As the title suggests, this is a topic for those games you played that weren't "bad" per se, but ultimately fell far short of your expectations in such a way that it left you wanting to scream "but if you'd just done X then it would have been fine!!"
For me quite a few games have ended up in my possession that had all the potential in the world to be amazing, but one or two bad ideas, or badly executed ideas, ultimately caused them to be merely "OK" or just "good," and ultimately left me overwhelmed with disappointment over what could have been.
For games to really come under this, they shouldn't be full-on bad games that were just complete disasters. They have to have done quite a lot right, but made a few critical mistakes that made the games good, but horribly disappointing when they could have been phenomenal. Bonus points if the mistake was something ridiculously simple. Here's my Top 5 for you:
5. Pokemon Black/White probably seems like a surprising addition to this, but remember that this is about good games with one or two stupid problems. The key problem in this case is (you probably guessed it) the horribly restricted Wi-Fi options for battling, made especially stupid by the fact that HG/SS's Wi-Fi offered everything players needed while B/W did not. A second issue I've had with B/W is how much of a pain it is to EV train in Unova - HG/SS was absolutely perfect for EV training, and Nintendo has to be aware that people do this sort of thing since they've provided in-game items to help the process, so why does B/W have to make such a nightmarish pain out of itself if I dare try to EV train anything besides Attack? As much as Gen V added to the games in terms of content, I can't help but feel it's still a step backwards compared to HG/SS for these reasons alone, but it only gets Rank 5 since the third game in the trilogy will likely rectify these problems anyway.
4. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has been responsible for me making fun of Deathwing's lower jaw long after I stopped playing the game, but in all honesty I would have liked to have seen Deathwing's chin in-game more often. Why? Because it would have meant seeing more of Deathwing. He WAS the main antagonist of the game after all, yet all he did throughout most of Cataclysm was occasionally set stuff on fire, appear in a few quests for a brief moment, and then die at the end of the game. What, that's it? What happened to the Lich King showing up to remind everyone that he was the almighty big bad of the game and that he was unstoppable? Why didn't Deathwing do something similar instead of just randomly setting places on fire? Ultimately his lack of involvement in the story combined with the story being rather lacklustre anyway (Deathwing's son is resurrected. NOBODY IN THE GAME mentions this,) really made Cataclysm become rather dull to me, and by the time Firelands had rolled around I'd quit the game out of sheer boredom. There's more problems than just the aforementioned with Cataclysm's story progression, but Deathwing's lack of involvement was by far the biggest issue.
3. Super Smash Bros. Brawl could have, and should have been better than Melee was. Why? Because all it needed to do was add more characters, more music and better graphics. For whatever unfathomably mystifying reason though, it was decided that Brawl's combat system would be completely overhauled. OK, I know the reason, it was to make Brawl more accessible to casual players. Problems? Well first of all, Melee already was accessible to casual players, hell of all the people I knew that played the game (about 100) only two of them played Melee competitively, so there was no point in this overhaul at all since Melee's combat system was fine as it was. Secondly, this overhaul was probably responsible for both the repeated delays of the game and ultimately the glitch-ridden mess we received when Brawl came out. OK, maybe that was a bit unfair, I mean Brawl's a glitch-ridden mess I have a lot of affection for, but this game should have been better than Melee, and it wasn't. Hell, it was significantly worse than Melee was, the "casual changes" only made the combat slower and encouraged people to camp/projectile-spam more, on top of the aforementioned horrible glitches which in Melee were very few and far between, and had little to no detrimental effect on the gameplay. Fanboys will likely rage at me for this, but seriously, who even plays Brawl anymore? Even casual players were playing Melee right up until Brawl's release, so that alone should say it all. Brawl could have been amazing if it was simply Melee 2.0, but it wasn't Melee 2.0 at all and it certainly wasn't amazing either.
2. Metroid Other M. Just...Metroid Other M. The characterization and story in this game were both horrible to say the least, and it's blatantly obvious that gameplay was sacrificed to make the story better, and even then they just made it worse anyway. This probably makes Other M seem atrocious, and to be honest it's not - the music, environments and gameplay are all pretty good, albeit not on par with the Prime series by a wide margin. The problem is that it just doesn't feel like I'm playing as Samus, rather as some overly wangst-ridden blonde chick wearing Samus's power suit. The problem I have with Other M is simply this: they wanted to give Samus a personality. What they failed to realize is that the other games already did that in their own way; they let the players themselves effectively piece together a personality for her based on the way she acted in the games, and while she showed very little emotion in those games and spoke even less, it simply gave the impression that she was a stoic, hardened bounty hunter whose entire life revolved around fighting and war. So...why did she need to be given a personality again? Seems to me like she already sort-of had one, which just makes Other M seem like a gigantic plot hole. Just for further disgrace, Yoshio Sakamoto actually stated that Other M "could not have been done better" by the time it was released. Uh, you mean besides the fact that EVERY aspect of Other M could have been done better and had already been done better by the three Prime games, which are apparently now non-canon to make up for Other M's story creating a massive plot-hole? Sorry, but if I'm to pretend any of the Metroid games didn't exist, I'm picking Other M.
1. Final Fantasy X-2 gets the top spot for one simple reason: the two things it should have done were so insanely simple. Step 1: remove any and all association from Final Fantasy X, and then Step 2: rename yourself Final Fantasy XI. My single biggest issue with X-2 isn't the fanservice, or the drastic change of tone from the rest of the series, hell it certainly has nothing to do with the gameplay, which was extremely good. It was just the fact that Final Fantasy X should never have had a direct sequel. For one thing, the way FFX ended wrapped that story up so tightly that just the idea of a sequel seemed completely implausible. Secondly, the story we did get was so disconnected from the apocalyptic dread that surrounded FFX's story that the change of tone was just jarring to the point that FFX-2's story felt like a bad fanfiction. In the end, I tried to like FFX-2, but I just couldn't because it felt so wrong being FFX's sequel and it ruined the entire game for me. So, yeah...FFX-2 should have been FFXI instead, same gameplay, different location and characters, all problems are solved, not to mention it would have removed the atrocious MMO FFXI from existence too...also, FFX-2's ultimate goal was to find Tidus again. Remind me why ANY sane human being would want this fucktard back? Like I said, shouldn't have been a direct sequel.
For me quite a few games have ended up in my possession that had all the potential in the world to be amazing, but one or two bad ideas, or badly executed ideas, ultimately caused them to be merely "OK" or just "good," and ultimately left me overwhelmed with disappointment over what could have been.
For games to really come under this, they shouldn't be full-on bad games that were just complete disasters. They have to have done quite a lot right, but made a few critical mistakes that made the games good, but horribly disappointing when they could have been phenomenal. Bonus points if the mistake was something ridiculously simple. Here's my Top 5 for you:
5. Pokemon Black/White probably seems like a surprising addition to this, but remember that this is about good games with one or two stupid problems. The key problem in this case is (you probably guessed it) the horribly restricted Wi-Fi options for battling, made especially stupid by the fact that HG/SS's Wi-Fi offered everything players needed while B/W did not. A second issue I've had with B/W is how much of a pain it is to EV train in Unova - HG/SS was absolutely perfect for EV training, and Nintendo has to be aware that people do this sort of thing since they've provided in-game items to help the process, so why does B/W have to make such a nightmarish pain out of itself if I dare try to EV train anything besides Attack? As much as Gen V added to the games in terms of content, I can't help but feel it's still a step backwards compared to HG/SS for these reasons alone, but it only gets Rank 5 since the third game in the trilogy will likely rectify these problems anyway.
4. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has been responsible for me making fun of Deathwing's lower jaw long after I stopped playing the game, but in all honesty I would have liked to have seen Deathwing's chin in-game more often. Why? Because it would have meant seeing more of Deathwing. He WAS the main antagonist of the game after all, yet all he did throughout most of Cataclysm was occasionally set stuff on fire, appear in a few quests for a brief moment, and then die at the end of the game. What, that's it? What happened to the Lich King showing up to remind everyone that he was the almighty big bad of the game and that he was unstoppable? Why didn't Deathwing do something similar instead of just randomly setting places on fire? Ultimately his lack of involvement in the story combined with the story being rather lacklustre anyway (Deathwing's son is resurrected. NOBODY IN THE GAME mentions this,) really made Cataclysm become rather dull to me, and by the time Firelands had rolled around I'd quit the game out of sheer boredom. There's more problems than just the aforementioned with Cataclysm's story progression, but Deathwing's lack of involvement was by far the biggest issue.
3. Super Smash Bros. Brawl could have, and should have been better than Melee was. Why? Because all it needed to do was add more characters, more music and better graphics. For whatever unfathomably mystifying reason though, it was decided that Brawl's combat system would be completely overhauled. OK, I know the reason, it was to make Brawl more accessible to casual players. Problems? Well first of all, Melee already was accessible to casual players, hell of all the people I knew that played the game (about 100) only two of them played Melee competitively, so there was no point in this overhaul at all since Melee's combat system was fine as it was. Secondly, this overhaul was probably responsible for both the repeated delays of the game and ultimately the glitch-ridden mess we received when Brawl came out. OK, maybe that was a bit unfair, I mean Brawl's a glitch-ridden mess I have a lot of affection for, but this game should have been better than Melee, and it wasn't. Hell, it was significantly worse than Melee was, the "casual changes" only made the combat slower and encouraged people to camp/projectile-spam more, on top of the aforementioned horrible glitches which in Melee were very few and far between, and had little to no detrimental effect on the gameplay. Fanboys will likely rage at me for this, but seriously, who even plays Brawl anymore? Even casual players were playing Melee right up until Brawl's release, so that alone should say it all. Brawl could have been amazing if it was simply Melee 2.0, but it wasn't Melee 2.0 at all and it certainly wasn't amazing either.
2. Metroid Other M. Just...Metroid Other M. The characterization and story in this game were both horrible to say the least, and it's blatantly obvious that gameplay was sacrificed to make the story better, and even then they just made it worse anyway. This probably makes Other M seem atrocious, and to be honest it's not - the music, environments and gameplay are all pretty good, albeit not on par with the Prime series by a wide margin. The problem is that it just doesn't feel like I'm playing as Samus, rather as some overly wangst-ridden blonde chick wearing Samus's power suit. The problem I have with Other M is simply this: they wanted to give Samus a personality. What they failed to realize is that the other games already did that in their own way; they let the players themselves effectively piece together a personality for her based on the way she acted in the games, and while she showed very little emotion in those games and spoke even less, it simply gave the impression that she was a stoic, hardened bounty hunter whose entire life revolved around fighting and war. So...why did she need to be given a personality again? Seems to me like she already sort-of had one, which just makes Other M seem like a gigantic plot hole. Just for further disgrace, Yoshio Sakamoto actually stated that Other M "could not have been done better" by the time it was released. Uh, you mean besides the fact that EVERY aspect of Other M could have been done better and had already been done better by the three Prime games, which are apparently now non-canon to make up for Other M's story creating a massive plot-hole? Sorry, but if I'm to pretend any of the Metroid games didn't exist, I'm picking Other M.
1. Final Fantasy X-2 gets the top spot for one simple reason: the two things it should have done were so insanely simple. Step 1: remove any and all association from Final Fantasy X, and then Step 2: rename yourself Final Fantasy XI. My single biggest issue with X-2 isn't the fanservice, or the drastic change of tone from the rest of the series, hell it certainly has nothing to do with the gameplay, which was extremely good. It was just the fact that Final Fantasy X should never have had a direct sequel. For one thing, the way FFX ended wrapped that story up so tightly that just the idea of a sequel seemed completely implausible. Secondly, the story we did get was so disconnected from the apocalyptic dread that surrounded FFX's story that the change of tone was just jarring to the point that FFX-2's story felt like a bad fanfiction. In the end, I tried to like FFX-2, but I just couldn't because it felt so wrong being FFX's sequel and it ruined the entire game for me. So, yeah...FFX-2 should have been FFXI instead, same gameplay, different location and characters, all problems are solved, not to mention it would have removed the atrocious MMO FFXI from existence too...also, FFX-2's ultimate goal was to find Tidus again. Remind me why ANY sane human being would want this fucktard back? Like I said, shouldn't have been a direct sequel.
