After bringing you our first look at overhyped games that ended up being terrible, we went
through your comments and suggestions. You gave us even more potentially-great titles
that came crashing into stores on a wave of hype and left us disappointed. Just like your
favorite video game franchises, we were bound to return with a sequel.
Slender: The Arrival
Slender Man is one of the most celebrated horror game characters on the Internet. The
villain set the standard for horrifying online mythologies before those animal robot suits
of Five Nights at Freddy's even thought about scaring your socks off.
"Aaahhh!"
You'd think with all the Slender Man buzz, and the occasional real-life stabbing in his
name, any game starring the message board monster would have to be worthwhile. Instead,
Slender: The Arrival tries to skate by on a creepy atmosphere and an occasionally-spooky
bad guy. The gameplay is simplified to collecting note pages and turning on generators while
avoiding the creeps stalking you. The game’s main villain occasionally teleports around
and can be seen staring at you in the distance... until he appears nearby and jump-scares you.
That's about it. At least the game helped inspire releases like Alien: Isolation. But
Slender: The Arrival was way too overhyped to justify its underwhelming premise.
Fable III
Following in the footsteps of its predecessors, Fable 3's expansive world was filled with
charm. But that doesn't necessarily save it from its obvious shortcomings. Most of the
game’s familiar RPG aspects were tossed out the window for the sake of making things
easier for the casual gamer. Worse, the gameplay was plagued with more bugs than the streetwalkers
in Bowerstone.
Even with an all-star voice cast featuring Simon Pegg and Michael Fassbender, Fable 3's
technical problems and simplified gameplay hamper any potential enjoyment. Even the game’s
final scenario makes you defend the entire country from invasion… using money. And
it’s no easy sum to attain if you’ve played the game properly. This ends things with an
unsatisfying letdown for those who cleared the Fable trilogy, with no future installments
in sight.
(roar)
The Order: 1886
In spite of its cinematic look, creative weapons, and unique story, The Order: 1886's generic
gameplay didn’t end up being Sony's answer to Gears of War, despite early expectations.
It’s another case of visuals getting prioritized over gameplay. It doesn't help that the story
is linear and offers no replay value, making it feel like a rental at best... Or worse,
an extended PlayStation demo. There are too many quick time events to make you ever feel
like you're in control of anything meaningful. Despite werewolves, zeppelins, Tesla-powered
weapons, and great graphics, there's not much else here. Once promised to be a huge system-seller
for the PlayStation 4, The Order just ended up being short for Order Another Game Because
This One Sucks.
(gunshot)
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric
After the fiasco of 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog, we thought Sega would never be able to bring
Sonic back to proper form. For 2014's Rise of Lyric, Sega completely redesigned the Sonic
crew, giving them lankier limbs, useless athletic tape, random fashion accessories… And possibly
steroids. Ultimately, Rise of Lyric boils down to what we were dreading the most: Another
lousy 3D Sonic game.
Even with a successful TV series to help build up the revamped Sonic squad, Rise of Lyric
falls on its face. Many of the game's segments are hampered by an extremely basic combat
system. There’s also a weird laser called “Enerbeam” that’s shoehorned into the
game way too many times. In an era where Mario has successfully made the jump to 3D multiple
times, we're afraid this is going to be the final nail in the Sonic-coffin. Sega should
just sell the rights to Nintendo already.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5
We had high hopes that returning to the Pro Skater series would mean we’d finally get
a good skateboarding game again. But we were wrong. After developer Neversoft left the
Tony Hawk franchise, Robomodo took over in 2010, producing games so bad that the whole
franchise was put on hold. Somehow, Robomodo reclaimed the reins for Pro Skater 5, along
with co-developer Disruptive Games...but adding another studio didn't make the game any better.
Pro Skater 5 is filled with embarrassing glitches, outdated visuals, terrible controls, erratic
obstacle clipping, and uninspired gameplay. The game’s marketing was entirely based
on the franchise name and the professional boarders featured on the roster, but you'll
have more fun just watching other gamers show off its endless bugs on YouTube. Pro Skater
5 is easily the worst game of the series and a blatant attempt to cash in on the memories
of a once-beloved series.
Star Wars Battlefront
Even though it had all the ingredients of a great game, Star Wars Battlefront ultimately
failed to deliver. Given developer DICE’s history with the successful Battlefield series,
fans expected multiplayer goodness on the same level as Battlefield 4. Throw in the
Star Wars Battlefront franchise, and we were bound for something both nerdy and groundbreaking,
right? Battlefront ended up being all sizzle and no steak. It’s easily one of the greatest-looking
first-person shooters ever made, but it's also one of the shallowest.
Thousands of players voiced their unhappiness with the game, resulting in lukewarm scores
on Metacritic and elsewhere. Excluding the tutorials, almost all of Battlefront focuses
on online multiplayer. Despite a collection of familiar multiplayer modes, everything
just boils down to the same kind of mid-range firefight, which can get old fast. After playing
Battlefront for 30 minutes, you've pretty much experienced all the game has to offer.
This game has a shorter life than one of Jabba’s dancers.
Assassin's Creed Unity
Despite being a perfect opportunity for Ubisoft to push modern consoles to their limits, Assassin’s
Creed Unity ended up offering more of the same kind of stuff that we saw out of the
franchise back in 2007. It doesn't have the awesome pirate motif of Black Flag, and the
French Revolution backdrop gets pretty stagnant. While it's cool to see thousands of revolting
citizens on the streets, it's underwhelming to watch the same thing happening down every
city block.
If that weren't bad enough, Unity is made much, much worse because of its numerous technical
issues. Seriously, it has a ton of glitches. No, seriously...so many glitches. Some of
these bugs are simple visual stutters, but there’s much worse. A glitch where the faces
of the characters don't show up, but their hair, eyes, and teeth do? It's as frightening
as you'd imagine. Still, nothing beats having the game glitch just before your big assassination
attempt on a high profile target. Did Ubisoft delay the sequel because of these issues?
Of course not. Assassin's Creed Syndicate launched less than a year later.
Watch Dogs
Watch Dogs was one of the most highly anticipated launch games for the PS4 and Xbox One, but
it simply failed to deliver. Sure, gamers could hack their way through an open-world
version of Chicago. But after playing for a few hours, nobody really wanted to.
A lot of the fundamental elements of Watch Dogs simply aren't that good. Crappy controls.
Vehicles that handle like a tractor trailer hovercraft, no matter what you're driving.
And that's a major problem, given how much driving you have to do. Also filled with tons
of repetitive side missions. So let's see, poor controls, horrible driving, and crappy
stealth sequences, Watch Dogs probably should've been sent to obedience school.
Enter the Matrix
Remember how amazing that first Matrix movie was? Well, the video game that came afterwards,
Enter the Matrix, is where hope goes to die. The title was a tie-in with the release of
the first movie sequel, The Matrix Reloaded, which received similarly mixed reactions from
fans and critics. As a result, Enter the Matrix was rushed to launch the same week that the
film hit theaters, and it shows. Any game set in the world of The Matrix comes with
some pretty simple expectations. Among them: being able to play as the movie's heroes,
like Neo, Morpheus, or Trinity, while fighting with stylized moves and slowed-down action
sequences. You know, all the stuff that made people like the movie in the first place.
Instead, you end up playing as Niobe or Ghost: two insignificant characters from Reloaded.
The third-person fighting had a lot of promise, especially when you factor in your bullet
time abilities, but it gets old quickly. Sure, it was kind of interesting that Enter the
Matrix helped tell the side stories of what happened around the events of Reloaded. Too
bad Reloaded wasn't much better than a crummy video game on its own.
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