For those who love video games, it's a world of constant hype and expectation and disappointment as move from one game to the next to the next. Some of them live up to those expectations, many do not. A list such as this, for games that disappoint you, is a highly subjective sort of thing and I'm sure that there will be a great deal of disagreement. For the purposes of this list, I'm trying to leave out games that were generally overhyped and may not quite have 100% lived up to expectations, but were still fun, like the Halo sequels and GTA sequels. They were fun games, but didn't live up to the "second coming of Jesus" hype. These are games that I for whatever reason got really psyched about and made me want to instantly run back to the store to return them.

Cobra Triangle (1989)

What I expected:

All the fun of RC Pro Am, only with boats with fucking machine guns. And a giant awesome dragon on every level.

What I felt I got:
4 unique levels that were repeated over and over again and a whole lot of crashing.

All interactive FMV games (early 90s)
You'll notice a trend in this list-- games made by Sega or on Sega consoles, because it seems that Sega were the masters of putting out games that looked incredible but were utter shit. Sure, companies other than Sega latched onto the "interactive movie" full motion video fad, but only Sega, with the Sega CD console, placed all their bets on it. There were a whole slew of incredibly awful FMV movie-type games, but Delsydsoftware insists that we mention Sewer Shark in particular as one that was a huge disappointment.

What I expected:

Being in control of the most awesome movie ever, getting immersed into video games like never before.

What I felt I got:

The worst of movies, with bad acting, shitty scripts and awful special effects and the worst of games, because usually there was some shitty gameplay that led to a stupid pixely video clip or the whole damn thing was just a series of terribly acted video clips that were strung together like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, only half as entertaining.

Ecco the Dolphin (1993)
With Ecco the Dolphin for the Genesis, the graphics looked great, it seemed like a first glimpse of a more or less free-roaming side scrolling 2D world, but in reality, it was repetitive as hell, the controls were confusing and the missions and overall gameplay was at times way too confounding and annoying.

What i expected:

A break from limiting side-scrolling run and jump platform games, a whole new fantastic world of freedom that had really not ever been seen before in games.

What I felt I got:

A buggy piece of shit where I just kept running into shit and couldn't figure out and didn't care to figure out what tiny fucking pixel of coral I was supposed to brush my dolphiny ass past to open up some secret door or whatever the fuck.

Starfox (1993)
A lot of people really, really, really liked Starfox. I, uh... was less than enthused. I'm a fan of flight games, and Starfox seemed to really dumb the whole thing down, with fucking Furry porn and stupid tracks and rings you had to fly through. Fuck that, I'll go play Gradius again.

What I expected:

The most awesome sci-fi flight experience ever, with a cool cast of characters.

What i felt I got:

Veiled Furry porn, a game that was just basically flying along a more or less preset path while some ugly fucking frog screamed at me in the corner of the screen.

Nights into Dreams (1996)
Once again, Sega came out with a game, this time for the Saturn, that seemed that it might be a good argument for getting one of Sega's latest shitty systems. Until, I remember, when I finally got to play the demo at Toys R Us and I realized that it wasn't the free-wheeling flying action that was promised in the commercials-- it was just a whole lot of glitter and a fairy flying on a rail that sometimes got you stuck in weird parts of the screen. Fuck Nights.

What I expected:

Sonic the Hedgehog on crack, without restraints, without limits. Flying around, even in a stupid purple suit, kicking ass and saving the world.

What I felt I got:

Uniracers for the SNES, only without the courtesy of being able to see the track they were making you fly on, so I just ended up scraping up against the sides of my invisible hamster run over and over.

Super Mario 64 (1996)
I know this one is going to get me a lot of hate, because thousands of people think this was the greatest game ever made and it constantly ends up near the top of "greatest games ever" lists, but this list is about my own personal disappointments and Mario 64 is pretty high up there. I'm a fan of the Mario franchise-- I loved the first Super Mario, I loved Super Mario 2 when a lot of people hated it, I played 3 and Super Mario World til my little fingers bled. But when Super Mario 64 came out, other than being in 3D, it didn't seem to add much to the franchise. It was pretty much Super Mario Bros in 3D and the camera controls were fucking awful. Sorry, that's just my feelings on the subject.

What I expected:

Super Mario Galaxy? A huge leap forward in the Mario franchise that would dwarf all previous attempts-- new styles of gameplay, new lands. I wanted it to be like 1, 2, 3, Super Mario Land, Super Mario World all rolled into one plus more.

What I felt I got:

The original Super Mario Bros rehashed in a 3D world with a jittery camera that just gave me a headache.

Final Fantasy X2 (2003)
Maybe I shouldn't have built up any excitement for Final Fantasy X2, but I did. I had played the hell out of FF games for decades, culminating in a sort of a video game nirvana with FF VII and then VIII. Nine I couldn't touch, I felt 10 was coming back on track and then with X2, I was excited about having some hot chicks continue the story line from 10, but it turned out they weren't so much hot chicks kicking ass as much as they were hot chicks killing enemies with shit like pop music. Holy fucking shit.

What i expected:

All the awesomeness of FF VII, only with much better graphics and three hot chicks kicking ass and taking names.

What I got:

The main character was a god damn POP SINGER who killed people with SHITTY JAPANESE POP MUSIC.

City of Heroes (2004)
The world of MMOs is rough. There's always new ones coming out and new ones folding every day. There's usually one that towers above the rest and the others have to desperately struggle to get a piece of that pie. I had played Everquest and World of Warcraft, but I was tired of fantasy worlds and CoH seemed like it was the cure for what ailed me-- comic book superheroes battling it out in a giant MMO world. I was psyched. Until I actually bought the fucking thing and realized that the controls were shit, the art was half-ass and the quests seemed to be designed by someone who had never ever played an MMO before and thought that two dozen "kill 12 of those guys over there" quests in a row was an AWESOME idea.

What I expected:

A first class MMO with the depth, excitement and intrigue of the best graphic novel ever created.

What I got:

Second Life populated with stupid fucking superheroes and incredibly boring quests. Or at least the ones at the beginning were incredibly boring and repetitive, I never bothered to keep going after that.

Assassin's Creed (2007)
Who among us REALLY thought that Assassin's Creed lived up to their expectations? If you said yes, you're just lying to yourself. It looked like an awesome combination of all the best bits of Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto, but it turned out to be a bunch of crappy time travel sci-fi wrapped in way too many cut scenes, too much frustration and too little freedom.

What I expected:

The best parts of Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto and being a rogue in World of Warcraft. Running and jumping and killing people in stealth because I want to because I want to be that bad ass.

What I got:

I whole lot of stupid sci-fi backstory, too many cutscenes, too little action that wasn't shitty or completely scripted.

Spore (2008)
Spore will be forever bronzed and put on a pedestal as the most over-hyped, over anticipated game ever. It will hold a place in the halls of video games as a game that everyone anticipated for years before it was even in the planning stages and it turned out to be complete crap. When Will Wright first began theorizing about a game using procedural generation to create a game of evolution, many quickly declared that such a game would be the greatest thing ever created with human hands.

What I expected:

The absolute future of video games. Once Spore came out, everything, even shit that came out the day before would suddenly look like Pong.

What I felt I got:

What we got however, once it was thoroughly run through EA's wash was a bunch of idiotic mini-games and a simple character creator where you couldn't even express your desire to make a penis monster without getting your account banned.

So, what games were you disappointed by?

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