Elysian Shadows

<rant>
On Sunday, I decided to ride up to Gamestop and buy myself a new 360 game. It's been a while, so why not.. After a few minutes of perusing I stumbled upon X-Blades, and I was like, "holy shit, it's out!?" Months ago I watched a few trailers for the game, and it looked pretty damn cool! It appeared to be a high-flying hack n' slash with elements of God of War, Tomb Raider, and Devil May Cry - not to mention the main character is a half-naked chick in ponytails.

Sounds like a solid foundation for a gaming win, right?

...not so much...

I really wanted to like this game. I played it for about 3 hours and it just got worse and worse... First of all, the main character chick is a stuck-up bitch - which is just odd. Think about it...main characters / heroes are never ignorant loudmouths because it becomes too difficult to connect and engage with the storyline. The ability to empathize with the main character and share their plight is what draws us in.

Storyline aside, the controls are sluggish, the camera is awkward, and the combat is VERY repetitive. In games like God of War, you are exploring a world and you encounter enemies and puzzles along the way. In X-Blades, levels usually consist of one huge-ass room and you continue to fight waves of enemies until the level is over. It's the equivalent of playing Asteroids...except not as fun.
</rant>

So, I ask you, when have you experienced an epic letdown in gaming? Surely there was a game that you were really looking forward to playing, and when it finally launched, it was a giant bucket of ass.

I'd love to hear your stories.

X-Blades looked like shameless marketing if nothing else, but that it might at least be fun to play. So this saddens me a bit.

This is basically what the battle system was for me in the new Prince of Persia. Now having an in-depth understanding of the workings of the game industry, I can't imagine it went through QA and external playtesters and any of them said "Yup, this is fun, keep it". There's just no way that happened. And I was excited about that game for months, I couldn't wait to start it.

I really can't think of another game that let me down like that. I usually focus on what I like about a game, but I feel as though I've definitely gotten pickier lately. I can usually tell when I'm going to like a game though, I've hardly ever been misled. Oblivion is a great example - everyone raved about it, and I knew I would be pretty apathetic, so I didn't play it for a long time. Sure enough, I got it for 360, and it was just alright, nothing spectacular. But it's probably more that I don't take many chances with games; if I'm not absolutely convinced I'll like it, I won't get it. Prince of Persia definitely deceived me though.

The Movies
Anyone remember this one? well I do!

I waited 2 years for this game to come out, mr molyneux promised us so much from this game, it really sounded great.

Make your own movies with 'sim like' characters! do cool stuff etc.

But all we got in the end was a bunch of premade scenes which you could slot your characters into, a static camera (with some fixed variations if you were lucky), a really annoying simlish language (but much more annoying), a terrible rendering bug (which would mess up the finished product badly), Glitches with the sets, HALF THE CONTENT CUT OUT AND DUMPED INTO AN EXPANSION PACK, oh and promises of custom content which were soon taken back when the greedy publishers didn't want anyone to put their content in the game, any talk of such things got your post locked in the forum! (although that did get relaxed when the sales began to tank)

I try not too get too excited about games which run late more than a year now, because they're bound to dash all your hopes

PS: IT WAS A GIGANTIC BUCKET OF ASS WITH CHERRIES ON TOP!

SPORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i waited months for this gmae to comeout played it enough to get into the repitive and boring space stage and quit. It didn't live up to any of my standards let alone the ones i had set for this game. I wanted to rip my hair out knowing i could of spent my 50 dollars on something actually good.

deryni21 wrote:SPORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was waiting for someone to mention that one

I agree, the first few stages were really fun, but the civ stage was half-assed and the space stage was REALLY repetitive

And I waited over a year for that game, I think I was in year 10(late) when I found out about it, it came out when I was in year 13(first week)

EDIT: and I didn't just spend £30 on the game, I had to buy a new graphics card so I ended up paying about £80 to play the thing!, then my pc broke, that was £80 i'll never see again...

programmerinprogress wrote:

deryni21 wrote:SPORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was waiting for someone to mention that one

I agree, the first few stages were really fun, but the civ stage was half-assed and the space stage was REALLY repetitive

And I waited over a year for that game, I think I was in year 10(late) when I found out about it, it came out when I was in year 13(first week)

EDIT: and I didn't just spend £30 on the game, I had to buy a new graphics card so I ended up paying about £80 to play the thing!, then my pc broke, that was £80 i'll never see again...

haha i thought you were older then that from your avatar? and yeah they said that every stage would affect the next but the only one that affected anything was cell stage. Will wright is a deuchbag of epic proportions

deryni21 wrote:SPORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy shit, how did i forget that? I think that was like the worldwide letdown of 2008. It was a 3 year wait for me, and by the second year I was convinced that it wasn't actually a game, and Will Wright was pulling off the biggest con ever (though what good it would have done him remains a mystery). By the time it came out, I was already determined to hate it for having teased me for so long. On top of that, they skipped a stage of development that I thought would have been really interesting, and each stage was so shallow you literally had nothing to do but get to the next stage. The creature creator was the only true great thing about it. And basically (as always) Yahtzee said it best when he said "if all you're after is some kind of 3D art program for 8 year olds, Spore is definitely for you".

On another note, I actually enjoyed "The Movies". But I didn't have any expectations for it, because I didn't know about it before it came out. I just had fun making ridiculous movies scene-by-scene and voicing them over with my roomate in college. So basically it was the 3D version of "Spiderman Cartoon Maker", except that nothing could ever be that awesome.

aamesxdavid wrote: "if all you're after is some kind of 3D art program for 8 year olds, Spore is definitely for you".

hahahaha thought the exact same thing when i hit tribal stage. Was like this is such bull-shit i'm not even sure if i want to keep playing it.

MarauderIIC wrote:

!! awesome.

I've never played Spore, so I can't comment either way...but I haven't heard of anyone really liking it.

It was just so much of a let down, I hate it when developers over-hype these games to so much of a degree...

one game that will NOT be a let down. there is no way.

Diablo 3

if anyone said anything negative about it. well i'll be like will write and pee on you.

avansc wrote:one game that will NOT be a let down. there is no way.

Diablo 3

if anyone said anything negative about it. well i'll be like will write and pee on you.

I cannot wait for the day that game comes out. It'll be nice to get something other than another new WoW expansion from Blizzard.

Love the comic strip... a very creative way of putting it :D

For cases like that, I think games can be like movies, like when they get too hyped up and over anticipated to be something monumental, only to discover expectations were way under-par. Either that, or the game just sucked... which IS actually the case for almost every movie these days, except for Gran Turino, which was awesome... anyone seen Gran Turino?

dandymcgee wrote:

avansc wrote:one game that will NOT be a let down. there is no way.

Diablo 3

if anyone said anything negative about it. well i'll be like will write and pee on you.

I cannot wait for the day that game comes out. It'll be nice to get something other than another new WoW expansion from Blizzard.

HEY! what about StarCraft II!!! thats going to be sick!!

and for the record, Spore is not a bad game, the only problem is,
the STUPID space stage gets boring after like an hour, and then you play it a week later and say, "sooo-why the hell am i doing this again?"