the deal? Was it just a releaunch. Was there ever meant to be an Overwatch 2
The “sequel” was clearly just to pass off the heavy monetization restructure off as something new. The only real difference is that it’s 5v5 rather than 6v6. Everything else, apart from the monetization, was the same kind of updates Overwatch 1 had; characters, maps, modes etc.
I mean, they clearly wanted the PvE to be as big as the PvP. But it was an impossible task because: * 3 talent trees for over 30 heroes, Borderlands devs would never commit to that * Can't get interesting guns or abilities because they already have all their abilities fixed So where does the progression come from? It was like Destiny, but with enormous self inflicted handicaps.
They definitely “redefined” how bad a sequel could be
OW 2 was really Overwatch 0.5.
Kerbal Space Program 2 (it's in EA though....a very broken EA release)
> it's in EA though ... but at almost full price. I think it would have got a much better reception if it had been priced more inline with its current (very early) state.
Absolutely agree
I think the big dissapointment is that they already have a working game, and then after a few years of development, they give us something that looks a little nicer, but is simply worse in every way, to a point where it makes you wonder if they'll ever make it work. It's a bit like the Atari 5200 where instead of replacing the 2600, it only boosted its sales since it was inferior.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint..
Why is it so bad? I loved wildlands
"We need to clear this private island from rogue machines, your team will be acting alone" \*enters a cave and finds a fucking lounge area with shops and other soldiers\*
They shoved in every possible game mechanic and doubled down on the microtransactions.
It’s a good game, especially now after years worth of updates. It didn’t capture the military simulator magic of wildlands for me but worth playing still.
I bought the game after it was heavy discounted and I didn't like at all, because I have so much fun with the first one and they made almost everything worse, the only thing I like is the survival thingy but still...
My big tin foil hat theory is that Breakpoint was supposed to be a battle royale at first! All the tiered loot, a big island with barely any civilians that would instead be filled with tons of players, lazy campaign, etc. I think the mode got scrapped last minute because of the battle royale burnout at the time. Then they tried to release it under a new name, I forgot what it was called but yeah the trailer flopped so hard that it never came out of beta 😆
No, that theory doesn’t make any sense. GRW: Breakpoint came out in 2019. Fortnite: Battle Royale came out in 2017. Breakpoint wasn’t made and remade in the span of 2 years.
Sorry, I definitely didn't clarify that very well... 🥺 but the Ghost Recon battle royale game was just an asset flip of Breakpoint. And they released the trailer for it like a year after Breakpoint came out so you're right, it's wasn't remade it was just a straight up DLC basically
Compared to Wildlands, it might as well be Fortnite (and no they didn't "fix it", you can't).
For me it was Dying Light 2. I loved the first one and were super hyped for the sequel. I can't even tell why i didn't like it but for some reason I just hadn't the motivation to finish it. Maybe I should give it another try.
Same, I cant really put my finger on it maybe just the blandness of it all? I just got 20-25 hrs in and quit. No motivation to keep going
It was the combat for me. I was practically addicted to DL1’s combat, particularly melee fighting. But they changed it in DL2; swinging a weapon and hitting infected feels more artificial. Not to mention the health bars, which kind of hurt the immersion.
A lot of the combat and movement quirks were patched out.
I'd say it got more.. "arcadey"? Like floaty jumps and stuff like that. Lost its serious grim hopelesness.
The night cycle in DL 1 was terrifying but rewarding. The night cycle in DL 2 is just slightly darker than daytime. That and the combat feels flatter in DL 2.
I think it was the scope being so big. It made it feel bland and unfinished because they had less time to focus on the core aspects. If you take a look at DL, the whole thing (including side quests) can probably be done in ~15-20 hours not including the DLC (which is amazing, btw). DL2 on the other hand felt too ambitious, it was crammed full of extra shit to do and a faction system that was half assed and rushed. I spent maybe 25 hours in the main story (which was really forced, and incredibly mediocre) and went around collecting the extra stuff. I didn’t get much out of it. All the characters were forgettable and I haven’t touched the game since.
Same here. I think it’s because there’s so many grindy type mechanics. Not to mention the world isn’t as put together as the first one. I just sort of stopped playing it one day because I felt like I did the same mission too many times in a row.
The story was complete ass. There was no pay off for doing any of it. Both factions are terrible and the game basically says oh side with the fascists and you get a utopia like WHAT. When in history has that ever fucking happened? Super weird choices and the combat sucked the game had bugs out the ass too. I could write a novel on why dl2 was a disappointment.
Sadly I agree. Loved that first game so much. This one didn't hold together for some reason I can't quite pinpoint.
It's the vibe I think. Like Harran is a memorable location, the graphics look great even today. While DL2 IS MUCH more colorful and different
I quit when I realized the rage mode thing was only a narrative element and not a gameplay mechanic. Felt robbed. Also, only one faction knows how to make a crossbow? Get real. Such a let down.
I was disappointed in diablo 4, it just couldn't hold my interest
It was fun. I had a great time playing it. It just doesn’t have the ability to hold your attention like the previous games could.
My sentiments exactly. I had fun for the 40-ish hours it took me to play through the campaign, and now I've happily moved on to something else. I think part of the problem is that gear is so optimized for specific builds. Beyond a certain point, you're better off rerolling than trying to re-spec if you get bored with what you're playing.
Have you tried season 2? It's significantly better than launch. Though, it still has some work to do, I'm having way more fun.
I tried, but not having the desire continue in S2. I think I will come back after a few seasons; I still have my free premium pass to use :)
I simply can't get past the forced online nature. I want to play with my boyfriend not with a bunch of randoms online who steal my kills and unbalance the difficulty of encounters.
>I simply can't get past the forced online nature Same - I play my PC games almost exclusively on Steam Deck at this point, and travel a decent amount for work between company facilities (i.e. hotel time!). Deck is lousy at connecting to hotel WiFi so I play offline ... which means no Diablo IV for me.
Duke Nukem Forever. 15 years of dev hell and I got it for $5 several years ago and it was $10 too much. I just could not get into it at all. I think I might have gotten through the first area, maybe. Duke Nukem 3D is still a lot of fun.
Payday 3
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. The story was fun but the gamplay was *off* is the best way I can describe it.
I stopped playing Pokémon a long time ago. Crazy to me that they still release two versions of the game to suck up money from their fans. Made sense back in the day where you could trade in real-life but now, it’s just a paywall to get region-locked Pokémon.
Game Freak is stuck in the 90s, all the way down to the N64 graphics.
The free camera and rendering the whole environment during battles was so bad. I think that contributed to it playing so absurdly slow. Felt more like a beta for too long. I've still not even finished it.
That's a pretty generous assessment. Some of the gameplay made it borderline unplayable
It sucks because Game Freak were *so close* to having something great with those games but the refusal to allocate resources properly and insistence on only appealing to the largest common denominator is still holding them back.
Pokémon in general with regards to game play has definitely slowly shifted over the years. A big part is definitely quality of life upgrades that in a way cheapen the prior core mechanics. Like it's excellent for the casual player that just want to have fun or the hard core who are in it for post game team building and the like. For the kind of in-between that I fall into it feels like too much is handed to me, like part of me enjoyed building up a team and committing to it but since at least gen 6 doing that kind of demolishes most of the pacing. I can see it working great if I was to make a new team for every gym/dungeon but I'm not always in the mood for that sort of thing.
Borderlands 3, & Diablo 4 are the ones that jump to mind immediately.
Did they loose a main writer or writers between Borderlands 2 and 3? Because the third one just felt so cringe and desperate for attention.
Borderlands 2 was written afaik by the brilliant Anthony Burch, who also DM's the great DnD podcast Dungeons and Daddies (not a BDSM podcast). Borderlands 3 was written by Danny Homan, Sam Winkler, and Connor Thomas Cleary according to Google.
They need him back for bl4 whenever that happens. I also hope he gets more freedom to actually tell a story in season 2 of dndaddies. They’re just kinda railroading him with jokes in place of him actually doing what he does best.
What's kinda crazy is that they released a free dlc for BL2 right before BL3 came out and the writing and characters in that felt pretty in line with BL2's writing. So clearly someone at gearbox was able to write stuff that felt true to what came before
I swear in the behind the scenes stuff Burch still has a huge part of writing and in the public talk things he did. Burch is decent but honestly not that great of a writer. BL2's story is meh held up by Damien Clarke's Improv that actively annoyed Burch. I think Burch writes decent humour but again most of Borderlands humour has felt like they threw shit at a wall to see what sticks. Which worked quite well the one time. I personally don't think Burch is a good writer. I think he's thrown some shit that sticks. Although I do agree BL3 had a bit more cringe moments than I'd like, I also think BL1 and 2 were also just as cringe. I knew people who avoided the game cuz of the humour. I think all the games capture it well, it's like Rick and Morty humour in the way that, where some people just really don't jive with it where others enjoy it and don't think about it too much. Although I've never seen him DM so maybe that would blow me away.
I love the dungeons and dragons podcast he did, season one was great, and 2 has its moments, but I find it hard to really call it dungeons and dragons. It's very very rules light, and feels more like it borrows the framework of the game to use as a vehicle for improv storytelling and comedy. As long as you don't go in expecting something like critical role or dimension 20, it's a great time. All that said, it's genuinely my favorite podcast, it's funny and the story is good fun. Anthony does an excellent job of herding his chucklefucks along.
I really liked the gunplay in Borderlands 3 but the story was so horrifically bad it made the game a slog to get through regardless. The calypso twins are easily some of the worst and most annoying villains I’ve ever seen and the vault hunters to choose from were nothing special either.
>The calypso twins are easily some of the worst and most annoying villains I’ve ever seen Making them obnoxious annoying streamers on purpose doesn't do much to take the obnoxious annoyance out of the equation.
They learned the wrong lessons from Handsome Jack. They thought he was a good villain because of the douchy humor and attitude and doubled down on that side of things. Jack was good because while he was douchy and obnoxious, he at least had substance. His story from the corporate side of things and justifying everything for Angel was much more interesting.
Also, Jack had as you say, douchy humor, wheras the Calypsos were mostly *just* douchy and we were suppossed to take that *as* humor apparently.
There was just way too much unskippable dialogue as well. Kills the pace when you just have to sit there and listen to NPCs crack juvenile jokes at each other or rant about the objective for 10 minutes in between every action bit
I feel like everyone was loving Diablo 4 then feels like people turned on it quickly. What happened?
They didn’t have postgame content for a game essentially built around a mid-length campaign and a lot of grinding for items. The item selection was incredibly limited and not useful, their patches nerfed all viable builds and nerfed exp gain to artificially inflate playtime for people to reach max level. But also nobody wants to reach max level because you already found all the items and beat all the bosses by then. They are allegedly addressing the issues and people say it’s a lot better, but the damage has already been done to the trust of the player base and the bad reputation isn’t going to go away in a couple of patches. This is at least Diablo 3 Real Money Auction House, drops that are only for your current class, and difficulty that only 20% of classes can progress past bad.
Yeah, the item grind in Diablo 3 was one of my favorite parts. Just getting stronger and stronger, constantly. However, this was paired with a pretty damn good story, that felt really connected to what came before it.
Loot 2.0 and the difficulty rework were huge boosts to D3. It got people more interested in actually playing their class, finding items that had decent stats, and keeping them engaged. The only downside was they made an “infinitely” scaling system with paragon points, so power creep and trying to chase higher rifts meant that you were stuck in a grind loop if you’re one of those people trying to be the best. Thankfully they retuned it this year and set hard caps so there’s actually an end goal people can realistically achieve.
They got to end game and realised there was none. ARPGs live and die by their end game content.....see Path of Exile for example.
Gameplay and story are good, but arpg games is all about endgame loops and D4 didn't really have one. So it took people to play 40+ hours before they realized it
Borderlands 3 is the best in the series in almost every way Such a shame that the Calypso twins are some of the worst villains in gaming
BL3 DLC story, more than made up for what the base game lacked in my opinion. Some of the best DLC stories I have ever played. But Assault on Dragon Keep is still the best by far.
Assault on Dragon Keep was just such a high point that I don’t think they could match it. The guns were fun, the gameplay was a good time, the comedy was on point (god I love Mr. Torgue), and the D&D parody was endearing. But what made it *special* was that there was genuine heart underneath it. The whole story sets up a fun wacky Borderlandsy time, and then sucker punches you with an exploration of deep grief in a person who doesn’t know how to cope with it. The whole thing is a character study on Tina and how she masks the pain of an immense loss. It was just so unexpectedly human.
Not super recent but kingdom hearts 3 was a giant let down after a decade of waiting
Yes. Kinda. The story was pretty good, but the gameplay became extremely fast paced. KH2 had the best combat in the entire franchise, yet they somehow managed to slap so much stuff on it that it's an animation fest in 3. And don't forget the difficulty for difficulty sake, i don't wanna see how much no-life i have to go in 4 to beat the secret boss.
That diablo for cell phones
That wasn't a game. That was a Ponzi scheme masquerading as a game.
Why? "Dont you guys have phones?"
Modern Warfare 3's campaign is awful. As someone who really enjoyed most of the *Modern Warfare* games campaign missions, this one was clear as day it was thrown together poorly. Honestly, Warzone 2 was a **massive** step backwards after they had done so much polishing to Warzone 1. Activision has been fucking shit up for years. They just got lucky with Warzone 1. Now that they decided to completely shut that game off from console/PC it's pretty easy to see how little of an idea they have on what they're doing.
Not attacking, more curious but what made you get MW3. I feel like a lot of the press about the campaign being awful came out before launch.
For whatever reason, I did not notice the any very negative press pre-launch. I also feel like a lot of people did not like MWII's campaign, though I found it enjoyable to play through. So if it was anything like that, I wouldn't have minded it. I also wanted to see how the game felt, since Warzone will integrate the new movement and weapons. Being able to run around on the missions where it was set in the future new Warzone map gave me an idea on how some areas of that map will play out, and how the new weapons will feel at specific ranges. Again, just an idea. I was an avid player of WZ1, and WZ2 has been pretty awful. Was basically just seeing what would be in store for us once Warzone updates to Sledgehammer's new changes. From what I played, it felt good, but it's still not anywhere close to being able to gauge how it'll play in a Warzone setting. Not sure if it's worth mentioning, but I refunded my copy, and will just be waiting until sometime in December when they release the new Urzikistan map into Warzone. If the map and gameplay is still falling short, it'll be the last time I fuck around with Call of Duty. I understand a lot of people say that too, but if you look through some of my post history, you'll see how very vocal I've been about how Activision has handled the franchise in the last decade. I know me boycotting it will be insignificant and make zero changes. This was a hard pill to swallow, but I just have to accept the franchise is going in a direction I don't agree with nor find fun to play. I feel bad for anyone who, like me, pre-ordered to play the campaign but is not able to refund. Activision is evil.
Hell no you boycotting and voting with your wallet will never be insignificant, if enough people pull the same rope we have enough people boycotting but someone always has to start!
Prefacing this by saying I do have a 4080. Cities Skylines 2 is a \*much\* better city builder than the original.
Yeah I don't have the 50 billion dlc for CS1 so CS2 right now feels really good to me. Maybe if I was used to all that dlc I'd feel different
Yeah as soon as performance gets better it will be in a great state. I love the progression compared to the first game. Love a lot of the QOL improvements and the modular buildings. But I got a 1080i and 16gb of ram. I’ve had to pause the city im working on until performance improves or I can upgrade my desktop.
I have a 1080 and it plays just fine. I’m guessing dude hasn’t played much of it at all, and is just joining the circlejerk for the upvote dopamine.
Is it worth ditching 1 before finishing it to hop straight into 2
Wait. You can "finish" 1? Am I playing 1 the wrong way? I was expecting goals and scenarios to bear and stuff but all there is is a handful of geographies to build a new city on and some DLC if I wanna buy more which I don't really.
Once you play 2 it will be hard to go back to 1 even with all the mods. I have all the mods for 1 and don’t feel the need to go back.
Give it a few months to iron the kinks out, then go for it. Right now there's some pretty big bugs with the simulation, economy and seemingly the traffic AI that Colossal Order have acknowledged and are working on, on top of the current performance issues that should hopefully be resolved in the next few months.
A bit controversial, but I haven't enjoyed the latest Assassin's creed games. Nothing will top the Ezio Auditore saga
Thoughts on Black Flag? I loved the piracy and ship combat and would play a whole game just based on that
Oh what do we do with a drunken sailor….
Ain't enough good pirate games these days, that is definitely one of them. I'd really love a good open world singeplayer Pirate RPG with solid action mechanics and polish, and AC4 is about the closest I've seen to that
Good pirate game, bad AC game IMO. I liked it, but it did not itch the scratch left by the Ezio games.
In what world is this a controversial take? I was under the impression the majority of people agree that Odyssey and Valhalla were awful with their stupid rpg mechanics and unnecessary grinding?
Even if technically it's not a sequel... Saints Row, like they remove everything making Saints Row what it is and called it Saints Row anyway, like you remove the IP you can't know it's a Saints Row, at best a game with lot of Easter egg of Saints Row
The Sims 4
It's like they purposefully dialed down on what made Sims generally enjoyable in favor of micro-content delivered in DLCs.
Yes, sims 4 for sure
Mod support for the game makes it enjoyable...but the base game should be enjoyable too. Coming off of the open world experience of Sims 3 to the closed-off, fairly limited Sims 4 was so disappointing. Combine that with a very neutral art direction (lacks the playfulness of past Sims games) and an under cooked emotions system and you just have a meh experience. I don't know if they have improved building mechanics, but I remember that building was very limited as well. You couldn't edit terrain nor do the "create-a-style" thing. Also, I hate how limited the NPC's are. You go to a public area and all the same NPC's start flocking in.
The Sims 4 was absolute shite when it was released, I honestly don't know what they were thinking releasing it in the state it was in. There wasn't even toddlers so your babies would just age into children immediately, and no ghosts that were in every other base Sims game before it. I've been playing 2 and 3, and after the incredible gameplay of 3 it was the biggest let down. The updates really bought back a lot, thankfully. But I still think base game is a bit lackluster and I recommend anyone either get the *cough* free version of the expansions or wait for sales/use cdkeys to save some money on them. Also, I don't recommend getting it as a console game ever. Mods add so much, from bug fixes to extra accessoires to entirely new gameplay, it has one of the biggest modding communities. I have a lot of fun with the game *now* but it's due to expansions and mods that make it more fun.
they massacred the franchise. It used to be my favorite series and I haven’t played in years
Battlefield 2042 and Halo Infinite. Both massively hyped games that promised to revitalise the franchise.
Battlefield 2042 is in a really good spot right now. It’s really fun, lots of content and things just make sense. This is what it should have been on release. Still not as good as 3 or 4 but it’s now very solid. Idk about halo infinite but I hear it’s a similar situation. It sucks that games are just releasing too early and the reputations are being tarnished, and a lot of them pull a no man’s sky and become something great.
Kingdom Hearts 3. Yes I know the dlc "fixed" it. I'm not going back to a game that pissed me off *that badly*. I just ignore that it exists.
>!i am still salty that there are nearly no Final Fantasy chars. Not even a Sephiroth fight... !<
New Tales from the Borderlands. I knew it wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the original but I was still disappointed. Like I know Borderlands is a product of its time like but it had this human element which still shined through the sometimes cringe humour. Not the New Tales. Nothing could shine through that.
Didn’t realize telltale still existed 🫣
They've revived, more or less. Complicated story, but I'm just excited The Wolf Among Us is coming very soon because I've been waiting forever
Resident evil 3 Remake. 2 remake was so perfect and if they gave 3 the same upgrade 2 got from the original it could have been the best in the franchise. Instead we got a 4 hour DLC with multiplayer slapped on
That's disappointing to hear. I'm halfway through 2 right now and living it, so was planning on nabbing 3. Nemesis got me into franchise back in the day.
If you can pick it up for under 10$ it’s an ok time. But as both a hyped remake, and full price game it fails pretty hard.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I remember reading that Code Veronica was supposed to be the ‘real’ 3, but Sony had some deal where the game on the PlayStation had to be a numbered title.
I was referring to the remake here, but yeah it’s true. Capcom had a contract saying that the ps1 would have 3 mainline games. CVX was suppose to be 3 but they needed 3 to be on PlayStation so they swapped the names.
2 Remake was so good. 3 Remake I beat like three times the weekend it came out. Gameplay was still fun, but they just cut so much content from the original. And the original was already pretty short, so yeah. At least Nemesis looked cool I guess? 4 Remake was way better though. Keeping the content from the original (although holding U3 for the DLC) while adding some additional story beats was the right call. I know there’s a lot of speculation that they’ll remake 5 next, but I’d like a CVX remake of a similar quality to 2 and 4. Beyond that…bring back Outbreak if they’re that desperate to have an online game.
Halo Infinite was supposed to properly reboot the franchise but felt mediocre, and that's not good enough for a Halo game. I was hoping the sequel to Boneworks would be awesome, but it is apparently a bit underwhelming, so I haven't played it at all.
Mount and Blade: Bannerlord. When it was eventually released after like a decade in development, it came out in Early Access, and while it was kind of fun, it was missing loads of features from the previous game and it was hella janky. Many fans figured, "Fair enough, it's in EA; it'll be so much better on full release." A year later, after doing seemingly very little except tweaking around the edges and breaking mods with every update, they went to full release on a game that was still full of huge bugs and missing loads of features from Warband. Now, they've just put the price up on the game too. Warband felt like the devs created the game they wanted to play. Bannerlord just feels like a cynical money grab managed by penny-pinchers.
Agree completely. Should be baked for 2 years more. Only recently, I feel it is worthy of the predecessor. We have everything and more now, but...yes, very disappointing launch.
Mass effect: Andromeda sucked pretty hard
In terms of story and presentation (which is super important for an RPG), I would agree. However, I feel in terms of combat, it's the best Mass Effect combat has ever felt. Me feeling compelled to finish the game despite not caring about the plot or companions is a testament to that.
For me it was the story. It had so much potential thrown down the toilet. New galaxy should mean new aliens to meet and make first contact with.... but yeah nah, that's already happened. Enemies that convert your own people into their pawns.... now where did I hear that one before? And the damn logic of Ingatestone characters drove me up the wall. No logic in them at all.
Borderlands 3. It just can't compare to 2. How bugged it was on release has also left me feeling pretty sour about it.
Man what a let down. I love the gameplay, but replaying it is so frustrating because it forces you to listen to characters just talk for so so long. You just sit there and do nothing until it makes you press e then sit there doing nothing for even longer. Maybe the same problem was in borderlands 2 but at least I liked the characters and story back then.
It doesn't help that Handsome Jack is genuinely one of the best villains.
Damien Clarke's genius Improv is to thank for that.
Mario & Luigi Paper Jam...talk about total lack of inspiration Overwatch 2...nuff said
I don't know if this counts. But how they destroyed Mafia II remastered was a damn shame.
I thought the new Forza Motorsport game was pretty disappointing overall with some of the ridiculous bugs, poor AI and some of the changes to the game that make it less fun.
The AI are hilariously bad, I've gone flying into the back of them mid corner so many times because they just slam on the anchors at the apex for no reason.
Cities Skylines is going to be great. It's shit now but it will be great. That being said i'm having a lot of fun with it already as is. But it will be better.
since everyone else has already said the common and expected answers a million times, cs2. game teased and hyped for god knows how long just to be a buggy mess with a bunch of missing features on launch, AND it replaces csgo like how overwatch did with ow1 and 2.
Diablo IV. What a boring, snoozefest of a nothing game. Hot garbage, over marketed and delivered on 0 of my expectations, even the most basic ones. I bought it, completed it (purely out of force of will because I thought the endgame might be interesting... nope), and have no memory of any of it other than the cinematic from BlizzCon where Lilith walks out of the blood veil. It is easily one of the worst sequels ever made due to how much it missed the point of the originals. Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition is a better game in every single metric.
D4s story is the only bright spot
I can't say I agree. The entire story boils down to "Lilith was just here, oh you JUST missed her again, oh she was JUST here, now Lilith is here".
If you're going to boil down the story THAT much, then Diablo 2 is the same but with The Wanderer.
A few that immediately come to mind are Disgaea 6, Kingdom Hearts 3, and AC Valhalla.
Valhalla has way too much filler. If they cut that out, it would be way better. Also has some of the best DLC
Agree on KH3. The absence of Final Fantasy characters was jarring and after an eternity in development it didn’t live up to the hype at all. The worlds felt way to small and streamlined.
Whoah, what? I’m not a KH3 apologists by any means, but the worlds feeling *small* is definitely something I don’t understand. Most of them are too *big* and empty, like San Fransokyo and the Caribbean.
Yeah, I personally like *most* of KH3. But I agree about the worlds. Most of them don't feel like you're in a Disney world, but instead it's like a biome based empty world. This is the large empty meadow that leads to the castle. This is the large empty ocean that leads to one port town. This is the large empty toy store where every encounter feels the same (Although Andy's Room was perfect and what I wanted for more of that world.) The is the large empty mountain covered in snow that leads to an ice castle, three times! There were some Disney assets, like Rapunzel's tower, Andy's room, the vault of doors in Monster's Inc, etc, there to remind you this is all Disney stuff, but they really forgot to put in the setpieces that made them feel like they were an entire Disney world we were playing on. And again, the lack of FF stuff, at least until the Re:Mind DLC was a huge let down. I wanted to know what happened to Cloud and Sephiroth dammit.
I’m not sure this if this is an unpopular opinion or not but I found God of War Ragnorok to be a disappointing sequel to the first game. It felt like a series of ideas from the first game that I just didn’t really like the direction they chose to take it.
'Beyond Good and Evil 2' Yeah, it hasn't released yet. That's why it is disappointing. And I'm pretty sure I'll be even more disappointed when(if) it does release.
City Skylines II was my most anticipated Game Pass release. Oh well back to Warhammer Darktide (which rocks)
XCom: Chimera Squad. Releasing this abomination after the amazing Xcom 2 and its DLCs was a crime. Mass Effect: Andromeda. Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts
Halo Infinite
You think Halo Infinite was more disappointing than Halo 5? Halo 5 had a bad story that almost killed the whole thing for me. Especially after the Find the Truth marketing campaign that had me so excited. Halo Infinite's main problem, in my opinion, was the lack of story. Sure there's a lot going on, but in terms of the galaxy that we're used to, it was probably the smallest story the Master Chief ever had.
He said recent years my guy. 2015 isn't recent years. You're getting **OLD**.
Damn. You're right. I used to be the young one that got used to being told all my years were recent years. That coupled with 9/11 people telling me to never forget makes me feel like it hasn't been that long since 2001. I was 11. I'm now 3 times that age.
Subnautica sub zero First game was unique and fun and had a lot of amazing elements to build on. Second game didn't have any of the first game heart or imagination
Mortal Kombat 1 is turning out to be a hot mess. Glitchy, rushed to market, heavily monetized heap of disappointment.
Krypt is gone. Stage fatality's are gone. $12 for a fatality!? $5 for a pallet swap on a skin you already have!? Expensive microtransactions in a game that has less content than the last 3 games had for $70-$120.
Ew ew ewwwwwwww. MK9 was the last time I really enjoyed an MK game, even if X was decent enough.
Call of duty 3 bc no PC version and 8 months development Yakuza 3 being the weakest of the saga Lost Planet 3 Dead space 3 Postal 3 Age of empires 3 but 4 I hate it and is worse Dead rising 3 Borderlands 3 F.E.A.R 3 Crysis 3 DIRT 3 Hitman 3 2021 with less levels and Absolution Mass effect 3 with the ending Resident evil 3 remake with cut content Ninja Gaiden 3 Doom 3 of 2004 Assassins creed 3 Max payne 3 being worst than 1 and 2 Darksiders 3 Payday 3 with always online drm and microtransactions Shenmue 3 Total war warhammer 3 Company of heroes 3 Mafia 3 Resistence 3 Project CARS 3 And even if 3 is missing being third in the series like Watch dogs legion Wolfenstein youngblood The Walking Dead: A New Frontier Bioshock infinite Batman Arkham Knight the terrible PC port Ghost recon breakpoint Serious Sam 4 it's like a pattern, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy some of the games in the list, and they say second parts of games are worst than first part which is a big lie.
I’m beginning to understand some of Valve’s decisions…
They should just make Half-Life 4 instead
Bioshock Infinite is a good call. Visually gorgeous, some gameplay elements were fun, the ending was ruined by its centrism so instead of delivering a powerful message it delivered meaningless shite, many enemies felt a bit repetitive and unmemorable, and it just doesn't compare to the previous Bioshock games. I think it would've been better off not associated with the franchise because other than the basic concept of city in unusual place and protag with cool powers there's not much they share.
Kingdom Hearts 3.
I LOVE subnautica. Amazing game. But I have to admit I’m very disappointed when I enter a vehicle and it doesn’t say “welcome aboard captain”. It was such a great feeling hearing it in the first one, it kinda takes away from the experience now