What was the most disappointing game you ever bought

[Sugar_Kane]

I'm at work day dreaming about which games I might play on my Pandora when I get home, and one popped in there that opened up a whole slew of memories about games that I was really excited about, but turned out to be dreadful once I'd actually played them.


The biggest for me were probably Olly and Lisa, Action Force 2, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, all on the spectrum.


I convinced my mum to buy me Olly and Lisa in WHSmiths for £1.99 (those were the days!), because the screenshots made it look utterly brilliant, however - when I actually started to play it I released pretty quickly that it was utter squid wee; I literally couldn't get out of the first room. Wasting a game buying opportunity like that was the children's equivalent of using your last bullet to open a can of beans during a zombie apocalypse.

Damn you, screen one!


We bought action force 2 (Yes friends, GI Joe was called Action Force over here, check youtube for the hilariously overdubbed intro sequence)on a trip to Howarth, visiting relatives. Yet again the screenshots made it look deliriously good, I literally could not wait to get out of that hell hole and play it in the safety of my bedroom. I must have spent two days examining every inch of the box in anticipation, unfortunately it was utter cack. You didn't actually control the characters, you just slowly swept a crosshair around the screen and shot at enemies that got in the way of them. Were they saying that the action force were incapable of combat? That they would walk blindly into death without so much as a weak karate chop to the nipples to defend themselves? Personally, any "force" that requires children to eliminate their enemies with sniper rifles while they sashay to their objectives should not be allowed their own cartoon series.

Even the loading screen promised spleen bursting excitement

Reality...


Indiana Jones was just a criminal travesty, everyone involved in the making of that game should be lined up and made to kiss each other until they're sick.

Marginally better than herpes


So that is my "question" to "you". What are the biggest personal let-downs in your gaming history?

 

[DavidBowman]

Final Fantasy VIII. I hated it. I wanted something alone the lines of FFVII or Xenogears and I got an androgynous wuss of a main character with a boring plot and unimaginative gameplay. Hmm. That sounds a bit harsh. Did I mention I didn't care for the game?


I'm sure that there were others, but that is the one that sticks out in my mind the most. I usually sold all the games that I didn't like, but more often than not I rented the game first. That helped me avoid a lot of bad games in the first place.

 

[WizardStan]

Final Fantasy VIII.

Seriously, there needs to be a support group or something.

 

[SNESFAN]

Final Fantasy VIII. I hated it. I wanted something alone the lines of FFVII or Xenogears and I got an androgynous wuss of a main character with a boring plot and unimaginative gameplay. Hmm. That sounds a bit harsh. Did I mention I didn't care for the game?

I have to actually say +1


I was about 15-16 when it came out, I played through the game completely because I spent so much money on it, and the dear hope that the game would have gotten better, but I hated literally every moment of that game... the gameplay was solid enough, but the story line was like a chic flic stuffed inside a video game, several moments made me want to actually vomit.


there's other games that I've played that made wish I hadn't played, but because of FF8 specifically I decided to start renting games first before I purchased them. I was tired of being burnt by flashy box art and hyped marketing.

 

[SOLGarion]

Quest 64.

First RPG in the states for the N64 so I had no other choice as I liked RPG's. Utter trash. I maxed out my fire power, beat the game in about an hour and never played it again. HUGE waste of $70 at the time! Damn expensive N64 Carts.


Evergrace was also a horrible game for me.

Same story almost. Was in Toy's R Us and had just gotten a PS2. Only RPG they had on the shelves was Evergrace. Two storylines, both bad. Got a 5.2 on GameSpot with the nicest way of looking at it, in their words, "Evergrace is just shy of average - there's nothing particularly bad here, but what little good it has is purely incidental and generally ignorable."


Edit: Did a search and it seems the average time to beat Quest 64 is around 10 hours. It probably took me 6 or 7 in real life, but so little for the 70 or 80 bucks it cost I remember it as an hour. Probably was only 2 gaming sessions.

 

[Michoko]

Haha, that reminded me a few of my player disappointments. I think the biggest one is related to an Atari XL game. During the summer holidays, when I was a kid, I had discovered the fantastic Ghosts & Goblins arcade machine, and had put all my pocket money into it. I was just fascinated by this game.


Then by reading a game magazine, I saw that a guy was selling a second hand version of Ghosts & Goblins for the Atari XL! I couldn't believe it! I phoned the guy who then sent the disks to my home. I had to wait anxiously for the end of the summer holidays, which is quite unusual for a kid. Finally we went back home, and I ran to my computer to try the game!


I was expecting this:

But the result was... that:

A very sluggish side scrolling game, with a chubby hero, ultra hard difficulty level, where you can't even jump and just shoot some kind of... horizontal line with the range of nail scissors. Even the Amstrad version was MUCH better! I heard later that the game author, Steven MacIlwee, was specialized in those kinds of lousy productions. At least he's responsible for one of my biggest disappointments in my gamer life


That's why I developped this fantasy of being able to play the original Ghosts & Goblins arcade game at will. I know this has been possible since a long time, but the Pandora has made this even more enjoyable, thanks to its great game controls and very nice MAME emulator.

 

[Sugar_Kane]

Is it wrong that I actually want to play that ghouls and ghosts?

 

[Michoko]

Is it wrong that I actually want to play that ghouls and ghosts?

Very wrong. Oh yes, believe me.


...Except if you like to suffer, of course.

 

[EvilDragon]

Haha, that reminded me a few of my player disappointments. I think the biggest one is related to an Atari XL game. During the summer holidays, when I was a kid, I had discovered the fantastic Ghosts & Goblins arcade machine, and had put all my pocket money into it. I was just fascinated by this game.


Then by reading a game magazine, I saw that a guy was selling a second hand version of Ghosts & Goblins for the Atari XL! I couldn't believe it! I phoned the guy who then sent the disks to my home. I had to wait anxiously for the end of the summer holidays, which is quite unusual for a kid. Finally we went back home, and I ran to my computer to try the game!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/sLwtLUQJXXc?feature=oembed

You should've waited for the AtariXL remake which started a year ago.


The WIP looks nice already, awesome music. Don't know the current state of that though.

 

[Michoko]

Wow, it's about time! Looks nice though.

 

[Viking]

I remember when I was 13 and went to an old, sceptical shop in the city. It had a lot of games and was run by a fat teen that was to busy reading magazines.


I found a game called "Tunguska - legend of faith" and he said it's great, I don't think he knew what game I held when asking..


So I bought it, got home, popped it in my PSX, played for 10 min. and never played it again..

 

[macsimus]

i don't know if it was the most disappointing, but i have a clear memory of double dragons on my nes, and how i was so disgusted with the game


perhaps because those were the days i used to look my big bro play final Fight at the arcade machine.. dunno.


Kisses


Mac

 

[Asiyura]

Like most of the people here Final Fantasy 8, hopefully, I never bought it

The most disappointing game I ever owned was Gyromite…


Damn, R.O.B. was awesome, I mean you were able to control a damn robot without any wires!


And you used him to control tops that were spinning at high speeds thanks to the electrical motor.


I was 5 or 7 at the time, it was pure magic in my eyes.


But the game was awfully boring.


More recently I would say Mirror's Edge, I played the tutorial then gave up.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Assasins creed.Press b kill enemy.repeat.It was a glorified tech demo.Also prince of persia warrior within.What a dissapointment after the superb sands of time.

 

[second exodous]

This game was horrible, like SOLGarion said why he bought Quest64 (had that one to, agree with him on it) this was the first RPG for the PS1 in the US. I got pretty far in it but got stuck. I can not quite remember what I got stuck on but I decided back then to start over. Got stuck again, same place. Started over again and got stuck in the same spot. I gave up after that and years later was reading a walk-through for the game and it was a bug, if you did something in the game it made it un-passable.


Searching for it now I can't find where the glitch is, maybe the person who wrote the walk-through so long ago just couldn't figure it out either. Anyway, graphics were bad, story was dull, characters were bland, it was just a horrible game. I got it on release date and it was for a new system so it was the upper price of PS1 games back then, can't remember what that was. A few weeks after I paid so much for it it was $20.

 

[Viking]

Like most of the people here Final Fantasy 8, hopefully, I never bought it

The most disappointing game I ever owned was Gyromite…


Damn, R.O.B. was awesome, I mean you were able to control a damn robot without any wires!


And you used him to control tops that were spinning at high speeds thanks to the electrical motor.


I was 5 or 7 at the time, it was pure magic in my eyes.


But the game was awfully boring.


More recently I would say Mirror's Edge, I played the tutorial then gave up.

I think that Mirror's Edge was fun, just fun. It didn't have any story, but it didn't need to, it was fun to play.

 

[Viking]

Assasins creed.Press b kill enemy.repeat.It was a glorified tech demo.Also prince of persia warrior within.What a dissapointment after the superb sands of time.

What the frick? Assassin's Creed is awesome! The combat was kinda easy, but aside that, running around Jerusalem and sky diving onto old ladies would crack me up every time!


But the story is one of the thing that really amused me, pure solid and the history behind, I actually enjoyed being lectured about those old buildnings that were there

 

[lulzfish]

Probably Super Mario Advance for the GBA.


I was thinking, "Yeah I'm gonna see what all the hype for the Mario games is about" but it was too hard and I couldn't finish it.


And I couldn't give a damn, because there were almost no checkpoints and I got sick of traversing the level to die somewhere near the end.


Mario 64 DS was way better.


Ace Combat 5 was a little disappointing after I realized that I was just going to be flying planes and shooting things for the entire game, and that I wasn't really great at it.


After trying to raid the ice fortress or whatever (I can't even remember) about 50 times, I gave up. I'd already spent too much effort just getting to where I was (somewhere past the Hrimfaxi) and no amount of story would justify the continued grinding.

 

[UberDub]

Gyromite, without ROB. Man, gyromite sucked with ROB. Even worse when I got it without ROB.

 

[second exodous]

Probably Super Mario Advance for the GBA.

I was thinking, "Yeah I'm gonna see what all the hype for the Mario games is about" but it was too hard and I couldn't finish it.


And I couldn't give a damn, because there were almost no checkpoints and I got sick of traversing the level to die somewhere near the end.


Mario 64 DS was way better.


Ace Combat 5 was a little disappointing after I realized that I was just going to be flying planes and shooting things for the entire game, and that I wasn't really great at it.


After trying to raid the ice fortress or whatever (I can't even remember) about 50 times, I gave up. I'd already spent too much effort just getting to where I was (somewhere past the Hrimfaxi) and no amount of story would justify the continued grinding.

So difficult games are disappointing for you?


Also, wasn't Super Mario Advance based on the non Japanese SM2? A lot of people say that isn't Mario as it wasn't made by Shigeru Miyamoto. The people that say that don't realize that neither was the Japanese SM2, Mr. Miyamoto and the rest of the team that made SMB was working on the first Zelda game so all the Japanese SM2 was is sprites from the first SMB remixed by no one that worked on the first SMB. Well, maybe a few people that worked on SMB worked on SMB2 but the famous ones didn't.


Anyway it was the only Mario game I had for the GBA and I passed it and liked it. It wasn't that hard.