{"id":6488,"date":"2009-01-07T16:52:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-07T14:52:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-01-07T16:52:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-07T14:52:00","slug":"biggest-gaming-let-downs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/gaming\/6488-biggest-gaming-let-downs.html","title":{"rendered":"Biggest gaming let downs"},"content":{"rendered":"

2008 is a year that many will remember for its impressive catalogue of high profile releases.  <\/span>The standard was high in terms of the quality of games. However, with high standards come high expectations, and therefore let-downs were inevitable.<\/p>\n

Just to clarify, a game need not be a complete and utter failure to make this list. It is merely a list of games which garnered more anticipation in the months leading up to their release, than they did critical acclaim. <\/p>\n

1.       <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (PC)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Touted as the World of Warcraft (WOW) killer, AOC first surfaced via the rumor mill in 2003. As a spin-off of the popular Robert E. Howard novels, the concept of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) based in the world of Hyboria garnered huge support. <\/p>\n

Officially announced in 2005, Age of Conan took a further three years, and as the years passed by the anticipation only grew. Finally, at a time when gamers were on the lookout for a MMORPG that could replace WOW, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures went live in May 2008. <\/p>\n

After five years of anticipation, it took only four months for most people to realize that the game is actually rubbish. Plagued by bugs and a clumsy game engine, along with a sub-par role-playing element, Age of Conan has been relegated to “the game that could have, but didn’t” status.<\/p>\n

2.       <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>Spore <\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps its early working title “Sim Everything” sums it up best. A game that aimed extremely high, in hindsight would have taken a miracle to pull off. Spore spent eight years in development, and three years in the public domain. The creator Will Wright, famous for the Sim franchise guaranteed the game a front page spot in gaming headlines worldwide.<\/p>\n

While not a complete failure, the overarching commentary has criticized the game for lacking depth or long term appeal. It’s been said that it tried to do too much, without doing anything properly. <\/p>\n

To add insult to injury, Spore was 2008’s most downloaded game, and its obtrusive digital rights management (DRM) fiasco left a sour taste in many gamers’ mouths. <\/p>\n

3.       <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky<\/strong><\/p>\n

PC Gamer UK declared Stalker: Clear Sky “The disappointment of the year”. A game that held immense promise and ambition was let down by a buggy engine and interface as well as frustrating game-play mechanics.<\/p>\n

4.       <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>FarCry 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

A far-cry from being a complete failure, FarCry2 was perhaps undermined by an over-ambitious marketing team. Technically superb, and a good game all around, yet it could have been so much more if certain elements of the game-play had been better implemented. <\/p>\n

5.       <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>Haze <\/strong><\/p>\n

Originally announced at E3 in 2006, Haze faced a slew of development hassles. Some original ideas and a breathtaking game engine earned it special attention from the media. However, a week plot, shallow and unoriginal gameplay and a short and glitchy single-player campaign earned it poor reviews.<\/p>\n

6.       <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>Sacred 2: Fallen Angel<\/strong><\/p>\n

Its predecessor stood out in the years of cut and paste Diablo clones. It managed to breathe fresh air into a quickly stagnating genre. Unfortunately, unlike its forerunner, Sacred 2 did not bring anything new to the party. Not a complete loss however, as it did manage to provide a solid RPG experience and a breathtakingly beautiful game world.<\/p>\n

7.       <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>Turok<\/strong><\/p>\n

The original Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was a 90s classic. Turok, released in March was relatively well received, but couldn’t  <\/span>make the leap from average-good to excellent, ultimately disappointing anyone who had been dreaming of reliving the glories of the original.<\/p>\n

8.       <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>Too Human<\/strong><\/p>\n

Described by a MyBroadband forumite as a “Marmite game”, you either love it or hate it. Unfortunately, a good percentage of people who played Too Human were of the more negative persuasion. <\/p>\n

An agonizingly long development process of almost 10 years may be the real culprit here. <\/p>\n

Ultimately let down by a poor control interface and repetitive gameplay, it fell sadly short of the hype accumulated during its lengthy development process<\/p>\n

9.       <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>Supreme commander (Xbox360)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The tragedy of this title is that the game itself is a masterpiece, yet its implementation on Microsoft’s console was nigh on catastrophic. Bugs, poor optimization and general shoddy implementation spoilt a good game.<\/p>\n

10.   <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>Shaun White Snowboarding <\/strong><\/p>\n

For many, this was supposed to be the snowboarding game to end all snowboarding games. Unfortunately, the controls and physics disappointed, as did the uninspiring gameplay structure. <\/p>\n

Gaming in 2008<\/strong><\/a> – give your views<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A look at the biggest disappointments in gaming for 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}