I don’t play many video games, but I was very disappointed with Enter the Matrix.
This may have been true on PC, but a console game? If a game crashes my Xbox once, it’s an annoyance. Twice, and it’s a serious flaw. Crash repeatedly, and the programmers are serious dumbasses who should be flogged with spiked leather straps. That game just screamed “rushed port”. F**ker crashed on me twice last night.
And another in the Surprise Gem category:
Space Channel 5. I expected to like that game, but I didn’t expect to have a permanent grin plastered on my face every time I popped it in my DC. That game was pure, distilled happiness.
Super Smash Bros. Melee is another game I expected to like, but not absolutely adore. 4-player SSBM is some of the most fun I’ve ever had with a controller in my hand, second only to the time my girlfriend seduced me while I was playing Rayman.
Speaking of which… I loved Rayman. The second was great, but the first just hit me out of the blue.
Jeff
EtM really seems like a tragedy in terms of missed opportunity. If they had just contracted the Oni engine or at least paid attention to third-person fighting lessons, they would have had a pretty decent game. It seems like they rushed it out the door before they could really polish it off.
Can you describe what other contemporaneous games you did like? Did you like Quake2, for instance? Blood2? Shogo? I can’t think of any other FPS games that even approached HL during that era, though I could see how constant action fans could have gotten bored during the slower, creeping-cooridor moments, whenever the soldiers weren’t around to tussle with.
Yeah: I REALLY don’t like the increasing trend of “crashing” console games. I mean, console games have traditionally been less crashy than PC games, and much better playtested: when you played a console, you expect solid performance. As games get more and more complex, however, I can certainly see how it gets harder and harder to playtest everything in a standard development cycle, and consoles couldn’t maintain their near crash-free reputation forever… but…
Well… the reason major bugs are marginally acceptable on PCs is that PC users can download patches to fix a game, often patches that come out very soon after the initial release. Once you’ve bought a buggy console game, that’s IT most of the time. It’s buggy forever. So crashes and major bugs can NEVER be acceptable unless consoles get Hard Drive and full patch downloading capability like PCs. (plus quicksaves becoming more common)
Loved the DOOMs, QUAKEs (I’ve never been as addicted to a game as QUAKE II), UNREAL, BLOOD, JEDI KNIGHTs, etc.
Don’t know what it is, but HALF-LIFE just rubbed me the wrong way. In every way.
The most surprising gem I ever saw:
This is the only game which hooked me straight from the demo. I found it to be creatively unique and cleverly storied, and while the music was a little weird, I grew to enjoy it. The gameplay suited an old stoner like me perfectly. With practice, the control interface was almost effortless, and somehow those giant full-3D maps were playable at full detail on my overclocked Celeron 300A and a Matrox G400. And hey, the Battlestar Galactica angle was pretty cool, too.
Homeworld: Cataclysm made some important improvements while retaining all of the good features, but by then there was no way I could be surprised. They’re the best damned games I ever played. I can only hope that Homeworld 2 equals its predecessors.
As far as disappointments go, I have to say that Interstate 82 was just… like getting mugged for fifty bucks by your best friend. How someone could have taken a great idea (and physics engine) like I76 and turned it into a buggy arcade-style piece of crap is completely beyond me.
There is a silver lining, however. If you look carefully at the ideas behind I82 and Vice City, you’ll notice they’re remarkably similar. I get the distinct impression that someone at Rockstar was just as disappointed as I was, and decided to do something about it.
Wow. I mean, Quake2 was a middling disappointment in my eyes: really adding nothing to the single-player genre other than garish colored lighting and the latest pretty engine. Unreal had its moments too, but again, HL really blew me away as far as making FPS interesting and creative again, rather than just being a series of random rooms connected by hallways, keyhunts, and randomly spaced monsters with “oh, I go here and kill now?” AI)
Multiplay is of course a different ball of wax: I spent incredible amounts of time playing CTF (though it never ever matched CTF for Quake 1 with the runes and the hook and the great map pack). HL multiplay took a few patches to ramp up to greatness, though the straight DM was actually worlds more interesting than the Quake or Unreal variants, with neat and tactical weapon menu and some great maps that pushed a little beyond vanilla DM even without getting complex (like the Rustmill or the airstrike DM maps). And of course, once the team-based mods started, it was all over for anything else. Natural Selection for HL is really really cool, even though it’s just starting out (and using an engine that’s currently pretty ancient).
It goes without saying that I’m a HL2 drooling Valve fanboy though, so you’re more than justified to dismiss my opinion (though you simply must bow to the coolness of the preview movies released for HL2)
Yeah, I remember that half-assed “turn-based” mode. Actually made the game more annoying. When I say turn based, I mean like Jagged Alliance 2 or X-Com. Or chess, for that matter. When it’s my turn, I move a guy, and no one else on the screen moves. Which is how D&D is supposed to work, dammit! Not this bullshit “Everyone runs around at the same time with intermittent pauses.” But, again, BG2 and Torment used the same basic system with minor tweaks and made it playable (although still not really D&D). Those were both fantastic games. BG1… wasn’t. Meh. I did finally beat it, using a character hack to pump all my characters up to ridiculous levels. The story improved eventually, but getting to that point involved way to much pointless frustration.
dissapointment:
Total Annilation. I Bought it but really couldn’t get into it. The gameplay was okay, but there was no plot at all to make me want to keep going. I eventually traded it in for Starcraft and was so much happier.
Gems:
C&C: Red Alert 2 A lot of C&C fans hated it, but I liked it more then any that came before. Probably because it didn’t take itself too seriously and that it just seemed a lot more fun then the other ones.
Deus Ex I heard other people raving about it for so long and finally decided to see just what the fuss was about. It was tough for the first few levels(lack of ammo if nothing else), but DAMN. Such a kewl game, and the fact you can often avoid conflict helps as well. See those giant military robots? well, you don’t nessicarly have to fight them. You can shut them down, blow them up or even just make sure they don’t see you.
Gems: GTA3 and Thief (the first one)
Sucks ass: Hitman 2 – I have tried everything and I can’t get it to stop crashing. And Eidos doesn’t return my tech support emails.
Dissapointment:
Arcanum I loved what these guys did with Fallout, and Arcanum was interesting in the beginning and fun. But then I got to the cave after you speak to the rich dude in Tarant (trying not to spoil), and it was GOD DAMN IMPOSSIBLE! My guys kept dying against the first rock man, and I said the Hell with this and deleted it.
Black & White Fun for a while… then turned incredibly repetitive. Maybe if it didn’t have the hype, I’d like it better… who knows.
Surprises:
Fallout I was in the store, and was planning on getting Diablo, actually. I wanted to try a RPG. Then I read the back of Fallout and said… wow… this is more like what I want. Played it, loved it, amazing. I still think back on it as one of the best games I’ve ever played.
Freedom Force What a great game :D. Great story and just super fun. I can’t wait for the sequal!
Disappointment:
Dungeon Siege: billed as a Diablo killer with full 3-d graphics, no load times, etc. However the developers sort of forgot to put any depth or gameplay strategy in- after the first few levels all you do is watch your party kill monsters, drink potions once in a while, and collect loot. The attack spells all behave pretty much the same, so it doesn’t matter what kind of magic you use, the weapons are all pretty much interchangeable, and melee or ranged characters have no special skills at all- all they do is hit monsters or shoot arrows!
Gems:
Wizardry 8: I never had any bugs at all on my system, and had more fun than any other recent computer RPG. Even better is that I could pick it up for $29.95 while any other new game out there runs 50 or 60 bucks.
Ikaruga: the single best 2-D shooter I’ve ever seen. Also cheaper than most other first-run Gamecube games
I hear Black & White mentioned a lot here, and would have to add my name to the petition, also. Potentially a fantastic game, which somehow becomes tedious about halfway through. It’s a pity, because there were so many radical and freeform concepts in it. I hear the developers are working on B&W 2, though… we’ll have to wait and see…
I think Black & White may not have been so dissapointing to us all IF the hype wasn’t so amazingly huge for this game. I’ve seen nothing like the hype that game got. It was incredible. I doubt if any game could have lived up to that.
Hmm… it sounds a little too pricey for me to justify a purchase:
http://www.oldmanmurray.com/longreviews/60.html
Surprise gem:
Eternal Darkness. I usually don’t like survival horror games or anything with a dark brooding atmosphere, but for some reason I liked this game.
Surprise Gems:
the original Final Fantasy(my mother suggested this one as a rental).
Actraiser
Faxanadu(also mommy suggested)
Shadow Madness
Elemental Gearbolt
Earthbound
Biggest Disapointments:
Azure Dreams
Dragon Valor(not a bad game, but could have been MUCH better)
Suikoden 3(A GOOD game, but it could have been GREAT. Or a 7 game that could have been a ten).
Actraiser 2
You need to read more than half of the game title. 
That’s “Freedom: First Resitance,” and that review frightened me.
Freedom Force–note the divergence in title after the first word–was simply a joy throughout. And never killed my monitor. Can’t count it as a surprise gem, though–it simply lived up to all the positive reviews I’d read before picking it up.
Another surprise gem: Anachronox. Great writing, as games go, frequently laugh-out-loud; a plot involving hideous peril to the universe that didn’t devolve into the easy route of drippy angst. Sold immensely poorly, the company that made it folded shortly after released (they’d pretty much killed themselves with Daikatana)–but the developers continued to support the game even after they had no professional reason to. The latest patch was put out just a couple months ago (and it runs on XP for me now because of it! Huzzah!). Good stuff.
That’s Freedom: First Resistance.
We’re talking about Freedom Force. Totally different game. Here’s the official website.
Great game. Nuclear Winter had the best villain theme music ever.
Darn: well, I was only looking for a chance to post that review anyway, since their conclusion “So, is F:FR worth your almost five hundred dollars?” bit is so priceless.
I’m going to have to try Anachronox again after this latest, apparently wonderful, patch.