...but brought down due to some strange, stupid or unexplainable gameplay idea or mechanics. Like if the game was leading you up to somewhere awesome or beautiful only to significantly fall short of that due to some awful idea implemented as if it was the product of a design team after one too many hits to the head. I'll start.

Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike:

I liked the ship segments, and I liked certain vehicle sections (like running around with an AT-ST). I also liked the environments, and the graphics were pretty good, especially on the Gamecube. So why, Factor 5, did you honestly think adding third-person on-foot gameplay was going to make the game enjoyable? Maybe if they were very, very brief periods, but it seems they were injected in almost every mission, acting as an awkward transition between flying and vehicle portions. There weren't any strategy involved; Wedge could take down an entire army of droids with a pistol (bash A over and over). Add terrible AI, repetition and a poor camera, it was just moments of pure "facepalming." I quit playing when there was this absurd "Jedi training" onfoot mission with Luke. I clipped into one of the floating rocks and got stuck; that was when I just gave up.

I'm not sure what is going on with the team in Factor 5 that is in charge of gameplay mechanics. Are they the same people who contributed to Lair years later? I'm not going to jump to conclusions, but were they the ones who agreed against allowing players to use traditional controls?

Farcry:

Mutants.


Lesser-degee offenders:

Metroid Prime 2:Echoes:

I thought this game was alright overall. But I can't seem to understand the whole idea behind "ammo limits" to the special beams. Was it to add some degree of strategy and depth to the shooting? I don't know, back in the first Prime, I liked just "spamming" the beams. Half the fun of acquiring new weapons in Metroid games was finding out ways of just blasting away things, especially taking the Plasma beam and burning up everything. Yes, mindless shooting was unfun in Rebel Strike, but Metriod Prime was made for on-foot gameplay so many other mechanics were involved. Acquiring the light-beam and dark-beam ammo seemed awkward and sometimes frustrating in the "dark-world-where-atmosphere-kills-you" when your ammo gets close to depleting.

[sub]/rant[/sub]

Bioshock, the Vita chambers ruined it for me.

Bioshock was way too arcade and easy to be enjoyable for me. Had it been more of a survival horror kind of game, it would have been absolutely incredible.

Ooh, a thread about lost opportunities!

I think there were few, but obviously the Biggest Lost Opportunity of them all is Deus Ex: Invisible War. Just about everything that made the first game great was toned down (sometimes very considerably), some vital characteristics were blatantly changed to something that made many characters... well, out of character... hell, it's not really a DX game at all. If it was a standalone game called The Invisible War, I guss it'd be nice in a consoley-kind of way but that's not the case, so yuck. Shame on the people who still call it DX2, luckily they're getting fewer and fewer.

I liked it, not in the same way i liked DX, but i liked it.

Star Wars: Obi-Wan

People were fussing over that game for nearly forever until it was announced the thing was changed to an x-box exclusive.

Daikatana :-(

Huge one: Fable.

There was so much promised for the game, with so many features that were supposed to be included, and the game was supposed to be so immense. It ended up disappointing me. Such a linear RPG, and short. The gameplay and mechanics weren't bad, but it really had a lot more potential.

Solution to that? Play Oblivion.

Galaxies. Come on! An MMO set in the Star Wars universe - that game should have kicked more *** than Chuck Norris in an *** kicking competition.

fable, and for that matter, kotor.

the combat in fable was fun, but the game was so linear it was retarded.. kotor was like, OMG THE PLANET IS GONE YOU CAN'T GO BACK.

for the more recent, cod4.

seriously, i'm tired of the enemy mills the damn series has. if you don't get your objective, it just keeps spitting enemies at you. honestly, how many ****ing terrorists can come out of one alley? did they have a goddamn convention there? games like that scream lack of substance.

what is so hard about letting a player sit in an area for a second after he/she mopped up? maybe it's because they might want to explore, and we all know you can do that in a shell of a mission that's basically a twisty line.

honestly, spend a little more time on the damn game and let it go from "ok" to "**** yes!"

bioshock looking pretty but having dull repetitive gameplay

I'm going to argue that if Oblivion were given another half a year in production, it would've been fun out of the box WITHOUT mods.

oblivion is awesome out of the box, you can chat to sean bean and jump off mountains on horseback, but thats all i ever ask for in games

Is it cool to dislike Bioshock now?

I just want to say, that yeah, I would put Bioshock on this list too probably. But it's still one of my favorite games of all time and has the best presentation of any game I've ever played.

Bioshock had good graphics and a good story.

But that was about it..

True... it was a lot more FPSy than System Shock 2 ever was.

I guess STALKER was a disappointment to a degree as well, but I never really waited for it either. Hm.

metroid prime wasn't about spamming beams, the ammo system in MP2 was to make sure you didn't have those better-than-average beams for every enemy. its not like you lost the beam completely if you ran out of ammo anyways, you could still charge it up for a regular shot.

other games that didn't quite live up to expectation:
timeshift
sure it was kinda fun, but it got old; just like FEAR you pretty much have to use time power for every enemy encounter

crysis
crysis is a very awesome game, but the end was such a letdown. come on, aliens. give me a break.

It was fun, just not omgmazing.

Definitely gonna go with Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. I could've played it for hours and hours--if it just wouldn't crash.

they did release a patch for bloodlines and it never crashed for me after I installed it.

Theres a super duper unofficial patch that is pretty nice and fixes almost everything.

i wish people told me it was an awful game before i got suckered in by the hype and pretty graphics.

god damn thing cost me 20 quid

So am I extra cool if I never liked Bioshock all along?

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.......hahahahahahahahh. I had that game pre-ordered for like 8 months, and it kept getting delayed, and it sucked even more when it finally came out.

Army of Two. It could have been so awesome. But game studios never seem to learn anything from their competitors.

Assassin's Creed. Painful, painful combat system.

No.

Just started playing (and loving!) it, I do have to agree with this, though.

Timesplitters: Future Perfect -

God damn I hate EA.

I wouldnt say it was a brilliant combat system, but there were enough amusingly violent counter-attacks to keep me entertained throughout the game.

Also that cool pounce thing. And the assassinate.

Kept me busy for hours.

yep they are the ones who make somewhat broken sixaxis only controls then refuse to admit it was a mistake

though they are supposedly working on patching the game for analog stick controls

i have only played one game that uses the sixaxis features with no option for analog stick and actually works properly.... High Velocity Bowling (which by some strange coincidence felt compelled to buy after watching the big lebowski)

I hated it too.

I loathe Bioshock from the very depths of my eternal soul, and I always have and always will. It's just a mother****ing load of ****ing bull**** that pisses my ****ing *** off to **** **** hell and back.

Really? I liked it.

It was good, but it was nowhere near as spanktacular as the first 2.

They just had to add in those god damn grating jokes in the SP.

I absolutely loved the gameplay, some of the music was great too.
The storyline was... ok. and the multiplayer was sextastic

The original Duckman Drake is still going to shoot you in the face if you can't escort him through the docks, regardless of what you think.

[If you get what I mean by this you gain 2 Baconfish points.]

te dont rate storyline if you want a good story read a book or watch a film because games story are terrible in contrast 100% of the time

Dammit boco I think you are Jon all the time and I read your stuff and I am like "WTF Jon is not talking right!"

A challange or level or something from the first one?