GameSided Roundtable: Hype-Deflating Games

Greetings! This is our weekly GameSided Roundtable feature, where our writers converge to provide their opinions, wishes, statements or critical thought on one general topic centered around video games. Sometimes it can be funny, sometimes it can be serious. Contemporary, classic; we hope to cover a wide variety of things in this segment as a group. If you wish to submit an idea for a GameSided Roundtable discussion topic, you can leave the editor an email at: daniel.george@fansided.com. We’ll totally give you (and your Twitter account, if applicable) a shoutout!

This week’s topic: “What is the most over-hyped game that didn’t live up to expectations when you played it?”

Keith Myers (Twitter)

Assassin’s Creed – The game was a massive financial success and spawned an entire series of good games, but the original Assassin’s Creed was nothing but unfulfilled promise.

The game’s best asset was the wall climbing and ability to run across the rooftops, and yet the game designers decided to cover each location with guards that made spending time on the rooftops nearly impossible. Instead, gamers were left trying to trek across cities on the ground at a snail’s pace, because moving at even a normal walking speed would summon the guards.

Luckily, the plot was rich with twists and the story and characters were well written. And it’s a good thing too. Had the plot been as uninspired as the boring and repetitive combat and the other poorly designed gameplay mechanics, the franchise may not have had a chance to evolve into the excellent state it is in today.

Erik Sugay

The Last of Us didn’t live up to my expectations. How’s that for a controversial opinion? Since it’s some sort of sacred cow, I always feel like I need to start by saying the product Naughty Dog delivered was thoroughly enjoyable and that’s thanks in large part to the performances of Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson. I love character development and this game delivered that in spades. But we’re talking about over-hyped games here.

I didn’t play The Last of Us immediately when it released, so I was bombarded by dozens of people telling me I was making a mistake not experiencing it and that playing it was “going to change my life.” That number is not an exaggeration and those claims were always said completely seriously. Unfortunately, beyond a pretty looking game and some great performances, there were multiple elements in the game that pulled me out of the fairly realistic universe that was set up, including but not limited to odd enemy A.I.

So, here I am, life unchanged. Again, The Last of Us is a fine, fine game but if there’s a title out there that was more over-hyped to me, I haven’t found it.