Games that should have been great, but weren't

Holy crap, I think this is the longest it's ever taken me to think up a subject! Two hours of pondering end with me simply glancing at a poster on the wall and having an idea appear! My mind is certainly a weird piece of work...



Ever look at a preview for a game, thinking it sounds like the greatest thing ever, only to play it later on and find out it just isn't that good? Sadly, this seems to happen all too often. Here are a few recent games that failed to live up to their potential.

Red Steel

Take one part gunpowder, add one part katana sword fights and stir in two parts of Japanese culture, and the result should be great. Sadly, this isn't the case with Red Steel. Running and gunning your way through swarms of Japanese bodyguards should be a thrill, but it gets stale very quickly. And the katana fights are way too slow paced. Swing, block, wait, swing, block, wait... It just feels nothing like one would expect from a skirmish between two men wielding ancient Japanese blades. It should be SLASH, CLANG, SLASH SLASH CLANG! Real fast paced and hectic, with sparks flying everywhere. Instead, it feels more like a messed up game of rock-paper-scissors than any swordfight I've ever seen.

It's really sad how this game turned out, and I can only hope that Ubisoft takes all the time they need with Red Steel 2.

Odama

(PS, that's "Odama", not "Obama", as is parodied in this mock-up box art by Go Nintendo reader musicguy)

Some of you may think "Pinball? Feudal Japan? Giant head on a spider's body? What the heck?", but when I first saw this previewed in an old Nintendo Power, I actually thought "Wow, this could be really awesome!". Seriously, doesn't shouting commands at a group of soldiers while beating away enemies with a giant pinball sound just so crazy that it's good? In theory, yes. In practice... Not so much. The voice recognition was terrible at best, and it was all too easy to accidentally wipe out your own troops with one false move. Seriously, pinballs are way too inaccurate and erratic to be used strategically. Winning a round in this game felt more like luck than skill.

Maybe someday somebody will answer the screams of the masses with a decent feudal Japan/pinball/anthropomorphic piece of software. Someday...

Spectrobes

Leading up to it's release, I was incredibly hyped for Spectrobes. A little bit of Pokemon, a touch of Digimon, and a sprinkle of card collecting... It all sounded like a great combination. And, in truth, these parts all did come together fairly well. The problem is, very little else did. It was too easy, even for it's intended audience, the Wi-Fi and card collecting aspects seemed half-baked, and it was all short enough to be beaten in a couple of days by most gamers.

Spectrobes was a really, REALLY great idea, but sadly, things didn't turn out quite as well as many would have wished. Despite it's relatively low sales compared to expectations (Best Buy actually gave away the game free with the purchase of Pokemon Diamond or Pearl for a while), Disney seems determined to turn this into a franchise to be taken seriously. With all the basics already established in Spectrobes, the sequel should be even more polished. My expectations for the sequel are high, Disney! Don't let me down!

So those are three games I really felt didn't quite live up to their full potential. What games do you feel didn't quite fill your expectations?

The Duck Has Spoken.