Worst And Most Disappointing Games You Played This Year - 2024 Edition

Dragon's Dogma 2 without a doubt.

Happy cakeday!

Happy cakeday!
Let's see...
Four Last Things i had big expectations for, turns out all the humour in it fell flat and the game was quite boring.
Hotshot Racing was really terribly mediocre and a total snoozefest. If it wasn't an SG win, i wouldn't have even bothered finishing it.

And that's about it :D

I play none of it but I was super excited for Rico cause it said it had multiplayer but that got taken offline so I was like... Oh nevermind.

As for a game I did play I'll have to say Animalistic, it was cheap and fine. Exactly what I expected except it called me a cuck and that's uncalled for

Will be mostly my dropped games(outside of skill issues).. from this month at that(as I have been trying to finish up some more wins so there are no win backlog games).

Escape from Naraka - It simply gave me motion sickness, turning motion blur off helped some but it wasn't enough, was actually enjoying it otherwise so its a disappointment that I just can't finish it.

Chaos Reborn - This one I was I had higher hopes for since I enjoy turn based games(thanks getting older reflexes), it just plays way to slow and ultimately was extremely boring, its rare I pull out the do not recommend reviews for games I don't like... but it earned it.

Dreamstones - Arkanoid clone... with buggy collision detection and physics, you know... the 2 things that cannot be allowed to be buggy in a game like this.

Elex 2 - I wasn't expecting an incredible experience with this one, was expecting a discount skyrim with jetpacks, however... the trailer for the game straight up feels like false advertising, its all action... the game is very little action(at least for the first many many hours)... really did enjoy having the jetpack right at the start, made going up... and down cliffs so much nicer since you could negate fall damage with a little jetpack burst.

Tales of Vesperia. Game's a mess in almost every aspect. It's a mystery to me how it's often considered one of the strongest in the series. If anyone's thinking of giving it it a shot, I'd recommend just playing something like Symphonia or Berseria instead.

Tails of Iron was also pretty disappointing. Very shallow and repetitive. Which is a shame because it has very nice looks.

Well, I played 3 games I got from Indiegala
HotFloor is a 1st person 3D platformer that tries hard not to be fun and succeds quite well at it. It also locks you out of playing the game once you finish it :D
Instant Farmer - Logic Puzzle feels like list of chores most of the time, and somehow manages to use up 90% of my graphics card while being graphically at low mobile game level :v
Alien Cat 2 was a game that if it wasn't for the snacks I was munching on while playing it, I would have had exactly 0 fun...

And 2 from Humble Monthly/Choice :o
Path of Giants is a cute puzzle game. And it has three controllable characters that are very slow. Puzzles also solve themselves most of the times due to specific level design...
Tiny Echo is a weird and cryptic exploration game that stays exatly the same once you finished it. Nothing gets explained, something gets kinda done, but there's really nothing to it.

Nightmare Kart. I hate to say that a free indie game I was looking forward to is kinda crap but that game really does handle like shit, and that's a major issue when it comes to a racing game. That dev is really good at emulating the PS1 style graphics, but gameplay-wise it's a big nope.

Can't remember a single disappointing game this year. Good times!

Happy 🎂day!

Happy cakeday!

Unsure about the worst game.
Megabyte Punch had great fundamentals, but was underwhelming.
Mittelborg is just not ready to be a game, really random, slow and uninteresting.
I disliked Defcon.
Guild of Darksteel is mindnumbingly boring AND repetitive.
I hated Styx: Master of Shadows :D

So I think the worst is Mittelborg, the blandest maybe Guild of Darksteel, most infuriating(ly inconsistant) was Styx: Master of Shadows

My biggest disappointment was Broken Roads. Now that the world's gone completely mad, post-apocalyptic stuff comforts me in a weird way, also I love turn-based CRPGs, also there are kangaroos in there - it should have been everything I wanted, but turned out to be insanely buggy and downright awfully written (I mean everything - story, characters, quests, that moral system the devs were really proud of). Oh, and the narrator is downright horrendous.

Played Crisis Core for the first time this year, I'd always heard of it as this great underrated gem of the Final Fantasy series and frankly it'd always been on my backlog, a game I've respected for so long and always thought I'd love when I had the time for it.

I'd rather play Dirge of Cerberus 10 times over than 100 percent Crisis Core again. It wasn't just disappointing, it was actively miserable. This is coming from someone who played Fallout 76 and Sonic Adventure this year as well.

I had high hopes for Dredge as well as Dave the Diver, I was so hyped for these games that as soon as they hit an acceptable discount, I bought them. And both were underwhelmingly boring.

Worst

• Sunlight - It's hard to even call this a game. It's more like a visual poem and an utterly boring one at that. Even Tonguc Bodur's basic walking sims are more exciting.
• McPixel - Click on ugly blocky objects and watch random stuff happen. The humor fell completely flat for me. I don't remember if I even cracked a single smile. Henry Stickmin does something similar but much better.
• Retro Machina - The only game I won on SG this year that I couldn't bring myself to finish. Nice retro futuristic aesthetics, but it's a total snoozefest. Slow movement across a huge map, repetitive combat (4 enemy types that keep respawing), boring puzzles.

Most disappointing

• Eastward - Another SG win that I had to force myself to finish. The story is full of holes and all over the place. You meet tons of characters as you get whisked from one location to the next, but they all have paper thin personalities and unclear motivations. I didn't care about a single character in the game but had to endure endless, pointless conversations with them. There's so much filler dialogue! The game seriously needed an editor and a major tightening of the plot. Shame, because the pixel art and OST are brilliant.
• The Magic Circle - I feel bad mentioning this one because it's such a unique game, both visually and in terms of gameplay. I enjoyed my time with it for the most part, but I'm disappointed by its untapped potential. The idea of reprogramming the world around you sounds exciting, but the way it's utilized in puzzles is very shallow. The few puzzles that exist can be solved using very crude methods. Could've been so much more...

Happy cakeday!

I got twice as many games played this year than last, according to Replay, and had a lot of fun with some farming (Stardew 1.6, Coral Island, Dave the Diver, and Core Keeper feels kinda cozy like that to me) plus some others like Guardians of the Galaxy, conquered Mirrors Edge, enjoyed some point and clicks like Darkside Det and story Citizen Sleeper, etc. Arcade Paradise, Nuclear Blaze. Good stuff!

But... went thru some older games and tackling some odd SG wins. Mortician's Tale was... dreadfully boring. Tedious. Mediterranea Inferno was too over the top artsy for me, but I could see some of my friends enjoying that ride. Full Throttle Remastered felt awkward, where it was hard to figure out where you were supposed to click to progress. No big disappointments though.

Totally don't get Sonic Frontiers on the Switch though. So chunky. My son wanted it right away, but we should have waited and gotten the PS 5 copy. But he's fine with it, so, no big deal.

worst? probably VVVVVV
most disappointing? fury unleashed. game was fine until the huge jump in difficulty for the final boss which I could not defeat even on easy

Most disappointing game I have played was Dying Light. I didn't play it on Steam, I played on Epic, but I have to count it easily. The MC is awesome and has a great personality - and that's the only thing I liked. I didn't like the parkour that everyone praises (it only became way more fun when I got the grapple on the "second city") and even then, it felt clunky at times. The story was interesting, but midway through, there's a certain scene where things could've been over but ofc, the story just gets extended for no reason - people also always die in the most random stupid ways, so you can't really feel sorry for them, because they were just... stupid. I always heard these things about Dying Light and I get it if you like the game, but it really isn't all that for me (and I'm a person that rly enjoys 95% of open world games)...

Worst game I've have played this year? A game of changes, I really tried to enjoy it but I just couldn't lol, everything was... bad

Happy CakeDay! :D

Now, you asked for lists ok you didn't, but anyway, so:
5 WORST GAMES I PLAYED THIS YEAR (#5 is the worst):

5. Sega Bass Fishing Did not age well
6. Waveform Initially good, but too grindy in the long run
7. Runaway: A Road Adventure Charming graphics, but ridiculous pixel hunting
8. Amaze Lunar It's mazes. I don't know what I expected.
9. Nux Ugh.

5 MOST DISAPPOINTING GAMES THIS YEAR (#5 is most disappointing):

5. Katamari Damacy Reroll The 3rd Katamari game I played, and it's getting a bit repetitive. That said: NAAAAAAA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NAAA NA is still catchy!
6. Samorost 3 The first two were less elaborate, but more charming.
7. It Takes Two The reviews seem to absolutely love it, but I found it just good.
8. Runaway: A Road Adventure That pixel!
9. Waveform I thought I would love it, but, meh, grindy.

Wavetale is probably my most disappointing game this year. It's boring and makes me feel dizzy and nauseous like I'm seasick ;d

Tough question.
I'll have to go with Shadows of Pygmalion I guess. But you might already have known that. Or the 3 other games runs away screaming

For me, it is a tie between
Scheming Through The Zombie Apocalypse: The Beginning (which is just a bad game)
and Dungeonborne (which is a fun game that I played the most this year but the development has made the game literally unplayable)

I have made reviews of both if you want to read them:
Scheming Through The Zombie Apocalypse: The Beginning: https://steamcommunity.com/id/alinuxgamer/recommended/813540?snr=1_5_9__402
Dungeonborne: https://steamcommunity.com/id/alinuxgamer/recommended/2448970?snr=1_5_9__402

Also, Happy Cake Day!

First half of God of War: Ragnarok and NFS Unbound

For me Control Ultimate Edition, usually I've no issues with hardcore shooters but in this game's checkpoint saving is sometimes placed so unfortunately that enemies drain much of your health before you reach the actual boss fight. This ended in frustration on my side and it's an indication Remedy is aware of the issue as they implemented immortality mode in the settings.
You might say it's a skill issue but as I prevail in other games more or less easily it seems a game design problem to me.

Probably Bloons Card Storm. I've been a big Bloons fan for most of my life, but the latest game feels incredibly unbalanced. Victory is pretty much always either certain or impossible.

I will probably get killed by everyone here.

But for me it was Nier Automata, i found the characters unnatural, the mechanics not interesting, and the story was a disappointment. Granted, I only finished the 1st ending, but I think I have played enough to know if the game is for me or not

Happy cake day, foxy friend!

View attached image.

Happy Cakeday!