2014 video games in review - Disappointing year for gamers?

Well, the year is wrapping up and plenty of new video games have hit the shelves.

I ran across this video from gamespot titled "The Most Disappointing Games of 2014 - In 2 Minutes"



As for my personal opinion, 2014 has been pretty disappointing for games. I only game on PC and PS4 currently, so my views are just coming from those 2 platforms.

The video above pretty much sums up the main games I was looking forward to this year.

AC Unity was unbelievably broken on release. I've had my share of broken games at launch and so on, but holy moly, Unity was a complete mess. Did they not even beta test the game before release? I'll have more to say about broken games at launch down below.

Destiny nowhere near lived up to its hype. (I swear I was seeing ads for this game every commercial break while watching the TV). The repetition and grinding was mind numbingly boring.

Watchdogs? Another game that was hyped up beyond belief, which also turned out incredibly mediocre. How many people still even play this?

Elder Scrolls Online? I completely forgot that this game even existed until I was reminded in the video.

To sum up, 3 of my most hyped games this year turned out to be incredibly dull. As for the broken games on release....well, that's something that really needs to be addressed. It's not just this year that this has been happening. For example, Battlefield 4 and Total War :Rome 2, which came out earlier. 2 companies that have had PLENTY of experience in making games launched some of the buggiest, most broken unable to play games. It took months and months before Battlefield 4 was actually mostly stable. Additionally, the Battlefield franchise began developing Hardline while BF4 was still busted.

As for Rome 2.....that was incredible. There's only 1 way to go once you hit rock bottom. Empire was a complete mess when it came out and one would think they would have learned their lesson about broken releases. Unfortunately, they took Empire's biggest mistakes and made them even worse. 400 hours into Empire before I threw up my hands and gave up. (btw - the budget on Rome 2 was 40% more than any TW game in the series.) One of the biggest points the developers were making was that the AI in Rome 2 would be by far the most advanced than in any TW series. That was total bs. (160 hours on this game and although Im not as disappointed as I was on launch, I'm still pretty disappointed and have thrown up my hands finally.) The AI is probably the worst out of every TW game, even after all the patches to this day. Even to this day Rome 2 is still somewhat broken. Not as much as it was on launch, but it's still one of the worst (if not the worst) games in the Total War series. The AI still sucks, the Warscape engine sucks, no unit collision, and just as with the BF4 scenario, another Total War game was being developed while Rome 2 was still broken. TW Atilla is set to be released in a few months, and unfortunately, it looks like it's going to be using the same engine (which means the same problems) as Rome 2 still has.

Rome 2, one year on. (not my video, but sums it up so much better than my typing)



Broken launches this year, broken games from the previous year still not being fixed, severely over hyped games falling flat on their face.....gah

The above has been going on for years now. Broken games at launch, while the company that made said game starts making a sequel/continuation of the broken game almost immediately after. Why has this been happening so frequently? Im assuming that one of the major reasons is.....pre orders. I've seen enough to where I never pre-order anything anymore. Kinda falling off topic here so I'll keep the pre-order rant for another time.

Okay, so there's my disappointment rant. Did anything positive happen this year? For games that have come out this year, I've put most of my gaming hours into Dark Souls 2. I still love that game. A few others, such as Shadow of Mordor, or Dragon Age Inquisition are also pretty good. Then there's the games that were released on previous years for last gen-consoles, and were re-released on next gen this year, such as GTA 5 and The Last of Us Remastered. Both good games to. (I bought TLOU when it came out for PS3 and I consider that to the last 10/10 game to come out.)

I think I've exhausted myself a bit now, but anyways, what are yalls opinions for the 2014 gaming year?

I had a quick play of Far Cry 4 before it went under the tree, it's gonna be lots of fun I think. I love the free roaming type games which is why I also have Renegade Assassin Creed under the tree too. I enjoyed the last 2 games although I still haven't finished Black Flag yet, I love the time period that it's set in.

Total War Empire was also pretty good I thought but I only play the grand campaign and they included the Puckle Gun
I lost interest in Total War Rome they should have released an American Civil War game after the Nepolean or however you spell it game.

Enemy Front the WW2 shooter should have been better with the biggest problem being not enough enemy present. I quickly lost interest in that game but Sniper Elite 3 is great fun! And oh man those Testicle Shots, hours of fun right there LOL!

a reply to: buni11687

What killed Elder Scrolls Online were 2 things:

1. The TES community wanted a game like Skyrim, but multiplayer. In the end, we got a complete different product than what we asked for.

2. The subscription system ruined a lot of the hype. But hey either way, not being able to get a free trial (even if you bought a physical copy) without a credit card, sucks. & if you got a physical copy and didn't have a credit card... There's no way of getting your money back...


About Watch Dogs... That game was falsely advertised. The experience and gameplay shown at E3 was completely different than what we were given. You can look up videos on YouTube showing the difference with E3 and the product given to gamers.

a reply to: buni11687

Elite just got released yesterday and GTA getting a graphics update was pretty awesome. Alien Isolation, Titanfall, Reaper of Souls expansion for Diablo 3 man Blizzard pretty much gave diablo an 18 gig update for free. Shadowrun Dragonfall, Endless Legend oh yeah and Dark Souls 2?!?!

Man 2014 has been pretty awesome for games.

I think it has been good also.
Mechwarrior online just released CW.
Star Citizen just released AC 1.0 and I can fly my Cutless about.
Archage is very good but did suffer from the usual hacks etc when launched.
If GTA was released for pc this year it would have been an awesome year for gaming.

a reply to: weirdguy

I'm a big fan of Far Cry games too, but the problem with Far Cry 4 (for me...) is that it won't run on a dual core cpu. I've got a reasonably strong, though older setup, but it turns out the developers programmed the game to run on the third core (#2), so even though it only needs 1 thread to run, it won't launch. Luckily though, one of those tricky russian hackers has released a patch to change the affiliation......

Dragon Age Inquisition is incredible if you like RPG's. Best served on hard or nightmare though. As a matter of fact, I believe it won game of the year. I actually enjoy the free to play game called Warframe as well.

The games I've enjoyed playing this year have mostly been small indie games. So-called AAA titles are painfully stale.

a reply to: buni11687

I think it's been a good year for games , sadly a lot were released before they were finished but at least these days they generally get fixed.
I was hyped for Watch Dogs but couldn't play it until I'd upgraded my PC , I read the reviews and was a little disappointed but having played it (patched) I think the game world is great but agree the story and Aiden suck , I think Jordi Chin's story would have probably been more interesting.

Games like Shadow of Mordor , Divinity Original Sin and Wasteland 2 are the icing on the cake for what for me has been a good year in gaming and with the Witcher 3 coming next year that too could be another good year for games.

I thought this was a pretty good year myself.

Dragon Age Inquisition, GTA V rehaul on xbox one,
cheap games in the stores and the PS4 & xbox1 took off after everyone worrying about if they were even going to be good systems or not.
(I LOVE my xb1)
(Diablo III Ulitmate Evil edition was also AWESOME IMO)
I sunk more money into games this last year than any other,
and being a gamer since the days of pinball and pac man,
I have been loving it this year.

I am eagerly awaiting the next year, and maybe 2016, whenever they put out a n xb1 VR headset.....

But that is just me. It would seem that if you are into online games, it might of been a sucky year, which is why I stick with as much solo play as I can.

I'm only a PC gamer these days. I didn't really buy any games this year... Except early access to Space Engineers (which I've become way to addicted to)

I did play in the Battlefield: Hardline Beta, and it was lots of fun. I'm not even sure if it's been released yet... I don't really pay much attention to EA anymore, after they've crappified some titles for me to the point where they're not even on the list of my favorite games anymore.

I've been eagerly awaiting GTAV on PC, but that's next year.

Seems to me that a lot of indie games got a lot of attention this year. Some of them were even making fun of mainstream games.

Game developers have learned that people will pay to play broken games,promises of future patches and fixes will keep people paying and playing broken games that never get fixed.
selling broken games and not fixing them is an inexpensive way for the developer to recoup the money they spent making the game and in many cases they actually make a profit from the broken game.
if people stopped rewarding developers for releasing broken games then developers will stop releasing broken games.

Gamers have nobody but themselves to blame for all the crappy and broken games that keep being released.

a reply to: buni11687

Not for me, Wii U saved the day. Bayonetta 2, Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros, Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, Wind Waker HD, etc. Wii U has fantastic games.

a reply to: Tardacus

I don't think it's all the developers fault , it's more to do with publishers putting pressure on studios to churn out games quickly so they can get revenue from the hype they've generated , publish and fix as required , EA have been doing it for years but now it seems Ubi want to take the crown for company most despised by gamers.

originally posted by: Tardacus
Game developers have learned that people will pay to play broken games,promises of future patches and fixes will keep people paying and playing broken games that never get fixed.
selling broken games and not fixing them is an inexpensive way for the developer to recoup the money they spent making the game and in many cases they actually make a profit from the broken game.
if people stopped rewarding developers for releasing broken games then developers will stop releasing broken games.

Gamers have nobody but themselves to blame for all the crappy and broken games that keep being released.

PC games have and always be plagued with issues due to the sheer amount of differing hardware configurations, PS4 and XboxOne is basically the same hardware excepting minor revision upgrades. With the complexity of programming PC games
players have to accept they they are in fact part of the debug/patch process now and need to get over it.

One more thing I forgot to mention is the constant hacking going on lately, most notably from the hacker group "Lizard Squad". Sure there's been a few hacks here and there in the past years, but it's been the worst lately. (yea, they just attacked PSN and Xbox live again this Xmas eve. I think they said a few weeks ago they would do this today.)

These guys have been Ddosing xbox live and psn rather frequently the past few months. They've also taken down PC games at times such as Leauge of Legends, Planetside 2, etc.... It's becoming ridiculous with how often they have been successful at these Ddos attacks.

Quick rundown on who these guys are.

www.businessinsider.com...

Lizard Squad is one of the most well-known online hacker groups and has a history of attacking popular video game services. In August, Lizard Squad claimed to have caused disruption to the PlayStation Network , as well as servers run by Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft.

In the same month, the group took their campaign one step further by tweeting a bomb threat against Sony executive John Smedley, which forced his flight to be diverted. As Smedley's flight was grounded, the group shared messages discussing 9/11, comparing themselves to ISIS.

But Lizard Squad's hacking campaign against video games didn't end there. They returned in September to wreak havoc against popular games such as Call of Duty, FIFA, Destiny, Madden, and The Sims 4. Yet again, the group (which has claimed to have a handful of members) had proven that they could successfully shut down the online services that video game fans rely on to play their favourite titles.

And below is an article about their hack today.

my.news.yahoo.com...

Hackers don’t take a holiday, it seems.

Hours after Microsoft’s Xbox Live went down earlier today, Sony’s PlayStation Network is now down, too.

Like the earlier incident, the notorious hacker group “Lizard Squad” is claiming responsibility for taking down PlayStation Network on Twitter, saying it has downed both networks with DDoS attacks — basically, intentionally overloading servers by sending a flood of bogus web traffic.

Also here's a video from a couple weeks ago by ReviewTechUSA (one of my favorite videogame/tech channels) describing one of the hacks from 2 weeks ago.

2015 is going to be the year for gaming... Bloodborne, Mighty no 9, H hour, hopefully no mans sky, Sony VR headset... Plus a ton I can't come up with right now

a reply to: buni11687

Also, they took down PSN and Xbox live today (xmas).