The 10 Most Disappointing Games of 2011

*phew* Now we can all catch our breath, gamers. This year has been especially nice to all those sofa warriors who have a controller glued to their hand. Too many AAA titles and too little time to play them, we felt.

We know what games turned out to be the shit and what turned out to be nothing but shit. But, what about the games we had our hopes and dreams riding on? How about the releases that promised a return to glory for some, and a new experience for others? Sadly, some of them let us down hard. Join us as we vent over the 10 most disappointing games of the year.

What We Expected: The same addictive run & gun gameplay of Spencer’s previous HD comeback. More gun totin’ and bionic arm climbing goodness is all we wanted and more. That “more” we wanted turned out to the new jumping mechanic. Time to platform, soldier!

What We Got Instead: MORE…of the same really. Nothing really new to see here, folks. We took Spencer for a ride around his usual slew of 2D levels and busted a high number of caps in fools. But we just felt like our time spent was simply a retread into mediocrity. Same ol’ shooting and climbing that’s been done before. By no means was this game bad. It was just…there. IT’S STILL BETTER THAN THAT REBOOT THOUGH! Man that game sucked.

What We Expected: Champions of Norrath meets The Lord of the Rings? Now that’s what we envisioned. All the trailers we watched for this thing made us thirst for some co-op orc torture. Three new characters, three styles of mass beast beatings and three players all enjoying the fun are all we could dream about. The “Mature” rating was just the icing on the cake…

What We Got Instead: The blandest thing to enter our disc drive since…well, name another other fantasy-themed hack and slasher. A non-existent plot, characters that embodied paint drying and several technical issues plagued this game. We put our trust into you, Snowblind. THIS GAME WAS SUPPOSED TO BE OUR PRECIOUS!

What We Expected: Epic T-Rex chases. Epic Raptor chases. *Insert Dinosaur Name Here* chases define the whole Jurassic Park experience! Telltale Games knows how to craft an excellent, engaging adventure game in their sleep. So we knew going in that these guys were going to do the movie franchise justice with this new game. We don’t get to play with the characters from the movie? WHO CARES? As long as we got to run like hell and blast a few reptiles, it didn’t matter.

What We Got Instead: Something along the lines of Heavy Rain: Jurassic Park Edition. Repetitive quick time events and hardly any sense of action got this game erased from our hard drives real fast. Those two knocks on the game made the forgettable cast stand out like lunch meat for some ginormous reptiles. Question: has there ever been a good Jurassic Park game? *Ponders to self*

What We Expected: X-Men Legends for 2011, son. How awesome were those games? They gave us a bunch of X-Men and proceeded to let us whup ass, Diablo-style. We didn’t flinch when the developers said we’d only get to play with 3 original characters. Ok, cool. We’ll create our own mutant tank and smash fools. Besides, the cameos from cats like Wolvie and Toad would do the trick.

What We Got Instead: A poor excuse for a button masher. It was pretty cool getting to develop our own heroes/villains. But putting in the work for upgrades meant smashing the same lame enemies over…and over again. The story turned out to be painfully short, so you can imagine our interest was too. Welp, there’s always X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse to go back to. No bueno, Silicon Knights.

What We Expected: The same excellence that Beenox gave us with Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. Yeah so we don’t get to sneak around with Spider-Man Noir and go symbiote ragin’ with Ultimate Spider-Man. It’s all good. Zippin’ around with NYC’s favorite web crawler in the present (AND THE FUTURE!) sounded like an awesome time.

What We Got Instead: Electronic Door Opener: The Game. How many quick time events did we have to engage in just to get to another room? Too many to remember, actually. The absence of those two other Spider-Men made us miss them even more. The Amazing Spider-Man plus Spider-Man 2099 are cool, sure. But their cool factor was instantly lost on us cause the web swinging was non-existent. One building to run around in = not much room to get your swing on.

What We Expected: The ultimate squad-based FPS not named Counter-Strike. The character design had its own style and sheen, which made it immediately stand out. The addition of parkour mixed with bullet mayhem sounded soooooooo cool. Two factions battling for ownership of The Ark? Nice backstory. And the Bethesda name happened to be behind this joint, too. We couldn’t wait…

What We Got Instead: Nothing much, really. The shooting mechanics felt good, but everything else just reeked of mediocrity. The single-player portion (if you wanna call it that) was nothing but a bunch of training exercises for the online portion. You’re A.I. squadmates weren’t exactly rocket scientists, so good luck if you try to play this thing without friends. And the ultimate sin this game committed is the exclusion of a lobby system! Inaccessible and unacceptable.

What We Expected: Call of Duty with tons more emotion and feeling. Sure we’ve done the whole “Fight the power as a part of the Resistance” thing before. But, the “so real it could happen” plot device had us ready to pick up our arms. What if Korea came to our shores and straight jacked our nation? This game showed us what would go down. THQ is ready to hit the big time as far as publishers go and this was the game that would take ‘em there.

What We Got Instead: Another decent FPS…in a flood of other decent FPS games. These days, the whole FPS genre has hit the point of “been there, done that.” Homefront tried to set itself apart with its story, which it ended up doing. Too bad the campaign was short as hell. Once we were done wreaking havoc on the final bridge sequence, it was time to go the multiplayer route. The all too familiar online aspects of the game juts made us tune out eventually. Crytek is gonna be handling the sequel, so there’s hope for this IP after all.

What We Expected: Another top-notch racer from one of our favorite franchises. We have to admit, though. Those QTE’s that were shown for the game at this year’s E3 had us a bit worried, but the racing action on display took our fears away. Plus, it’s Need for Speed. That’s all we have to say.

What We Got Instead: An unexciting racer with the worst excuse for a “story” we’ve ever had to play through. There just wasn’t much to do in this game. Rubberband A.I. reared its ugly head again, the story was painfully short (it sucked anyway) plus the QTE’s felt like a complete afterthought. More avalanches and chase sequences could have kept this racer in our systems for a lot longer. Next year we expect something more worthwhile, EA.

What We Expected: Another epic entry into Bioware’s newest franchise. The first Dragon Age gave console gamers a worthwhile adventure with plenty of action and intrigue. The anticipation for this baby was high. RPG heads around the world couldn’t wait to hack up some baddies with Hawke. The gore factor was clearly at a high level again, as the screenshots for this game showed plenty of Kool-Aid flowing from the hectic battles.

What We Got Instead: A good Dragon Age game, yeah. A worthy successor to the first game? Well, not quite. The retooled combat system turned battles into button mashing contests and the new setting didn’t have much a grand scale. Loyal fans of the series came out in droves to complain about the game’s simplistic nature and half-hearted storytelling. We were in line protesting with ‘em on that note. Dragon Age: Origins is still the king.

What We Expected: The greatest FPS ever made. Nah, we’re just playin’ wit ya. But we were still gearing up to play a game that had the “TBA” release date on it for too long. Rap heads, you think you’re having it hard waiting for that damn Detox to come out? THIS THING’S BEEN IN DEVELOPMENT PURGATORY SINCE 1996! Mr. Nukem was finally coming home, baby. This one had better be good…

What We Got Instead: A game that was still stuck in the 90’s and clearly had no business being released. Duke Nukem was that dude back in the day, but 2011 wasn’t very kind to this 90’s gaming icon. First-person jumping action? Yawn worthy. Cleary outdated jokes and concepts? Yessir. Add to that the epic load times, flat shooting segments, buggy driving segments (and lord knows what else!). We were pulling for ya, Nukem. Ya let us down the hard way. Wu-Tang is forever, not you.