Tell GR: What's The Biggest Disappointment Of 2012?

The lack is Vita releases. The killer app for the console still isn't there yet. I am also disappointed in how many ports there were for WiiU which made it a must-not-buy for me.

There were also just a lack of good games this year. Not as many as last year. The really great ones didn't get released into the last quarter of the year and just a spot here and there throughout the rest. Hopefully next year will be better.

Starhawk. Great concept, horrible execution.

What isn't the biggest disappointment in gaming of 2012?

The hipster gamer strikes again. You're a hero.

If you really thought everything video game related was disappointing this year, I feel very bad for you. Never has a year gone by that didn't contain at least a few games I loved.

As far as disappointments go, I'm probably going to have to go with Neverdead. Such a truly wasted game. It had real potential with such an interesting mechanic... too bad it was so boring and horribly executed.

Like a lot of players, I was also severely disappointed with the ending of Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect is one of my all time favourite trilogies and games in general. I love the series, I was greatly interested in the characters, their pasts, personalities. I was also interested in the universe itself - its locations, cultures, histories etc. The games were all about choice and most of the time, I would try and do what I personally felt "was right" - regardless of the Paragon or Renegade points that may ensue. When I first played Mass Effect 2 (spoilers ahead), doing Legion's loyalty mission, you have the option to destroy a bunch of Geth, or spare them. I figured "I fought the Geth in ME1, I'm fighting them again in ME2, regardless of Legion, sorry, they've gotta go" - I felt it was the right thing to do.

I was severely disappointed that despite all the choices, all the actions and reactions from ME1, to ME2, to ME3 (as I had imported my character through each game on PC) the ending came down to a "blue" or "red" ending with a secret "green" ending. Again, I chose to do what I personally felt was the right thing (the "blue" ending) but... it just disappointed me that the ending came down to a very simplified choice and regardless of your actions building up to the finale, it all came down to three colours. The epilogue was also disappointing because there were so many unanswered questions, loopholes etc.

I'm happy that Bioware at least offered an extended, slightly changed and "better" ending for free after this... but I wish they hadn't had to do that to begin with. :/

A wall of text like this deserves a tl;dr.

No clue what you had to say, other than scanning and seeing "ME" over and over.

For future reference, probably no one cares about you not reading a post. Save your energy.

The ending was fine! I still wish people would stop complaining about the ending when BioWare fixed it for FREE!

Well, like I said - I was disappointed with the original ending, but at the very least, Bioware did rectify the ending by making some adjustments (answering unanswered questions) as well as giving a further explanation to what happens afterwards - all for free. I'm happy Bioware did that, I just wish they didn't have to, to begin with.

I still don't know which ending I saw, since I hopped on the bandwagon pretty late.

I'm going to pick on Nintendo, because I can. The Wii U has been a huge disappointment for me. Beyond the standard launch bugs, it's just lackluster from top-to-bottom. Moreover, I fear that they have seriously Dreamcasted themselves this time.

I feel the same. The Wii U just doesn't have the massive fad appeal that the Wii had to carry it though.

"fad appeal" (chuckle)

The fact that bioshock infinite didn't come out. But also mass effect 3. I was a super mass effect fan, and I can't remember being more excited for a release like I was for me3 in a long time. The game just felt lazy to me, like the writers just got writers block and decided to settle on what they did. It's not just the ending that disappointed even the small things such as tali's face really let me down.

Gotta love the whole photoshopped stock photo for the reveal of Tali's face. :P

I didn't get to see it :( Also because of my choices she killed herself. So yeah, not doing so good as far as Tali is concerned.

Also **** spoiler warnings on games that have been out for a long time.

A lackluster attempt at depicting a character's face is a legit disappointment but a lackluster attempt at depicting the end of the galaxy isn't? Sorry, Dan, but both of these issues show a lack of thought and effort. The problem is that fanboys went WAY too far, not that they were disappointed.

To me it's a tie between the Vita small games library, with CoD:BO:D as the crowning achievement of crap, and GTA V not being released this year.

Use your tears for lube. There's always a silver lining, buddy.

For me personally, Diablo 3.

The RMAH does affect the game for me, it takes away the "feel" of being happy of finding a better weapon or armor, now you can just go to the auction house and buy what ever you need. If anyone ever played D2 here, knows the feeling I'm taking about :)

I haven't played at all recently but last time I played the barbarian was the top choice to play the game without dying a million times by using a build that I used myself that is SO STUPID.
You don't hit anything, you just run and it creates tornado's, the tornado kills and the life leech keeps you alive, what a badass barb! -_-

The PVP is still not there.

Maybe Diablo 2 was one of my first games and that's why I feel it could never get even close to it.
The gameplay isn't bad but there's many little things just dragging it down. They have a good core but they need to refine it much, much more!

You're not the only one. Numerous people (myself included) who played Diablo I and II extensively prior to D3's launch found D3 a huge disappointment.

I bought the Diablo Battle Chest after I'd played WoW for a while. Played D2 and the expansion quite a bit (not hardcore, or "Hardcore"). D3 was a shell of D2. RMAH cheapened the entire experience.

After playing through a few times I (and my friends) had no reason to keep playing because we could just as easily spend less time and more money maxing out our characters (Not saying this didn't exist before because of farmers, just sayin').

I'm not even going to address the class imbalances and useless skills.

Crap... I totally forgot about D3. Maybe I found D3 so disappointing that I actually forgot about it? :P

Numerous specific systems are missing. The old item crafting system was completely opaque, had virtually no in-game instructions, and demanded everything of the user to get any kind of results out of it. Naturally Diablo II fans (who probably went on to enjoy the Souls games a lot) took to it like Tony Montana took to cocaine. This combined with Diablo II's complex and fully customizable skill system within a proper difficulty curve and a boss-run metagame that drove item discovery. The item lists were not merely long but deep. Strip that out. Slap a coat of oversaturated day-glo paint over it. There is Diablo III - bereft of everything that made Diablo II special with a thick coat of generic sauce and mandatory helping of rancid writing sprinkles.

In less hyperbolic language: Diablo III is a generic badly designed hack-n-slash. It is a sequel to a non-generic well-designed hack-n-slash. It is obvious D3 was made by people who did not understand what made D2 good.

We get notifications to replies to our comments?!?

It is quite possible. It would be a major effort. They would have to reincorporate or reinvent as many of the old crafting systems as possible. They would also have to fix the numerous pitfalls of Hell mode. Further they would have to redesign the itemization to be more in line with D2, where many non-standard items* were very useful in interesting ways. Bumping up the level cap to recreate the feeling of the 'unattainable' level 99 would also help. There's no fixing the utterly rancid writing and plot in D3, but that's neither here nor there - nobody played D2 for the story, but at least it stayed out of the way of the game in both cases.

*Numerous items had stats which were not slot-optimal for the characters wielding them but they did possess unusual buffs that, in educated hands, could prove far more beneficial than bonuses to vitality and the player's core combat stat.

If it makes you feel better, Torchlight II was a much better game than Diablo III. I even have a friend who worked on the game and she refuses to initiate any conversation about it. It's like a secret occult over there at Blizzard.

Diablo III as a game in the making for 12 years was a disappointment. As just a dungeon crawler it was fine. Fan boys need to quit whining. 12 years ago dungeon crawlers were the pinnacle of PC gaming, but times have changed. Its the change that disappointed most people not the game. Sure it could have been better, but it was solid.

"Solid" usually refers to a game that is worth one's trouble in spite of flaws. Fallout: New Vegas is a solid game. Fallout 3 is solid. Deus Ex: Invisible War is solid. Final Fantasy VIII is solid. These games have obvious flaws (New Vegas is glitchy - 3 is glitchy, poorly written, badly designed, takes a giant dump on series lore and uses level scaling - Invisible War is a game designed by committee and it's clear the people who made it were not exactly sure what they were doing; the game feels deeply schizophrenic - Final Fantasy VIII introduced level scaling and the junction system was easy enough to game to the point that combat was completely broken) but they should be played through at least once in spite of those flaws because they are worthwhile games all the same. Diablo III does not merit such a distinction. It is markedly inferior to the game which preceded it in every way that actually matters and is objectively a badly designed game. It had more QA time than most games have development time.

Yup, instead of D3, I should've been patient and got Torchlight 2. Buyers regret there

That's true too. That's the disappointment from the game and not the genre. Blizzard seemed to have dinked around with it for a while then just decided, "Meh, gotta finish it some time" and just rushed it out the door. It felt very repetitive and just boring towards the end, plus the loot sucked.

IMO it was the year of awful endings. Mass Effect 3, Assassins Creed 3 and Farcry 3 come to mind.

Anyone else find Xcoms last level to be very very underwhelming after dozens of epic, punishing battles in the last half of the game?

Mass Effect 3 started disappointing me before I got to the end of the prologue. Anyone who made it through a 12th grade English course could have walked them step-by-step through the flaws in their own storytelling. The worst part wasn't the ending itself. It was the massive complaint-storm surrounding it and Bioware's (and by extension game 'journalists' like Colin Moriarty's) unbelievably incompetent handling of it. The way seemingly independent writers who apparently did not know one another jumped to Bioware's defense used the same language as not only one another, but Bioware's own employees, pushed the situation beyond suspicious and into the territory of the obviously untrustworthy. On top of all this, the cherry on the sundae, were 'professionals' who do not pay for the games they play, chiding those who do for being 'entitled'. I didn't put a word into the air on either side. I'd stopped caring long before the matter went pear-shaped.

To clarify my second-to-last sentence above: I do not recall saying a single thing that can be properly construed as endorsing the 'retake' bunch and their effort to get Bioware to make a saving throw against Casey Hudson's pretentiousness. I did not endorse their cause or support it. That they were on the right of an argument in dramatic and literary criticism didn't make their methods palatable.

It's impressive they were able to at all. Just thinking of it. They got a major corporation, to whom they had already given their money with no chance of getting it back, to admit they'd screwed up on a level that, as I said, a competent high school student could have warned them off. I'm guessing the 'extended cut' was already in the works well before launch but the only difference was that they didn't charge for it. You know you've screwed up when a fanbase as loyal and devoted as Bioware's turns on you. You have, as Jeff Foxworthy would put it, gone beyond mistake into the realm of faux pas.

Biggest disappointments this year, hmmmm. Resident evil operation raccoon city was awful. RE 6 was also a disappointment.
Medal of Honor warfighter was somewhat of a disappointment to me. It wasn't so much that I didn't enjoy the game, believe me I spent a lot of hours on it and had fun. It had to do more with the lack of polish and its extremely buggy. In multiplayer, the maps had horrendous texture loading issues. I hate to say it but frostbite 2 does not look great on consoles. :(
I guess my absolute biggest disappointment in 2012 is all these new games coming out and our generation of consoles not being able to deliver top notch visuals.

I didn't buy any video games this year that would piss me off. So, I have no disappointments for me personally. However, I feel Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD would be a disappointment to everyone to bought it, because of nostalgia.

Jonathan and I celebrated the Tony Hawk revival by playing THPS2 on the Dreamcast (which btw, is not only cheaper than the THPS HD remake, but a FAR superior game overall). So yes I agree with you completely, anyone who bought THPS HD for nostalgias sake is an idiot when they could have spent that money and bought the PS1/DC/Xbox versions.

Absolutely THPS HD was a disappointment. 15 seconds into the demo I was like "Nooooooooope."

AC3 easily biggest disappointment.

The thing about ACIII is that it is an excellent game. The combat and free-run (tree-run?) mechanics are spot-on, and the world they built is absolutely gorgeous. But the story is absolutely terrible. I'll even give them the first half - building up support for the revolution, and being involved in major events leading up to the War was fun (so was the Haytham "reveal"). But then the game veers off the revolution, squanders all this drama it had built up between father and son, and abruptly ends on a sour, unsatisfying note. And then Desmond's story ends on a sour, unsatisfying note. Such a waste.

Biggest disappointment of 2012? Ill let you know on December 22nd.... (insert ominous music)

That makes me wonder how many people would commit suicide first before suffering from the world ending.

Id want to see the end, anything that ends the world is worth seeing... how many idiots would record it on their phones out of habit is the bigger question.

Nasa released a video and statement telling people the world wasnt going to end because they kept getting suicidal emails from people asking.

If the world turns into Shadowrun I'm going to buy a big bottle of booze and drink it. Then I'm going to jump for joy and click my heels in mid-air because I live in Shadowrun and that is awesome. Then I'll get queasy from the booze/acrobatics combo and get sick all over my floor.

The online gaming community. For me at least, this year has been the most frustrating year for me to bare. People already called me old before but this year, i just couldn't! From people complaining small changes to games that didn't come out to attacks, yes i said attacks, on game staffers cause they don't share the same view of the community... when it's THEIR GAME!

The good news though, is that there is a growing vocal minority who are standing up to this. They appreciate the game given to them and share helpful feedback to the developers. It's too bad that the other side still well... let's say that for years I'm trying to have some friend play online with me but they always say the same thing "I don't want to be called a F*%".

My love life.

Deep answer? Egypt's "democracy."

GR answer? Fort Whateverthefvck on GW2. Seriously guys.

YO MAMMA!
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Woah **** it actually let me post that. I thought there would be some sort of counter measures to keep that from happening.

Seriously, though, I wasn't disappointed by much this year. Little things that have been mentioned, like the ME3 shitstorm with disappointment on both sides, and a bunch of other things. But in order to be disappointed by something, you first have to have expectations of it to be better than it actually is. I don't think that happened. I saw the writing on the wall for just about everything this year. Hell, I was actually pleasantly surprised by some stuff.

Like yo mamma.

For me? The Dark Souls port to PC which I cannot even play.

For everyone else? Don't know, the Justin and Selena breakup?

Definitely the Dark Souls port for me. I was really looking forward to that game, and finding out what a piece of junk the port was left me so disappointed. Don't think I'll ever buy it, but I have hopes that if they port DS2 they will have learned from their mistakes with the first game.

Actually, ME3 was a bit of a disappointment for me, but the ending was only a small part. I don't really care about simplifying the game into only three endings. In fact, I was secretly hoping that everything would be in vain, and everyone would die, since I have a soft spot for tragic endings like that, so I really liked the new ending from the extended cut, since I didn't even want any part into the whole one-size-fits-all future of the galaxy thing the Crucible represented.

What I thought more disappointing was that after the Reapers finally get around to invading, the game just ignores it for most of the time. I think I read a great simplification on RPS that ME3 wasn't a game about an alien invasion, it was a game that takes place during an alien invasion. The presence of the Reapers isn't nearly as overwhelming as it should have been.

Biggest disappointment though: GTA 5 probably not coming to PC. After Max Payne 3, I had high hopes.

Does SWToR count? I know that was released last December but I'm pretty sure it's still my biggest disappointment this year. I didn't get to 50 till this year than once that happened there was nothing left. Then f2p was absolutely horrible in its execution. It could have been good for the game but somehow they made it worse for me.

I can't believe hardly anybody is mentioning the console killing black ops 2. Just the fact that its fries your system is bad enough the game wasn't that even that good.

I feel some people getting it for PC would be disappointed, but they received Mass Effect 2 which should have relieved them.

Game Revolution and its reviews (most of them)

I think your comment made Daniel Cry... or drunk... probably both.

Far Cry 3 was a BIG disappointment for me, that and not getting to play Bioshock infinite :(

What's disappointing you about FC3? It seems everyone else is in love with it (especially on reddit...)

It's the multiplayer, I loved the multiplayer so much in far cry 2 , that the multiplayer in farcry 3 can't hold a candle to it. I mean you can't even get down on your belly, whats up with that, and the lack of vehicles is sad. plus this one dose not even have free for all death match. Every time I try to go off on my own it keeps reminding me to use my battle cry and then it reminds me to do this and that, its very distracting when i'm trying to shoot. in short i'm not saying the single player part is not good, it's the multiplayer that's bad and silly me for buying it for the multiplayer when I thought it would be as good as far cry 2

FarCry 3 is awesome. Pretty much all the things I loved about FarCry2 minus all the things I hated. Paired with a beautiful engine that runs great on my 680 Lightning whats not to like??

Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City and RE6 are my biggest disappointments. Capcoms been letting me down. I still think the new DMC is gonna fall flat but that's next year. And for anyone who thinks the Mayan prediction about the end of the world,remember the Mayans couldn't predict Cortez.

The Mayans didn't predict the end of the world at all in fact so lets just get drunk, chill out, and stop believing stupid crap.

THANK YOU! Somebody with a brain.

Oh, dayyum, I forgot about O:RC. Thanks for bringing up terrible memories.

Every ending is a new beginning, so I don't really care what anyone believes about 2012.

For me it was SSX, it wasn't a bad game but it's more that because of how much I loved SSX Tricky and especially SSX 3 when I was younger I really wanted this new version to be just a bigger more badass version of SSX 3, which it just wasn't. Maybe it's more a case of a game living up to what I expected but disappointing all the same.

I would've been happy with SSX had they kept split-screen. Only reason I wouldn't buy it, and I won't buy another Skate game till they include it.

I would have said the biggest disappointment for 2012 was the PS: VITA releases. They put out a Call of Duty that was absolute GARBAGE. Thing is, there are even BIGGER fails such as Wii:U - which many people don't understand due to the lack of good commercials - and is doomed to fail due to the price and the lack of interest.

That piece of chit can't even run Far Cry 3 or Crysis 3!

The fact that there is still no Last Guardian :( ARGH I WANT IT!!!

the fact that i haven't had enough time to even start playing halo 4, let alone finish assassins creed 3...

I have to go with the vita. I must say, sony did some seriously shoddy market research regarding what the people want and how to deliver it to them. It absolutely pains me to see how little support the little monster is having (or lack thereof). An the fact that nba 2k13 didn't get launched for the vita, while MBL and fifa did,,, wow,,,

Rage on PC. It was released late 2011, I know. But even to this day, I can't get it to work

Rage was my dissapointment of last year along with APB. I'm still enjoying Borderlands 2 though, that was more of the experience I wanted with Rage so I guess I had high expectations anyways.

Counter Strike: Global Offensive on console. i know valve isn't known to make a good console game but they released it on console so it means they had to support it at least but i guess so far there's still no patch and it sucks

My biggest disappointment gaming wise was Assassins Creed 3. I loved all the other games in the series, but I just can not get into this new setting. The game just isn't fun. I'm around sequence 7 and I just put the game down. I will one day get back to it but tree running isn't as great as I thought it would be.

The fact that Square-Enix still hasn't given in and decided to take millions and millions of dollars from fans for an HD update to FFVII. How do they not understand that they can only benefit from doing it?

Also, my dick size.

It's not the size that counts, but where you get to put it.

I have to admit with Wendy in your name I always thought you were a girl

Fair assessment. My middle name is Wendell, so a bunch of my friends call me Wendy because it's much funnier than my boring first name.

Well there is the Facebook group blackops2brokemyps3 or #blackops2brokemyps3 on twitter or just type in black ops 2 class action suit and click on an activision link and see them cover it up for yourself, they are even blocking people from commenting or posting, deleting accounts etc I know what this feels like from personal experience, my ps3 will only play games off the hard drive or games that have an install. I have been on the phone with support when it first happened now the call centres are shut down. Eb games has been reporting more issues, activision tells people to call Sony and vice versa. I was on the phone with them the day of patch 1.04 and the tech support seemed like he was not surprised at all.

Dishonored. I expected so much of that. And it was just so.....

....It could have been alot more easily. Lets just keep it at that.

Assassin's Creed 3...

The game is gorgeous and the gameplay is fantastic. I love that synching from the high points does not reveal anything. I love hunting. The rope dart and let's not forget the ship battles. Ubi could make a game based on that and I'd buy it on release day. hell make it multiplayer system link and I'll buy 2. Yup the game is awesome...

The story is ... I haven't the words to accurately describe my disappointment

Oh that beautiful ship combat - I wanted to abandon the Assassin's cause and just roam the high seas as a bad-ass pirate.

For me the big disappointment of 2012 was the closure of GSC Gameworld and the cancellation of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. I'm not the biggest shooter enthusiast but it was an FPS coming out in the future that I was actually hoping to play. It had a lot to live up to and would probably have done so.

Forget the ME3 ending - Bioware's writers are incompetent hacks and paid fan-fiction writers and the ending made it so obvious that even the most devoted Biodrones had to admit it. Forget the Mount Everest-sized pile of undeserved praise heaped on Spec Ops: The Line, a game which takes pretension to a level not seen since before Harmony Korine married heroin. Forget the whole Rab Florence flap and what it said about the credibility of gaming media. Forget even the habit (exhibit: Kotaku, every single damn time) of regurgitating second-hand rumors about a PS4 Dev Kit when the only available evidence strongly indicates it does not even exist. A great game was in development by a talented studio and it got canned and the studio went under and I'm mad about it.

Yet another Call of Duty. Not gonna buy however low the price goes.

I'm more interested in new IP's

The Biggest Disappointment of 2012 was Bethesda's lack of support for Skyrim on the PS3. No DLC that was promised. A over six month wait of a patch to fix the issue plaguing the game which didn't do a damn thing, but make the issue worse.

Gotta love that. The patch makes the patch file larger which means that any attempt to fix the memory usage issue will inherently make the memory issue more severe. I should do a write-up for my blog to put that all in one place.

In my personal opinion it has to be the Lord of the Rings Mod for Skyrim halting production because of a cease and desist from Warner Brothers.

I also heard about this BS. What about all the Zelda mods, or Warcraft stuff? I don't see Nintendo or Blizzard getting excited and sending out "cease and desist" emails. Perhaps there is a Skyrim-esque LOTR game in production? Surely it can't hurt LOTRO being as old as it is. Sucks for the people who put SO MUCH time and work into thier non-profit fan-made work, just to get shut down by greedy suits? smh

Anyways, my biggest disappointment in gaming for 2012 is that I spent most of it playing Skyrim: a game from 2011 *looks at stack of games* Just need to finish one more mod, one more character! -.-

Borderlands 2 and Hitman: Absolution, are first on my hit list.

Yeah they creators of the mod said that they would change the title and everything, but Warner Brothers still said no which is weird because all of the other LOTR mods out there.

I had the same problem and when I was not playing Skyrim I was playing New Vegas.

I have played Borderlands 2 for the PC and I highly recommend it especially with Physx unless you don't have friends who own it (biggest regret for getting on PC).