The Top 10 Most Disappointing Video Games of 2013
02. Gears of War: Judgment
With its rich and well-established presence among the shooter genre, and a crew of awesome and interesting characters, it seems like it would be impossible to make a disappointing game for the Gears Series... And yet it happened.
The previous games in the series were Epic adventures -- which is rather fitting considering that they were all made by the Epic Games studios -- and in fact as the release date for the game approached, based on everything that we had seen at E3 and the press-only reveals, our expectation was that we were going to be treated to yet another epic entry in the Gears franchise.
In the interest of full-disclosure and transparency I admit that I am a huge Gears fan; in fact now that I think upon it, I am pretty sure that I have spent more time with Marcus Fenix, Augustus (Cole Train) Cole, and Damon Baird (who are the heart and soul of Delta Squad) than I did with my university roommate!
Coming fresh off of Gears 3 and deeply satisfied by the manner in which its story arc was wrapped up, I was genuinely anticipating Judgment to take Gears to a whole new level. Unless you have actually played it, you have no idea about Judgment.The betrayal and frustration we were confronted by is the sort that I can only generously describe as the resulting bastard child of a hurried and drunken mating by Halo and Call of Duty -- a child that while it is certainly a warrior is a warrior of the sort that always fires from cover; in GoW terms then, it is almost more than the heart can bear without breaking.
I can only imagine the immense shame that the dev team must have felt in handing in the source code for Judgment.
To put this in perspective for you, what they have done is to take the unique, patented and slick sang-froid of Delta and its commander, and then replaced it with the anxiety-ridden discomposure one finds in a Supplies E-6 fresh out of Adgie School on their first night in charge of gate security.
The fact that it is not a bad game at all -- from the perspective of a shooter -- makes that disappointment all the more keen. To be honest it is actually a pretty good shooter; it's just not a GoW caliber shooter...
What makes the game even more disappointing is that it performs admirably and it even takes a few risks in terms of convention and expectation -- the problem is the Gears experience we all anticipated simply isn't there.
The game play that IS there, while perfectly adequate, fails even to offer a memorable level that might be held up as a best feature.
All of the issues can be traced back to an effort to simplify the game so as to broaden its appeal for a new audience -- a decision that may very well have cost the series a large chunk of its loyal followers.
The features that make game play overcomplicated in the GoW series -- like requiring the player to attain a level of realistic squad and military tactics and then use them -- is said to have been a big part of why they sought to strip-away those elements for that whole appeal-broadening gesture.
The thing is those are the elements that make GoW titles GoW games.
Our disappointment was so complete that, when a comic performing at one of the cons we attended cracked a joke about Judgment, it was so spot-on accurate that we didn't find it even a little funny...
What was the Joke?
'We hear that Gears of War: Judgment wasn't the first choice for naming the game -- in fact the project name for this one was allegedly Halo: Call of Gears 4!'
True that.
That is the version of the story that was written up by Andy Chalk for Escapist - and by the way, paragraphs are our friends.
The situation that lead to the formation of the ESRB wasn't over a single game and it did not happen overnight - and as far as I know it was not a conspiracy.
It started with bloody gore and violence in Mortal Kombat and Doom, and the sexploitation games Night Trap and Rape. When the issue was brought to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee it was a combination of games from Capcom and Midway that were said to have excessive violence.
Remember this was just after Australia created an official government run approval system - that really hurt the games industry in Oceania.
As for the conspiracy - considering that Acclaim, Sega, Nintendo, EA and Id created and funded the initial committee that ended up creating the ESRB.
Good read,but I am confused. To the best of my memory it was in fact mortal Kombat on Sega genesis and night trap on Sega cd that caused all the big issue over video game violence not street fighter. Also it was Sega that worked with video game developers and instituted the first video game rating system not Capcom. You see after huge sale of mortal kombat over genesis over the sanitized super nes version Nintendo went to Joseph Lieberman to try and harm Sega and caused the big out cry over video game violence. I am pretty sure this is the situation that took place and Capcom and street fighter did not have much to do with it. Still enjoyed the article and I still need to check out Remember me. To bad about the original staff being let go.
Er,the Aliens from the Alien series do not live on human flesh and can't morph at will.Maybe you should watch them again.
Actually you are missing the point - if RockSteady had been hired to do the third game it WOULD have had improvements. What happened was the IP owner decided that the level of advancement in the game was sufficient to simply retread the engine with a different story on top and none of you would notice or care. Apparently they are right for some of you - but we do expect more.
He's got a point
You can't be dissapointed, if you don't have expectations in the first place. if you were expecting anthing from these tittles, then its your fault to get dissapointed.
first place whaaat?
You simply cannot expect the quality go up any higher than Arkham city lol, i mean it has to stop somewhere, jesus. insatiable gamers.
I actually enjoyed Batman Arkham Origins pretty much. It was what I expected to be after playing the previous two games from Rocksteady. Articles like this are the beiggest proof that gaming media has gone down the toilet. We get incredibly amaizing games every year, but now for some reason, to the gaming media they always turn out to be crappy disapointments. I seriously wonder what exactly are you guys expecting? Are you not entertained?