In today’s game industry, marketing plays a very important role, which is widely used by developers and publishers. Unfortunately, there are times when what was promised was far from what actually happened.
In recent years, an active advertising campaign with trailers, gameplay videos, developer diaries and more has become normal for projects with a large budget. But it is far from always shown and said that it is worth believing that 5 games in this top have been confirmed that do not meet expectations after the release.
No man’s sky
According to the promises of Hello Games, their brainchild in the form of No Man’s Sky was supposed to be a real breakthrough, but in the end, most of what was said was not in the release version. No landing on asteroids, multiplayer, destruction of stations or fleets, huge fleets of ships, factions, large-scale space battles, sandy planets, giant cities and more. Not even wandering NPCs were added, and the maximum number of characters that you can meet live in stations and in commercial buildings.
All of the above is only part of what was promised. Moreover, it was very easy to catch developers on outright lies. Just what is the supposedly gameplay video in the midst of a large-scale space battle or the study of ancient cities and gigantic destroyed ships (in the arts and “screenshots”). After all, all this was literally shown and voiced, but even there was nothing remote in No Man’s Sky…
True, over time Hello Games, with Sean Murray at the helm, made amendsby not just adding most of the elements that should have been, but also making additional innovations… The game continues to receive regular updates and big DLCs, and the Playstation 5 version came out in November 2020.
Anthem
Compared to the previous member of the top, Anthem developers did not really feed the fans with promises, but disappointment was no less… Bioware is known for its great story-driven RPGs (Mass Effect and Dragon Age), so the new multiplayer game was supposed to be the perfect Destiny with interesting storytelling and charismatic characters… Incidentally, this is exactly what has been pointed out in many trailers and pre-release interviews.
Unfortunately, in the end it turned out the complete opposite of a good story and interesting characters. Anthem has a completely empty story and drawn-out dialogues for the sake of a tick, and also there is not a single emotional or deep moment.
In addition, Bioware talked about a variety of missions, each of which will be different from each other. In practice most of the tasks are the same, consist of either protecting against a wave of mobs, or clearing locations.
The game-service is based on regular additions and events, and if in the first months after the release something similar came out, now Anthem is living out its days… Canadian developers never made a worthy project, leaving only a feeling of disappointment among the fans. Moreover, not so long ago a decision was made don’t restart Antheminstead focusing on new titles from Dragon Age and Mass Effect, as well as support for the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Warcraft III: Reforged
Following the announcement of Warcraft III: Reforged, 2002 strategy fans were thrilled as Blizzard said it would be exactly the same gamebut with improved graphics, animations, interface and other visual elements. Eventually only the words about graphics turned out to be true, but even she raises criticism (too much bias in realism compared to the original).
One of the main factors that was often mentioned before the release – 4 hours of completely redesigned videos… This turned out to be a blatant lie, because the 2020 Reforged used video and cut-scenes from the 2002 version… The only thing that replaced Blizzard is the intro cinematic and the final battle. No four hours.
In addition, the developers did not make a full remastersince in Reforged many important features are missing from the original:
- clan system;
- profile of each player;
- custom cards (without obligatory posting on the network);
- clans;
- rating table.
Blizzard also decided to replace the 2002 Russian voice acting. In the re-release, the localization came out much worse, and the acting of the dubbing actors leaves much to be desired.
More than a year has passed since the release of Warcraft III: Reforged, and Activision-Blizzard has fixed only bugs and crashes, and added the ability to launch custom campaigns directly from the game (and not through the editor) and tightened the optimization. Otherwise, everything remained as bad as in the release version.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk can rightfully be called the main disappointment of the gaming industry in 2020.
There are a lot of reasons for this: a bunch of cut content, terrible bugs, the absolute lack of the ability to play normally on consoles and, of course, high expectations.
It was the latter factor that caused the collapse of Cyberpunk 2077, but only the developers can be blamed for the failure. After all, they did it unrealistic announcements, used a lot of graphics in their videos and didn’t have the courage to move the project again and finish it properly.
Initially, CD Projekt Red positioned their project as “tabletop role-playing game in the computer“. Not all fans know, but Poles created their own project based on the board game Cyberpunk 2020. Many key characters and gangs were taken from there, including the mega-popular Johnny Silverhand and the incredibly cool Beast. Most of the “author’s” weapons also migrated from the board.
However, CD Projekt Red, in the process of converting the board game into a computer game, lost a lot of lore, pumping nuances and other interesting features, so their project seems much more meager.
The personal promises of the developers regarding the gameplay were also not fully fulfilled. Significantly worsened the Implants (for example, the Mantis Blades can no longer be used as a means for climbing walls), the subway was removed, flying cars were left only as an element of the quest. Even the number of novels is less than planned. The number of endings was cut as well.
Of course, these elements are likely to come with new updates and DLC, but frustration and feelings of deceptionthat the game aroused among the fans will not disappear.
Outriders
Another game from Polish developers People Can Fly is Outriders. An open-world online looter shooter that was supposed to be the assassin of Destiny 2 and The Division 2, but something went wrong.
Initially, the developers started well and promised not to repeat the mistakes of their colleagues from CD Project Red… They presented a demo version of the game, which was downloaded by over 2 million people. Mostly admired the game:
- They praised the interesting plot setting;
- Unusual classes with 3 skill lines;
- Good optimization.
On release, the game became the leader in sales, but everything went through one place, from the first day Outriders began to collect many negative reviews:
- Numerous errors, friezes and crashes;
- Inability to connect to the servers of the game, even in solo it was impossible to play the campaign;
- The servers were constantly crashing, constant lags in the multiplayer game (okay there 1-2 days after the release, but they could not fix this problem even after 2 weeks);
- The plot was quickly blown away and the ending came out in the style of “blunder and done”;
- The class of the tank and the caliper turned out to be completely unclaimed, they are even “kicked” from the set game;
- Hyend content is boring and monotonous;
- At high difficulty levels, only one build is relevant for each class.
And these are not all the problems of the game. The developers began to gradually fix them, but screwed up even more:
- Players went through the game quickly and started complaining that there was nothing to do and high-end content about nothing? Ok, let’s nerf the classes to make it harder to pass.
- We tried to establish a cross-platform game – a new bug appeared, when after a disconnect a character is reset and it is no longer possible to log in to it (and after all, many have played dozens of hours).
Therefore, most of the players in the reviews agree that the game is raw and not worth the money (2000 rubles).