We’re running our 2014 awards and we need your help. We need your nominations! Today we’re talking disappointments of the year.
I feel as though 2014 was a pretty disappointing year all over. So many AAA games didn’t quite deliver, so many games required stupid amounts of patching and were broken out of the gate. Games were delayed into 2015, plenty of big name sequels didn’t live up to expectations or just flat out sucked.
Here are a few things that disappointed me to get things started.
Assassin’s Creed Unity
Trials Fusion DLC
Halo: Master Chief Collection Matchmaking
Now you go! Leave your nominations in the comments below.
Comments
116 responses to “Kotaku Awards 2014: Nominate Your Biggest Disappointment Of The Year”
Myself.
Hold my hand bro!
Im also going to go with Mike. nah just kidding, you’re a champ *shakes head* haha nah jk (nope)… teehehe messing with you, ur a good egg {fingers crossed}
holy crap i am bored at work. when will this day end.
Well damn, I guess when my mom used to also say
She was wrong. I’m a winner of a Kotaku award now mom, a winner!
Driveclub.
Agreed. Still doesn’t work two months later.
Most games I picked up this year were really great.
The exception was Destiny.
It’s just so unpolished, and I didn’t even get to level 20 before giving up in frustration at some of the “story” mission mechanics (eg, dying in a mission and having to redo it.. without ammo.)
So much playing of that game without tangible rewards.
Hopefully they get around to fixing it in the next year. =D
Assassin’s Creed Unity
Elder Scrolls Online
I’m disappointed by the continued fear in the industry when it comes to risk and profit. So many games could have been out this year, so many of them current-gen exclusives, they would have been better for it, increased the install base of these consoles, and resulted in PS4 and Xbox One having amazing starts, not lackluster ones.
Every time a company releases a console they need to be as hungry as Microsoft was with the first Xbox, put it all on the line, and people will reward you.
But then people will complain about half finished games that are not polished enough.
What? How?
Ah wait, re-read that. You mean if they only released the games on the new platforms and didn’t dick around with the older gen?
Yeah, the current gen not previous gen. We’ve yet to see a game that’s truly exploited the power of these new consoles I think. And as such, there’s no point in buying them yet in many consumer’s eyes.
Yup, I agree. More current gen exclusives would be good.
Watchdogs, without a doubt.
I thought Watch Dogs was last year?
according to Wikipedia, May of this year
I don’t feel the same way although looking through this a lot do agree with you.
serious question here: why?
Pretty much what Geometrics said…
And Destiny.
Destiny
The delay of Batman: Arkham Knight
I’m slightly disappointed at the GTA remake. While it looks pretty, it’s really just the previous game with some make-up. In hindsight, it doesn’t seem like it was worth the full price again…
EDIT: I thought about it some more and while I still wish they added a bit more content, I know I’ll end up playing it for a shit load of hours.
I think the most disappointing thing is that it still might be game of the year!
Seriously though I’m still enjoying it as a second playthrough, the new graphics and perspective add a lot more to the experience than a few extra missions would have (although that would have been nice anyway).
Same man. It was immersive before and now it’s even better. I just wish there was a bit more added. That’s not to say it’s a bad game – I know I’ll end up playing it for 100h min and it’s well worth the price again.
Destiny has to be the hands down winner here.
Playstation TV. I’m liking the ability to play Vita and PSP games on a bigger screen with a nice controller but it just could have been so much more and there is so much missed potential. It feels like Sony really dropped the ball and then stood watching as it rolled down the hill into oncoming traffic where a car hit it and knocked it into the nearby sea at which point a passing seal barked happily and balanced it on its nose before swimming away with it.
Oh, and Destiny.
Watchdogs.
Watch Dogs.
Watch_Doge
much lols
Such disappointment.
many uPlay
Assassin’s Creed Unity – what a shambles…
Destiny – supposedly it once had a story…
Hyperdimension Neptunia Producing Perfection – probably the worst idol management game ever (only redeemed somewhat by the whacky Neptunia humour)
What a shambles indeed!
I haven’t played Unity and won’t until probably long after TW3 is released, but I’m disappointed that it’s wasted the setting of the French Revolution with what everyone is saying is a dull story and poor game. It had so much potential, especially for the Assassins vs Templar storyline…
Definitely Destiny. No plot… become Legend
Kneejerk response is Assassin’s Creed: Unity. After reinvigorating my interest in the Assassin’s Creed franchise by finally getting around to ACIII and Black Flag, the problems plaguing Unity have got me seriously considering abandoning the franchise for the first time – and I haven’t even played it yet. That’s how let down I am.
However…
If we want to exclusively count things I’ve actually played that came out this year, I have to grudgingly give it to Destiny. It’s not that I’m unhappy with the game as a whole, I feel like I’ve more than gotten my money’s worth out of the 100 or so hours I’ve probably played on it (I’ve seen people bitching about lack of things to do after putting 350+ hours into it at which point I say “REALLY?!”). No, I like the small amount of story content as a window into the future of the wold Bungie is building for us, and am perfectly happy running the same content over and over for challenges and bounties, just like I did in Halo Reach, and even Halo 3 back before I was even rewarded for doing so. People complaining about the lack of content are suffering from a lack of perspective.
No, it’s more that lately Bungie seem to have forgotten that some people just like to play for fun. In a bid to keep the hardcore crowd interested, they constantly patch and “balance” gameplay elements that simply do not need to be fixed. Making the raid more challenging by basically randomising whether you can beat it or not, etc. This has extended to the strikes too. I understand they’re supposed to be a challenge but 2 level 29s running a level 28 strike should not be getting completely stomped just because some guy on the other side of the world learned how to cheese the boss in five seconds.
Bungie, it’s not you guys vs. the players. You’re supposed to provide an experience for us to enjoy, not kick our asses by tweaking the code until the game can’t be beaten except by the elite few. Please don’t punish casual players who love the game because of a few narcissists looking for bragging rights who beat your game then taunt you about it.
For the first time since launch I said to myself last night “I don’t know if I want to bother getting the DLC”. That is to say, for our second copy of the game which I’ve been playing on my second Xbox One which I got solely so my wife and I can play something together. I already bought the Ghost edition at launch so my wife’s copy/console already has the DLC pre-paid for, so I could simply migrate my play time back to Xbone Prime and play it there if I want to cheap out. But then I wouldn’t get to paly it WITH my wife, only have us go back to taking turns watching each other. At this point that’s the only reason I might still buy it – because I love playing games with my wife more than I currently hate the experience I am having playing what this game has turned into over the last 2 months. :/
I guess in retrospect I’m not so much disappointed with Destiny as I am Bungie itself.
I played Assassins Creed Unity being a long time fan on the PC. I loved it. Had only 1 issue which was fixed on day one and then I have no idea why people have had glitches, frame rate issues, co-op issues…etc. I have a decent set up but not top of the line. Oh well…i guess I was fortunate.
Great story, setting, side missions. You should play it if you’ve been a long time fan. Maybe wait for all the issues to settle then give it a go when it’s cheap.
I most likely will, I plan to wait for a Xbox One port of Rogue or wait til it’s on sale is a port doesn’t seem forthcoming. Either way, Unity will wait until after Rogue, at the very least.
Another issue I’m having with the AC franchise is this Initiates program they introduced with black Flag. I didn’t play Black Flag until about 9 months after it launched, at which point they’d closed the Initiates site to prepare for Unity. Then apparently it wasn’t ready for the Unity launch? If there’s a segment of content that’s blocked off unless Initiates is active that’s going to continue to drive me up the wall if I’m not playing Unity until right before the next game is coming out. The annual instalment system seems to be leading to a complete lack of support unless you accept the game with all it’s launch quibbles.
What an excellent post. 🙂
I agree in one sense, Destiny wasn’t what I expected. It’s not at all what I thought it would be.
But 5d 2h 36m 28s so far is a lot of playtime for the money. 🙂
Hory Shet!!
Innit. I’m not even a “heavy player”, there are other people doing 2 or 3 raids a DAY. 😮
5d 9h 14m 3s
Wow, even after leaving Halo behind they’re still getting taunting by their playerbase?
I agree with this big time, and I think that your lack of disappointment in the game itself comes from you playing it the right way, with friends (or in your case, your wife). Bungie have made this excruciatingly difficult, but once you have friends to play with, the game becomes much more enjoyable. In a way, not letting you matchmake for the raid means that it really does feel like an event each time, getting your friends together and beating it.
I do agree with the rest of your comment too, Bungie’s focus on keeping the game “unbroken” actually hurts the players who just want to have fun.
I think the biggest disappointment is Xur, any exotic you get will eventually appear in his stock, and when everyone has exotic weapons and armour, are they even all that exotic anymore?
Either way, Destiny was a disappointment, but in some ways, there wasn’t much chance of it not being so, with the expectations so high. At first I thought the herculean effort of creating that much content meant that it was unfair to ask for much more than what they gave us, but playing Dragon Age: Inquisition this week has shown me that it’s entirely doable and it probably just came down to publisher greed and too much developer ambition.
It’s still a game i keep coming back to though, almost 3 months on. Even with a brand new game (DA:I) and Shadow Of Mordor before it, I still played the raid tonight with my friends. There’s something to be said about that.
3DS, hardly had any games come out this year. A number of aspects of Mario Kart 8. Amiibos not turning out as cool as they first looked. No regular version n3DS on show at PAX. @miketarno.
Thief
It promised so much
It delivered so little
It’s the only game i have traded in this year.
I actually didn’t mind thief but I’d agree it was a disappointment and I can see why some people didn’t like it. I thought a large portion of how severe the backlash was seemed more that a lot of people want to or think they enjoy stealth games but when actually presented with a true stealth game they don’t like it.
I was disappointed by Thief mainly because they decided to reboot the world. It didn’t need rebooting, I liked the Hammerites and Pagans and Keepers and crap. Why even reference them in the game if you aren’t going to use them? Oh and getting from one side of the city to the other sucked every time.
The asylum was really cool though.
watchdogs
assassins creed unit (although I wasn’t really planning on getting it myself)
vita (did a single vita game besides freedom wars even come out this year that wasn’t an indie)
Hehe, I feel like you should take some responsibility for being disappointed by Ubisoft TWICE in one year. It’s not like the AC series has a flawless record of delivering games that lived up to the hype either.
“Fool me once” and all that.
yeah that’s why I wasn’t really planning on getting it. I enjoyed the first two but gave up the series after that.
GamerGate
Also
Pre-Order Pants
Also
My financial situation
Ass Creed Unity, Watch Dogs, Ubisoft being shit. Titanfall being mediocre. Xbone unable to run 1080p even after Kinect resources are free’d up. GTA PC delay. Hardly any ‘excellent’ games. New 3DS. Nintendo continuing to be fucking retarded with mostly everything they do. Steam controller being nerfed completely. My life.
Thief
Unity’s optimization
Watch dogs (still didnt deserver such harsh reviews)
My graphics card that didnt fit.
Tf2 scream fortress
I guess a lot of ppl will say Destiny due to lack of content but you know what, for me it was Watch Dogs. Promised so much for so long, we waited and waited and waited through all the delays and yet still the hype and excitement was there…..suddenly it dropped and it was a turd.
Civilization: Beyond Earth
PS4 lack of DLNA support
I haven’t gotten around to Beyond Earth yet but I’m hearing some mixed murmurings, what was the letdown? Too much like a CiV mod than a real game, or something to that effect?
Oh, it’s not a bad game. Not at all.
But yes, while it’s a bit more polished than just a mod, it certainly is a disappointment in that I was expecting something a bit different from Civ 5 gameplay wise.
Can you be disappointed in a game you haven’t played? and even if something is disappointing, does that mean you’re saying it’s bad?
Because I found Dark Souls 2 disappointing but I still think it’s a great game.
Yes. So much yes. The game is still in my top 50 of all time but I was still incredibly let down by it.
To be fair though Dark Souls set an incredibly high bar.
If you swap the two games around, nobody would be disappointed and would consider it a natural progression.
Yes!
The shitstorm of GamerGate.
Seriously, even something like Kojima praising the mobile game Framed only took a handful of @ replies until it devolved into people arguing about GG.
I’m disappointed it became so prevelant. I’m disappointed that it went for so long. Why can’t we just be nice to each other?
I still don’t know what it’s about. One minute it’s about an indie dev giving…ahem…bribes to reviewers, then its a network of reviewers from different networks discussing what they are putting in their reviews, then it’s about feminism.
Destiny for sure. Just mind blowingly disappointing.
God, way to be a Debbie-downer on the whole year @markserrels.
It’s the first full year of a new-generation and it wasn’t until the last week or two that I felt like it finally arrived.
It’s not quite the back part of 2007 when the 360 got Mass Effect, The Orange Box, Bioshock and Assassins Creed in the space of a couple of months and I went “THIS GENERATION ROCKS!”, but last weeks combo of Far Cry 4, Dragon Age and GTA V (the new perspective is a revelation) has me wanting to be locked in a room with my shiny new-gen console in a way I haven’t felt in years.
I know the delay’s are disappointing, but did you seriously want the Witcher 3 and Dragon Age in the same month (as was originally planned)?
Sid Meier’s Beyond Earth. Still doesn’t work on high performance displays. Game overall feels like a civ 5 mod
Biggest one… Definitely Watchdogs…
Lack of info about (or even, god forbid, actual release of) The Last Guardian.
The Coalition’s treatment of the ABC….
Oh, we’re talking games?
Then Titanfall.
Destiny – 5 negative points.
Watch Dogs -3 negative points.
trials fusion – 3 negative points
theif -2
Forza horizon -2.
Walking dead season 2, -2
Bayonetta 2, -2
Pikmin 2, -2
I could go on and on.
Massive disappointing year.
Ubisoft.
Definitely Ubisoft.
The BS around rec specs being over inflated for next gen on PC.
Farcry 4 for being Farcry 3.5 (but must admit only 10 hours in)
Planetary Annihilation.
Arkham knight being delayed (I know it will be better for it but still). Other than that, I haven’t had any major disappointments this year.
MasterChief Collection requiring a 15-20gb Day One patch.
Master Chief Collection for totally refusing to work and not being able to play online and then me finally returning the XBone console AND the game for a refund.
I actually bought the console just for this, and it was a money-grab travesty.
Destiny. Nothing else could come close. 🙁
GTA V PC being delayed into 2015 or letting myself get suckered into paying $150 for the ded-sec edition of Watch Dogs.
Ouch! Yeah, Watchdogs for me too. They promised so much but ended up with “Meh…”
The evil within, could have been so much better, and that Damned letterbox view shits me to buggery.
Destiny
Ubisoft
Dark Souls 2.
I was going to wait for the PC version but the hype got to me. I cracked and bought a copy on PS3 a day or two after it came out.
Now the Souls games have never been very well optimised but the PS3 version of Dark Souls 2 was pretty terrible. Loading times were a pain in the ass and everything felt chuggy.
Then there’s the game itself. Dark Souls 2 felt like a pale imitation of Dark Souls. The world didn’t feel as well realised. The enemies felt much cheaper. Souls games should not have trash mobs dammit. Enemies that are trivial when you’re better at the game, sure. But enemies that are only a problem because you’re constantly swarmed? Nope. Not what I’m after.
It’s not the actual game that was disappointing (it’s actually quite wonderful) but the RIDICULOUS delay of Shovel Knight tops the list for me. Having to wait 6 months for a PAL release was taking the whole “authentic 8-bit experience” a little too far.
AC Unity. The game that finally killed AC for me. I was the guy who defended AC to his friends and pre-ordered everything, the misses as well as the hits. No more. I’m done with this utterly broken franchise until Ubisoft fix it.
The Last Guardian.
(well someone had to say it)
The rampant dishonesty of developers in the promotional material about their products, and the inability of developers to deliver a functioning product in a timely fashion.
Half life 3 biggest disappointment of the year. Game play was non existent, poor visuals, bad audio, and the story itself made Destiny look fantastic.
Honestly I can’t think of any disappointments besides what aaa publishers are doing to the industry. Game wise I generally only play indie or old and reliable AAA titles. I do my research before buying a game, rarely buy new releases and don’t join in on hype.
Assassins creed unity. As one of the die hard fans who keeps buying everything to do with this franchise every year, the dissapointment I felt when the frame rate issues on xbox one outweighed the fun I was having and caused me to stop playing was second to none.
Hand up who’s with me impatiently waiting for Virtual Reality to launch and go mainstream?!!
Evolve getting delayed.
Edit: +1 vote for watch dogs being a let down.
NBA 2K15.. The gameplay has just been destroyed since the last version. Defence is nigh impossible on harder settings and offence can be as equally tough. The whole game seems rushed and hastily put together. Not a happy camper.
AC Unity and Destiny
Assassin’s Creed: Unity
Everything about Ubisoft.
To a lesser extent, Civ Beyond Earth. Not even close to a bad game, but so much wasted potential.
Destiny. The Effort:Reward ratio was out of whack. Server issues.
Patching things that made the game playable.
Destiny
Watchdogs
The NBN
Watch Dogs and AC Unity
Destiny. 500 Million on a unoriginal Skinner box? The original Halo was more open and fun then this more than a decade ago.
Half Life 3
it’s sometimes hard to pick “biggest disappointment” – I mean, do you include marketing hype? Because Watchdogs and Destiny were two games that had been hyped up from day 1, so people’s expectations were enormous. So those two were definitely the biggest disappointment on that regard, but if you take the game on its own and remove any expectations or build-up, and they were two pretty solid games. Not perfect by any means, but 2 games that I really enjoyed playing.
From a pure game perspective, it’s gotta be Driveclub. Months after release, and large parts of the game are still either unplayable or just incredibly unreliable. I mean, it’s a car racing game – the standard game type that is usually used to show off the power of a console, and it’s broke as fuck.
Since we can go with aspects of games: Titanfall’s matchmaking. “Just give me a browser and server list, damn you! The IMC must be behind this.”
I’m really surprised that Halo MC Collection hasn’t had more votes, or did everyone hold off buying it for long enough to know to avoid it anyway?
Maybe because you can’t really be disappointed in a re-release, especially when the original games are still there 😛
For me it was gamer gate. It wasn’t needed. It was bullshit and it still is.
Game wise, it’s the Evil within’s cheap tactics. I would enjoy the game more if it wasn’t so frustrating.
<3
I have no idea what I did to deserve this.
For me, it’s gamer gate as well. As a result of reading about female gamers being harassed and doxxed, my girlfriend has become really cold towards playing games, especially if they have am online component.
Personal problems aside, Gamer Gate is just the worst, whatever you think it’s really about. It’s validated almost every hack media story about gaming culture, especially at a time in the medium where we need to legitimise our past-time of game playing as more than something that kids do.
Some people just need to grow up.
1. Monster Hunter 4 U.
Firstly a Wii U port would have been fantastic and it’s really disappointing not to get a HD sequel to MH3U. And secondly, the massive delay in getting the 3DS version.
2. The AAA games industry.
In the early months of 2013, I really wasn’t sure whether I’d get my moneys worth from the Wii U i’d just bought. I thought I’d get 12 to 18 months worth of fun then grab a PS4. Now here we are at the end of 2014 with the Wii U having a stunning line up of games with must have titles like Bayonetta 2 and Smash Bros (and VC games and indies).
And there’s still no compelling reason to buy a PS4. Just buggy annual franchise games. Is that what the future of mainstream is gonna be? I’m thinking it will take till 2016 before I need to pick up a second console.
Edit:
3. Gamergate
I really don’t know if any good came out of it.
The Australian people for voting in Tony Abbott.
The Stick of Truth, maybe because of all the hype involved. Just left me extremely disappointed
The Sims Team and their “vision” for Sims 4.
Thief,Among The Sleep,TWD Season 2(the story was good but gameplay sucked,because there was none),Alien Isolation(that fucking save system!),Never Alone