Well, we’re still seeing new ideas in games today, but what’s perhaps more common are promising ideas that end up flopping. Whether it’s overpromising, poor execution, or trends chasing monetization, these games prove that a great idea alone isn’t enough.

Here are 15 revolutionary gaming concepts that sounded incredible on paper but then folded like a deck of cards with its execution.

Exploring A Full-Sized Galaxy – Starfield

Everything that Todd Howard presented to us about the then-upcoming open-galaxy Bethesda RPG seemed too good to be true. Skyrim in space was enough to get most of us in pre-order lines, but the promises went much further than that. There’s the hundreds of explorable solar systems with thousands of planets, sure, but the customizable space ship and ability to fly your ship and recruit crew members excited me the most. Unfortunately, when the game released, it was apparent that Todd’s promises really were too good to be true. There were practically no memorable characters, nearly every planet was devoid of interesting content, and ship navigation was frustrating and under-utilized. The game sold well enough due to initial hype, but a 97% player drop-off after six months and the broader damage to Bethesda’s reputation paint a clear picture of Starfield’s shortcomings..

Pirate Live Service – Skull and Bones

Just about everybody wanted a large open-seas pirate game where filled to the brim with tense ship battles and sea shanties, but the developer somehow managed to screw that up completely. The biggest failing with Skull and Bones was that it was a $70 title with a predatory live service model tacked on top of that. You had to grind for what seemed like hundreds of hours obtaining the ‘pieces of eight’ just to upgrade your hard-sought pirate ship equipment. The whole experience was just so bogged down in incremental monetization that even the few fans that were left had a hard time sticking with it for long. So much for the first ever AAAA game.

Hunters vs Hunted Multiplayer – Evolve

I wasn’t exactly the biggest Left 4 Dead fan in the world and even I was pretty excited about Evolve in the 2010s. Evolve pitted a group of hunters against a horrific Godzilla-like human-controlled opponent, differentiating Valve’s team-based shooter with an asynchronized matchup. The big distinction with Evolve is the colossal prey is just one human-controlled creature, resulting in a lopsided 4 versus 1 scenario. Matches were novel and hilariously fun … for the first couple hours. Running around as a hulking horror monster in search of four helpless little humans makes it hard to frown. But the novelty wore off pretty quick. The balance issues, very thin post-game offerings, and hefty price tag for what was essentially a repetitive game loop contributed to Evolve devolving to the husk it is today.

Open World Parkour – Forspoken

I remember being pretty hyped for Forspoken right before its demo released. It was made by the Final Fantasy XV studio using their in-house engine, all of which I’d been a big fan of. And the open-world parkouring just looked absolutely mesmerizing to top it off. Well, after playing the demo, I found myself frankly appalled. The best thing I can say about Forspoken is that it looks nice and has a serviceable soundtrack. The dialogue is perhaps the biggest culprit behind it’s failure, but the repetitive enemy encounters and throwaway isekai story don’t help sell the game either.

Your Choices (Don’t) Change Everything – Mass Effect 3

A lot of gamers want a good choice-driven narrative and plenty of games have attempted it over the years. Yet, carrying over those choices for a meaningful endgame remains an elusive accomplishment for many titles. Mass Effect 3 is perhaps the best example of this. Mass Effect 2 was noteworthy for carrying over key decisions made from the first game and branching those off into even more scenarios into the third game. Yet, Mass Effect 3 ended on a whimper with originally only three endings. The worst part about the narrow endgame funnel was just how paper-thin the different endings were. It’s like all the player-driven choices throughout the three games came to the same uninspired conclusion, albeit with a different color tacked on.

Mandatory Crafting – Metal Gear Survive, Fallout 4

I’m all for looting abandoned houses in open-world games, especially when paired with a robust crafting system. Yet, some games rely a bit too much on crafting to advance the main story. In the case of Fallout 4, crafting is absolutely essential no matter what you plan on doing in the game. The game’s big draw, other than being another Fallout, was its settlement creation system. Yet, to properly build up your settlement, you had to grind for loot and craft like crazy. And then on the extreme spectrum, you have Metal Gear Survive, which made crafting the core gameplay loop, and by extension, the only loop the game had to offer. Crafting is a fun aspect of gameplay, but there’s such a thing as too much of it, as is the case with these two games.

Detective Vision – Batman: Arkham Series, The Last of Us Part 1

Batman: Arkham Asylum made many of us fall in love with detective vision gameplay. Turning on the infrared goggles and snooping the environment for clues just added so much to the setting and gameplay. But then, it seemed like every other game out there started implementing it, and the novelty didn’t quite stick. The Witcher 3 had Geralt investigating hundreds of trails using his witcher sense, but fans generally like it there because of his fun banter. But the later Arkham games and The Last of Us Part 1 tended to overuse detective vision to the point where it slowed down not just the gameplay but story as well.

Procedural “Infinite Story” Generation – No Man’s Sky Launch, Daggerfall

I remember how skeptical a majority of gamers were when Sean Murray talked up his infinite galaxy filled with procedural generation in No Man’s Sky. The game released and, well, a majority of gamers felt correct in their initial skepticism. No Man Sky’s launch lacked the touted multiplayer component that it now enjoys, but it also felt barren and void of meaningful content, something procedural generation often struggles with. An earlier example of empty fields of infinite procedural generated content was Bethesda’s Daggerfall. Daggerfall boasts a staggering 62,000 to 80,000 square miles of traversable land with well over 10,000 towns. It was simply the largest game at the time of release, dwarfing most modern open-worlds today. Yet, the dungeon design was … well, absent. And the actual content within such mammoth maps were repetitive and shallow, even if other systems were novel and fun at the time.

Memory Editing — Remember Me

On paper, Remember Me’s mix of third-person action combat, platforming, and puzzles in the form of Memory Remixing should’ve been the beginning of a new hit franchise. DontNod had the budget and concept for a longlasting series and rewriting people’s past to influence an outcome in the plot was the big selling point. And you don’t just rewrite memories in cutscenes, you actively re-arrange objects called glitches in the subject’s mind like a puzzle. It’s a truly terrifying ability, and one that would’ve rivaled the Animus from Assassin’s Creed if it was used more fully in the game. In the end, Remember Me was known for its subpar combat encounters and underbaked story. If only Remember Me could’ve remembered the Memory Remix mechanic enough for gamers to remember it.

Possess Enemies On-the-Fly — Mindjack

Who remembers the Japanese cover shooter game from the early 2010s, Mindjack? Yeah, probably not many. Besides the generic third-person shooting mechanics and forgettable sci-fi story, it had an innovative mind-hacking mechanic thrown into the mix. Being able to possess enemies and convert them to your side on-the-fly sounds pretty dang fun, until you realize the AI is awful in Mindjack. The repetitive level design and bland missions didn’t help the promising mind-jacking concept either.

Open-World Live Service Campaign — Anthem

Bioware is still chugging along today even after lukewarm releases like Dragon Age The Veilguard and Mass Effect Andromeda, but Anthem was the signal that the  studio just wasn’t the same anymore. Despite building a reputation for rich storytelling and immersive character interactions, EA made Bioware go the live service multiplayer route with Anthem. That decision didn’t go well with longtime fans or newcomers. The launch was plagued by glitches, bugs, and crashes galore. And the long-term looter-shooter loop didn’t do enough to keep players around. This is alll despite a genuinely fun jetpack system that allowed players to fly around with their mechanized soldier through the environment with ease. It’s a fun game to fly around in, but was a chore to actually do anything else.

Superhero Looter-Brawler – Marvel’s Avengers

Marvel’s Avengers was another game that cashed in on the live service looter band-wagon, with the advantage of having the Marvel IP tied to it. There was actually quite a bit of hype building up for Crystal Dynamics’ huge new AAA superhero game. It came out during a time of Avengers high and within a game industry that hadn’t capitalized on it yet. Needless to say, many gamers desperately wanted to pick their favorite Avenger and fight some baddies in a high quality action game. But the aggressive repetition within the mission design and lack of a post-game severely hindered what was supposed to be an ever-evolving game. If you’re going to make a game with the kind of structure of Marvel’s Avengers, at least build it around a compelling story and interesting gameplay.

AAA Episodic Storytelling – Telltale Games

Where’s Telltale Games been, by the way? Episodic interactive game dramas just aren’t the same since Telltale’s reign in the 2010s. Telltale’s The Walking Dead fomented a revolution in the episodic potential for smaller-scale video games. But it seems that ever since Telltale’s Game of Thrones, the formula just hasn’t seen the same kind of success. The stagnant cell-shaded art style contributed to gamers just getting tired of Telltale games, but the realization that choices were largely illusory or at least highly bottlenecked also likely played a role in the genre’s decline.

Time-Manipulation Shooter — TimeShift

Everyone loves a good bullet-time Matrix moment in movies or TV, especially so when we get to control it. TimeShift leaned into the slow-motion cool factor and then cranked it up a notch with full control over time itself. Centering a first-person shooter on time manipulation abilities just seems limitless in its potential. But despite the ability to freeze time in the middle of firefights, the game just felt lackluster to play. Like Anthem, the game had one cool thing going for it: the time-bending abilities, with nothing else to compliment that. The story, while told within a cool dieselpunk setting, was awkwardly paced and surrounded by forgettable characters. And the enemies were bullet-sponges without much thought put into their encounter design. We all love a good time-bending mechanic, but TimeShift just didn’t make a good game around it.

Cloud-Powered, Fully Destructible Cities — Crackdown 3

Gamers were surprisingly delighted by the chaotic sandbox that Crackdown 2 provided and hyped up the next game beyond what it was capable to deliver. The third game executed on the sandbox action hero concept about as well as MindEye did the GTA formula (okay, maybe not quite that bad). Where the second Crackdown delivered on laughs and mindless fun, the third drilled repetitive urban landscapes and bland mission design into our tired hands. Even the advertised cloud-powered destructible environments didn’t make the final cut into the game, except for the now-dead multiplayer mode that nobody played. Crackdown 3 failed to iterate or improve on the chaotic sandbox formula that fans loved about the second one, so much so that even Terry Crews couldn’t save it.

In their video, And799 was able to successfully “log in” to the live service shooter. It is worth noting that this locally-running server is still in its early stages, and many online-centric features are still inaccessible. These include things like player profiles. Despite this, however, the player was able to set up the local server to function on a peer-to-peer basis, and was able to get a second player in the game by starting up another instance.

And799 has noted in the description of the video that it is simply a log for their research and experimenting with the server infrastructure. It is not meant to “represent the current progress of the private server/revival project that is currently in progress.”

Former executive producer on Anthem, Mark Darrah, had released a lengthy video detailing its development. Among the subjects he touched on throughout the video was also the possibility of reviving the live-service shooter. His pitch “conservatively” involved a roughly $10 million investment from EA, which he noted would be recovered if Anthem were to sell more than 400,000 copies. As a part of this idea, Darrah pitched that BioWare and EA should move the shooter over to current-gen consoles from its PS4 and Xbox One home, and make use of servers that could be hosted locally.

“The reason you do this, it pulls away the cost of maintaining this game,” Darrah explained. “So rather than having dedicated servers that are required for the game to run, you let the server run on one of the machines that’s playing the game.”

Darrah had also spoken about the legacy of Anthem, and how it had left a mark on just about everyone who worked on it at some point. “To be honest, I’m not sure that I came back from Anthem. I think that’s true of a lot of people,” he said.

“Anthem did permanent damage to the careers of a lot of game devs, to the mental health of a lot of game devs. I think even with BioWare itself, you can trace some of the issues that it’s had in more recent years back to this time period,” Darrah continued. “I don’t think Anthem is 100 percent to blame [for] everything that’s happened since 2019, but definitely there are seeds of damage that continue to grow from that point onwards.”

Anthem was released back in 2019 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. While it was praised for how fun its traversal systems and combat could be, the lack of mission variety and several filler missions would damage its reputation quite a bit. For more details, check out our thoughts on Anthem. Also check out our review from back when it first came out.

Unsurprisingly, former executive producer Mark Darrah heard plenty of this around release time. Speaking to Destin Legarie after servers shut down for the title, he said many came “out of the woodwork” to proclaim the above. However, he views its creation as a natural process since BioWare has “always been changing.”

“My feeling is that BioWare’s always been changing. I mean, by that argument, we should have never made Neverwinter Nights because we were a 2D RPG maker. We should never have made Mass Effect because we were a tactical RPG maker, not an action RPG maker. So, I don’t know that that argument holds a lot of weight for me.”

It’s hard to disagree – by that measure, BioWare had no business working on Baldur’s Gate, a Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, after releasing Shattered Steel.

But that approach doesn’t always guarantee success. “Studios evolve, and they try new things. Was Anthem too big of a reach? Yeah, for sure. But could you tell at the time? I don’t know. I don’t know that you could,” said Darrah.

Furthermore, he noted that while publisher Electronic Arts “certainly” deserves a “bunch of blame for Anthem,” its failure is “not all their fault.” Remember reports about how the launch version came together roughly a year before release? Or how many team members only learned that it was called Anthem after seeing the first reveal trailer? If it weren’t for former CEO Patrick Söderlund, there apparently wouldn’t have even been flying.

After shipping the relatively disappointing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, BioWare is now focused on the next Mass Effect. While being a single-project studio has its issues, Darrah said in the same interview that it’s “probably for the best.” Granted, we haven’t seen any gameplay, but the teasers have slowly ramped up over the years, including the recent artwork of a Krogan Civil War.

When it comes to the legacy of Anthem, Darrah believes that the game damaged its developers’ careers and mental health. He also noted that BioWare itself has faced trouble trying to distance itself from the game. “To be honest, I’m not sure that I came back from Anthem. I think that’s true of a lot of people,” he said.

“Anthem did permanent damage to the careers of a lot of game devs, to the mental health of a lot of game devs. I think even with BioWare itself, you can trace some of the issues that it’s had in more recent years back to this time period,” Darrah continued. “I don’t think Anthem is 100 percent to blame [for] everything that’s happened since 2019, but definitely there are seeds of damage that continue to grow from that point onwards.”

Darrah had worked as executive producer on quite a few projects at BioWare over the years, including controversial 2011 RPG Dragon Age 2, and its 2014 follow-up Dragon Age: Inquisition.

The fact that Anthem was shutting down earlier this week was announced by EA back in July 2025. Its fans had decided to experience and enjoy the game one last time before the plug was pulled on its servers. Many of these fans had taken to social media to discuss Anthem, with a common point of discussion among them being the fact that it had a lot of potential.

“Goodbye Anthem. You had so much potential, such a waste,” wrote one player. “As one of the most notorious ‘Destiny killers’, its shutdown is a good reminder that keeping a looter shooter alive and well for years is a nearly impossible task.”

“Last night I logged into Anthem for the last time. Toured the map one last time. Did some missions. Had some fun,” wrote another. “People can feel how they want, but the potential this game had was undeniable. The flying was spectacular.”

Anthem launched on PC, PS4 and Xbox One back in 2019, and while it had seen quite a bit of praise for its visuals, gunplay and flying mechanics, the title was criticized quite heavily for its lackluster mission design and other questionable decisions throughout its development. For more details, check out our review.

However, Anthem was dragged down by rote mission design, limited enemy and content variety, and a boring opening stretch padded by heavy content-gating, while constant visual bugs, long loading screens, and restrictive, sluggish Fort Tarsis management, having to return just to equip gear, moving slowly, and even being teleported back if you stray too far, making the whole experience feel needlessly frustrating.

However, there was hope. As our reviewer mentioned, “That’s not to say that Anthem is unsalvageable. I think it can be saved, and I hoped that it will be. Because the good stuff is really good. There’s mounds of untapped potential here. It just needs work. Serious work, to fix the game’s core problems before BioWare begins the ceaseless content drip that defines games like this. That shouldn’t be their focus now. Getting this right should be. Right now, Anthem is the music of creation that inspired its name. Left alone, it’s unstable, flawed. But with the right hand to shape it, it could be something wonderful.”

And it seems that BioWare took that feedback to heart. In 2020, it announced that it would be overhauling the game’s many core systems. Dubbed Anthem Next,  Christian Dailey– who was looking after Anthem back then – stated in a BioWare blog post that the team will be making several changes to experience.

“The Anthem incubation team has kicked off and we are starting to validate our design hypotheses,” Dailey said back then. “Incubation is a term we use internally – it essentially means we are going back and experimenting/prototyping to improve on the areas where we believe we fell short and to leverage everything that you love currently about Anthem. We are a small team – about 30-ish, earning our way forward as we set out to hit our first major milestone goals. Spoiler – this is going to be a longer process. And yes, the team is small but the whole point of this is to take our time and go back to the drawing board. And a small team gives us the agility a larger one can’t afford.”

“We really want this experience to be different for the team and our players, but we know we have some tough challenges to tackle,” he wrote back then. “We want to include you as we go and be open and honest with where we are at and what the expectations are with where we are going. The reality is you will see things that look awesome but end up on the cutting room floor or things that you might think suck that you feel we are spending too much time on – but in the spirit of experimentation this is all OK. We really want to provide you all the transparency we can because of your passion and interest in Anthem. But, with that comes seeing how the sausage is made – which is not always pretty by the way.”

However, in early 2021, all plans to revamp Anthem were scrapped. On the BioWare blog, Dailey stated that, “2020 was a year unlike any other however and while we continue to make progress against all our game projects at BioWare, working from home during the pandemic has had an impact on our productivity and not everything we had planned as a studio before COVID-19 can be accomplished without putting undue stress on our teams. ”

Dailey revealed that BioWare will now choose to focus all its resources on Dragon Age (eventually released in 2024 to disappointing sales and critical reception) and Mass Effect sequel (which is still in production as of 2026), as well as focusing on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

“Game development is hard. Decisions like these are not easy. Moving forward, we need to laser focus our efforts as a studio and strengthen the next Dragon Age, and Mass Effect titles while continuing to provide quality updates to Star Wars: The Old Republic.”

Interestingly, despite being a critical failure and EA letting it die for a few years, Anthem reportedly sold pretty well, at least on paper. In December of 2023, the LinkedIn profile of ex-EA employee mentioned that Anthem sold 5 million lifetime sales and 2 million in its first week. However, for the publisher it was a different story.  Anthem’s sales failed to meet EA’s expectations, so overall, it was a failure. I mean imagine selling 5 million and still termed as a commercial flop. Sigh.

The entire situation surrounding Anthem has been pretty sad. I won’t go in what kind of development problems the game went through, those have already been documented on the internet, but my mind goes back to 2017. It was E3 and BioWare first revealed Anthem with an absolutely insane demo that showcased the potential of the new IP. It was unreal in so many ways and took the internet by storm. Unfortunately, a large portion of that experience never got translated into the final product.

After the revamp got canceled, Anthem still lived on through a small but passionate community, and now that the game is no more, that group is now looking for PC custom servers so that it could live on. Whether they will be able to achieve that is something that remains to seen.

Anthem is dead and buried, and has now joined numerous other live service games that squandered their potential. The truth is that the game, despite having some really good parts, didn’t do much above the required minimum. And simply put, that is not enough.

It’s a shame that, for most of us, Anthem won’t be remembered as a game worth our money or our time; rather, it’ll stand as a reminder of how poor management, weak planning, and troubled development can doom a game in a matter of weeks.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

“Goodbye Anthem. You had so much potential, such a waste,” wrote one player. “As one of the most notorious ‘Destiny killers’, its shutdown is a good reminder that keeping a looter shooter alive and well for years is a nearly impossible task.”

“Last night I logged into Anthem for the last time. Toured the map one last time, did some missions. Had some fun,” wrote another. “People can feel how they want, but the potential this game had was undeniable. The flying was spectacular.”

“A game that could have been great,” wrote BlueSky user Dominic Tarason. “The feel of moving around, flying and shooting? Top notch. Better than any official Iron Man game. I want sci-fi super-suits to feel like this everywhere. But the mission design was a mess. Levels were designed like they were for a regular ground-based FPS.”

The fact that “potential” is a running theme in many of these posts should come as no surprise. Even back when Anthem first launched on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, common consensus was that the flying mechanics served as excellent foundations on which the rest of the game could then be built. However, a severe lack of content, and other game design decisions ended up hampering a lot of players’ enjoyment of the game.

Even in our own review, we noted that Anthem often tends to have excellent gameplay that is often brought down thanks to un-fun mission design. For example, the story is brought to a dramatic halt after players are tasked with unlocking some old tombs. However, the process to unlock these tombs was considered an arduous waste of time, with our review referring to them as “arbitrary tasks” like killing a certain number of enemies with specific attacks or reviving squad mates. We ultimately gave Anthem a score of 5 out of 10, noting that, while the gunplay, flying, story and world were great, poor mission design and a lack of enemy variety were only part of its problems.

Taking a cue from long-running live service games, BioWare and EA had announced back in February 2020 that a revamp of Anthem was under development. The revamp would focus on improving stability and performance, along with new content and features. However, this revamp would never see the light of day, with the project getting cancelled just a year later in February 2021. In a statement, BioWare Austin head Christian Dailey spoke about the unique events of 2020, including the worldwide pandemic, and noted that the studio had suffered a major impact in its productivity.

For more details on Anthem‘s rise and fall, check out the full story.

A game that could have been great.The feel of moving around, flying and shooting? Top notch. Better than any official Iron Man game. I want sci-fi super-suits to feel like this everywhere.But the mission design was a mess. Levels were designed like they were for a regular ground-based FPS.

— Dominic Tarason (@dominictarason.com) 2026-01-12T11:08:07.430Z

BioWare won’t face layoffs due to the sunsetting, which is good news. Then again, considering Anthem has been on life support after the cancellation of its major overhaul, dubbed Anthem Next, it’s probably not surprising that there weren’t any developers assigned.

Anthem is currently available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. It launched in 2019 to a negative response from players and critics. Scrapping its post-launch roadmap, BioWare set about making improvements to the loot, progression and overall gameplay. However, it shifted from seasonal updates to focus on Anthem Next.

Earlier this year, the studio went through significant restructuring due to the disappointing performance of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. It allegedly consists of less than 100 developers focused on the next Mass Effect.

Metal Gear Survive

Metal Gear Solid 5 took the fan-beloved series to new heights with its shift to an open-world structure, but the road to release was anything but smooth. The turbulent development led to the infamous Kojima Konami breakup, putting a big question mark on the future of the franchise. Konami tried to take the game’s foundations and create another makeshift zombie open world out of it with Metal Gear Survive, but it was a spectacular failure. A barren open-world, repetitive missions, and uninteresting progression mechanics were some of the biggest issues that plague Survive’s gameplay loop – making it a really boring time.

30. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

The fact that the world of Mirror’s Edge had such untapped potential, to the point that many desired a sequel years after its launch, is a testament to its impact. The first-person parkour model would be in other titles, most notably Dying Light, but the focus on platforming and skill-based jumping, not to mention the gorgeous dystopian world, helped it stand out.

So when DICE finally announced Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, which offered a more open world, the excitement was palpable, even if it was revealed to be a reboot. While it retained the fluid movement and responsive controls, the world felt barren, the story rudimentary and the ending inane. DICE has no plans to return to the franchise, and for all its appealing aspects, Mirror’s Edge is pretty much dead.

29. Rise of the Ronin

As a fan of Team Ninja’s Nioh series and even finding some enjoyment in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, it’s sad to see how Rise of the Ronin turned out. On the one hand, it’s earned some praise for its combat and even the directions you can take the story. On the other hand, critics have expressed disappointment with its open world, English voice acting, story and visuals.

While there were plenty of comparisons to Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima, I feel that they’re both distinct enough and trying to do their own thing. So why is Rise of the Ronin so underwhelming? Well, for starters, it’s a PS5 exclusive in development for seven years, with Sony’s support, which lends certain expectations. This isn’t to say that all reviews were equally hard on the game, as indicated by the 76 Metascore, but ranking fifth in physical sales for the UK at launch and dropping to 14th place the next week is nothing short of disappointing.

28. Need for Speed (2015)

Years of requests for a new Need for Speed Underground title and Electronic Arts delivered…sort of. Employing real-world legends like Ken Block, it was ultimately about a cast of street racers struggling to get noticed. While the customization and visuals received praise, the uninteresting story, AI prone to rubberbanding, multiplayer and lack of certain features (including drag racing) soured fans. There was also the always-online requirement with no option to pause. It would have qualified as one of the weaker games in the franchise, but then Payback happened and drastically lowered the bar.

27. Biomutant

When a game like Biomutant promises a massive world with choices and consequences, extensive character customization, vehicles, deep combat mechanics and much more, it’s hard to not get hyped. The fact that it was five years in the making, with Experiment 101 consisting of former Just Cause developers, further contributed to this. However, all those intriguing bits turned out to be incredibly shallow, from the story and combat to the mission design and annoying narrator. An update helped improve things, and with a million units sold in a few months, it was far from a flop, but it still has a ways to go.

26. The Order: 1886

Ready at Dawn’s The Order: 1886 received extensive attention for its graphics, with gorgeous facial animation and lighting. The presentation also received significant praise, but everything else left much to be desired. The campaign was ephemeral, with the disappointing story (despite such an intriguing setting and premise) and over-reliance on quick-time events bogging down the overall gameplay. Ending on a cliffhanger with no prospects for a sequel didn’t help either.

25. Exoprimal

Piloting exosuits to battle hordes of dinosaurs sounds like a good idea in theory, but what is live service? The developer’s to join the trend resulted in Exoprimal, which featured a story focused on time traveling, simulations run by a rogue AI called Leviathan, and so much dino slaying. The story felt disjointed, with the characters getting little development, and the lackluster map variety and repetitive objectives brought the experience down. The developer has expanded on the different modes at least while also adding new Alpha variants of Exosuits (Beta variants are coming soon), but its launch state was just so underwhelming.

24. Star Fox Zero

Not that Star Fox had the best run since peaking with Star Fox 64, but Zero had PlatinumGames involved. Surely, the Wii U controls would allow for a compelling shoot-’em-up experience. As you’ve probably guessed, that isn’t the case, as the controls were criticized for their unwieldiness. It also didn’t help that the experience heavily mirrored Star Fox 64, though some critics enjoyed the approach. With less than 500,000 copies sold, it flopped hard, and there hasn’t been a follow-up ever since.

23. Thief (2014)

One of the most beloved cult classic stealth series of all time, Thief was considered as revolutionary for PC players as Metal Gear Solid for consoles. So when Eidos Montreal announced a reboot, there was excitement and perhaps a little trepidation, especially after Garrett’s old voice actor was replaced. A dull performance was the least of the game’s problems, with the level design, AI and story all feeling out of sorts. While opinions settled more on the slightly above side, Thief (2014) couldn’t match up to the original games in player freedom and choice.

22. Days Gone

The praise for Days Gone, Bend Studio’s open-world zombie survival title, cropped up most when it was free on PlayStation Plus. Full credit to the team for sticking with it and adding sizable new content and features, but that’s not the launch version. The latter was roundly criticized for its excessive bugs, performance issues and loading screens (that too after delays for more polish), to say nothing of the bland story and awful dialogue. The open world, the motorcycle maintenance mechanics, the shooting – nearly everything had its downsides.

Make no mistake – there were some positives, from the immense undead hordes to the progression, and it notched up some impressive sales numbers, topping the UK physical charts for three weeks in a row and outselling the combined total of Bend’s previous games. However, it was nowhere near the high bar set by first-party Sony titles. Perhaps for this reason, the publisher didn’t greenlight a sequel and directors John Garvin and Jeff Ross subsequently left the studio. As beloved as it is now, there’s no denying that Days Gone underwhelmed at launch.

21. RAGE 2

For its time, RAGE was trying to do something technologically ahead of its time courtesy of id Tech 5. However, it faced criticism for its overall story and forgettable characters, not to mention the aggravating cliffhanger at the end. The fact that it launched after the more successful Borderlands, which captured the Mad Max feel of a post-apocalyptic wasteland far better, also didn’t help. Nevertheless, it did receive some praise for its visuals, combat, side missions and AI.

With RAGE 2, Avalanche Studios decided to go for a more traditional open-world first-person shooter with vehicles. You had the usual enemy camps to clear, some points of interest and enemy convoys to assault, while the story was a paint-by-numbers “gather the MacGuffins” before a showdown with the big bad. The combat and visuals were still worthy of praise, but everything else felt further downgraded over the original, and it had microtransactions.

20. Immortals of Aveum

Coming from a new team with a five-year development cycle and emphasis on a single-player campaign with no microtransactions, Immortals of Aveum was a noble endeavor. Problems arose with the overall story, graphical issues on consoles, iffy dialogue (with the cast trying its very best to elevate it), and controls. With the emphasis on fast-paced mage combat, encounters could feel repetitive, ultimately underwhelming despite some impressive set pieces. Again, it received updates and new content while attracting a following, but Immortals of Aveum failed to leave a mark.

19. Shenmue 3

A sequel that fans (and creator Yu Suzuki) craved since the second game’s release in 2001. An announcement years in the making with $6 million in crowd-funding. A launch finally happening four years later, mired in controversy due to Epic Games Store exclusivity and a publishing deal with Deep Silver. Shenmue 3 finally arrived in 2015 and was panned for its outdated mechanics and storyline that ended on yet another cliffhanger. While some found the antiquated mechanics to be the appeal, it ended up feeling inconsequential and just another chapter in the ongoing story which would likely end.

18. The Callisto Protocol

Spiritual successors to classics from the original creators never fail to generate attention, as seen with Striking Distance’s The Callisto Protocol. This Dead Space tribute sported gorgeous visuals punctuated by over-the-top and grotesque death sequences. Delays and declarations of crunch didn’t help, nor did the performance issues at launch. Of course, despite all that, the experience was dragged for being overtly linear with shoddy melee combat, no option to skip the death scenes, a short playtime, heaps of unrealized potential and ultimately, not measuring up to the legacy of Dead Space.

17. Rainbow Six Extraction

After the success of the limited-time mode Outbreak in Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft did what any self-serving publisher would do – spin it off into a new game and monetize it. Extraction would take a while to launch, initially announced as Rainbow Six Quarantine in 2019 (and eventually abandoning the name for obvious reasons).

It would finally arrive in January 2022 after multiple delays and revealed itself as a session of interconnected areas with procedurally generated objectives and enemies. The sparse content, terrible objectives, bad AI, laughable story and repetition sadly made for a dull experience. While the developer would tout three million players in the first week (likely in no small part thanks to Game Pass), you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who remembered it past the first month.

16. Crackdown 3

Before Microsoft pushed cloud gaming via Game Pass, it hyped the computational powers of the same and how they would revolutionize gaming. Crackdown 3 was an example, touted as having a fully destructible open world. It eventually relegated into a separate mode, which quickly died out, while the base campaign launched after years of delay and generated ire for its archaic, repetitive design. Could you have some mindless fun? Sure, but it was a far cry from what Microsoft hyped the project to be and far from the next big leap for the franchise.

15. Resident Evil 3 (2020)

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis has always occupied a weird place due to its shorter length and unorthodox features (like the titular villain). Releasing in the shadow of the brilliant Resident Evil 2 didn’t help – unfortunately, that same fate awaited Resident Evil 3 remake. Despite some fantastic visuals and combat, it was more notable for omitting areas (city hall, the clock tower and more were nowhere to be seen) or changing some of the original’s most iconic moments.

Barring the final sequence, none of them felt like an improvement. The fact that Mercenaries wasn’t included, but we got Resistance, a terrible asymmetrical multiplayer mode, didn’t help. Even with sales at 8.4 million, Resident Evil 3 is considered the weakest of the modern remakes.

14. Wolfenstein Youngblood

MachineGames delivered not one but two excellent Wolfenstein titles, reviving the franchise for a new generation with some incredibly cinematic storytelling that remains impressive to this day. How did it follow these up? Why, with a co-op title focusing on B.J. Blazkowicz’s daughters, Jessie and Zofia. The initial gameplay showings weren’t terrible, and the prospect of venturing to Paris to take out Nazis was appealing.

Unfortunately, Wolfenstein Youngblood fundamentally failed to capture what made the previous games so successful. Enemies were bullet sponges, causing players to constantly run out of ammo, and the missions were forgettable, with bizarre hub-like stages that felt utterly unnecessary to the campaign’s flow. Throw in terrible AI when playing solo and microtransactions, and it felt like a poorly conceived side story rather than a proper follow-up to MachineGames’ hits.

13. Forspoken

You want to believe that Luminous Productions had good intentions when designing Forspoken, first announced as Project Athia. Boasting a premier writing staff and billed as a two-year PS5 exclusive, it could have been the developer’s next big thing. While the combat wasn’t terrible, it did little to uplift the barren open world and dull activities.

The initially awful dialogue and plot also weighed it down, but even as things improved over time, the story was over quickly. It wasn’t long before the developer declared that Forspoken’s sales were “lackluster” and by May, Luminous was reorganized and merged into the publisher.

12. Mighty No. 9

Also considered one of the worst games ever made, Mighty No. 9’s development history would have suggested otherwise. It was helmed by a new team at Comcept who promised a spiritual successor to the Mega Man franchise when the developer had effectively kept the series on the back burner.

Then the delays happened, and that whole second Kickstarter campaign to fund a completely different project. By the time Mighty No. 9 launched, it was beset by performance issues, terrible voice acting, lack of content and an overall feel that screamed “cheap imitation” rather than spiritual successor.

11. Skull and Bones

Before its multitude of delays that whittled any faith that anyone had in the developer to deliver a competent pirate game, Skull and Bones had some potential. Its first announcement trailer gave the vibe of an Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag but a stronger focus on naval combat that fans had demanded for years. Of course, then the delays happened, followed by reports of reboots, behind-the-scenes issues, incompetent upper management, leadership departures, etc. When Skull and Bones was close to launching – for real this time – Yves Guillemot made the baffling decision to call it a quadruple-A game instead of the tried and true “triple-A.”

Upon launch, and to no one’s surprise, Skull and Bones was a live service grind for “loot”, punctuated by increasingly dull missions and tedious back and forth. Good thing it sold for $70 and included microtransactions. The results were telling – less than one-fourth of Sea of Thieves’ launch sales in the UK and allegedly 850,000 players, including those who played the free trial.

10. Marvel’s Avengers

Marvel’s Avengers didn’t have the best of reveals, competing against the first-ever gameplay of Final Fantasy 7 Remake on the same E3 showcase. Nevertheless, despite how many felt about the lack of resemblance to the Marvel Cinematic Universe actors, it didn’t look terrible either. Live service was seeing a downturn, but with Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal at the helm, how could it go wrong?

Cut to the underwhelming beta and full release, and the distinction between Marvel’s Avengers and a title like Marvel’s Spider-Man became clearer. Despite unique kits for its heroes and some decent visuals, the mission design, objectives and loot were subpar. Post-launch support added some new heroes and content, which did little to raise the player count, and it was subsequently delisted from storefronts in September 2023.

9. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3

While one may joke that Call of Duty is a disappointment year in and year out, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 felt especially egregious. Reports indicated that it was to be an expansion to Modern Warfare 2 focusing on the Mexican cartel that underwent a reboot into a full-fledged game. Calling it that feels dirty due to the painfully short campaign with its lackluster and ultimately inconsequential story that sets up yet another sequel.

Perhaps even worse is the Open Combat Missions, promising sandbox-style action but coming off as lazy with simplistic objectives. Multiplayer was knee-capped out of the gate with the focus on remastered maps for its core 6v6 modes, and despite some solid gameplay, the age-old issues of skill-based matchmaking (or at least how COD approaches it) and connection issues still cropped up. Zombies was the only good thing about this release, but that’s been abandoned after some lackluster updates. At least the microtransactions continue to roll in.

8. Anthem

After the mess of Mass Effect Andromeda, it was the turn of the main BioWare team to produce something special. It was…a live service looter shooter, which emphasized co-op over the developer’s tried and true single-player story-driven approach. As impressive as the initial gameplay reveal seemed, it was reportedly fake – Anthem’s development period was plagued with issues, from crunch to terrible management.

The result is a mess, with poor characterization and dialogue, bad mission design and objectives, a baffling lack of quality of life, performance issues, bugs, glitches, unimaginative loot and a barren endgame. Despite changes and updates, Anthem’s attempt at a do-over was ultimately rejected by EA, and support is effectively dead (though servers remain available).

7. Ghost Recon Breakpoint

Speaking of an underwhelming launch, we have the developer going from Ghost Recon Wildlands, which grew into something great to Ghost Recon Breakpoint and its removal of AI teammates, looter shooter elements, bland open world, bullet sponge drones, bugs, glitches, the list goes on. Why did the developer suddenly want to adopt a shared world shooter approach with the franchise (besides live service revenue)? No one knows, but it was disastrous. The developer would eventually claw a good game out of it, one that still fell short of Wildlands, but at least offered a more tactical experience without worrying about gear scores.

6. Resident Evil 6

After Resident Evil 5, impressions of the franchise weren’t exactly the most positive, with many feeling it veered too much into a more action-heavy approach. Even if Resident Evil 6’s trailers were full of action, there was still the hype behind seeing so many fan favorite characters (and Jake) tearing it up together. The result offered some pretty good combat but flopped in multiple ways. The characters felt off, and the overall pacing of walk a few feet, cutscene, rinse, repeat was a killer. While Resident Evil 6 saw decent sales, its critical reception was in the gutter, but thankfully, it led to the rebooting in Resident Evil 7: biohazard.

5. Payday 3

Considering the ups and downs that Payday 2 saw, it was in a pretty good spot by the time Starbreeze stopped producing new content. Payday 3 would have been the perfect opportunity to start over with a fresh new slate, avoiding its predecessor’s mistakes while ushering in a new age of heist-focused co-op gameplay. Of course, it wasn’t to be with the always-online requirement and lack of an offline mode souring fans early.

This would come back to bite the development team when server and matchmaking issues ensured fans couldn’t play for days. Even after their resolution, the sequel faced heavy criticism for removing features present in Payday 2, whether it was the pre-heist planning map, text chat, or just the option to unready. Sales were below expectations, and given the poor reception, Starbreeze has replaced its CEO to try and turn the ship around. Thus far, it doesn’t look like it’s happening anytime soon.

4. Redfall

Arkane Austin, which specialized in immersive sims like Dishonored and Prey – didn’t inspire too much confidence when it was revealed to be working on a co-op looter shooter. The lack of an offline mode or progress for other players except the host in co-op also didn’t help. On the bright side, the state of Redfall made both issues feel like water under the bridge.

Horrendous AI, performance issues, bugs galore (including catchy music playing during serious scenes), horrible bosses, a dull story, lackluster characterization, bad mission design – everything went wrong. You may argue that expectations were low, but Redfall sunk lower, and still flounders despite some major updates.

3. Battlefield 2042

This one hurt for longtime fans of the franchise, especially coming off of a relatively disappointing Battlefield 5. With no campaign, Battlefield 2042 promised a return to everything that made the series great, wrapped in the veneer of modern combat and massive 128-player battles. Reports emerged of troubled development, and the beta earned some ire, but fans were still hopeful.

Cue the disappointment and savage response on Steam, with the sequel becoming one of the lowest-rated games in the platform’s history overnight. From the removal of the class system to the visuals, destructibility, map design and the scoreboard – that damned scoreboard – Battlefield 2042 was a letdown in every way. It’s improved over the years but is still a far cry from the series’ peak.

2. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

Before it was revealed as a live service looter shooter with a boring mission design, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League had a suitable amount of hype. How could fans not be excited when it was Rocksteady’s first new game since 2015’s Batman: Arkham Knight? After its disastrous showing last year, it was delayed almost a year from its original release. Maybe it would add an offline mode and tone down its live service elements, including but not limited to microtransactions and a battle pass.

As it turns out, none of these things happened, and when Suicide Squad launched, it was begrudged for its terrible mission design, repetitive gameplay and boring endgame. After Warner Bros. admitted that it fell short of expectations, Rocksteady would focus on fixing the plethora of network issues and bugs while prepping the first post-launch season. Unsurprisingly, Season of the Joker was another miserable disappointment with its utter lack of story content, boring “new” missions, annoying grind to unlock the Joker as a playable character and audacity to charge for immediate access.

1. Mass Effect Andromeda

Of all the games to disappoint over the years, this one probably hurt the most. It’s not like Mass Effect Andromeda was the next mainline title in the franchise or one that had the budget and resources of Mass Effect 2 and 3. However, as the first new entry in five years, fans looked forward to it all the same. The potential for a new story and setting with an open-world twist also sparked interest. When Andromeda launched, it was quickly clowned for its bugs, facial animation and dialogue.

Those who dived deeper discovered barren planets, uninteresting characters who couldn’t hold a candle to the original heroes and a low-stakes plot. The underwhelming critical reception and sales wouldn’t outright kill the franchise entirely (as evidenced by the recent Legendary Edition and upcoming sequel), but it was the first time that fans began to question BioWare. Of course, Anthem happened, and the rest is history, but Mass Effect Andromeda hurt more.

Anthem

Following the underwhelming release of Mass Effect: Andromeda, fans were expecting a redemption arc from developer Bioware with Anthem. The game looked really promising with all the markings of a great action-adventure game, but the final product was anything but. A rushed development cycle and poor management from higher-ups meant that much of the game’s creative parts were crushed under the weight of business decisions, and Anthem ultimately became a massive flop. There were plans to revive the game under the Anthem NEXT banner, but those efforts were also canned due to growing costs.

Skull and Bones

Skull and Bones was the developer’s effort to translate its adrenaline-pumping naval combat gameplay mechanics into a live service format. The game spent years and years in development hell, surviving multiple changes and differing creative directions before finally releasing just a few days ago. And suffice to say, the reception has been poor. It might be too early to call the verdict on this one, but the chance of Skulls and Bones’ sinking ship reaching the shores of live service success is looking pretty slim at the moment.

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League

When Rocksteady announced Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, it felt like a natural evolution of the ideas we saw in the Batman: Arkham games. The prospect of playing as the anti-villains and engaging with the game over the long term was pretty tantalizing, but the first look at the uninspired gameplay more or less set the course for what was ultimately going to be a trainwreck. And to not much surprise, Suicide Squad also launched recently, and most fans have already lost interest in the game just a couple of weeks after launch.

Marvel’s Avengers

A live service game that lets you play as some of the most famous superheroes on the planet would be a formula ripe for success, right? Well, that’s what the developer thought when it laid down the blueprint for what would ultimately become Marvel’s Avengers. The live service elements felt shoehorned into the final product, and a lack of engaging endgame portion and grindy progression mechanics didn’t really help either. And to top it all off, the game released in an extremely buggy state making it one of the biggest flops in recent memory. While the developer did make some effort in turning it around into a success with post-launch DLC, it eventually became clear that many of its biggest problems were rooted in the foundational elements of the game and that wasn’t really something they could repair with a finished product.

Knockout City

Knockout City was a really fun multiplayer game with an interesting art direction and unique mechanics, and developer Velan Studios was able to accrue a sizable player base through those aspects. But player interest, unfortunately, waned over time due to a variety of reasons, and the developer started to withdraw support with falling player counts – resulting in a slow death of this once-promising multiplayer IP.

Hyper Scape

Yet another developer trying to capitalize on the battle royale hype train with Hyper Scape, a game that combines fast and fluid movement mechanics with unique features that were specifically catered towards streamers. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with Hyper Scape’s set of mechanics, and it did gain some success on an initial level but the game just wasn’t able to sustain that success in the long run.

Evolve

Evolve was one of the first games in the asymmetrical multiplayer space, and developer Turtle Rock Studios’ title had quite a number of fans waiting with bated breath for its release. It had some fun ideas going for it, but the developer failed to capitalize on the potential with underwhelming DLC content. The idea of killing fantastically designed monsters in a eerie atmosphere certainly was a great idea on paper but the execution left much to be desired.

Foamstars

Foamstars was a decent attempt at cashing on the popularity of Splatoon’s gooey splatterfest mechanics and taking those concepts to a new platform, but a rough execution meant that much of the potential therein was put to waste. Foamstars does have a few good things going for it, but the lack of engaging content and uninteresting progression mechanics give players more than enough reason to not be in it for the long run. Player counts haven’t been the best as of late, and Foamstars is looking to be on a downward spiral just a couple of weeks after launch.

Lawbreakers

Lawbreakers was an interesting attempt at creating a hero-based first-person shooter, and while some of its ideas could be traced back to Overwatch – Lawbreakers was anything but a ripoff. There were plenty of reasons why Lawbreakers never got the love that it deserves which range from poor marketing to uninspired art direction and high skill requirements among others. There was a dedicated group of players who enjoyed what Lawbreakers had to offer, but that group wasn’t nearly enough to sustain the game’s continuous development and maintenance costs – eventually leading to servers being shut down.

Radical Heights

The insane success of Fortnite caused a lot of developers to quickly rush into the battle royale genre and grab a piece of this newly discovered pie, and developer Boss Key Productions’ Radical Heights was one of those shameless attempts. It was a game that could barely pass off as a minimum viable product, and the fact that it lacked any sort of creativity meant that it was dead as soon as it launched.

Paragon

Epic Games tried to capture the lucrative MOBA market with Paragon, but failed to create much impact in the long term. The game managed to earn some faithful players when its early access version was first released in 2016, but complaints regarding its mechanics and quirks weren’t addressed in a feasible manner. There was a very clear distinction between the direction that the developers took with Paragon and what players wanted out of it, and with no common ground achieved – player counts trickled down and developers started to withdraw support, eventually causing servers to shut down.

Red Dead Online

Red Dead Redemption 2 is an undisputed masterpiece, and it continues to stand as a towering achievement for storytelling in video games. It’s pretty sad then that the online component of the game can’t be praised on a similar level, and a lot of that could be blamed on the developer’s inability to drop meaningful content updates to keep players hooked in the long run. The runaway success of Grand Theft Auto 5’s online component meant that RDO was mostly kept on life support, and that eventually led to player counts dropping and it ultimately turned out to be a failure.

Rocket Arena

Rocket Arena was yet another attempt by EA to cash in on the popularity of gaming trends, and the developer tried to take on the team-based mayhem of Overwatch with a few tricks up its own sleeve. Rocket Arena had somewhat of an interesting art style and compelling mechanics, but it also had an equal share of glaring issues ranging from game balance to progression and lack of content among others. Players quickly lost interest in the game soon after its release, causing a premature end to what could have been a promising IP.

Battlefield 2042

Battlefield 2042 was an ambitious project that tried to turn its multiplayer model into a live service format, but a less-than-stellar execution plan made it one of the biggest failures that the long-running genre has seen to date. A missing single-player campaign, basic communication features, and a general lack of content are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Battlefield 2042’s buffet of problems – and players quickly took note. Sales were obviously much lower than projected numbers, and those who did get into the game didn’t stick around for much longer.

The Culling

The Culling is yet another attempt by a developer to capitalize on the battle royale hype, but developer Xaviant Games clearly put out the game well before it was even ready. It suffered from a bevy of issues ranging from technical inefficiencies to half-baked mechanics and much more. It was a laughing stock of a game, and it continues to serve as an example for developers to not blindly rush towards hot trends.