Why Was It Released at All?Top 10 Gaming Disappointments of 2020
Since now, before the release of the game, the authors manage to upload a lot of trailers and other materials to the network, many gamers have time to form certain expectations regarding the project. If the footage of the game looks great, then potential buyers eagerly await the opportunity to launch it and personally test the gameplay. And after the release, sometimes it turns out that the game does not live up to expectations and is much worse than it was imagined. Then crowds of disappointed players appear, who unleash their discontent on the project, and the latter quickly disappears from the horizons.
Here are the 10 most disappointing games of 2020:
10. Cyberpunk 2077
9. Tell Me Why
8. Serious Sam 4
7. Star Wars: Squadron
6. Crysis Remastered
5. Watch Dogs Legion
4. Fast & Furious Crossroads
3. Marvel’s Avengers
2. Sports simulators
1. Warcraft III: Reforged
10th place ‒ Cyberpunk 2077
Again the old song about the main thing. The game turned out to be not how we all envisioned the release from CD Project Red. In Cyberpunk 2077 many gamers would like to see something completely different. Someone does not like the open world, someone is annoyed by the artificial intelligence of the NPC, and someone is not happy with the control of transport. Hello, Poor Screenwriter! Almost all of these aspects can be called subjective, well, or they just did not meet the players’ high expectations. But Cyberpunk 2077 has one objective problem that disappointed most gamers. This is, of course, about the technical component.
Cyberpunk 2077 was almost unplayable on previous generation consoles. However, the situation was not much better on the new consoles. Owners of medium and powerful PCs could complete the game without friezes and reloads, but they also suffered from bugs and glitches on release.
Once again, we are not talking about the plot and gameplay of the project, but about its technical condition. The situation is ruled by patches, the current version of the game is already much better than the release. But this does not change the disappointment experienced by the gamers who launched Cyberpunk 2077 on December 10.
9th place ‒ Tell Me Why
From the game, where the main feature was a transgender hero (the authors emphasized that this is the first such case), it was not initially worth expecting much, especially in some countries where the novelty was eventually removed from sale. But the players’ low expectations did not come true either. Sometimes it seems that the authors decided not to support transgender people, but just try to hype on a popular topic.
It’s not even worth talking about the gameplay: it simply does not exist. Quests are completed with one button, and the players just have to read the text, saturated with aggressive propaganda of political views and certain values. This is noted even by those who generally agree with the position of the authors.
8th place ‒ Serious Sam 4
To protect the release from criticism, the authors of the new part of the legendary childhood game initially positioned the “four” as a gift to old gamers. But this cannot justify everything: bugs, graphics problems or straightforwardness were difficult to understand even ten years ago.
Serious Sam 4 really looks like a 2005 game, but is it that good? Good remasters have proven that you can attract new players with cool modern features without losing the atmosphere of the original. The authors either did not plan to do this initially or simply did not cope with it.
7th place ‒ Star Wars: Squadron
Fans of the universe have dreamed of a space simulator based on “Star Wars” for a long time, but in the end, they got something completely different from what they wanted. The battles on the ships turned out to be quite an arcade and uninteresting, the physics of flights is unpleasantly surprising, the scenario sewn with white threads is disappointing.
Of course, making a good cosmos isn’t easy. But such a giant of the gaming industry as Electronic Arts had all the resources for this, especially if you remember that we are talking about Star Wars. As a result, we got a boring plot, laggy multiplayer, and simple gameplay for such a project. In general, nothing that could make players linger in Squadron.
6th place ‒ Crysis Remastered
The most unfortunate remaster of the year opens the top five. In an attempt to modernize the game, the authors simply hung a bunch of graphic chips on their beloved Crysis that make almost any, even a powerful PC, suffer. It looks beautiful even against the background of modern competitors, but was the game worth the candle?
If you look closely, it turns out that no. In contrast to the graphics, the level design and gameplay have remained in the past decade, which was a problem even in the original Crysis. But if then it was possible to put up with it, now the game looks frankly boring. Probably, it was difficult to wait for something else, but apart from graphics, the authors did not offer the players anything at all.
5th place ‒ Watch Dogs Legion
And from Ubisoft, instead of a new game, we received a remaster or DLC for the second part. The gameplay remained at the same level, the game looks straightforward, and the only feature in the form of playing for any NPC only spoiled the emotional coloring ‒ it did not give Watch Dogs anything interesting.
We have already written about the problems of the game ‒ there are actually enough of them. If you really want to run around the city, completing quests of the same type, endlessly hacking into traffic lights, and listening to the Krinzh dialogues of teenage hackers written by pensioners, it is better to replay the second part.
4th place ‒ Fast & Furious Crossroads
Probably the worst game of this year, which turned out to be slightly lower than the first place only because it did not initially claim good marks. Already the first trailers received a ton of dislikes for graphics and physics from 2005, which turned out to be only worse in the game.
But the “two” from players on Metacritic is quite logical. Apparently, Codemasters got too carried away with the third part of Project Cars and simply beat the Fast and the Furious, deciding that a well-known brand and familiar characters would be enough for good sales. No, not enough if you just put a primitive storyline and insanely boring gameplay without a single chip on an outdated engine.
3rd place ‒ Marvel’s Avengers
If nothing good was originally expected from “Fast and the Furious”, then the game about the Avengers was promoted as a bright and interesting novelty, which would be the best gift for both comic book fans and ordinary gamers.
It worked out to please neither one nor the other. The plot turned out to be very far from the original story and cool references, the gameplay also did not please ‒ except for bugs and unreasonably high system requirements. Not a fan of Marvel, but looking at their disappointment with such a gift was very sad.
2nd place ‒ Sports Simulators
A confluence of circumstances or a trend is not very clear. But this year all sports games have received terrible ratings. New NHL 21 users Metacritic have bet 2.7, FIFA ‒ 1.4, NBA 2K21, and UFC 4 ‒ 1.6. Even relative favorites, the Konami PES soccer sim, settled for a 6.3 rating.
Nobody managed to say a new word in the world of sports games, the developers of simulators lag behind the general trends of the gaming industry and hardly understand what gamers need. Year after year, they present the players with the same product, collecting money again ‒ it seems that by 2020 users are pretty tired of this.
1st place ‒ Warcraft III: Reforged
When Blizzard promised to release a re-release of the third part with updated gameplay and graphics, many gamers were delighted. However, when the release took place, in the first hours, the players attacked the project with strong criticism.
Blizzard’s shame won`t be forgotten by gamers for a very long time. It was necessary to try so hard to spoil the legendary game. More than half of the promises the developers did not even intend to fulfill, the graphics turned out to be terrible, there were no innovations and improvements at all. At the same time, the ladder and other interesting features disappeared.
Six months later, most of the game’s shortcomings have not yet been fixed, and officially returning to your favorite old version is not as easy as it seems. Blizzard tried to quickly cut money on Warcraft fans, but lost reputation, resources, and money, turning the community against themselves. It would be better if they just hadn’t touched Warcraft III.
