SHADOWS OF THE DAMNED

The textbook example of a diamond in the rough, Shadows of the Damned is the perfect game to kick this feature off with. Grasshopper Manufacture’s 2011 cult classic is a game that has garnered an increasingly sizeable fan following over the years, and it’s easy to see why, whether that’s because of its stylish action, its sense of humour, or the abundance of character and personality that it’s overflowing with. Hopefully, its upcoming remaster will bring a much larger audience to the game.

Redfall

It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that Arkane’s recent release Redfall was anything short of utterly disappointing. The game’s concept combined with the developer’s signature gameplay felt like a formula ripe for success, but the end result was a hotchpotch of ideas that never quite hit the mark. There are a few moments of greatness hidden somewhere deep beneath the pile of technical problems and frustrating game design, but those aren’t nearly enough to redeem Redfall’s fall from grace.

Forspoken

Forspoken was one of the earliest games to be showcased for the PS5, so naturally fan expectations were high. And to be honest, Forspoken did deliver with its smooth movement system that is an absolute joy to interact with. But everything surrounding that central mechanic such as the story, the gameplay, and the open-world designs left something to be desired – which ultimately made the end result an extremely underwhelming experience.

Mass Effect: Andromeda

The Mass Effect series still stands tall as one of the most prestigious RPGs of all time, and Mass Effect: Andromeda was set to be the next evolution of the franchise. Bioware tried some interesting things with the game, but the product heavily suffered due to development issues ranging from an unwieldy Frostbite Engine and external pressure from publishers. The final product was a technical mess, and while post-launch updates have fixed those surface-level issues – the design issues continue to make Andromeda a promising but failed experiment.

Gotham Knights

Gotham Knights felt like an interesting spin on the established formula of the Arkham games at first glance. The trailers and pre-release gameplay looked promising, but the final product was a bog standard co-op shooter where players would take on repetitive mission types and keep grinding towards arbitrary higher numbers. Add to that a weak story and poor graphics, and Gotham Knights becomes one of the worst games of recent memory.

Duke Nukem Forever

Duke Nukem Forever spent more than a decade in development, so when the game was finally set to release in 2011 – franchise fans rejoiced at the prospect of a modern sequel. Upon release, Duke Nukem Forever was harshly criticized on account of its tasteless humour, uninteresting gameplay, and poorly written story – which put a final nail in the coffin of this once prestigious franchise.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (2023)

It’s fair to say that none of the Call of Duty games have been okay experiences but the recent release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has to go down as one of the most disappointing releases in the genre. And a lot of that criticism can be chalked up to the game’s blatant use of mindless missions, and its switch to an open-zone structure for select missions also feels extremely rushed and half-baked.

Rainbow Six: Extraction

The developer really knocked it out of the park with Rainbow Six: Siege, a game that continues to be one of the most popular multiplayer shooters on the market after such a long time. The developer tried to take those foundations and placate a wider audience with a zombie shooter in the form of Rainbow Six: Extraction, but those mechanics never really fit well with one another, to begin with. It’s not a horrible game, but it is a very mediocre release that never really reaches its true potential.

Marvel’s Avengers

A live-service game where you play as powerful superheroes from the Marvel universe was a formula ripe for success. Marvel’s Avengers was one of the most highly anticipated games of its time, and it quickly morphed into one of the most disappointing games following its troubled release. The game’s story wasn’t really interesting or engaging, the mission designs were extremely repetitive with you having to hold down choke points from enemies, and the progression loop was entirely based on chasing high numbers. The developer tried to turn the game’s fates around with post-launch updates and DLCs, but none of that really worked in the end.

The Callisto Protocol

The Callisto Protocol was hyped as the next big thing for survival horror, so there were more than a few people waiting to see what’s in store. We wouldn’t say that The Callisto Protocol is a terrible game; it has some really pretty visuals and the combat is pretty smooth too. But the game just couldn’t nail the ominous atmosphere that we loved in Dead Space and the jumpscares also fell flat in comparison to its inspirations. It wasn’t able to live up to its promise, and fans weren’t happy at all.

Thief

Thief: The Dark Project was a game that was well ahead of its time, and it’s a game that arguably laid the blueprint for modern stealth games to follow. So when the developer announced that Thief would be making a return with a reboot, many were understandably excited at the very prospect. The game was released in 2014, and failed to meet expectations by a significant margin. The gameplay felt watered down in comparison to the original, the story felt like a hotchpotch of ideas, and the game lacked any sort of personality – ultimately making it a bland experience.

Anthem

After a disappointing run with Andromeda, millions of Bioware fans had their eyes set on Anthem – the latest live-service RPG from the team behind Mass Effect. The game looked really promising in trailers and footage, but the final release was a faint shadow of what could have been. A weak story, half-baked mechanics, and blatant issues with the progression are just some of the problems that Anthem suffered from – which culminated in the game being yet another disappointing release. The developer wished to solve those issues with Anthem 2.0, but the developer pulled the plug before that update could see the light of day.

Need For Speed: Payback

Need For Speed: Payback released at a time when publisher EA went all out on microtransactions, and Payback also had all the markings of an unethically designed game. The progression was created to drive players into buying real currency with money, and that didn’t go unnoticed by players. In addition to this, Payback wasn’t really able to impress with its open-world or customization options or even the driving mechanics – which ultimately made it one of the biggest disappointments of its time.

Mafia 3

The Mafia series is known for its quality writing and interesting mission design, but the open world has always been somewhat bland with little in the name of interesting side activities. Mafia 3 tried to right those wrongs with an overhaul of its open-world designs, but those changes ended up biting back in the foot. The mission design was pretty redundant, culminating in a frustrating moment-to-moment gameplay experience. The story tackled some interesting themes, but it also felt flat compared to what came before.

Crackdown 3

Crackdown 3 was yet another game that suffered delay after delay, and when it was finally released in 2019 – there was a general consensus that it should have spent even more time in the oven. Crackdown 3 is an extremely dull game with a frustrating and repetitive gameplay loop, and it’s all presented without much attention to detail. Everything from the story to the gameplay and progression falls flat on its knees – making it a big disappointment for the patient fans.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint

The Ghost Recon series has been on a downward spiral as of late, and Breakpoint might just be the series at its absolute lowest. The game tried to refine the ideas introduced in Wildlands, but the execution left a lot to be desired. The systems and mechanics never quite meshed well with each other, and the many technical inefficiencies also don’t make things much better. It flopped on a critical and a commercial level, and that failure is what has resulted in the series being put on an indefinite hold.

Sons of the Forest

Sons of the Forest is a brutal survival game that tasks players to hold their backs against cannibalistic primals with only a limited few resources to spare. It presents its brutal world with gorgeous graphics and striking attention to detail, and the gradual process of collecting resources and becoming more powerful is one that will keep you hooked for dozens upon dozens of hours. Add to that the ability to enjoy exploring with friends, and Sons of the Forest becomes a great option for a co-op open-world experience.

ASSASSIN’S CREED ODYSSEY

We’re going to be speaking about plenty of Ubisoft games in this feature, so it makes sense to start off with one- and it’s probably one that most people think of when they think of open world bloat. There’s no denying that Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is an excellent game, and the vast majority of the content it delivers is an absolute blast to play through- but there’s way too much of it. And that excessive size results in plenty of issues, from repetitive quests and quest design to excessively reused assets throughout the open world, and more. This is a game that can easily eat up between 80-90 hours of your time, and while most of it is a good time, by the time it’s coming to an end, it does feel like it’s overstayed its welcome a little bit.

Andromeda, unsurprisingly, failed to sell the way EA had hoped it would, and shortly after its release, it was announced that the series had been put on ice, and that plans for the game’s post-launch DLC had been cancelled. A sequel, which was very much being set up throughout Andromeda’s story, also never came to fruition- though former BioWare veteran Mac Walters, who directed the game game, still wishes the studio had got the chance to develop a direct sequel.

Speaking in a recent interview with Eurogamer, Walters – who left BioWare earlier this year – talked about how the development team was focused more on quantity of content than quality, and ended up compromising on polish as a result.

“There were just a lot of things that we had to relearn, re-figure out, and ultimately when you do that, it’s very, very challenging to come out and be as polished as your third iteration was, and we didn’t hit that,” he said. “And we probably should have – in hindsight – just reduced scope more and executed on what we could to [ensure] quality.

“But we were also in a weird phase in the industry where a lot of people were saying quantity was quality, so we were deluding ourselves internally a little bit that if it’s maybe not as polished as [Mass Effect 3], it’s fine – it’s bigger and there’s more here, and there’s more to do. And we hit a point where people were like, ‘No, that isn’t okay.’ Or, at least, ‘It isn’t okay for your franchise’. And that’s fine, that’s a lesson learned.”

However, Walters believe that if BioWare had been able to make a direct sequel, the developer would have applied significantly greater levels of polish to the title, just as it did over the course of the original Mass Effect trilogy.

“I only wish we had been able to then do a second one, because then you would have really seen that polish just like we did from [ME1] to [ME2] on the original [trilogy],” Walters said.

Later, he added: “Certainly, had we shipped an Andromeda 2, I am a hundred percent certain we would have improved on all the things that people called out and then also been about to lean into the innovative things that we were trying to do as well.”

Of course, BioWare is currently at work on a new Mass Effect games, which was first confirmed to be in the works in December 2020, and received a mysterious new teaser in November of last year. Very little is known about the game, but even though it’s unlikely to be a direct sequel to Andromeda, BioWare has hinted a couple of times that it could still pick up unresolved narrative threads from the 2017’s RPG story and continue building on them.

A couple of years ago, former BioWare writers Chris Helper and Jo Berry also spoke about Mass Effect: Andromeda’s development, and how the studio had to severely cut down on the game’s scope due to budget restrictions. Read more on that through here.

ANTHEM

It’s hard to think of many games in recent years where the gulf is as wide between the product that was promised and the one that was delivered as it was for Anthem. BioWare set out to deliver something unique and fresh, but failed on nearly every level imaginable. Anthem didn’t deliver in any of the ways you’d expect a BioWare game to, from its story to its world to choice and consequence mechanics, but it didn’t even deliver as a looter shooter- in fact, on that front, it was downright broken. Add to that a bevy of technical issues that made it downright unplayable, and it’s not hard to see why BioWare and EA ended up quickly dumping the IP and moving on from it.

CYBERPUNK 2077

We’ll start with what’s become the poster child of rushed releases that could have benefitted massively from a delay- or another delay, in this case, because Cyberpunk 2077 was, of course, delayed more than a few times in the lead-up to its launch. The state the game released in was, frankly, unacceptable, not only in terms of the baffling lack of polish, but also the core gameplay itself feeling decidedly half-baked. With a couple more years in the oven, who knows? Maybe things could have turned out differently.

THE ENDING (MASS EFFECT 3)

Let’s start with the obvious pick. Mass Effect as a series was (and still is) built on the promise of proper choices and their consequences, with BioWare claiming that decisions made throughout the series would go on to affect its very end in various ways. What we got instead was an ending that failed on multiple levels- not only did it resort to simplistic choices while ignoring a lot of major decisions made throughout the series, it also provided some pretty unsatisfactory answers to major questions, while also leaving a lot of crucial things unexplained. Sure, the Extended Cut would go on to fill some of the holes, but even so, the ending was not even close to being at the level that BioWare had promised.

METAL GEAR SOLID 5 – DE-EMPHASIZING STORYTELLING

Metal Gear Solid has always been focused on storytelling, and that only grew with each new instalment in the series. Thanks to Hideo Kojima’s love for films, that generally materialized as stylishly directed and cinematic cutscenes- which only grew longer and longer as time went on. By Metal Gear Solid 4, these cutscenes had expanded to ridiculous lengths, with some that could stretch on for thirty minutes, if not twice that, and for many, that was a bit much. Large numbers of players hoped that the series would reel it in with the cutscenes going forward, but with Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, it’s fair to say that Kojima overcorrected. There’s a severe lack of cutscenes in MGS5, to the extent that many parts of the story that should been crucial cutscenes were relegated to being missable audio logs. It’s on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from MGS4.

#10. DRELL

The history of the drell is fascinating. Native to the dry, arid planet of Rakhana, the drell were on the verge of dying out, but were saved by the hanar when they made first contact with the species. And though they remain grateful to the hanar for literally saving them from extinction, that’s also come at a cost, with many drell not finding their planet’s much more humid atmosphere agreeable, which in turn leads to a deadly respiratory disease called Keplar’s Syndrome. The badass repentant assassin Thane Krios is, of course, a drell, and is also one of the best characters in the series, which also earns the alien race a lot of bonus points for Mass Effect fans.