Biggest Disappointment
At GameSpot, we believe that each game must be considered on its own terms. When we evaluate a game, we try to set aside any preconceived notions about what that game is supposed to be or how good it should have been, and we review the game on its merits. However, sometimes it's impossible not to approach a particular game with a certain set of expectations--some games have such ambitious concepts or such good predecessors that you can't help but wonder whether they could have turned out differently. At other times, the developer or publisher of a game contributes to the hype, helping create unreasonable expectations for their products.
A game doesn't have to get a poor score to be a disappointment. Sometimes the level of expectation for a game grows to such proportions, that even a great game can still fail to meet expectations. As a matter of fact, three of these five nominees earned very high scores from GameSpot. But the bigger and better a game is, the more disappointing certain aspects of it may potentially be. The following five games resulted in our biggest disappointments of the year:
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After years of delays, the end product didn't quite live up to our hopes. Gorgeous graphics, sure, but the formulaic and repetitive monster ambushes grew tiresome, and the paucity of monsters also stood in stark contrast to the legions of enemies in Doom 3's hallowed predecessors. Doom 3's still a great game, but it wasn't completely satisfying.
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Months of delays should have given this game enough time to catch up to its competitors in the driving action genre. Instead, Atari shipped a bug-ridden product that suffers from stiff controls and uninspired mission design.
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What was promised to be the "greatest RPG of all time" turned out to be a great action adventure game...not bad at all, but not nearly up to the level of what was originally promised by the game's outspoken designer. Fable was a fine game on its own merits, but it didn't seem nearly as ambitious as how it was presented during the course of development.
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Few console first-person shooters are revered as highly as GoldenEye for the N64. When EA announced a follow-up to the game that put you in the role of the villain, longtime GoldenEye fans hoped for the best. What they got instead was something that played like a cheap cash-in on a strong brand name.
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This might seem like a typo, since Halo 2 easily earned our Editor's Choice award. But considering the lofty expectations for this game, the abrupt conclusion to the single-player campaign left us and many other Halo 2 fans feeling sour. Fortunately, we got over it quickly thanks to the game's amazing multiplayer mode, but a significant percentage of Halo 2 players don't get to play online, and are stuck wondering how come this story has no ending.
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And the Winner is...
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