Games that I thought were going to be better than they were

The Bouncer.

I remember getting all goose pimply about this game. It was one of the first that was going to be on the PS2. And it was made by Squaresoft. A company which at that time in my life I would have sworn to you that everyone that worked there also walked on water. (I am fortunately no no longer that naive.) But at that time I was of the opinion that Squaresoft could do no wrong. Plus the graphics looked more amazing than anything I had ever seen. And so help me I am a bit of a sucker for cool looking costumes no mater how unrealistic they may be. Not many real bouncers would wear a dog collar with a huge chain and cross on it. It'd be to easy for someone they were supposed to "bounce" to grab hold of it in a scuffle and choke them, or literally lead them around by the neck.

I look back at it now and think it more than just a little bit silly. Of course hind sight is twenty twenty. But I played the game and... well it was a mediocre beat 'em up game at best. Now this is just my opinion. As with all these games I'm going to mention in this post. Just because I was disappointed by them doesn't mean that you can't like them. Every one is different, with different tastes. I won't begrudge you yours if you don't begrudge me mine. Next up.

Metal Gear Solid 2.

This game was a landmark event for me. With it came the great split between myself and eastern culture. Up until this point I had regarded the ability of Japanese story tellers, through the medium of video games, to be superior to anything that the west had to offer. This game put an end to that. Now I don't know what exactly happened. For example I loved, and still do love Final Fantasy VII. The same goes for Metal Gear Solid. But something happened, either with me or with the Japanese culture, and the schism occurred.

Why didn't I like this game. Partly because MSG was such a great game and this sequel comes off as such a pale, poor, pathetic imitation of it's predecessors greatness. One point of contention is the supplantation the wonderful character Solid Snake, by a inferior whiner named Raiden. As I understand it Raiden did quite well in Japan, but not so much in the U.S. I think this is where the cultures begins to clash. Effeminate men seem to be very cool in Japan, where as in American we prefer tough guys as our hero's. I won't speak negatively of the preferences of others but when you market a game it's wise to consider your audience. This character switch (and it's Snake on the cover for crying out loud, and he's hardly in the game) was very unsettling. Every five minutes of game play I kept wondering when Raiden was going to disappear so that I could go back to playing as Snake.

But I think the major issue here was that the first game crafted a great story. The sequel was all puff. It was trying to imitate what it did in the first game. I used to ask how had Hideo Kojima messed up MSG2, but as more and more Metal Gear games came out I came to realize that Metal Gear Solid was the fluke. Kojima had some how managed to make one really good game, maybe it was luck or something, but I have been nothing but disappointed with the rest of the series.

Final Fantasy VIII.

In my ignorance and innocence of youth I thought that this was going to be a actual sequel to FFVII. I kept expect them to announce Cloud as a character. When it finally sunk in that this was not going to happen I still expected aspects of what made FFVII so good to be retuning. 'Surely,' I thought to myself, 'they will be bringing back the Materia system. It was so ingenious, inventive, and intuitive, that they wouldn't get rid of it after just one game... right?...' Well I was wrong. Then I played the demo. It was boring, the draw system was lame, everything seemed clunky. Where FFVII was smooth and slick, it was slow and rough. I can't say enough bad things about this game, and yes I played it all the way to the end. Eighty hours of my life I'm never going to get back. I'm going to have a whole post about how much I detested this game. I mention it here because I was looking forward to it and it disappointed me.

Rise of the Argonauts.

I was super stoked for this game. It looked like the graphics were good. The makers had promised that the story was going to be a main focus and that combat would be smooth. Plus they were going to give me a chance to worship Athena. Like an actually chance (in a small geeky way) to do her will, and to praise her over the other gods. (I have a geek crush on Athena so sue me.) Well the game came out got luke warm reviews so I didn't even bother. If a game doesn't get an eight or better from Gamespot.com it isn't worth my time. There are a few exceptions, but none of those scored less than a seven.

So those are the games that ached my heart on account of their suckyness, what disappointments have you had to endure?