8. Rage 2
Rage 2 wasn’t a bad game, and was actually pretty fun to mess around with — for a while. But all those awesome explosions and gorgeous ultraviolent gun battles couldn’t hide the glaring lack of narrative depth that left us less than thrilled. Rage 2’s vast geographic expanse was “filled with things,” no doubt, but lacked a sense of overall purpose that came to symbolize, for many in 2019, a general disenchantment with big-but-shallow massive open gaming worlds.
7. Ghost Recon Breakpoint
Ubisoft knows how to make great games, but there is a formulaic tendency that has set in somewhat recently, and Ghost Recon Breakpoint is a good example. There’s a massive open world, yes, but going through it feels slow and dull. And Ubisoft seemed to lazily throw in a mixed bag of so-so gameplay elements from other titles, like the loot system from Division 2, without a real purpose or coherence. Add to that tons of micro transactions and even some performance glitches, and it feels like the devs just phoned this one in.
6. Shenmue 3
Ah, Shenmue 3. We waited 20 years for this sequel, and unfortunately it was not worth it. The writers had literally 2 decades to come up with a decent ending to the unfinished story, but apparently could only come up with boring filler and pointless goose-chases. Combat was clunky and as our reviewer said, even the main characters gave us no reason to care. After all this time, Shenmue 3 felt like it was still stuck in the past — and maybe it should have stayed there.
