3) Phantom Dust
Development on Phantom Dust for Xbox One has been anything but simple. Originally announced at E3 2014 on Microsoft’s stage, this new and refreshed version of a cult classic looked to be in the right hands of developer Darkside Game Studios. While no actual gameplay footage was ever shown, the announcement was a great way to show that Microsoft wasn’t all about the Halos and Gears, and that it was thinking about the little guys too. Unfortunately, that didn’t last because due to monetary issues, Microsoft canceled the remake and shuttered the studio. The project was moved internally and finally saw the light of day in May, but it wasn’t close to what was promised. The Phantom Dust that was released was as bare bones of a remaster one could get. Even with upscaled 1080p visuals, this still looked and played like an OG Xbox title.  The core gameplay and mechanics remained the same as it did in 2004, which by the way, haven’t aged as gracefully in 2017. There are a few quality-of-life improvements, but certainly, nothing to write home about. No, this felt phoned in and half-baked; a poor response from Microsoft to try and alleviate some of the concern from Xbox fans that they’ve been canceling too many games. Phantom Dust’s only saving grace? Well, it was free.
2) Super Bomberman R
The Bomberman series tends to fly under the radar these days with the last few games being released as digital versions only. So there was definitely some excitement from fans when Super Bomberman R was announced as being the first major retail Bomberman release in a long while. In the end however, aside from having that new game box smell, Super Bomberman R still feels like a smaller digital title anyway. The new Story Mode is a nice addition, but it becomes quickly apparent that R doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. It plays practically identical to past Bomberman games, but it suffered from some nasty glitches and an unstable frame rate. While performance has been addressed from the developer recently with a new patch, the damage was already done.
1) Mass Effect Andromeda
Mass Effect Andromeda isn’t a bad game. We even scored it highly in our launch review, but there’s no beating around the bush: it underwhelmed no matter how you looked at. The original Mass Effect trilogy is adored for its character building, branching narrative paths and dialogue choices while holding its own in the RPG and Shooter categories. Despite the totally overblown negative reaction towards Mass Effect 3’s finale, gaming has never seen a more ambitious space opera that spanned hundreds and hundreds of hours. So with that said, Andromeda was a victim of its hype and well, sadly, it didn’t come close to reaching it. Immediately out of the gate, Andromeda was criticized for its questionable facial animation where it was picked apart on social media through gifs and memes. It wasn’t a good look for Andromeda because underneath all of that was a pretty great game.
Since its release in March, BioWare has patched the game five times improving its gameplay, squashing bugs, and yes, the facial acting. It’s also been confirmed that new content will be added in the future, proving that Andromeda didn’t have the smoothest development cycle. In fact, a breaking report from Kotaku in June revealed the game’s troubled history, including a change in script writing and problems adapting to the Frostbite engine. Beyond that, Andromeda appears to have struggled in the sales department, falling short of its predecessors and other BioWare RPG’s. It’s had its price slashed numerous times at retailers as well as PSN and Xbox Live. Even at the time of this writing, Best Buy is giving it away for $20. Andromeda disappointed so much that all planned DLC have been canceled. It’s clear that BioWare, and to an extent EA, wants to forget about Mass Effect Andromeda and may even the shelf the series because of it.