2014 has seen the release of several long awaited games, including followups to some of gaming’s biggest franchises, but it has also seen the release of several huge disappointments that suffered from game-breaking bugs, missing features, and uninspired gameplay.
Here is a look at some of this year’s games that should have been great, but missed the mark in one way or another.
Ubisoft Montreal’s Watch Dogs generated a lot of hype in the two years between its announcement at E3 2012 and its official release in May.
It was this hype, perhaps, that lead to the game’s lukewarm reception among gamers. Watch Dogs was met with a resounding “meh” from the gaming community. It wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t great.
Many players complained that the game was “more of the same” from Ubisoft, focusing on pointless collectibles and repetitive gameplay rather than the innovative experience that was promised. Watch Dogs also suffered from slow framerates and other graphical issues, a recurring theme among recent Ubisoft games.
Few games have the name recognition that Halo has, so a remastered collection of classic games from the series would seem to be a sure win. And it was—mostly.
But Halo: The Master Chief Collection suffered from one crippling problem. The game’s multiplayer mode, which is one of the primary staples of the Halo series, was fundamentally broken at launch.
The game’s matchmaking system, which set players up with multiplayer servers, either functioned very slowly or did not work at all, leading to outrage from many gamers.
This lead to Polygon retroactively dropping its review of the release from 9.5 to 8.0 out of 10, a full point and a half lower.
Assassin’s Creed has become a top franchise in recent years, spawning seven main titles, several side story games, and multiple books, comics, and animations. It is little wonder that Ubisoft would want to give fans more of the series they love, but in the developer’s rush to get more and more sequels out the door, the quality of the games has started to suffer.
The most recent title is Assassin’s Creed: Unity, which launched in November with multiple bugs that caused framerate issues, graphical glitches, and game crashes.
As a result, Ubisoft has released patch after patch attempting to resolve the issues, but players still complain about slow framerates and game instability.
Perhaps Ubisoft should have followed CD Projekt Red’s example, who delayed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt until next year to resolve issues with the game.
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