Well this year was FULL of fail, so it was hard to narrow it down to just 4 losers (or unfortunate events).

Here we’ll talk about the biggest failures, or disappointments of the year. It may be games that sucked, games that failed to live up to expectations, or something that just sucks in the modern state of the industry that started popping up a lot this year.

So read on! Here are our 4 biggest disappointments/failures of 2010!

Series getting rebooted without any need to do so

There’s 2 games in particular I’ll talk about here, but I’m sure there’s tons more series getting reboots without really needing to. First is Devil May Cry: A series that has TONS of untold stories (We know next to nothing about Sparda, Dante’s mom, Nero’s demon arm, and there’s probably more), yet they randomly decide to make the new game into a reboot. Not only that, but Dante’s design and overall personality is pretty much a mirror opposite of his normal personality. And then there’s the fact that it’s developed by a terrible company that has yet to make a proper game, but that’s not what this entry is about, it’s about pointless rebooting series that don’t need rebooting.

Next? Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. It basically eliminates 24 years of vastly detailed Castlevania history for no reason, has nothing to do with Castlevania (other than some character names coming back from previous games (not the characters, just the names)), has gameplay that’s completely different from anything else in the series and… well, there’s the fact that it was just another God of War knock-off… Basically, there was literally no reason for this to be Castlevania (other than, you know, generating more sells than just calling it “Lords of Shadow”), and did Castlevania just suddenly have no more story to talk about? A series that can go from medieval vampire hunters to a modern day japanese kid getting possessed by Dracula’s soul suddenly doesn’t have anything good to tell, so they decide to completely completely destroy and redo the story as a whole? What bullshit.

So yeah, there might be more unneccessary reboots out there, but those are the 2 that really caught my eye. And it’s really disappointing for such great series to not only get rebooted when it’s not needed, but for said games to be shit just really sucks(well, we’re not sure about DmC yet, but if Heavenly Sword and Enslaved are any indication, Ninja Theory is completely unable to make anything of quality).

Heavy Rain

Well, this isn’t just on here because it wasn’t a good game, or because it didn’t live up to the insane amounts of hype it has gotten, but because it’s the worst game of the generation, and a fine candidate for the worst game ever. I mean, at least Shaq Fu, Superman 64, E.T., Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and a few more (yes, I have all of those and I play them when I’m REALLY bored) actually have gameplay, and the whole “so bad it’s good” thing going for them. Heavy Rain is a movie, not a game. Problems: 1. the gameplay elements are horrible and buggy 2. They messed up what should be the easiest thing in 3D gaming by now: WALKING… that’s a clear sign of a terrible game 3. not only is it a movie rather than a game, it’s a bad movie… it’s a REALLY bad Saw-ish story with a REALLY bad antagonist (seriously, it’s a fucking joke) and none of the characters are interesting. There was so much damn hype for this game, and it amounted to nothing. The “Your character can die and the game goes on!” thing… well, sort of true, but only a few scenes even have the possibility of a character dying so it’s pointless. They also talked about how “There’s multiple endings!”… nope, there’s ONE ending, and only different prologues that are occasionally not resolved… The culprit is always the same person, and nothing is actually interesting in the plot ANYWAYS. There’s no point to replaying the game since the story never ACTUALLY changes.
Heavy Rain isn’t “so bad it’s good”, it’s just plain terrible.

Goldeneye 007

I really wanted to like this. Because Goldeneye on the N64 was such a tremendous game that revolutionized the console FPS genre, and it’s still fun to play now. This one? Well, it’s not terrible, if you like boring modern FPS (specifically Call of Duty, since it’s an exact clone), but it’s just so different from the original and nowhere near as fun. Here, you don’t have a health bar, settling for regenerating health which sucks, you have no mission objectives (well, you take pictures of things/hack computers with a smartphone, but that barely counts, where’s all the awesome gadgets?), a lot of the cool guns are gone, the level design was changed to boring linearity despite being originally based on, you know, LEVEL DESIGN. The only sort of good thing in the game is the “hardest” difficulty setting (which is a walk in the park anyways) where you actually have a health bar (and that almost makes the game fun, rather than one where you can Rambo your way through). Oh, and the multiplayer was lame, and features NONE of the classic levels, changing them to really bad levels. Oh, and you can only carry 2 weapons at once, and chairs don’t explode anymore. FAIL.

Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV was supposed to be great. Square-Enix’s second take on a Final Fantasy mmorpg. Final Fantasy XI wasn’t for everyone, but those that sticked to it found in it one of the deepest Final Fantasy story ever. It’s also nowadays one of the most content filled mmo out there.
So it came as a surprise when FFXIV came out with no sign of any prior experience in the realm of mmorpgs. The game had an awful interface, lacked in content beyond doing a few quests a day and crafting/gathering as well as a few and fare between storyline for each town. Yes, it’s a new mmorpg, but you’d think Square-Enix would have been none the wiser and waited for the game to be a match to other mmorpgs before releasing it.
Sure, it’s still free to play (beyond buying the games) until the new team working on it is satisfied with the state of the game, but it’s going to be an uphill fight to convince people to go back to it after the stigma of an unoptimized and content lacking game has been imprinted on their minds. It’s been better lately, but to me, it’s still one of the biggest disappointment this year. (Thank you Dave for the text!)

jobocan Game of the Year, Games, Games of the Year