Another great candidate lost to market logics (and to overdone bloom 😁 ) : Syndicate (2012).

Really great engine. Really flat story and gameplay.

Guys, cut out the nonsense about the Quake series. All the 3 Quake games were successful as well as popular around the world and a crowd is what dictates the show. Therefore, my favorite game of the series is Quake II and least favorite is Quake III, however I have all the 3 games in my collection. Just need to get rid of Quake 4.

Pretty sure this thread is for personal opinions, and not for arguing. For me, Quake 3 was a major disappointment.

Shadow Warrior reboot was also quite disappointing. However I'm disappointed with every game that you can't change the FOV or turn off annoying exaggerated post processing effects and head bobbing.

lowenz wrote:

Another great candidate lost to market logics (and to overdone bloom 😁 ) : Syndicate (2012).

Really great engine. Really flat story and gameplay.

Great engine, sure. Just get rid of the basement dweller vision that you permanently have in that game. It's like you're a vampire or something...

Rod Primitive wrote:

lowenz wrote:

Crysis 3: great technology, great budget, great voice acting.....half crysis 2 lenght. Totally flat story (no fuzzy interactions between Cephs and Prophet, now more Ceph than ever). More an expansion than a game.

IMHO Crysis 3 was all about Psycho being a crybaby because he lost his suit.

Crysis 1 was a great game. Crysis 2 is the best of the three, I think, even though it's areas tend to be less open and smaller than the first game. But for some reason, I found Crysis 3 to be pretty boring, it just didn't hold my attention at all.

Tertz wrote:

Davros wrote:

Singularity (a bit slow in places, but when it works it's fantastic),

Absolutely agree, criminally underrated game.

I've found it too short and easy. Similar situation with many today games.

I think maybe the game was rushed and unfinished, as the end of the game feels lacking. There's no final battle (be it against a boss, bosses, or lots of soldiers) and you choose from the multiple endings by one action at the end of the game, which feels forced and contrived.

Still a great game, though. It really deserves a sequel, which could fix the first game's flaws.

Putas wrote:

Lo Wang wrote:

You ought to be built for a game like Quake 3, because it's boring to death.

15 years later there is still no better TDM. Same can be said about CTF of Quake 2.

Unreal Tournament (1999) is better than Quake 3 in TDM (or other modes). And Perfect Dark (2000, N64) has the best multipayer of any FPS ever, including TDM. In my opinion, of course.

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

Guys, cut out the nonsense about the Quake series. All the 3 Quake games were successful as well as popular around the world and a crowd is what dictates the show. Therefore, my favorite game of the series is Quake II and least favorite is Quake III, however I have all the 3 games in my collection. Just need to get rid of Quake 4.

Quake 3 is the only Quake I ever liked (I've played all four), and even then I thought that Unreal Tournament (which was released at almost the same time) was better in almost every way.

I've never understood why Quake 1 and 2 got so much magazine space, whereas the (to me) vastly superior Duke Nukem 3D received much less coverage.

I think that Quake and Duke Nukem 3D took the genre in very different directions, in terms of the engine, the overall design, and the atmosphere. Therefore it is hard to say which one is better, and I'm not sure there is an objective answer here.

As for Quake II, well, it got the magazine space simply because it was the sequel to Quake. As far as the game itself goes, well, this is what I thought:
https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/daikatana-quake2/3

But Yahtzee's brilliant one-liner about Quake II being "like inspecting an architectural plan through brown candy wrap" is probably the most succinct, although quite cynical, description of the game. 😀

Apart from tiertex's shitty port of bonanza bros, I can't think of anything else. I can however think of games I expected to be shit but which turned out great. specificly any of tiertex's ports of american arcade games (specificly, gauntlet and ms. pac-man, yes, ms. Pac-man was proudly made in the USA, by College students in fact). Given tiertex's reputation of bastardising any arcade game they can get their grubby hands on, I'm surprised the ports on the master system, which were made by them, ended up on a level comprable to the original arcade games. there's a reason ms. pac-man on the sms is rarely credditted to tiertex and instead to tengen, besides being based more on tenge's nes port, which, fun fact, was made by one of the level designers behind cristal castles.

Any James Bond game after Goldeneye (N64) is a disappointment, since none of them even approach Goldeneye's quality (even today, Goldeneye is so fantastic that two separate other games tried to sell themselves by using the Goldeneye name; Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, and Goldeneye: Reloaded, even though they had no real connection to the N64 game, and weren't even a fraction as good).

It's especially ridiculous that the PC doesn't have a good Bond game. The machine that all but invented the first person shooter *should* have the definitive Bond shooter, but for some reason the PC doesn't even get ports of most Bond games.

Batman: Arkham Origins was a disappointing game. It had a lot to live up to, since it was the sequel to the two magnificent games Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Batman: Arkham City, and when it came out it had real problems, such as some serious bugs (i.e. scripted sequences could fail to start, or you'd get trapped in scenery, and save-games getting corrupted (all the more serious since the game only allowed one save per game, controlled automatically by the game), the AI of enemies would occasionally fail, etc), plus it borrowed (stole) from City too much (parts of City were unashamedly ripped off, including a glue gadget that behaves *exactly* like City's ice gadget, in both games you have to follow an injured female ninja by her blood trail, etc), and you didn't get to fight many of the game's main enemies.

It was still a good game, and had some real strengths (such as it's story, some boss fights, and an interesting city layout) but was disappointing in many ways. I still really like it, though. And I liked it more after playing the final Arkham game, Batman: Arkham Knight, since that game really made me appreciate Arkham Origins more.

Batman: Arkham Knight was hugely disappointing in so many ways. For example, it introduces the Batmobile, which you are forced to use far too much. Driving the Batmobile isn't nearly as much fun as Batman's usual method of transport (using the grappling hook, and gliding through the air) and it seems to be bugged - for some reason, the Batmobile controls a lot better if you're in bumper view than if you're in third person view (and no, it's not just me, lots of people have remarked on this). You are forced to fight against multiple tanks, using the Batmobile, and this happens very often, and doesn't feel like a Batman thing to do at all. And the further into the game you get, the more instances of you vs. tanks you get. It soon gets tedious. Something else that's both baffling and very annoying is that you get to interactively fight so few of the main enemies. Instead, Batman fights them in cutscenes, when you're supposed to be playing a game, not watching a movie.

The city looks great, but doesn't feel much like a real city. The story is depressing, and Batman makes some terrible decisions, which really hurts the fun factor. Lots of people criticise the fact that the mystery of the identity of the Arkham Knight is so obvious, but that doesn't bother me much - after all, once you've played the game once, then you'd always know the identity anyway. But it is bad that it's handled poorly in the game (i.e. when Batman mention's the Knight's real name to Alfred, Alfred never asks for more information).

And the Knight, who knows most of Batman's secrets, tells Batman's enemies things like where to shoot on Batman's chest to hit his armour's weak spot, when half of Batman's face is permanently unprotected at all! The Knight uses (literally hundreds) of drones (unmanned tanks) which Batman then destroys, when if the tanks were manned (even if it was just a hostage tied to the tank) then, as the Knight *MUST* be aware, Batman would not blow up the tank as it would kill the hostage.

And Batman, who *never* gives up, does several things in the game that seems like he has given up.

Basically, there's a lot to like in Batman: Arkham Knight, but there's also a lot to dislike, and to me it's the worst of the four Arkham games. I'm glad it exists, as opposed to there not being a fourth Arkham game, but it should have been so much better.

Hitman: Absolution - no significant innovations compared to >10(!) years old 1st part. No challenge, so casual. No originality in design, boring. Looks mostly as remake with new maps and slightly better graphics. It's also shorter than should.

dr_st wrote:

As for Quake II, well, it got the magazine space simply because it was the sequel to Quake.

It was not even true sequel: other atmosphere, design, made by other people partly.

Kerr Avon wrote:

I think maybe the game was rushed and unfinished, as the end of the game feels lacking.

Short games seems as a trend of late years. Most probably it is strategy to reduce development costs, time and by this to get more profit with investing in more games. Not many today want to try create masterpieces with long development time. Good advertising and bribed press gives clients, anyway, on such unter-games. Above we even saw a fanboy of such mediocre craftwork like Syndicate, somewhere exist tasteless fans of the last Fallout, etc.
Similar approach we see when a series of similar games is created like Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Stalker, COD ... - they do in essence the same game, with same engine and gameplay, only with additional story and environments. They could spend more time and input same content in one greate game, but prefer to release add-ons as new games.
Good game, as I understand it, should last >30 hours without copy-past content. Some popular FPS today like COD get max 8 hours, - it's bad. I've liked Deus Ex: HR, but it should be 2-3 times longer. You pay $30-60 as for full-fledged game, sometimes you don't even pay for a box/CD as you get it online and then... 8 hours gameplay is just confusing.

Still a great game, though. It really deserves a sequel, which could fix the first game's flaws.

Seems today games need 2-3 sequels to gather a masterpiece analog of the past, according to gameplay time or new content in them.

Quake, Quake II and Half-Life were all about the mods. The stock games may have been good (HL especially so) but it was TF/AQ2/CS/DoD and others that made them really great.

Kerr Avon wrote:

Quake 3 is the only Quake I ever liked (I've played all four)

In order to be able truly judge each game of the series you have to play them in chronological order at the actual release time.

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

In order to be able truly judge each game of the series you have to play them in chronological order at the actual release time.

In other words, someone who hasn't played a game upon its release is not entitled to have any opinion on it, ever? Or just that his opinion is less valuable?

dr_st wrote:

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

In order to be able truly judge each game of the series you have to play them in chronological order at the actual release time.

In other words, someone who hasn't played a game upon its release is not entitled to have any opinion on it, ever? Or just that his opinion is less valuable?

It's just less valuable because you just can't treat the first game of the series the same if you started your journey from the second one. In other words, most of the time we get attached to a particular game of the series that we actually played first, which probably means that a nostalgia factor gets involved. Time plays a big factor too because at the time games were getting old technologically pretty quick. just look at Doom and Quake 1. Huge difference in graphics.

Say what? So if we played it on release and have the nostalgia thing going on, are we allowed an opinion? Or are we unable to be objective? And if I played it later, out of order, but promise to be objective, can we submit our thoughts here? Or are those thoughts simply not valuable enough?

What if, hypothetically, a person - who we'll call Michael (Mike to his friends) - fell off a ladder while changing the batteries in his smoke alarm, and awoke in the hospital thinking that it was still 1996. Michael then proceeded to play Quake 1 in 2016 as if for the first time, despite having played the whole series pre-ladder-fall but having no memory of that.

Could Michael - or Mike if I may - submit his opinion here?

dr_st wrote:

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

In order to be able truly judge each game of the series you have to play them in chronological order at the actual release time.

In other words, someone who hasn't played a game upon its release is not entitled to have any opinion on it, ever? Or just that his opinion is less valuable?

At least have the context of what was released then. Quake was released in a world filled with sectors, and lines, and vertex shaded maps at best for 3d. Quake was released in a world where there was very, very few games that had a scripting/programming language open for the users to modify (i.e. Abuse, Duke3D). Quake was released when TCP-IP was barely touched by games at this point (beyond IPX tunneling and direct modem). Quake was released when mouselook and VESA2 support wasn't overly common. Quake was released when player physics sucked (i.e. you couldn't rocket or grenade jump properly in any game made before it 😀)

That's not to say one couldn't be disappointed with Quake in '96. I didn't welcome the removal of the use key and was annoyed by automatic opening doors. I didn't like the soundtrack at first (I expected some Pretty Hate Machine-esque MIDI work given the NIN involvement). I didn't even like the handless, reloadless weapons, weak-feeling shotgun, and the missing pistol/chaingun weapons. The only graphical drawback in Quake I saw then was the lack of transparencies that Build engine and late Doom engine games had done by that point, but given the time, DJGPP, and the mere little things that had to be sacrificed to not cause a stack overflow (like no loading graphic for quickloading), I now understand why.

Quake2 was a huge disappointment for me on release though, mostly for technical matters and content reasons...like drenched dark saturated lighting in GL, no muzzleflashes, noisy loudnesswar soundtrack, and QuakeC being scrapped, which were the bane of many ambitious projects hoping to migrate smoothly to the new tech. and then you notice the terrible 10hz physics you can't unsee!!! delayed grenade bounces, inprecise player movement... all things tolerated by today's Q2 community for granted, the things that make every id Tech 2 game age badly.

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

It's just less valuable because you just can't treat the first game of the series the same if you started your journey from the second one. In other words, most of the time we get attached to a particular game of the series that we actually played first, which probably means that a nostalgia factor gets involved.

I will partially agree with you.

I suppose that it's correct that if you are discussing which games disappointed you (which means - did not meet your expectations), you should probably make sure that the expectations were reasonable, and that may be difficult if you are playing a game for the first time much after its release.

To say something like "Quake disappointed me, because I played it after I played Half-Life, which was much better" is pretty silly. But I don't think anyone has been saying that.

It is, however, also interesting to see how games age. Some age better than others. Games whose primary selling point is cutting-edge graphics tend to age poorly. That is, unless nostalgia kicks in, as you say. In fact, I think nostalgia is the primary factor why Quake II receives 10/10 on Steam/GoG.

leileilol wrote:

That's not to say one couldn't be disappointed with Quake in '96. I didn't welcome the removal of the use key and was annoyed by automatic opening doors. I didn't like the soundtrack at first (I expected some Pretty Hate Machine-esque MIDI work given the NIN involvement). I didn't even like the handless, reloadless weapons, weak-feeling shotgun, and the missing pistol/chaingun weapons.

It's always possible to get disappointed with anything. 😀 But I feel that overall Quake was well-done, for what it is, and as you said - the technological breakthrough was significant. Quake II was also well-done, but without the same level of breakthrough, and with too much repetitiveness (IMO).

I don't see Shadow Warrior as disappointing, maybe because I played Duke Nukem Forever. I played and finished it and enjoyed (almost) all the way. It has a design feature that may be controversial, making the sword the most important weapon on the game. If you forget about that (if you didn't like it), the game is not so bad. The worst error on that game were some spots where the difficulty skyrocketed for a while (two or three fights... there were much more difficult than the previous and next scenes).

But... I played Duke Nukem Forever before Shadow Warrior. That gives you some perspective.

I think DNF (Did Not Finish?) is not as bad as people say. OK, it's not a good game, but not the worst game you can play. The worst errors were a high price and having "Duke Nukem" written on it. I think that if they called it "Deadly guy" the reviews would have been better. But leaving aside the uninspired levels and weapons, I guess most people learned that those things that worked on the past (gruesome humor, sexism, hyper macho man) doesn't work anymore and those happy memories are that: happy memories. They're not a cool gaming feature, because we've grown and get over that things (well, most of us).

I guess it was something that anybody that played Duke Nukem Manhattan Project could feel. Yes, it was a Duke Nukem. It was a good Duke Nukem. But you don't feel as enthusiastic as when you saw Duke Nukem 3D. The same things may apply to the new Rise of the Triad (hey... nobody said nothing about this?), but I guess the entire game mechanics (exploration of big levels, jumps, secrets) don't feel as right as before.

dr_st wrote:

That is, unless nostalgia kicks in, as you say. In fact, I think nostalgia is the primary factor why Quake II receives 10/10 on Steam/GoG.

I should have mentioned that it's more than just nostalgia it's the impressions that we get when we play a game for the first time and then in transfers into nostalgia. 3Dfx played a big role in popularity of Quake II as well. I believe that I played Quake II before I played Quake 1 which is why I like Quake II more. I guess that's just how our psychology works. At the same time I like Quake 1 as well just less than Quake II.