Video game: Biggest disappointment? / Suprise gem?

[Miller]

Halo 2 - it will be a gem, i can tell

Yes, but that’ll hardly be a surprise will it?

[Drastic]

I’d put Unreal in the disappointment category, myself. Sure, coming out of the cramped dark corridors of the prison ship into sudden outside sunshine and that waterfall was one impressive moment–but the game pretty much shot its load right there. Rest of it barely left an impression in the old synapses.

Looking back, the first Ultima Underworld stunned me. Was in college at the time, and a buddy called me up to tell me I had to come over soon to check out this demo he’d just downloaded, some sort of first-person dungeon thing. “So it’s like Wolfenstein?” I queried. Heh.

[fizzygoodmakefeelnice]

*Originally posted by ElwoodCuse *
**
Starship Titanic. Bought it without a review because I’m such a DNA fan, but the game was crap.
**

Damn I just bought that and I’ve since heard about three peole say it’s naff.

[Brutus]

I bought Halflife, back when the world was young, not really knowing what to expect. Damn, what a game. To think that the years-old HL engine forms the basis for two of the more popular online games to this day. (CS and DoD)
And GTA3, of course.

[RickJay]

Disappointments:

Master of Orion III - Evidently the production of this game was done in a cave, because they didn’t get any gamers to play it and actually determine if it was any fun. Just a terrible succession of design errors.

Star Wars: Rebellion - Worst. Interface. Ever.

Patriot - The land war successor to “Harpoon.” I was so excited. It looked so technical. Alas, it did not work in any way.

The Sims - I know some people adore this game. That’s why I found it so disappointing. I just do not get it. After several weeks of trying to organize their little house so they could take a shit in less than an hour and a half, I realized the game had about 25 design flaws and 0 points.

Gems:

Rollercoaster Tycoon - What a wonderful little game, and I ignored it for months assuming it was just about roller coasters.

Total Annihilation - Just looked like another RTS game until a buddy called me and said, “For God’s sake, go buy this game.” Six years later, still the best pure RTS ever.

EverQuest - I know this is no hidden gem to most, but I got into this game two years after it came out after refusing to buy it maybe 100 times. Every day I go into the video game store and every day they’d say “Rick, ya gotta buy this, it’s great.” And every day I’d say no because I’m not fussy about D&D games and, frankly, the box looked stupid and juvenile. One day I had some store credit and finally knuckled under to their demands, bought it, took it home, played it… and hated it. Two weeks later spent a few hours on it and realized what a great game it was. I just cancelled my account because I wasn’t playing it, but you can be damned sure I’m getting EQ2.

[SwimmingwithChickens]

*Originally posted by Miller *
**
As for Baldur’s Gate, (brace yourself, this is going to be long) I hated it chiefly because it was billed as being 100% accurate to the pen and paper game, but used real-time combat. Dungeons and Dragons isn’t a real-time game. So, false advertising was reason #1. And then there were dozens of little errors that seem like no big deal but added up to what was, to me, an unplayable mess. The way the game unpaused whenever you opened your inventory, for example. Which meant that drinking a potion in the middle of combat would result in half your characters dying. The unbelievably high mortality rate of your first level characters, especially mages. I don’t think I ever had a mage survive a fight in that game. They’d always take a stray arrow from a kobold and get killed. The fact that I could never even get to any of the dungeons, because I’d always get a bunch of random encounters along the way that would result in a bunch of dead characters, so I’d have to go back to town to get them raised. And the way dead characters dropped all their inventory on the ground, so you’d have to fill up the rest of the party’s inventory with their crap, then try to remember who got what after everyone was raised. The fact that, as near as I could tell, there wasn’t a single NPC cleric adventurer in the entire game. The fact that whenever I cast Fireball or anyother area of effect spell, by the time my wizard was done with the casting animations, all the bad guys had left the target area, and usually been replaced by a bunch of my guys. Huzzah! More dead PCs. Also, the way you could raise any character in the game except the player created one. I spend tens of thousands of gold pieces raising all these damned NPCs over and over, but as soon as I go down, they strip my corpse and leave me for the rats, apparently. And the story wasn’t all that great. Decent, I suppose, but not inspired, and most of the NPC interactions were lame.

Baldur’s Gate II fixed a lot of the minor stuff, like letting you pause the game while you hunted through your inventory. I don’t know if it was improved AI or what, but I had a lot fewer characters wandering into the path of friendly fireballs. Also, remembering the lack of clerics in the first game, I made my main character a cleric, and she was high enough level that she started off with Raise Dead, eliminating a lot of my other gripes. Plus, the writing was straight up fantastic. I loved the story, I loved the NPCs, I cared about what happened in the game world, I could make my own decisions about what path the story would take: everything I wanted in an RPG. Still wish they had dropped the real-time combat, but you can’t have everything. I bought it, fully expecting it to suck as much as the first one (the store I used to shop at had a great return policy) and instead got one of the definitive computer RPGs. So, the second one was a surprise gem. **

I have to absolutely agree 100% with the first part of this Post. While I was marginally entertained by the story and even a little amused by the real time combat, what Miller has written is dead on accurate. I can’t say I agree though with your assessment of BGII, the reason being BGI turned me completely against the series. I never made it through BGI and didn’t even think about picking up BGII when I saw it on the shelves. Though based on your review I might check it out.

I did go on to buy Icewindale though. It’s not nearly as bad as BGI, but there are some striking similarities. Number one being everytime I cast a fireball (or ice storm) by the time my mage has made it through the gyrations the targeted area is devoid of monsters. To combat that you can target the monster directly, but literally everytime I do this the baddies seem to charge my weakest character thus obliterating him as well. Another problem I have is how excruitatingly linear the story is.

Biggest disappointments:

Baldur’s Gate
Any of the SIM titles (I just can’t do it. I love the Civ series though.)
Daffy Duck’s Quack Attack for PS2 (Don’t ask.)
Biggest Surprise:

Arcanum (Judging soley from the back of the box and not the hype.)

Lukewarm feelings:

Icewindale.
Fallout 2.

[elf6c]

Biggest surprise was No One Lives Forever, wow, did I ever replay the hell out of that game.

NOLF2 is very good, but no longer a surprise- I expected it to be good, and it was.

Ace Combat 2, for the Playstation was an amazing game as well. Caused me to picke up Ace Combat 4, for the Playstation2, which was even better.

Disappointments- too many to mention, but the Serious Sam series of games are highly overrated. Hours of circle-strafing why being exposed to Bruce Campbell-ish knock-off jokes. Meh.

I liked Deus Ex, it is was a pain in the ass to start with, as your character was somwhat useless till he got some upgrades. The second time through the game is easier-- lots of flamethrower and shock baton action. I either cooked them, or put them to sleep and then stabbed them to death in a quiet corner. Heh. If only life were that simple- dumb ass boss, Flamethrower! 25 items in the 15 item lane, Flamethrower! Writing a check for $2.43 purchase, and not even starting the check until after you are rang up- Shock Baton, then the Flamethrower! Oh, and for you 25 MPH in a 35 MPH zone, slow for the green light , then run the light when it turns red away morons, sniper rifle!

Ah, if only life were like a FPS. . . .

[smiling_bandit]

As for Baldur’s Gate, (brace yourself, this is going to be long) I hated it chiefly because it was billed as being 100% accurate to the pen and paper game, but used real-time combat. Dungeons and Dragons isn’t a real-time game.So, false advertising was reason #1.

1. It wasn’t real time. It only only looked real time in the sense that it didn’t autmatically stop after each round.

The way the game unpaused whenever you opened your inventory, for example. Which meant that drinking a potion in the middle of combat would result in half your characters dying.

2. Y’know, I never had a problem with this. COme to thinkof it, I’m not sure I noticed. I never used potions.

The unbelievably high mortality rate of your first level characters, especially mages. I don’t think I ever had a mage survive a fight in that game. They’d always take a stray arrow from a kobold and get killed.

3. Weren’t you just complainging it wasn’t tru enough to DnD? Seriously, I had no problem keeping them alive.

The fact that I could never even get to any of the dungeons, because I’d always get a bunch of random encounters along the way that would result in a bunch of dead characters, so I’d have to go back to town to get them raised.

4. Was this really a problem? I hardly ever got killed.

And the way dead characters dropped all their inventory on the ground, so you’d have to fill up the rest of the party’s inventory with their crap, then try to remember who got what after everyone was raised.

5. That was slightly annoying.

The fact that, as near as I could tell, there wasn’t a single NPC cleric adventurer in the entire game.

6. There were three.

The fact that whenever I cast Fireball or anyother area of effect spell, by the time my wizard was done with the casting animations, all the bad guys had left the target area, and usually been replaced by a bunch of my guys. Huzzah! More dead PCs.

7. Just like in real DnD! Seriously, you got to have the skillz!

Also, the way you could raise any character in the game except the player created one. I spend tens of thousands of gold pieces raising all these damned NPCs over and over, but as soon as I go down, they strip my corpse and leave me for the rats, apparently.

8. You can’t be ressed easily. Plot point.

And the story wasn’t all that great. Decent, I suppose, but not inspired, and most of the NPC interactions were lame.

9. Really? I, and a lot of other people loved it.

I guess what really makes me wonder is that this was my first real experience with DnD. So I didn’t really know what was going on, I just took it as it came. I suppose I wonder why you had so much trouble, since it seemed pretty natural to me.

Oh well, life goes on.

[ArrMatey]

Disapointment- Freedom Force. I -so- wanted to like this game, I really did. But the linear-ness of it really turned me off, which brings me to…

Gem- Arcanum. Wow. For such a ‘little’ game it packs a lot. Huge character divergence, and a real ‘the ending reflects what -you- did’ feel to it. I love that game, and still play it from time to time just to see what would happen if I do things a little differently (for instance, last time I played I made a character designed -specifically- to seduce one of the evil NPC’s in the game, just to see if it would work. It made the entire encounter with her much more interresting.)

[Terminus_Est]

Deus Ex was hard?

Granted, I like sneaking games and had already played Thief and System Shock 2 (both excellent games in their own right), so I already knew what to expect from Warren Spector. You can’t just go charging in with guns blazing like every other two-bit FPS. Hide in the shadows, make a minimum of noise, and wait. I actually found it easier (and less scary!) than Thief, since you can upgrade your stats. Later on, you actually can charge in with guns a-blazin’.

[Jayrot]

RE: Baldur’s Gate

I guess you guys never poked around the options menu. There was a choice in the pausing options to have it pause after every round. You can’t get much more turn based than that. Certainly a pain in the ass for travelling huge distances (at that point I changed it to only pause when your character is attacked), but I almost always used it in combat. IMHO, a very realistic D&D experience. As a matter of fact, you could enable an option to show you each roll of the (virtual) dice. 12+7=19 HIT!

Options, guys! Options

BTW, are there any others like me that the first thing you do when you load up a new game is to go straight to the options menu?

[Tarrsk]

RickJay: Yes! My friends and I still play Total Annihilation over the college network, despite having played it for nearly six years now. It’s amazing how well the game has held up- it’s just too bad that its followup, Kingdoms, was so disappointing. But scuttlebutt has it that Chris Taylor’s next game, from his new company (Gas Powered Games, who released Dungeon Siege last year), is going to be a new RTS, the “spiritual successor” to Total Annihilation. I wait with bated breath.

Other gems:
Starfox
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Unreal Tournament
Jet Grind Radio
Panzer Dragoon Orta
The Secret of Monkey Island
Worms 2
(and I would say Halo, except that I went into the game already expecting it to be a masterpiece… which it was)

Disappointments
Starcraft (terrible multiplayer, especially in comparison to TA)
Warcraft 3 (terrible single-player)
Tiberian Sun (don’t get me started)
The aforementioned TA: Kingdoms (one resource?!)

[blainer]

I’m going to take it back to the old school here and suggest that Super Tecmo Bowl for Sega is the biggest dissapointment ever.

Super Tecmo Bowl for NES was/is the greatest game ever, sports or otherwise. The sega update had too many bugs and was not nearly as playable. What a piece of crap.

[Windwalker]

*Originally posted by Miller *
**
As for Baldur’s Gate, (brace yourself, this is going to be long) I hated it chiefly because it was billed as being 100% accurate to the pen and paper game, but used real-time combat. Dungeons and Dragons isn’t a real-time game. So, false advertising was reason #1. And then there were dozens of little errors that seem like no big deal but added up to what was, to me, an unplayable mess. The way the game unpaused whenever you opened your inventory, for example. Which meant that drinking a potion in the middle of combat would result in half your characters dying. The unbelievably high mortality rate of your first level characters, especially mages. I don’t think I ever had a mage survive a fight in that game. They’d always take a stray arrow from a kobold and get killed. The fact that I could never even get to any of the dungeons, because I’d always get a bunch of random encounters along the way that would result in a bunch of dead characters, so I’d have to go back to town to get them raised. And the way dead characters dropped all their inventory on the ground, so you’d have to fill up the rest of the party’s inventory with their crap, then try to remember who got what after everyone was raised. The fact that, as near as I could tell, there wasn’t a single NPC cleric adventurer in the entire game. The fact that whenever I cast Fireball or anyother area of effect spell, by the time my wizard was done with the casting animations, all the bad guys had left the target area, and usually been replaced by a bunch of my guys. Huzzah! More dead PCs. Also, the way you could raise any character in the game except the player created one. I spend tens of thousands of gold pieces raising all these damned NPCs over and over, but as soon as I go down, they strip my corpse and leave me for the rats, apparently. And the story wasn’t all that great. Decent, I suppose, but not inspired, and most of the NPC interactions were lame.
**

Wow that does not seem like the Baldur’s Gate I that I played! First of all, combat was only as real-time as you wanted it to be. I just paused at the beginning of combat and every time I needed to issue new commands (usually after a mage or cleric casts a spell or i needed to use an item), and I never really felt rushed. Also, I don’t understand how you died so much. If you don’t want some of your characters being involved in a fight, let them run! Whenever I saw those annoying fire-ball kobold archers, I always let my weak characters (mage, theif, etc) run away while my warriors closed in. I usually only let my mage fight if she was protected from ranged weapons, and against boss-type enemies. Also, I would always scout ahead using my ranger or thief to figure out what’s lurking out there, so I’d be prepared for a battle should one come up. That’s what I loved about Baldur’s Gate I; that feeling of exploration and of not knowing what’s out there. You have to use your common sense about how to protect your characters, and whether or not to engage certain dudes in combat. If you see a party of characters with glowing weapons, while you’re at level 3, I would try not to antagonize them. If you’re scouting ahead and see a pack of 5 trolls guarding a pass, then I’d get the hell out of there.

About the inventory screen, the reason they didn’t let you pause while changing inventory was because they didn’t want you switching armor during combat (or swapping weapons not in your quick-weapon slots). BG II improves upon this by letting you access your inventory while paused, but also restricts you from switching your armor during combat.

About aiming area-effect spells (like fireball), I guess you have to guess where the enemies will be as opposed to where they are. I usually only cast fireball if my fighters were holding back a horde, or agianst ranged units (who would stay put). Sometimes I would do a little trap by luring a monster towards the group with one of my warrior-types and casting fireball a second or two before the dude would reach the target area. It does require timing, but it’s great fun.

Anyway, I apologize for the long post, but I have to defend one of my favorite games of all time. It was also one of the biggest surprise gems I’ve encountered. Yes, your characters are more fragile in BG1, but that was part of the fun; almost ANY encounter had the potential to be lethal, so sometimes diplomacy, running away, splitting your party, or sneaking around were what you had to do.

[Bippy_the_Beardless]

Gems
CIV 2 for playstation, it is one of the very best games available for the Playstation 2, and it’s a PS1 game!
Kengo for PS2, still the most tactical fighting game, timing and position are everything, button mash and you’ll be Yakotori (Japanese Kebab) in no time.

Dissapointments:
Every game based on a film that I’ve ever played.
Monopoly on PS1

[samarm]

posted by cletus
Disappointment

Red Faction
I heard a lot of hype about their geo-mod system and how great it was. I should have realized that just meant the game had the one gimmick to distract you from all the crap. Everything in the game just felt like ‘filler’ to me. Plus, the geo-mod feature turned out to be useless past the first level. Fortunately, I was able to exchange it for Max Payne at the store by being a asshole to the manager (lesson for you Fibber McGee ). Now I’m off to download the Kung Fu mod. Thanks Drastic.

I’m suprised so many people didn’t like Red Faction. I loved it! OK, at heart it’s your basic FPS, but there was enough action and enough tough battles to keep me hooked through to the end. I found the geomod system useful in most levels, for example I used it to knock out bridges on which bad guys were standing, sending them plummeting to their deaths. I loved the jet fighters and the way the enemy would hide behind sandbags, and the gun turrets. OK, so it didn’t do anything amazingly new (except for the geomod), but what it did do I thought it did well.

I also liked Deus Ex. It is a game that you need to dedicate some time to get into, as there is a lot of cut scenes and dialog, and the plot twists and turns a lot. If you persist with it then it’s a rewarding experience.

[jkirkman]

Biggest disappointment:

MOO3.

This was not a game, this was a project implementation and root canal rolled into one. They could have saved everyone a lot of learning curve and dev time by just releaseing it for Mocrosoft Project with some Excel spread sheets.
Unexpected Gems

GTA3.

I bought this on a whim expecting a few hours of mindless driving fun. This thing sucked me in for WEEKS. I wish I could get those radio stations on my real car.

Outcast.

I sometimes think I am the only person in North America to have played this game. The voxel graphics worked out poorly, but the branching and free-form plot progression and everything else was mindblowing.

Unreal.

Oooh Baby. I STILL have this one loaded up. As an added bonus, it will actually run at full detail now that I have a machine that is 10x the recommended specs.

PlanetSide.

There is just something about this game. Imagine how much fun it would be if it actually worked!

[Apos]

To think that the years-old HL engine forms the basis for two of the more popular online games to this day. (CS and DoD)

It still blows my mind that there are more people playing Counterstrike and other HL mods at certain peak times than there are people watching any one top-rated Tv show. Or at least that’s what Gabe Newell implied. It still sounds crazy.

I’m still waiting to get a computer powerful enough to play NoOneLivesForever2.

DeusEx really did have a bit of a learning curve, as well as a story curve. The game didn’t show its real strengths until you got into that first NY area, and the plot didn’t really start to heat up until after the Lebedev incident (that bit underground and at the airport was actually the slowest, weakest part of the game). Worse, when you start out your skills are all so low that it’s hard to do anything well. I suggest that beginners who are going to just shoot their way through allocate enough skills to pistols that they can actually aim accurately from a distance.

[RickJay]

*Originally posted by Tarrsk *
**RickJay: Yes! My friends and I still play Total Annihilation over the college network, despite having played it for nearly six years now. It’s amazing how well the game has held up- it’s just too bad that its followup, Kingdoms, was so disappointing. But scuttlebutt has it that Chris Taylor’s next game, from his new company (Gas Powered Games, who released Dungeon Siege last year), is going to be a new RTS, the “spiritual successor” to Total Annihilation. I wait with bated breath. **

Okay, so when are we playing? Mrs. RickJay and RickJay’sBestFriend need more opponents. Send me an E-mail. We have all the expansions and TA web site units.

Damned Mavericks!

[MrSarcasticus]

Sorry, but I hated HALF-LIFE.

HATED it. I usually love first person shooters, but it was like pulling teeth getting me to play this game. The AI was decent, granted. But I had absolutely no fun playing it. Can’t say that about too many other games.

NOCTURNE was another game that looked great, but this had such horrible control functions it was easily more annoying than entertaining.