4 Popular Games That Didn’t Live Up To The Hype

Sometimes as gamers, we buy or rent titles because the critics absolutely loved the game. Or we might see that certain series has a massive fan base and we want to get in on the excitement. But on occasion, we are left disappointed because we were expecting something more.

The Non-Fiction Gaming crew chats about some of those games.

Assassin’s Creed

James Wilson

I never got into is the Assassin’s Creed series. It’s a popular franchise which I know many people love, but I never really boarded the hype train. Straight away I disliked the games’ ‘Matrix’ style foundations, and for me this was a major factor into why it didn’t appeal. I would’ve preferred an alternative story idea, one which could have been much simpler; for instance if you were actually playing as an assassin from the past and not as a descendant controlling the assassin hundreds of years later.

It also takes away some of the immersion having to ‘synchronize’ as it constantly reminds you that you are not actually in the time period, which is a shame considering that the gameplay is pretty decent and you have all the tools of a 13th century hit-man at your disposal.

It does however make sense to me that the Knights Templar are the games’ antagonist faction both in the past and the present, fighting with the player over artifacts and valuable knowledge, although I feel that the game could have included or hinted at this without making it the major point of the story (which also gets really hard to follow at times, from what I’ve seen).

It could have benefited from games like Dark Souls, one of my favourite titles, as that keeps the player guessing as to what is actually going on and leaves them to forge their own stories.

As a whole Assassin’s Creed was one of those games that I could never pick up, let alone finish, and that had a lot to do with the story. However credit to the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Unity, as they seem to be moving away from the future to focus on the past.

World of Warcraft

Senior Stiv

I’ve checked nearly every well loved RPG out there and for the most part I’ve enjoyed all of them. I even stepped into the MMORPG realm and loved quite a few. The first MMO I tried to play was one of the most addicting and popular MMO’s: World of Warcraft. And, honestly I don’t get what the fuss was about.

I played through some of the early story missions which didn’t seem the least bit entertaining. Each one felt like a pointless fetch quest to collect a certain number of items or killing a certain number of creatures. Even when I tried following the story missions it was the same, hit a certain number of kills or collecting and your done.

I eventually got bored and stopped playing the game all together. I can’t understand why anyone ever skipped school and lied about the deaths of relatives to simply grind through what seemed like a fairly unexciting game.

Bioshock Infinite

KRS  2

Bioshock is probably my favourite IP created for the last generation of games, so I was really looking forward to Bioshock Infinite. Much like Grand Theft Auto V it received extremely high scores with critics and fans alike. But when I think back to the game, the gameplay was ultimately inferior to is two predecessors.

Now before anyone complains I will say upfront that I loved the story, setting and two lead characters. In fact, they were so perfect I kind of overlooked all the flaws of the game on my first play through. The whole story was captivating and the ending especially took my breath away to the point that I immediately started playing through again.

But a lot of elements of the game just weren’t that great. The Vigors are kind of there and easily ignored both in gameplay and story, and now you’re stuck carrying only two guns selected from a pool of extremely generic weaponry. Not to mention you spend most of the game going down long (though very beautiful) corridors and have a Call of Duty style gun battles while ducking behind boxes.

Similar to how I felt about GTA V, the game was a chore except when I was watching the story. Bioshock Infinite only shone occasionally in its gameplay (for example, I liked the asylum part of the game).

It’s still a great game that everyone should play, but don’t feel too bad if you find yourself bored by the tedious gun fights.

DotA 2

Daniel

Don’t get me wrong, I still play Dota 2 and have even followed The International for the last two years. Millions of gamers put hours into Dota 2 matches every day and the game itself is certainly enjoyable to an extent.

There are some flaws I can’t overlook with the game that are either ignored by the fans or outright touted as adding to the game experience. Some of these issues seem to be because the game is attempting to stay true to the source material of DotA on the Warcraft 3 engine. Issues that were actually just limitations of the engine don’t need to be replicated in the next generation of games.

The game feels clunky and slow to respond to inputs. What at first I thought was a latency issue on my end or some kind of ‘slow turn rate’ and ‘slow casting speed’ could actually be due to an Interpolation delay and the Source Server Tickrate that can potentially add extra time to each command being carried out.

These delay issues can cause frustration in a game all about quick reaction times, it’s an odd choice when there are similar games that don’t appear to have the same issues. In games such as League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth your character responds instantly to commands (Heroes of the Storm feels slightly better but I haven’t spent as much time with it yet).

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Of course, this isn’t the only issue I’ve had with the Valve reboot, but it’s enough to make me skeptical of all the hype. A whole article could be devoted to UI and mechanical limitations Valve has decided to keep because that’s the way Dota did it.

The game is still fun, I was just expecting more from a game with this many players, especially one I’ve heard called, “The One True MOBA”.

Did you ever play a game that everyone seemed to love except you? Or do you disagree with our opinions on your favourite game?

There’s a comments section below for you to argue your case!

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