What is your most Disappointing and Surprising game you played this year?

[yakumo]

Disappointing: 

 

Stray  - I was expecting a lot more from this game. I understand it's an indie title but the gameplay was too basic, puzzles simplistic and not a huge fan of the ending which was just abrupt. It was just OK and that is why it was so disappointing.

 

Surprising:

 

Elden Ring, shocker I know. The caveat is I never completed or gotten on with a Souls game despite trying for so long before giving up in frustration. It's like fancying the girl in class but she doesn't like you back. Elden Ring though for some reason I managed to get to grips with, the game for a while just devoured my life that has hasn't happened since BOTW. Just a masterpiece for me for reasons people have already talked about.

[Siri]

I think it mostly mimics my GOTY entries.

 

I was disappointed in Ghostwire: Tokyo because it was all shirt, no trousers - it looks incredible, but it runs like shit because of it and it's the driest fucking open-world shooter I've experienced in a long while.

 

Tunic was shocking, though - I knew I was expecting a very cute Zelda clone, only to get involved with the most outrageous puzzle experience and big reveals since Zero Escape and some genuinely hard moments. Such a brilliant, exciting time playing it.

[moosegrinder]

Disappointment: Splatoon 3. There's not much they could've done with the template set down by Splatoon 2 so the game itself is unsurprisingly excellent, but the implementation of the online and the tick rate and all that is just abysmal. It makes it worse BECAUSE the game is excellent. I'm genuinely thinking of getting rid of it.

[Qazimod]

I wasn't disappointed by that many 2022 releases - I didn't buy a lot of 2022 releases.  I guess Persona 5 Royal was disappointing for the same reasons I had when it first came out? It's a great game in its own right but it just feels bloated and can get a bit chorelike when compared to the more streamlined but equally challenging predecessor.

 

Surprising - yeah, Elden Ring for me as well. My history with From games has been hit and miss; I like the Dark Souls sequels but not the original, and I enjoyed Bloodborne a lot, so I didn't know where this would land. Also, I failed a lot during the network test, and I think I had concerns that the open world would just be an exercise in finding different ways to die and get frustrated. However, treating as its own thing helped a lot - its one of the least Soulsy games since Sekiro and getting out of that mindset allowed me to enjoy the change of pace and concessions to varying skill levels.

[robdood]

Disappointing: Pokemon Scarlet. Its my first pokemon.. And its not the tech issues, or the open world or anything, its just the actual fighting. Its pretty boring isn't it? There's not much depth. You chase bosses who basically have a team all of the same type (how the fuck do they become gym leaders etc with that strat lol), so you make team good vs that type then steamroller it? Weird. I want to try another one (poss sword / shield) but if the fighting is still just the same idk if I can be arsed. I really think you could make a cool slay the spire type game using pokemon and the way over complex rock/paper/scissors thing as a foundation. 

 

 

Surprising: vampire survivors. What a great, interesting and unique little game! Everyone who hasn't played it yet should before they do their rllmuk voting!

[JoeK]

Somerville, by a country mile.

 

I love these sort of games, but the sheer lack of finesse applied to this game was shocking, considering how long its been in development. 

 

I had to go back to Inside, plus Little Nightmares 1 and 2 to bring back some vague sense of happiness into my life.

[Benny]

Biggest surprise was definitely Vampire survivors. Or at least just how much time I ended up pumping into it and still can't fathom why. It's dangerous. Also: Cultic.

 

Biggest disappointment was Signalis, as I really wanted to like it and I liked what it was doing, but the unnecessarily restrictive inventory management just frustrated me too much to carry on.

 

I would have said High on Life, but I honestly wasn't expecting much from it going in, and it was indeed a bit crap.

[Wiper]

Disappointing? Nothing really notable — I was disappointed that Tactics Ogre had ugly uprezzed sprites forced on it, and that Vampire Survivors was exactly the mindless skinner box it looked like, but neither were exactly unexpected.

 

Surprising: must be Triangle Strategy. After the lacklustre Octopath (and with it using the same HD2D look that I abhor), I was expecting little from this, but it turned out to be an absolute all-timer of an SRPG. A wonderful surprise.

 

Notable runner up is Ghostwire Tokyo, which I expected nothing of but turned out to be a quirky, charming take on an open-world shooter.

[Vulgar Monkey]

Think these are pre-2022, but I only played them this year so:

 

Disappointment - Wouldnt go as far as to call it that, but maybe FarCry 5? Very impressed with just how polished the presentation is, and it did absolutely nothing to really pull me into the combat at all. Probably shouldnt be that surprising as I could characterise most ubisoft games the same way, but I remembered the older ones being a bit more engaging at the time.

 

Surprise - Hmm, Project Wingman? I only picked it up as it happened to be on sale at the same time I saw it on an old twitch vod, so grabbed it as a spontaneous purchase which I rarely ever do. And ended up liking it even more than Ace Combat. AND it's made by, like, three people. Absolutely great fun and far better than it has any right to be.

 

Also, honorable mention for MechWarrior 5, which is the exact opposite in some ways; a proper (if small) dev studio, but a somewhat troubled period of an iffy release and subsequent updates, so I was expecting some jank at best. With the help of a few great community mods though it turns out to be not half bad.

[Paulando]

Disappointing:

 

The Outbound Ghost

 

I’d been following this for some time, as I love Paper Mario 2 and this looked very similar. It had super-cute characters, and looked to copy the excellent battle system. Just look at the early trailer, it’s gorgeous:

 

 

Bought it on Steam and played a couple of hours on my Deck.

 

It’s pretty shite.

 

Unsatisfying battle system, with every move being the same bar moving along, boring dialogue, and a tedious environment to explore. A real shame though because it looks the part, and is clearly made by someone with a similar love for Paper Mario.

 

It came out on consoles a couple of weeks ago, and the lead developer came out and apologised for the state of the game. Apparently this version wasn’t authorised by them? And they’ve threatened legal action against the publisher, defaced the Steam page and pulled it from sale. All a bit of a mess really, and still ongoing I believe.

 

 

[Gambit]

Disappointing

 

Bayonetta 3. As stated in its thread I think the combat is abysmal and I'm genuinely shocked by the high review scores. It's like the entire Bayo 2 team left and it was given to the Z team. Worse than Platinums licensed stuff.

 

The Quarry was also disappointing. Was hoping it to be more of Until Dawn's quality but it was severely lacking.

 

Surprising

 

Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Made me go and buy the first game again which I abandoned about ten hours in on the Wii. Maybe I'll appreciate it more now.

[carlospie]

Disappointed

 

Elden ring. I didn't really like any of the other souls games and through this would be different. It wasn't. Die die die. 

 

Overwatch 2. This is not a sequel on any planet. It's a cheap, disgusting cash in and should not be allowed to exist.

[RubberJohnny]

Disappointing: Bayonetta 3, I don't know how this got any good reviews, yet alone all of them, I mean it won best action game at the game awards FFS! It feels like people just went "well I don't know anything about the series, but it's over the top and has crazy action sequences so it must be what the audience likes" because I swear if you asked them while they were playing it if they were actually enjoying the platforming challenges chasing some bird over quicksand or instant death pits, or the shit stealth elevator action homages that go on forever or the action scenes where you can't see what's going on, they'd go "fuck no" like any sane-brained gamer.

 

Surprising: Er..., that Pokemon Arceus was surprisingly alright, like it's still kinda a 7/10 title, but playing Scarlet/Violet there's so many things where I think "they literally released a game that did this better this year"

[BabelRich]

Disappointment: Switch Sports, Tunic and Mario Strikers. I just didn’t get on with Tunic so was disappointed with myself more than anything. The other two were just so lacklustre. 
 

Surprise: Has to be Chained Echoes. I saw the ‘box art’ on the GamePass tweet and assumed it was another also-ran JRPG. In reality it’s an utterly amazing mashup of FF6, FF12 and Skies of Arcadia. 

[Wiper]

13 minutes ago, BabelRich said:

Surprise: Has to be Chained Echoes. I saw the ‘box art’ on the GamePass tweet and assumed it was another also-ran JRPG. In reality it’s an utterly amazing mashup of FF6, FF12 and Skies of Arcadia. 

 

Okay, I'd largely written this off (despite vague praise being assigned it) on the assumption it was just a generic throwback JRPG, but that's an intriguing combination of games. I'll have to give it a try!

[Uncle Nasty]

Disappointing: Xbox first party. Love my Series X for everything else it offers, but disappointed with the lack of solid exclusives, or even that one standout game that would be classed as a system seller.

 

Surprising: Jeff Minter remaking an obscure 80s wave shooter for Atari /s

[dumpster]

Disappointing: I'm playing Mr Driller Drill Land, various PS2 games via emulation and the highlight of the year has been Vampire Survivors which you could have done on a Commodore 64.

 

Surprising: 

You still can't easily buy a PS5 and it's been out nearly three years. 

[Benny]

After what I said about Signalis, I decided to go back and give it another go, as it's been on so many game of the year lists and apparently the story is incredible...

 

Well, got past the first boss and the item management stuff that felt arbitrarily annoying the first time was multiplied to an even greater degree. The actual "game" part still feels stiff and not particularly engaging, and the much vaunted story has barely got into gear yet.

 

I'm probably going to persevere a bit because I'm still curious, but I'm honestly unsure where the praise is coming from because it honestly often feels retro in the worst ways. The first boss for example had absolutely no flare to the encounter and was just tedious shoot until dead, and better hope you have saved enough ammo!

 

I don't like to criticise small indie efforts too much though, but it still doesn't mean quality is relative.

[ChewMagma]

15 minutes ago, dumpster said:

Disappointing: I'm playing Mr Driller Drill Land, various PS2 games via emulation and the highlight of the year has been Vampire Survivors which you could have done on a Commodore 64.

 

Surprising: 

You still can't easily buy a PS5 and it's been out nearly three years. 

 

Tell me you have never played on a Commodore 64 without telling me you have never played on a Commodore 64.

[Popo]

Biggest surprise - the Steam Deck. It’s more brilliant, versatile, and just damn pleasurable to hold than it at first appeared. My whole Steam library, plus near-turnkey emulation for a huge number of systems? Amazing stuff. 
 

Biggest disappointment - my available time to play games did not increase compared to last year; if anything, I had less time to play games than ever. 

[cassidy]

Disappointing = Somerville

 

Surprising = Midnight Suns and Powerwash Sim for me.  

 

 

 

 

[CheekyLee]

1 hour ago, ChewMagma said:

 

Tell me you have never played on a Commodore 64 without telling me you have never played on a Commodore 64.

You totally missed the point, there! Clue: He isn't criticising those old games ...

 

Disappointing - Halo Infinite. Great fun for far too short a while before becoming bland, repetitive, and ultimately generic. An advert for the Halo game we all really wanted, and may one day get.

 

Surprising - Marvel SNAP. A free-to-play collectible card mobile game that makes me want to evangelise it to anyone within earshot. Throw all your prejudices aside and take a look, this one is an absolute best in genre.

[ChewMagma]

1 minute ago, CheekyLee said:

You totally missed the point, there! Clue: He isn't criticising those old games ...

 

Disappointing - Halo Infinite. Great fun for far too short a while before becoming bland, repetitive, and ultimately generic. An advert for the Halo game we all really wanted, and may one day get.

 

Surprising - Marvel SNAP. A free-to-play collectible card mobile game that makes me want to evangelise it to anyone within earshot. Throw all your prejudices aside and take a look, this one is an absolute best in genre.

 

I don't understand what point he is trying to make, positive or negative, because you couldn't make Vampire Survivors on a Commodore 64.

[amorenod]

2 hours ago, dumpster said:

Surprising: 

You still can't easily buy a PS5 and it's been out nearly three years.

 

Not that it makes the situation more palatable, but November 2020 is not nearly 3 years ago

[BabelRich]

2 hours ago, Wiper said:

 

Okay, I'd largely written this off (despite vague praise being assigned it) on the assumption it was just a generic throwback JRPG, but that's an intriguing combination of games. I'll have to give it a try!

Yes, definitely do. It isn’t perfect but it’s definitely not generic.

[dumpster]

36 minutes ago, amorenod said:

 

Not that it makes the situation more palatable, but November 2020 is not nearly 3 years ago

Stop using facts to prove your point. You can win any argument if you use facts, it's not fair.

[dataDave]

10 hours ago, moosegrinder said:

Disappointment: Splatoon 3. There's not much they could've done with the template set down by Splatoon 2 so the game itself is unsurprisingly excellent, but the implementation of the online and the tick rate and all that is just abysmal. It makes it worse BECAUSE the game is excellent. I'm genuinely thinking of getting rid of it.

I’ll keep my game forever, but NSO isn’t getting re-subbed until dedicated servers are in place as opposed to peer-to-peer.

 

I was naively excited when I first heard we were getting a premium online service from Nintendo. Finally! But nah, all that meant was that they’d do nothing other than apply a fee while dumping some dodgy ROMs.

 

It’s annoying voting with my wallet like this, especially when I’m in an extreme minority. Even if it was €1 a year I still wouldn’t pay it. They get away with this horse shit precisely because it’s so ‘cheap’.

[stir fry]

Surprising for me is Bayonetta 3, I'd kinda written the series off as I didn't really like B2, DMC5 sort of made me forget about Bayonetta (prefer DMC in general) and the constant delays and hit and miss quality of Platinum's output definitely made me stop looking forward to it. But I found the summoner style combat system genuinely innovative and pretty expressive. I think the game still has problems, too many gimmicks and the power balance of certain demons and the combat encounter design lends to simplistic, explosive approachs being rewarded more than ones which flex the potential of its systems. But I still found exploring that potential to be really interesting, and I intend to go back to it at some point. But I think I will put it on ice for now until a next gen Nintendo handheld can do it justice

 

As far as bad campaign design problems go, well I guess Bayo 3 has some shitty levels but tbh a lot of the games I play in this genre have similar issues. DMC4 and DMC5 have a really shit campaign and a really boring one respectively, but figuring the systems out in those games makes up for it and I generally just do chapter select a lot and skip the bad bits on replays when I can (which you can do immediately on replay in Bayo, bye bye Jeanne's stealth sections. Not doing that shit again lol)

 

In terms of disappointing, Elden Ring's open world feeling like a bunch of disconnected MMO zones that you glide through frictionless on a magic horse wasn't what I wanted from FROM's first real stab at open world RPG. I imagined some kinda weird hybrid of BOTW and Dragon's Dogma, with From's penchant for teaching via punishment. But it was missing so many elements that previous games had which lent them their intoxicating qualities. It just felt so rote, and repetitive. Some amazing looking visuals at times though

[Jamie John]

Disappointing: Scorn

 

I've been looking forward to this for a couple of years now and thought it would be a great gross-em-up horror experience, but the puzzles were tedious and the combat was frustrating, and although it certainly checked off the weirdness criteria that I was looking for, I didn't enjoy playing it enough to warrant completing it.

 

Surprising: Kirby and the Forgotten Land

 

I thought this was just going to be kid's game, similar to Yoshi's Wooly World or something like that. It turns out the final boss was tougher than Malenia in Elden Ring.

[dumpster]

9 hours ago, ChewMagma said:

 

I don't understand what point he is trying to make, positive or negative, because you couldn't make Vampire Survivors on a Commodore 64.

My point is that this era is very silly. I have the most powerful console I've ever owned, the Xbox Series X and yet it's primarily used for games that were from previous generations.  And the most modern game I've become hooked on is Vampire Survivors, a £2 steam game that OK, maybe c64 is pushing it but you could surely have done it on a Dreamcast.  

 

I think this generation is the least inspiring there's been and a good chunk of that is hardware unavailability.  Who will develop games for the Series X and PS4 specifically when the user base isn't there after two years?  I'm a video game fan and have always owned all the consoles but the last 2 years has actually persuaded me that I don't actually want a PS5.  Had there been one available at launch I'd have snapped it up.  But the best games don't need that super technology and I've got 9 hours and 45 minutes left of my Need for Speed Unbounded trial, but I keep playing Vampire Survivors and Mr Sodding Driller.