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Biggest disapointment for the year?

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Biggest disapointment for the year?

Old 12-27-02, 11:36 AM
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Biggest disapointment for the year?

For me the easy winner is Metroid Fusion. A true sequel to one of my favorite games of all time had me wet in the panties all year long. But Nintendo did everything they possibly could to sandpaper the sweet beautiful folds of a once awesome franchise.

First of all.. METROID GAMES SHOULD NOT BE LINEAR!! I told myself I would forgive the gay computer system and the retarded forced plot in the game, as long as I got to explore a vast world, discover short cuts, etc. I guess somebody decided that was a little too much in the day and age of Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid 2. Nope. This game is all about Point A -> Point B. The level structure is stupid. The once powerful wall-jump is now useless. There's no items you can get early, there's no short cuts, there's no figuring out how to get everything as fast as possible through innovative use of Samus' moves. It's just A->B. And if you're in a room with a hidden item IT LET'S YOU KNOW. This is the 2nd stupidest thing they did. No more being proud of finding that elusive missle pack hidden in the corner, because, hey you knew SOMETHING was there. It ****ing tells you. What the hell is the point of hiding items when the game tell you there's something there the minute you walk in? (the decoy missle tank and energy tank WERE cute the first time I must admit).

The plot. Why? Why oh why? Why does everything need to be spelled out for people? Is this generation of video game players THAT lacking in imagination? The "plot twist" in this game was dumb, and anybody surprised by it should be executed. Nintendo must have found Square's copy of "How to Write a Story for Kindergartners".. Not only was it dumb, but you are bombarded with it constantly, espically in the start of the game. And then I guess making the game a simple "Get from point A to B" wasn't enough that they had to have the game ****ING TELL YOU EVERYTIME!! "Oh.. you need to go here!" Duh, it's the only place I can go. There's one level near the start, where you enter the Nav Room, it gives you the level map, which consists of a corridor leading down to a long hallway leading to a big room. That's it. And the computer says "You need to find the security switch! But due to security reasons it's not on the map, you'll have to find it on your own!" Well let's see.. there's.. a hallway and a room. This is going to be very hard. I better buy the strategy guide for this one.

*let's out deep breath*

Now. The game IS pretty fun. I mean, it's Metriod fro crying out loud. The whole X thing is cool, the SA-X is even cooler. I think it was a stroke a genius that when you kill a monster, you have to chase the virus (which essentailly is your health and missle recharge) it releases before it revives another monster, or makes an exsisting one more pwerful. Genius I tell you. I like how using missles is simplified. I didn't like that, other than missles, yuo really do not have any other weapons. And every upgrade you get to you main gun just takes it to the next level. Super Metroid was a lot better in that you could mix and match the various upgrades to cerate different weapons, though to be honest, the most I ever did with that was turn off the ice beam. And the ice beam is now in your missles, so null point here. There are LOTS of bosses and that is a good thing. Some of them are even diffucult!! (shocking!!)..

So yes, I do like this game for what'sit worth. I'm just upset at the things mentioned above, for this could have easily been the greatest Gameboy game of all time.

So what, if anything, disapointed you in the gaming world this year?
Old 12-27-02, 11:59 AM
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3 words.... State of Emergency <shudder>

This was supposed to be the game that revived the 'beat-em-up' genre, but ended up being a massive disappointment. I remember anticipating it for months, and how furious I got when it was constantly being delayed.

-r
Old 12-27-02, 12:15 PM
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Hmm... I'll agree with you that Metroid games shouldn't be linear, but the fact is they have been pretty linear ever since Super Metroid. Sure, Super Metroid gave you a little more room to explore, and there wasn't anyone telling you exactly where to go, but really, it all boiled down to:

Find certain powerup to gain access to next boss, which would give you powerup to enter next area. Repeat until Mother Brain is destroyed.

Metroid Prime plays pretty much the same way. Except if you have hints turned on, it tells you exactly where to go.

I remember playing the original Metroid back in the day (we didn't have any swanky auto-maps back then!) and you could go all over the place, pretty much whenever you wanted to. I seem to remember being able to tackle the 2 main bosses in any order that you wanted. That's nonlinearity.

I think the reason it worked better back then, was there were so few power-ups, that it wouldn't ruin the game if you did things out of order.

Anyway, on the question at hand. My biggest dissapointments would be:

1) Animal Crossing: After all the glowing reports I'd read of this one, I can't believe how shallow it turned out. I got bored after about 2 weeks.

2) Super Monkey Ball 2: I don't know what it was about this one, but it just didn't have the same spark the first one had. Maybe it was all the gimicky levels.

3) Eternal Darkness: I know I'm in the minority here, but this one really bored me as well. All the monsters pretty much looked the same, and while each character was different, they all pretty much did the same thing (target head, chop off with sword/knife/whatever). Some of the insanity effects were cool, but most were just embarrassing. (Every time I heard one of those characters yell "THIS ISN'T REALLY HAPPENING!" I winced.)
Old 12-27-02, 01:28 PM
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GTA Vice City, Metroid Prime, and Splinter Cell

*ducks*








Old 12-27-02, 01:32 PM
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For me it was Unreal Championship.

Unless you have broadband and "Live!" access (and believe me we that do not, outnumber those that do by the millions)the games' single player component (when compared to the PC versions versatility)blows goats. No bot customization, no ablility to select which and how many bots in a game, having to create a new profile to change your character, frequent slow down instances on a few levels (while it did not render it unplayable, it is unexcusable for a closed platform) nothing to unlock to keep it interesting (a 'la TS2).

Yes, I have complained about this game before, but for as touted as this game was, they sure didn't do as complete a job on it as it's PC cousin.
Old 12-27-02, 01:41 PM
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For me, GTA Vice. I guess after spending months playing GTA3, I had very high expectations. They should have spend another 6-12 months on it.
Old 12-27-02, 02:01 PM
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Originally posted by jackepstein
3 words.... State of Emergency <shudder>

This was supposed to be the game that revived the 'beat-em-up' genre, but ended up being a massive disappointment. I remember anticipating it for months, and how furious I got when it was constantly being delayed.

-r
I can certainly understand your disappointment. But I'd also like to point out that your frustration is probably related to your heightened anticipation due to the hype and the price you paid ($50 at initial release?). For me, I stayed away, due to the waves negative vibes from other gamers. But last week, I finally decided to give it a chance when BB dropped the price down to $6.99, plus the buy 2 get 1 free deal is still going. So to me, as a $5 (used) game that I was not expecting too much from, State of Emergency was pretty good. But had I paid $50, I probably would have been just as disappointed.

PAL
Old 12-27-02, 02:02 PM
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Mario Sunshine ... I was really looking forward to the game but could never get into it once I had it.
Old 12-27-02, 02:28 PM
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Toejam & Earl III was a huge disappointment for me. I expected Sega to revive the old-school gameplay of the series into a 3D world, but it ended up being an incredibly bad game focusing almost solely on witty dialogue. Bleh.
Old 12-27-02, 02:34 PM
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Starfox Adventures. I had been waiting for this game ever since it was announced as Dinosaur Planet for the N64. That, plus it was Rare's swansong with Nintendo. All the hype was inevitably setting me up for disappointment, but I wasn't expecting the game to blow completely. Pretty graphics, though.
Old 12-27-02, 03:52 PM
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The performance of Sega games, especially NFL 2K3, in the market. Great game, a definite contender with Madden 2003, but it was blown out of the water mainly because of name recognition. That's what was most disappointing to me. This will probably make EA sit on their laurels for next year's Madden, too, since they'll force all the online players to buy the new game anyway.

I was also disappointed by the lack of online support by Nintendo for the Gamecube. Adapter was hard to find, and then when you find it, only one game is available for a fee. I might actually have invested all that money in PSO if Nintendo would just tell us that they have something else planned for online play.
Old 12-27-02, 04:20 PM
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Batman Forever by Acclaim. Doh, wrong year.
Old 12-27-02, 04:27 PM
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Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly - horrible horrible game considering how good the previous three iterations of the series were. Shame that Universal had to ruin an otherwise excellent series. And long ass load times to rival Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex on PS2. A steaming turd created by amateurish programmers who should never be allowed to work in the game industry again. Craptacular!!
Old 12-27-02, 08:12 PM
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Mario Sunshine gets my vote. Most of my posts here, as few as they are, contain only few sentences. My "I hate Mario Sunshine because..." post was at least 10 paragraphs. It was the first game I returned to EB in over a year. I still wince when I see a commercial or walk by a demo station in a store.

Turok is a close second. This game was an unfinished, poorly designed, butt ugly piece of work. This would have been first on my list if Acclaim's reputation wasn't already in the toilet. Thank God I decided to rent this first.
Old 12-27-02, 08:30 PM
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I'll second State of Emergency

runners up
Mario Sunshine
Madden 2003(I love NCAA but didn't care for Madden)
Old 12-27-02, 08:51 PM
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My vote is probably for the Xbox exclusives in general. Crazi Taxi 3, Bruce Lee, Toe Jam and Earl 3, Star Wars Obi Wan, Blinx, and Jet Set Radio Future to name a few. For a console that has so much power and usually the best version of multiconsole games most of its exclusives which should have taken advantage of its power were terrible. It got so bad I sold the console.

This is an area the Xbox need major improvement IMO, but Panzer Dragoon Orta will probably go a long way towards correcting that in a few weeks.
Old 12-27-02, 09:37 PM
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My vote goes for Nintendo AAAs


Mario Sunshine was just OK and Metroid Prime is pretty good, but not as good as I was expecting based on feedback from here. Star Fox sounds like a dud, I didn't waste my time.
Old 12-27-02, 11:48 PM
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Flame away....

Metroid Prime. My reasons, copied from another post I made earlier today:

I am finding very little enjoyment in the game. And I'm not being a 'fanboy' or anything... MP was one of the primary reasons I got a Gamecube. I loved Super Metroid, and was really looking forward to Metroid Prime. I was completely willing to give it a chance. But it simply let me down.

It just blows my mind when I see people say something like MP is the best game they've ever played. Apparantly Nintendo released two version of the game or something, because the best word I can find to describe this game is "boring". Yes, it bores the hell out of me. The combat is incredibly undynamic and inane... auto-lockon to enemies with zero AI! And do it over and over again to the exact same enemies every time you backtrack through a location! Whoopeeeeee! And quite frankly I'm fed up with boss battles myself, which this game seems to have tons of. Find its weak spot and/or pattern and exploit it, and repeat and repeat and repeat until it dies. Oh how original. I just find it mind-numbing.

I also find it dull as an "adventure game". Could a game possibly have any more of a linear structure than Metroid Prime? Go here, find this, open this, kill that, jump here, shoot those four buttons to open door, activate switch to lower/raise water level in room, and on and on and on, encouraging absolutely no real exploration or problem-solving skills. Just one unoriginal puzzle after the other. And the worst part is, it's so linear that you have to do the exact same boring thing every time you replay an area after dying. I just got absolutely fed up with having to do that about half way or so through that I quit on the game.

And don't even get me started on the morph ball. It could have been used in such interesting ways, but it's primary use is as a key, a key that lets you into any passage you couldn't otherwise get through or to without the morph ball. Very, very little creativity went into the utilization of the morph ball, and while it may be fun as hell to control, that aspect of the game greatly disappointed me.

And the controls....ugh. It still baffles me as to why the c-stick isn't used to look around. Would it have been that hard to implement? Why did they make it so you cannot look around and move at the same time? They say the game has 'simplifed controls', but what's so simplified about a control scheme if it just makes doing something integral to parts of the game even harder? I hate having to stop movement just to look around, and switch back and forth every half second, when I'm in the heat of combat. It's nothing but cumbersome in my opinion.

I dunno. It's a beautiful game with pretty tight level design and always "something to do" (whether or not I find that 'something' as dull as can be), but there's no way I'd label MP "game of the year". Biggest disappointment of the year for me. Yes, that is a very minority opinion, but I'm sticking to it.
Old 12-27-02, 11:57 PM
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My vote goes for Wreckless.

I was looking forward so much ever since the first preview for Wreckless (aka Double Steal) came out back in April '01. I didn't find out that they took out the Free Roam and being able to run over people till after I got it. Needless to say I took it back to EB 2 days later.
Old 12-28-02, 12:08 AM
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Originally posted by tha_dvd_man
Flame away....

Metroid Prime. My reasons, copied from another post I made earlier today:

I am finding very little enjoyment in the game. And I'm not being a 'fanboy' or anything... MP was one of the primary reasons I got a Gamecube. I loved Super Metroid, and was really looking forward to Metroid Prime. I was completely willing to give it a chance. But it simply let me down.

It just blows my mind when I see people say something like MP is the best game they've ever played. Apparantly Nintendo released two version of the game or something, because the best word I can find to describe this game is "boring". Yes, it bores the hell out of me. The combat is incredibly undynamic and inane... auto-lockon to enemies with zero AI! And do it over and over again to the exact same enemies every time you backtrack through a location! Whoopeeeeee! And quite frankly I'm fed up with boss battles myself, which this game seems to have tons of. Find its weak spot and/or pattern and exploit it, and repeat and repeat and repeat until it dies. Oh how original. I just find it mind-numbing.

I also find it dull as an "adventure game". Could a game possibly have any more of a linear structure than Metroid Prime? Go here, find this, open this, kill that, jump here, shoot those four buttons to open door, activate switch to lower/raise water level in room, and on and on and on, encouraging absolutely no real exploration or problem-solving skills. Just one unoriginal puzzle after the other. And the worst part is, it's so linear that you have to do the exact same boring thing every time you replay an area after dying. I just got absolutely fed up with having to do that about half way or so through that I quit on the game.

And don't even get me started on the morph ball. It could have been used in such interesting ways, but it's primary use is as a key, a key that lets you into any passage you couldn't otherwise get through or to without the morph ball. Very, very little creativity went into the utilization of the morph ball, and while it may be fun as hell to control, that aspect of the game greatly disappointed me.

And the controls....ugh. It still baffles me as to why the c-stick isn't used to look around. Would it have been that hard to implement? Why did they make it so you cannot look around and move at the same time? They say the game has 'simplifed controls', but what's so simplified about a control scheme if it just makes doing something integral to parts of the game even harder? I hate having to stop movement just to look around, and switch back and forth every half second, when I'm in the heat of combat. It's nothing but cumbersome in my opinion.

I dunno. It's a beautiful game with pretty tight level design and always "something to do" (whether or not I find that 'something' as dull as can be), but there's no way I'd label MP "game of the year". Biggest disappointment of the year for me. Yes, that is a very minority opinion, but I'm sticking to it.
This nicely sums up my thoughts on the game as well. I might even go a step further and say I didn't like the graphics as much as other people. The ball effect looks great for sure, almost like pre-rendered graphics, but the rest is very drab, plenty of jaggies. I liked Halo's FPS graphics more, especially with the bump mapping. However the level design of Metroid is a bit nicer, at least the indoor stuff. I really enjoyed some of the outdoor stuff on Halo.

Another game I would put on this list is Vice City, but after not finding the first too compelling, it would be hard to put this on my list as well. The map addition was nice, but the shooting controls still suck (when they try and put FPS stuff in the game it fails miserably) and the fragility of cars is still cumbersome and unrealistic for me.
Old 12-28-02, 12:17 AM
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I remember way back when I said how crappy Eternal Darkness was and I caught slack for saying it. I just thought it was pointless and after about 8 chapters I had no intention of going on.

State of Emergency is so bad I can't believe that it was actaully made. I mean it was pure crap. Poor graphics, boring missions and countless other problems just ruined this game. And they are making a second one huh? I can't believe it.

Oh.....and Godzilla sucks. I bought it for my wife cause she liked that fact that she beat me when we played the in store demo. When I get 3 more Wavebirds and can play 4 people at one time I might like the game a bit more but till then it's a very weak game.

Right now I'm trying to figure out if I like Shenmue II. I just bought it and so far I'm not to crazy about it. I've barely played it since I got Splinter Cell for Xmas but I think Shenmue II will collect dust for some time and just might fade towards the bottom of my collection.
Old 12-28-02, 12:34 AM
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GTA: Vice City

Entertaining for the first 5 hours but got bored myself (Steal, Drive, Murder, Repeat). In no rush to complete the game ( If ever ). Not really my game Genre but thought i'd give it a try becuase of the hype and reviews.
Old 12-28-02, 02:34 AM
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Biggest disapointment for the year...

...this thread.
Old 12-28-02, 04:44 AM
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Metroid is in this thread (Fusion or Prime)? The world is going to hell...
Old 12-28-02, 08:26 AM
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Originally posted by cubanx
GTA: Vice City

Entertaining for the first 5 hours but got bored myself (Steal, Drive, Murder, Repeat). In no rush to complete the game ( If ever ). Not really my game Genre but thought i'd give it a try becuase of the hype and reviews.

This was my same thought on GTA 3. Bad graphics too.......

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