4. Horizon Zero Dawn (PC)
There’s no denying that Aloy’s epic adventure in Horizon Zero Dawn is among the best gaming experiences ever. But in the move from consoles to PC, much of the greatness got lost in translation, mostly due to technical frustrations. Even on fairly beefy gaming rigs, there were serious optimization issues, including frame rate dips. Despite constant fiddling with sliders and switches, the game never really looked good and when gameplay got fast and frantic, using keyboard controls just didn’t feel natural like it did on the PS4. Look, Horizon Zero Dawn is a great game, but this port didn’t seem like the ideal way to play it, unless you’re a PC-only player … and even then, you better have a first-class setup.
3. Gears Tactics
The disappointment with Gears Tactics was not about unmet expectations, but more of a wondering why the Gears franchise even needed this game in the first place. And it seems our concerns were well-founded, as Gears Tactics brought some bizarre design choices to the tactics genre that just didn’t work. The streamlined missions felt too one-dimensional and repetitive, and the story lacked coherence. Sure, it looked enough like the Gears games we all love and the gameplay was competent enough, but overall this unnecessary genre cross-over just had us asking “why?”
2. Marvel’s Avengers
Playing the demo had us pumped for Marvel’s Avengers, but the final product fell way short of expectations. Yes, our favourite MCU heroes were all there, but there were just too many annoying aspects that kept this game from greatness. The character designs were inconsistent, sometimes looking like the movies but other times not so much. The loot-based RPG elements felt bloated and level progression required too much grinding. To make matters worse, micro transactions reared their ugly heads if you wanted to unlock new characters and costumes. After finishing the campaign, Marvel’s Avengers gave us little desire to dive into its repetitive and tedious post-game slog.
1. Cyberpunk 2077
Well, here we are. The game that was possibly one of the most highly-anticipated titles in modern gaming history somehow turned out to be one of gaming’s biggest-ever disappointments. Technically it was a certified disaster, running the gamut from hilarious bugs to an infuriatingly-low frame rate on last-gen consoles that dipped into the single digits much of the time. But even more of a let-down was Cyberpunk 2077’s poorly-scripted AI and the empty open world, and just a general lack of depth that was, frankly, embarrassing coming from one of the industry’s most respected developers. Well, the title of the game might be one of the few things that they got right — because it might just take until 2077 for CD Projekt Red to earn back the massive amount of respect they’ve lost.
Well there you have it — the video games of 2020 that disappointed us the most. How about you? What games let you down in the past year? Let us know your thoughts below!
Thank you for keeping it locked on COGconnected.