Video game: Biggest disappointment? / Suprise gem?

Cafe Society
61

Disappointments:

The Getaway - Nice graphics, but totally unplayable due to the lack of an interface and the godawful controls. I took it back to the store only a few hours after renting it.

Halo - You may have seen my thread about this. It was all hyped up to be the Best Video Game Ever, but turned out to be the greatest hits album of first-person shooters.

Surprises:

Space Channel 5 - I thought Parappa the Rapper was the definitive music game, but this blew it away. The soundtrack is outstanding, the graphics were excellent for the time, and it has great replay value (especially with those hidden areas).

Rez - I rented it when I returned The Getaway, and this one lived up to the hype. It’s like Space Invaders meets Tron and Winamp on acid. The graphics are simple but often breathtaking.

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Biggest disappointments:

Chrono Cross (PSX): Weak character development caused IMO by too many playable characters. I never felt strongly about anyone. With over forty possible party members, you’d think Square would have had a field day with the tech attacks, too.

Silent Hill 2 (PS2): Even though Konami didn’t self-censor themselves as much on this one, I still feel like the first game was the better skullf**k.

Final Fantasy IX (PSX): Failed attempt at another “tragic” villain, didn’t care for the locked-in classes or the wimpy females that I could not mold into fighters no matter how much I tried. (VIVI is one of the series’ most poignant characters, though.)

Surprise gems:

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (PSX): When I got it, I had no idea how deep the gameplay was. Subquests and minigames galore, two major story branches and lots of mini-branches that influenc chara responses and boss battles, an EX dungeon, dozens of possible personae to find or forge, tons of combo party attacks, messages for your answering machine from the main characters, all wrapped up in a funky modern-day Japan setting. It was the game that kept on giving.

63

Chrono Cross breaks my heart. Chrono Trigger was hands down the best RPG for the SuperNES (beating out even FF"3"). Yet Square gives us this haphazard mess with, as was noted, poor characterization and only a paltry amount of the great “tech attack” combos that made the CT battle system so great. And while I understand that Square is big on not reusing characters or revisiting storylines so much, they DID tie the sequel story to the original a little (I mean, its a major plot point), and that made the very very paltry presence of the original characters all the worse: especially the strange variations on unresolved CT storylines that went nowhere. Ugh.

64

Actually, the locked in-classes was pretty standred in the games before they made FF7. I’ve heard people complain because the materia and junction systems “stole their personalities” since they could all do pretty much the same things.

65

They could have done a much better job with the plot, but sadly they sqandered so much potentional. Plus there was the issue of far too many characters as MineFujiko mentioned.

CT was far better then either FF3/6j or CC. I say that because FF3 was great until you get the falcon, then the plot pretty much dies off. Also, I was dissapointed on how the World of Ruin was supossed to be a “Dying” world but except for a few things, it didn’t seem much worse then the first world was. CT did the “Dying World” thing far better. Just compare the World of Ruin in FF3/6j and 2300 AD in CT. No contest.

66

Gem: Earthbound

Stumbled across this while browsing through someone’s SNES ROM site, downloaded it coz it was big and had a “sci fi” name, and forgot about it for weeks.

When I finally played it, and saw the intro, I stared aghast at this line of little kids walking around the screen to the tune of some weirdo music. WTF?? I thought to myself, “Oh well, so it’s a kid’s game, I’ll just play around with it for a little while until I got bored.”

72 hours later, with hardly a wink of sleep, I finished the thing, the word “bored” never having entered my mind again. I even cried when it ended.

Disappointment: The Streets of Sim City

This one made me cry too, but for a different reason. Ever since the first Sim City game, it was my lifelong dream for them to make a game that let you get down to street level, and just drive around the streets, marvelling at your wondrous creation (and perhaps running down a few pedestrians, a la Carmageddon, lol.)

Instead, you just drove around in this brown, dull, boxy, blurry lump of shit that I suppose was supposed to resemble a city, and you could barely drive around at all, the control was so bad. You could enter a cheat code to fly, but even then, all you saw was more dull, brown, boxy crap.

At least they made up for it with The Sims. (Oh, and to those of you who dared to list The Sims as a big disappointment…well, I suppose you just have no concept of what it’s like to PLAY GOD!!!)

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I’m aware. :slight_smile: FFIX’s implementation irked the hell out of me, though, because

  1. I found Garnet to be incredibly bland;
  2. I did not care for this installment’s Spunky Li’l Kid™ (give me Relm any day!);
  3. ‚±‚ñ‚É‚¿‚́AƒI[ƒpƒ‹‚³‚Ü ;
  4. I just have this problem with the dragoon job and furry/beast characters. Sorry.

If there had been a little more customization, I could have turned them all into Beatrices and been happy with them at least in battle.

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Gem - DDR Max - Yes, I bought a dance pad for it. Yes, I dance around in front of my TV in my socks. Yes, I look like a total dork when I do so. No, I am not any good at the game. Yes, it is more fun than you can possibly imagine. My older brother gave me a “what’re-you-some-kinda-queer?” look when I showed it to him, and was nothing short of addicted 20 minutes later. It all starts when the victim says, “Lemme try this stupid thing…”

Disappointment - I have to agree with Black and White. It just couldn’t hold my interest. I’m not even really sure why…

Wait, I figured it out just as I was typing. I am tired of “management” games. The Sims, Black and White, even Warcraft III. Manage time. Manage resources. Manage characters. Bleh. If I wanted to manage brainless sprites, I’d go work at McDonalds.

I loved Starcraft when it came out, but the finish has worn off a bit for me…

69

Disappointment: Unreal II. To me, it came off as an extended technology demo. Utterly gorgeous, but far too linear, predictable, and just plain short. That said, the levels where you command a small squad against alien invasions were neat. Overall, though, the gameplay suggested that nothing has been learned since the original Unreal.

Gem: it’s not for everybody, but I’ve very much enjoyed Disney’s Toontown since signing up for beta testing some time ago. Players of “real” MMORPGs will probably find it far too simplistic, but I find it entertaining and surprisingly addictive. In a nutshell, it’s a “lite” MMORPG, where everybody runs around looking like cartoon characters, battling the attacking “cogs” (evil robotic businessman creatures such as Bean Counters, Telemarketers, Spin Doctors etc.) in turn-based battles with an arsenal of seltzer bottles, pies, anvils etc. Charming. I play it with wife and 8-year-old son, then sometimes stay up late and level up my character some more when everybody else is asleep. :eek:

70

You can get Freedom Force for about $15, and if you’re looking at getting the Gamers Pack, you can get FF, Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit, Earth and Beyond, and C&C: Renegade for just $20.

71

Yeah, the -one- problem I had with Arcanum is that there are some areas you have to build specifically combat-worthy characters to beat. There are several ways to do it, but it was a -long- time before I beat that set of caves. Once I did, though, it became pretty easy, all in all (And believe me, about 2/3 the way through the cave, there’s a room with -3- of those rock-men. Grenades and spells don’t fail me now!!!)

72

Speaking of Persona, I’ll add Revelations: Persona to the list. A truly execptional game!

I have mixed feelings about Earthbound, but it’s still a truly unforgettable game and not quite as “kiddy” as people think. Although it was at times a little too cute. Hehhe.

73

Gem and disappointment: Heroes of Might and Magic.

I thought I was buying another RPG in the Might and Magic series. I was so disappointed in my hasty purchase that I put the game away, uninstalled it, and vowed never to play it again.

Then one weekend I wanted to play something new and not having any cash, decided to re-install it and give it a whirl. 18 hours later I decided it didn’t suck as much as I originally thought.

74

You mean the fact that Nintendo took all the Alcohol references out and replaced them with Coffee ones, but usally only be doing a find and replace? You’d be running into people who were totally drunk on Coffee…or so I’ve heard.

Earthbound is on my list of games to beat before the summer is over, after I finish Planescape Torment.

75

Two of them have already been mentioned in this thread, but I might as well throw in my two cents:

Surprise

Wizardry 8. I consider this a “surprise” because I had heard about all the problems Sir-Tech was having. The long delay in the game coming out seemed to be a bad sign (see: Daikatana). I followed the word of mouth on the web for a week after it was finally released and it seemed it was getting good reviews, so I went for it. Funny thing, I heard that some packages were missing a CD-ROM so I asked to open my box at the store to check! (All three discs were inside.)

I have to say that I didn’t have any particular technical difficulties with the game, and I found it was lots of great, old-school style RPG fun. A big part of the fun was building a party and developing the characters. I actually played through the whole game twice, the first time with stock characters included with the game and the second time with characters of my own creation. I tried a third time, but I could never get my solo faerie ninja to survive long enough…

I also have to put in a good word for the voice acting, which was great and added a lot of character to my characters!

While I wouldn’t hold my breath for Wiz 9 to show up, I do have my end game saves tucked away in a folder on my computer, just in case…

Disappointments

Baldur’s Gate. I had heard both good and bad things about this game, but since it seemed to be an important milestone in modern CRPGs I picked it up when it was cheap. It probably didn’t help my impression of the game that I played this one after I finished Planescape Torment. While PS:T had a densely packed, interesting world, it seemed like the world of Baldur’s Gate was made up mostly of a lot of empty space without a whole lot going on. It didn’t help either that I couldn’t run, like in PS:T.

I probably would have finished Baldur’s Gate eventually, though, except that my CD drive broke down while I playing it (going through the gnoll stronghold, after Minsc nagged me too many times about it). After I got the drive fixed I simply didn’t feel motivated enough to play it again.

Funny thing, I’m playing Baldur’s Gate 2 right now, and it’s holding my interest a lot better than its predecessor. It kinda makes me wish I did finish the first game, if only to have a character to import.

Bridge Commander. This one I got because I like Star Trek and more importantly because it was made by Totally Games, which created the awesome X-Wing series. Bridge Commander was competently done, but it didn’t have the variety and excitement that the X-Wing games did. I also didn’t feel sufficiently in control of the action to feel like I was making a difference. (I didn’t like the way the manual control felt either.)

76

Gems: Parodius.

Stinkers: Realm.Realm is a shooter, with a cover that says NOTHING about the game, you can’t tell when a level ends, most bosses are painfully easy, one boss is nigh impossible and the game is just plain BAD.

77

No, your not the only one. Loved that game.
Since we’re talking about surprises.
Good Surprise:

Nightfire on Xbox
Quantum Redshift on Xbox
Sanitarium on PC
Thief on PC (Only because Gamespot didn’t rate it very high before I bought it) This game was incredible.
Commandos on PC
Hitman 2 - One of the best Xbox games out there

Bad Surprise:
Morrowind - combat was way too easy
Shadowbane
Black and White
Metal Gear Solid 2 - I got this for Xbox and hated the camera. Hated it.

The Xbox in general is a disappointment. I guess I’m just a PC gamer.

78

Gem: Monster’s Inc: Scream Factory (I think was the title…anyway)
Rented this one night at Blockbuster on a whim since we loved the movie and assumed it was a kiddie game. Boy were WE wrong!:smiley: It had lots of suprises and the levels were on-par difficulty wise with probably the original Mario or even Mario II and Mario III.

CG and I had a blast with this one:

Star Wars Ep I: The Gungan Frontier–ok so the voice of resident Gungan JarJar Binks got annoying after awhile…but I could just turn the sound down. I found it to be challenging and entertaining.

IDBB

79

Surprise Gems:

“Roller Coaster Tycoon”.
I don’t even want to think about the hours I have put into this game. My only complaint is that I wish they would have put out more expansion packs, rather than put out “RCT 2”. I still can’t quite figure out what is that is better about the sequel and I am apprehensive to buy it and find out.

“Sim City 4”.
I love this game! Granted, the learning curve is somewhat steep, I’m still having a great time at building failing cities. :wink: I hated Sim City 2000 and never tried 3000, but this one looked interesting and I’m glad I purchased it.

Disappointments:
“Starfleet Command”
I really wanted to love this game. When I heard Sulu’s voice start the tutorials, I thought “Wow, this is going to be great”. I really just don’t like the maneuverability of the ships though or the gameplay in general.

“The Sims”
I have such a love/hate relationship with this game. I enjoy playing it to the extent that I have all of the expansions. The problem is, it is buggy as hell. Also, my computer locks up constantly with this game and that makes it so frustrating. There is nothing worse than working on a house for a couple of hours and then losing all of the work you just did. It has really soured me on the whole game.

80

Musicguy–is there someplace you can download a SIMS teaser/trial? I really want to try this game BEFORE I go out and buy it.

IDBB