parrotheads4

I think 2007 was the best year for gaming ever. That said, there was a bit of "irrational exuberance" regaurding the ratings for some big titles. For me the most overrated game had to be Halo3. I have to confess that I'm mainly a campain, and head to head guy so on-line means little to me. The head to head shrinks the screen....why? The graphics while good are just that...good. I was hoping for more. The campiain was short. I'm a mediocre player at best, and I beat the campiain in 8 hours - not 8 game hours - 8 realtime hours on the setting just below the hardest setting. Did I enjoy it? You bet. I thought it was a very good game that was a lot of fun to play. Was it a 10 out of 10 like many reviewers gave it? No. Being generous I'd give it an 8.5/10. That's a difference of 1.5 which is pretty big.

DVD Josh

In the same vein, I'd say Assassin's Creed. Extremely repetitive and nearly no replay value. Short too.

starseed1981

Bioshock. I know this will be highly highly disputed. I still think it's a great game, just not worth the unanimous praise it got.

I too also will agree with Assassin's Creed. After the first two hours it's pretty much just meh. If I wasn't drunk I don't think I would've finished it.

DVDsAreMyLIFE

I loved Bioshock...but the ending was SO disappointing, it ruined it for me.

I liked Assassins Creed BUT it was repetitive, hopefully the sequel will be a lot better.

PixyJunket

Halo 3, Assassin's Creed and Bioshock.. nice. Anybody want to take Mass Effect or Call of Duty 4 next?

Decker

Sorry, Bioshock has to be a top contender for GOTY and can't be considered "most overrated" if you agree it's a great game. Even if you feel it's a 9.0 not a 10.0, that's still a game worthy of high praise.

I might mention Crackdown. It's a game I actually like and isn't terrible, but it's way too repeditive and limted in its sandbox structure. It could have been the first true next-get GTA 3, but instead you were too limited and it got old.

I consider the Zelda PH a game that was pretty good, but certainly not as deep or as fun as I was expecting.

And you can add whatever brain training games came out this year. I'll never understand why they sell so well. They just annoy me.

Rob V

I agree with Halo3 and Assassin's Creed -- neither game did it for me.

Brent L

Wouldn't Saint's Row be considered the first true next-gen GTA3 type game? I think Crackdown would be one of the biggest disappointments, not one of the most overrated.

PixyJunket

That's not really hard to understand at all, they're games for people that are not teenage boys.. and the last time I checked, that's a lot of people.

Flay

Assassin's Creed for sure. The story pacing was terrible and the ending (post credits) is a mindfuck of a failure.

Also, Guitar Hero III and Halo 3's single player campaign.

Giantrobo

For me the overrated games of 2007 have been:

Super Mario Galaxy...pretty and imaginative settings but still boring, tedious, and annoying to me.

Metroid 3...Boring graphics and boring gameplay. I may finish this game but not anytime soon.

McHawkson

I will go for Forza 2 and Rainbow Six Vegas. Well, I didn't play many different games this year, Forza 2 and RB6V are only overrated games I can think of.

Call of Duty 4 does deserved to be top rated game through it's pretty short campgain, but it does have a great graphic and gameplay.

Chris_D

The thing is, the reviewer has to factor in all parts of the game as best they can. For example, if you read Dan Hsu's review at 1UP, he admits that the campaign isn't all that, but for him the multiplayer component of the game was so overwhelmingly great that he still gave the game a 10. So, for a reader of the review who doesn't play multi, at least he was making them aware that he had reservations about the campaign component of the game.

taffer

Assassin's Creed disappointed me. Coming from the "Prince of Persia" team, I expected so much more.

Lair was also pretty bad, but coming from the "Rogue Squadron" team I wasn't expecting much.

The Bus

Crackdown is probably my most under-rated game of the year.

taffer

Rainbow Six: Vegas came out in 2006.

PixyJunket

I really think people should just stop playing into the stupid amount of hype EVERY game gets on the internet nowadays.. and stop buying into fucking number reviews. Games are only "overrated" if you go into them with ridiculous expectations. I've gone into a lot of big games this year expecting nothing and have gotten so much enjoyment out of them by not buying into excessive advertising campaigns, internet hype and arbitrary 9s and 10s.

slop101

ditto

Not saying it sucked or anything, just wasn't as great as I was expecting it to be. Same with Mass Effect.

McHawkson

D'oh!

Well, I played it in 2007.

Chris_D

Mass Effect, despite being really really good, did have some surprisingly uneven sections. I think it's all been covered pretty well on podcasts, forums etc, but the controls and feel of the vehicle in the driving sections were not good. The side quests were also not up to Bioware's usual standards and actually detracted from the game (I enjoyed the game much more once I gave up on doing any side quests). And, of course, everyone has complained about the inventory management.

kmac2878

Agreed - I had a blast playing Crackdown...Bioshock, too.

I'm just getting around to playing Mass Effect now...enjoying it so far.

Jury is still out on Assassin's Creed...

Spiderbite

And the originall thread question was overrated games...not games you personally disliked or were disappointed in.

I defined the thread question as asking for games that were given fantastically high reviews (by professional reviewers and everyday gamers) and the real gameplay fell well below those reviews and thoughts.

Going by that line of thought, I can't think of any. Most reviewers these days temper them with both the good and the bad as do most of the gamers' thoughts that I read (at least here on dvdtalk).

Yeah, Halo3 was highly reviewed and the campaign was disappointing to some extent, but was it overrated? Most reviews I read stated that the campaign wasn't all that. How is that overrated when they tell you beforehand. Why someone would buy Halo3 for the campaign alone when the multiplayer aspect is 9/10ths of the game (and everyone knows this...it was well established with Halo2) is beyond me. So complaining about that seems a little asinine.

I don't know...I guess the term overrated needs to be better defined for the question to get the proper answers.

DVDsAreMyLIFE

I loved Forza 2. I never played the first one but I grabbed it to hold me over until GT5 comes out.

TwilightZone

Guitar Hero III. Perhaps it's just my musical tastes, but I absolutely HATED over half the setlist. The game doesn't have that feel of the others like you're rocking out with a band. It feels like button-mashing. After playing the set list a few times, I realized I had no desire to improve my score on most of the songs and eBayed it.

I still have GH1, 2 and 80's and still go back to them and have fun. If GH3 would have been the first game in the series to come out, I doubt if I would have come back for more.

fujishig

Agreed. These usually boil down to "this game was liked by a lot of people but I didn't like it for this personal reason." Every game, even great games, will have its detractors, and every game has it's flaws. I'm sure there are even gamers that hate Ocarina of Time or Super Mario Bros. 3.

I, for instance, care very little about Rock Band but the people who do have it seem to like it. I also agree that Mass Effect has it's problems (repetitiveness, people were probably disappointed with the conversation system, length) but I'm having a blast with it.

Now if we're talking overhyped games, especially games overhyped before they came out, I can think of quite a few. Lair, Warhawk (much earlier, before it became an online-only title), Kane and Lynch, etc.