Hater Depot wrote:

Recently I got to thinking about the games that had most disappointed me...

The MPC version of King's Quest V. I know it was early voice acting, but why was it made? Cedric's voice and the ant song are just two horrible examples.

First of all, some points to make:
- Anyone who thinks X-wing is a disapointment, please leave and don't come back...ever... 😈
- Half Life 2 was one of the best shooters that I ever played (and I played it first just last year)
- Steam just works for me. I have about 30 games from them (all versions of Doom, Quake, Half Life, Crysis, Jedi Knight, Hexen, Heretic, Wolfenstein and some more) and never ever had any problems yet.

And the personal disapointments:

TIE Fighter:
X-wing rocks, and everybody knows it. And TIE Fighter was an absolutely much better game compared to X-Wing, from any point of view, but I just can't get over the unsatisfactory feeling caused by flying for the empire... 😊

X-wing vs. TIE Fighter
Dear Lucasarts, please remember that there are people who does not like multiplay much, especially during the times of 33.6 modems.

Far Cry 2:
Yes, nolinear gameplay is good, but so much of it, just kills the joy, and the game with it.

Leisure Suit Larry Magna Cum Laude:
I don't even want to talk about this one. Definately not Larry as we know it, and disgustingly pathetic even for a non-Larry game.

For me it is any Halo game, in my teens when I heard about Halo 2 (Yes I am a young punk...) being this amazing experience of an FPS game it made me lust over the Xbox and thankfully the lust wasn't too bad since I ended up playing awesome Xbox games at the time like Ninja Gaiden or Panzer Dragoon Orta, but when I played Halo 2, I thought I was crazy because I got a game that was so boring and bland it didn't even compare to the fun I had with games like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, or even the Red Faction games. I pretended to like it around people to be cool but deep down, I resented the game. I also tried the first game at that time and found it slightly better but still not as good as other FPS games. I still say that if you want a good Bungie FPS series, play the Marathon games since they have a similar plot but better level design and even the gameplay is better to a degree.

MrTentacleGuy wrote:

The MPC version of King's Quest V. I know it was early voice acting, but why was it made?

It was a rush to be a multimedia award-winning "first". Space Quest IV was handled much better on CD even if it's just mostly Gary Owens.

Star Wars Force Commander. They should have just went with the original 2D-based game. Fun music though.

Star Trek Starfleet Academy. Starships are like fighters.

Deus Ex Invisible War. The areas are ridiculously small and yet it has long load times. Incompetent team who didn't know how to work with the Xbox.

SpooferJahk wrote:

For me it is any Halo game

Loved the first one in splitscreen multiplayer back in the day. Those graphics and huge environments were really impressive if you haven't played Unreal before, which was the case for me. Got the PC version myself after a few years and was pretty disappointed with the campaign though, only the first few levels were decent, didn't care for the other games then...

leileilol wrote:

It was a rush to be a multimedia award-winning "first". Space Quest IV was handled much better on CD even if it's just mostly Gary Owens.

SQ4 CD is incredible because of Gary Owens. 😁 (And he's been hired for the new Two Guys SpaceVenture!!)

Of course it would be nothing without Mark and Scott's comedic genius.

d1stortion wrote:

SpooferJahk wrote:

For me it is any Halo game

Loved the first one in splitscreen multiplayer back in the day. Those graphics and huge environments were really impressive if you haven't played Unreal before, which was the case for me. Got the PC version myself after a few years and was pretty disappointed with the campaign though, only the first few levels were decent, didn't care for the other games then...

Yeah the first game was not too bad actually, the level design is what really killed it on my opinion. 2 and on were a bit iffy, will admit Reach wasn't too bad, have yet to play 4.

Killing floor

Unreal tournament 3: Black Edition

Rage

Ghostbuster (performance and polish wise{was still decent})

tayyare wrote:

- Half Life 2 was one of the best shooters that I ever played (and I played it first just last year)

What about it impressed you particularly? I thought the locations were really bland, when it came to that scene where you have to drive around in a buggy and shoot infinite amounts of antlions or whatever I began to think this game should have stayed vaporware forever.

I think HL1 is overrated too. But the games seem to really work on some people. You have to really dig Valve's brand of corridor shooting and their mute protagonist storytelling stuff.

swaaye wrote:

I think HL1 is overrated too. But the games seem to really work on some people. You have to really dig Valve's brand of corridor shooting and their mute protagonist storytelling stuff.

I thought Half Life 1 was rather good, certainly better than most other shooters at the time and that Freeman was a mute never bothered me tbh.

leileilol wrote:

MrTentacleGuy wrote:

The MPC version of King's Quest V. I know it was early voice acting, but why was it made?

It was a rush to be a multimedia award-winning "first". Space Quest IV was handled much better on CD even if it's just mostly Gary Owens.

I haven't tried the CD version s of the KQ games, but I was quite disappointed by the voice acting in Dagger of Amon Ra. At first I was psyched to try it out since I never had a CD drive as a kid but... I mean, I'm only in the beginning but so far it's bad, like the voices are just random Sierra employees.

Procyon wrote:

I thought Half Life 1 was ... certainly better than most other shooters at the time....

It was a time with a lot of innovation in shooters so I don't agree with that. Half Life had a new kind of storytelling and an intriguing story that worked pretty well.

swaaye wrote:

Procyon wrote:

I thought Half Life 1 was ... certainly better than most other shooters at the time....

It was a time with a lot of innovation in shooters so I don't agree with that. Half Life had a new kind of storytelling and an intriguing story that worked pretty well.

I agree. HL1 with so much story and scripted events blew me away in 1998!

d1stortion wrote:

tayyare wrote:

- Half Life 2 was one of the best shooters that I ever played (and I played it first just last year)

What about it impressed you particularly? I thought the locations were really bland, when it came to that scene where you have to drive around in a buggy and shoot infinite amounts of antlions or whatever I began to think this game should have stayed vaporware forever.

It's the atmosphere as a whole. I liked that buggy level for example, I don't remember this level as just about crushing and shooting bugs, but rather as an immense level with nice variety of challanges and locations, beautiful scenery, immersive ambients, etc.

I'm an old school player, to say the truth. I'm always several years behind the contemporary games. To illustrate, the last thing I played from the Call of Duty series is "World at War" (last year), the newest game I played is Crysis 2 (still not finished) and Far Cry 2 (didn't like it much, too time consuming for me). I finished Crysis and HL2 just last year, Doom 3 and MoH Airborne are still waiting for me to play with them. I still think that the level of graphics in Return to Castle Wolfenstein and HL1 is awesome. I still play Duke3D, Doom, DF and even Wolfenstein3D with great pleasure. and I even quite liked Turning Point Fall of Liberty, the game that everyone cursed with all their might.

So my taste of games might be a little bit old fashioned and coarse. At least it's not not on par with today's digital (1 or 0, "best ever" or "worst ever" and nothing in between) kind of "taste", that's for sure... 😁

Just about everything Sierra released from 1994 I played :

King's Quest VII - Required more video RAM (512K) than I had on my system at the time (256K).
Phantasmagoria I, II - Too easy, cheesy acting, awful characters (just about everyone in I) or themes (BDSM in II), multiple CDs.
Police Quest: Open Season - Game was good until a bug made it impossible to finish. No internet to download a patch.
Police Quest: SWAT - So indescribably awful I find it hard to believe this game actually shipped. Gameplay that rival's Dragon's Lair with lots of CD swapping.
RAMA - Quite atmospheric, but base-8 and base-16 puzzles?

Other games :

Icewind Dale II - I played all the rest of the Infinity Engine games to conclusion, but try as I might I could not get into this game.
Neverwinter Nights - I never quite got comfortable with the camera, the main quest was unexciting, ditto the first expansion pack, and the idea of two characters in a D&D world just seems silly. A lot of tedium in this game.
Escape from Monkey Island - I didn't care much for the GrimE engine of Grim Fandango but loved that game. I didn't love this game.
Dreamfall - I think this game rivals MGS2 for the cinematics vs. gameplay ratio, but at least MGS2's gameplay was good. Not a worthy successor to TLJ.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure - Way too difficult to avoid fighting guards in the castle and on the road.
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders - Mazes and limited funds? What is this, Zork?
Twilight 2000 - Could never quite get the hang of this game, and I was not alone.
Myst - Almost zero plot progression, lifeless worlds, no sense of what to do or where to go, postage stamp sized graphics, Quicktime dependency.
Leisure Suit Larry 2 - only one girl, timed sequences, cheap deaths, perfectly timed and syntax required for parser.
Leisure Suit Larry 5 - too short, no difficulty, poor plot and I didn't like the graphical style.

Well, I thought HL1's pacing was vastly superior to its sequel. You really get the sense that the whole world is after you and that you need to get out of Black Mesa. I perceived 2 more as aimless wandering around, with most of the landscapes being just dreary instead of immersive. I don't think it had too many good scenes, and the Gravity Gun was just a stupid gimmick to mask that and give the reviewers something to write about.

The game being the earliest example of online-only DRM that I can think of, as I wrote in a previous post, doesn't help a lot either. And lastly I always thought that HL1 had a great multiplayer... all the hours and hours of crossfire matches. When I first heard that the multiplayer in HL2 will be a seperately downloadable game I already had a bad feeling, and sure enough they didn't just butcher it, but completely wasted the whole thing 😠

Back to the OP's original topic - Most Disappointing:

Half-Life Episodes 1 & 2 - Totally loved the 1st and second games but *not so fond* of the add-ons, especially the Grav Gun [hate it] and the interactive characters of the Episodes - just give me a couple of absent minded scientists and I'm fine. Disappointed.

Of Light and Darkness: Horrible highly hyped adventure game - I dare *anyone* to remember the hype...

CART Precision Racing: I'm a race head and this sim came so close yet ultimately failed big. SOOO much potential - especially for the time.

Grand Prix 4: As a huge GP2 fan I should not be saying this, but GP4 left me cold.

Myst Uru: I'll leave it at that. If it weren't for "Paths of the Shell" which was very good, Uru would be nothing...

Myst End of Ages: Again, I'll leave it at that. When Myst left 2D/point-n-click the game was over...

More will come to mind I'm sure.

EDIT:

Sabre Ace: When this came out there was no standalone Korean Air War game and was eagerly awaited. Though it had potential it suffered from to many poor design shortcomings, especially in the view system.

Yup gotta say with HL games it's the atmosphere but, now that i see some of the comments i guess i agree some of the levels are bland but, with the story and atmosphere and my lack of skills it goes together well.

you might check out BioShock (story and atmosphere might not like) and Metro 2033 (graphics, story and gun play)