Siliconera Speaks Up: Disappointments of the Year

By Louise . December 21, 2008 . 8:28am

Last week, we covered our Games of the Year. While it was definitely a good year for gamers, it wasn’t without its disappointments. What were your biggest disappointments of the year in terms of games and game-related events.

Jenni: I was totally and utterly disappointed by Wii Music. I was mildly interested in the casual music title when I first started hearing about the variety of instruments. In practice, I have no idea what Nintendo was thinking. After a recent gathering at a friend’s house, who had rented Wii Music, we decided to try it out.

Unfortunately she hadn’t unlocked any of the songs, and after playing four of the five songs available, “Do Re Mi”, “My Grandfather’s Clock,” “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Daydream Believer,” and finding they all sounded alike with our admittedly rudimentary, impromptu group, we decided to disband. Really, it was for the good of all people concerned and within earshot. After playing “Daydream Believer”, I found myself asking, “You didn’t actually pay money for this, did you?”

Spencer: Few people had high expectations for it, but Away: Shuffle Dungeon was disappointing. Mistwalker started off with charming art and a clever concept of shuffle levels. However, shuffle dungeons aren’t fun dungeons to explore. Away: Shuffle Dungeon is more like a moving maze than an action RPG. Miss an exit and you have to wait for it to shuffle back into place. Mundane combat and a lack of puzzles didn’t help Away: Shuffle Dungeon either. Since Majesco flip-flopped on the release date and there was a surge of quality RPGs on the DS Away: Shuffle Dungeon didn’t have a chance to disappoint many.

Nintendo was also a letdown this year, but only in the West. In Japan Nintendo has a balance between titles like Wii Music and core games like Fatal Frame IV. They even makes niche games there like Captain Rainbow, which is designed for fans of Nintendo’s obscure history. I can understand why Nintendo of America passed on Captain Rainbow, we wouldn’t “get” most of the references. However, Nintendo also dropped the ball on many other games like Disaster: Day of Crisis, Kousoku Card Battle: Card Hero, The Glory of Hercules, Bokura wa Kaseki Holder, Stafy, and Soma Bringer. One thing these games have in common is they’re new franchises for the West and it seems like Nintendo of America isn’t interested in publishing anything that isn’t established here. It’s not like Nintendo of America had an overcrowded schedule this year either.

Perhaps, Nintendo thinks adding untested franchises will dilute their brand. If Nintendo’s 2009 calendar, which shows they are only publishing Pikmin and Mario Power Tennis ports in the first quarter, is any sign we could be disappointed by Nintendo of America next year too. The funny thing is Nintendo of Europe is brave enough to pick up at least some of these games which is a change from the past.

Louise: I try not to get too hyped up about games, but I couldn’t help myself when it came to Too Human. An action game full of tons of loot sounded like something I could definitely get into. The controls took a while to get used to, but as soon as I finished the first level, I was hooked. Unfortunately, the game just went downhill from there.

Too Human was too short. Just a handful of levels and one really long one that dragged on too long with its cut and paste design made me question if the hype was worth it. The fact that all of the really good loot demanded repeated playing of the same map really killed the game for me. It would have been fine if the maps were interesting, or if there were more variety in enemies, but by the fourth or fifth time playing the same map, I loss any interest in the game.

For a game that was billed as the next Diablo, Too Human was just too short and repetitive to live up to its hype, which is why it’s my disappointment of the year.

TAGS: Siliconera Speaks Up

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daizyujin

I share Spencer's feelings on Nintendo and I definatly think they were this years big let down. Even the games that were decent seemed like they had some trouble from Mario Kart Wii's unbalanced and skillless gameplay to Smash Bros's broken online, it was disheartening that every time I would pick up a Nintendo title this year that I would ultimately be let down.

Still even if Nintendo does drop the ball again this year, we all know that we can count on some awesome games coming from 3rd parties, in particular Sega. Come to think of it, I am saying that I am looking forward to Sega's lineup? Is it 1999 again?

James A. Calwell III

I was excited about From the Abyss but I didn't bother going past the second dungeon. Repetitive beyond belief.

Mazen

I agree with Spenser's viewpoint fully about Nintendo and Away: Shuffle Dungeon
I was really looking forward for that game since it was from Mistwalker and Oshima Sonic's character designer but I couldn't play it for more than 2 hours I didn't like the dungeon idea at all,
even though a friend of mine told me that the game gets much better later on I still can't find the urge to continue it.

Phailpail

I'm going to have say Nintendo, as well. Nintendo's E3 keynote was a barrel of laughs, and for all the wrong reasons.

Cielito

I would say Sonic: The Dark Brotherhood.

arollo

I agree with Cielito - Sonic: The Dark Brotherhood was a huge letdown. I wasn't expecting much from a Sonic game, but from BioWare? I really, really like BioWare. I knew they had enough good ideas in them to turn something really interesting out for the DS. But they ended up cramming so many ideas into a single game that it became a burden to even try and play. The world looked good, but the rules seemed arbitrary, and the combat system....why? Just why?

I was also pretty disappointed by Final Fantasy IV DS. It was that whole "we took the Final Fantasy game you know and love, but we gave every single enemy the ability to kill you no matter what just to make it hard" thing that made the game terrible. There's no skill or challenge or fun when every random encounter becomes a roll of the dice, and making progress is more about saving every 10 seconds or so "just in case".

Mazen

In the opposite I didn't think Sonic: The Dark Brotherhood going to be good because of Bioware.

scott

Top 10 Disappointments of 2008:
Infinite Undiscovery
Final Fantasy IV DS
Wario Land Shake It
C&C Red Alert 3

I probably would have hated The Last Remenent too based on what read about people playing it. I specifically didnt not buy it because i was so disgusted with Infinite Undiscovery.

scott

whoops, i didnt mean to say "Top 10". There wern't too many stinkers in 2008 i guess

matty

Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (DS). While some features were added in that the original PS game didn't have, some were left or taken out. Not to mention hearing about all the glitches.
While it was a highlight of the games to come this year for me it was also a somber one. What hope I had for this series to make a long-awaited comeback remains in the dark.
It's not the game itself since I'd still recommend it to new players, its just that what was considered a solid game just turned into a half-baked port for a longtime fan.

Louise

@Scott
Oh yeah, I forgot abut Infinite Undiscovery. Maybe I was too sad about it to remember it. I had such high hopes from the same developers that brought us Valkyrie Profile.

As for the readers who are saying Nintendo was the disappointment of the year, I have to agree. While I was writing this feature up, I thought about writing about them being disapointing, but I couldn't really pinpoint anything. I guess it just comes down to the fact that they didn't release anything on the caliber of Super Mario Galaxy is disappointing.

Andy

I'm surprised to hear people put FF4DS as a big disappointment. I didn't encounter the same problems with the game. It was harder than a lot of recent Final Fantasy games, and I found that refreshing. Challenges make game completion more of an achievement, one of effort, not just of time.

But of course, my view is colored by the fact that FF4 is one of my favorites from the series, and I have fond memories of beating it again and again on the SNES.

scott

@Andy,

I bought it on a whim because my friend (who grew up on his SNES) raved about ff4's story and that i GOTTA PLAY IT, since i never played the 16-bit version... i bought FF4DS on a whim. Can't go wrong with a classic game remake right?

Terrible pacing, and a bit hard where i can't really enjoy the story any more. Biggest issue i had, which you may only hear from me- I Hated FF4DS's 3D Graphics!! It made it fairly unenjoyable since the game played so slow, and we've basically reverted ourselves to a time when Cecil's polygon hands are triangles, and the magic effects are something you saw from Shining Force III era.

You take this game, and compare it to a game like Dragon Quest IV DS where the graphics are BEAUTIFUL, and battles are fast, and just overall enjoyable. I just had to ask myself, where is Square going wrong here?

SomeDude

I could just tell that Away was going to suck from the gameplay videos.

I keep telling people that Sakaguchi's totally lost it, and this is just further proof. I expect Mistwalker to fold in under 3 years.

jarrodand

I actually really enjoyed Away. It was weirdly compelling, probably my favorite of the Mistwalker efforts so far honestly.

Tony

I don't know, I felt Lost Odyssey was pretty solid. It certainly has some of the more interesting characters in recent Japanese RPG memory... Given some of the comments made in reviews for it, I'm not convinced many played much of it as it was.