There’s been a lot of great games and gaming moments in 2014 but we can’t deny the fact that a lot of them have been overshadowed by more negative things. From botched releases to GamerGate to just plain horrible games there was a lot of crap that ran alongside all that good stuff. Of course we’re hyped up for 2015 and all the possibilities that are ahead but we’d be remiss to not poke at all the garbage that went down in 2014. We asked the team at COG what their personal worst or most disappointing game or moment was from this past year and surprisingly a few of them picked on some fairly well received games. Apparently no game is safe from the wrath of a critic!
Broken Launch Day Games
I’m not going to point my finger at one game in particular because it’s extremely sad that there was more than one. 2014 will long be remembered for the fact that nearly every one of its major releases was either pushed back or were a flat out a disaster upon release. Framerate problems, server problems, missing faces, freezing issues, etc. plagued most of the anticipated games of the year and left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. Whatever the studios decide to do from here on out needs to be a pretty big change since they have many legions of fans to win back after some serious missteps in 2014 and some fancy DLC doesn’t seem to likely to smooth things over this time. I guarantee no one will mind not getting an entry a year as long as the product is solid in the end and doesn’t require 3 months of patches simply to make it playable. – DOUG MERCER
“What ya got up your sleeve there Arno? Framerate problems, graphics glitches and hidden micro transactions?”
Since my gaming time is at a premium, I rely heavily on what I have liked before and what is getting good word of mouth. Only then will I buy a game which means I avoid buying turkeys. So my vote in the poorest category does not go to a particular game but a disturbing trend in the premature release of games. This problem has always existed but the transition period from the older consoles to the newer ones has exacerbated the issue. NHL2015, Drive Club, and Assassin’s Creed Unity are the poster children for broken games. Embarassing. Shame on you game companies. Shame. – LOU SYTSMA
It took me quite a while to figure out my disappointment of the year and I couldn’t even pick a title to fall into that category. What has disappointed me though is the many releases of broken or bugged out games that have released this year like Halo: MCC, AC: Unity, The Crew and even my GOTY Destiny has had its fair share of problems that I couldn’t even ignore. I don’t for one instance think developers want to release broken or buggy games and shouldn’t be pointing the fingers at them but we need to show these corporate cronies who force developers to release their art on a timeline that this just isn’t cool. They can’t hide behind embargoes or the millions of pre-orders they try to get beforehand. Gamers speak with their wallets and I assure you that gamers might let it go for a bit, but they won’t stand idly by for too long. – JOHN ELLIOTT
Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark
Over the years I have come to enjoy what High Moon Studios have done with the Transformers franchise. War for Cybertron remains one of my all-time favourite Transformer games. So going in I was looking forward to what High Moon could do with Rise of the Dark Spark. Sadly, I’d rather watch The Cosby Show re-runs (ouch, too soon?) than trudge my way back through Dark Spark’s boring and mind numbing single player campaign. I wanted to enjoy this Transformers game, I really and truly did. Yet sadly Rise of the Dark Spark has few redeeming qualities and is a Transformers game we all need to just forget about. C’mon High Moon you can do better than this! – TREVOR HOUSTON
Driveclub
There’s a reason Evolution Studios Driveclub has earned itself the moniker DriveFlub. It was the epitome of broken gaming in 2014 and Sony fan or not you can’t deny this. The multiplayer was unplayable at launch, the free-to-play version for PS Plus members still isn’t available, and it was an overall PR nightmare for Sony. When you take a snippet from a website (taken out of context of course) and produce an ad labelling your game as the ‘PS4’s Forza Killer’ you better have the product to back it up. I had the fortune to review both DriveClub and Forza Horizon 2 and even though you’re not really comparing apples to apples as the games are quite different from each other there’s no way that DriveClub kills much of anything. Even comparing it to Forza Motorsport 5, which it’s closer in line with it comes up short. I went into Driveclub really excited for the experience and was let down in every possible way. Admittedly, some of the footage I’ve seen from the recent dynamic weather update looks amazing but it’s a situation of ‘too little, too late’ as I left Driveflub back at the starting line months ago. I’ll patiently wait for Sony to get the gears shifting on Gran Turismo 7 which I have extremely high hopes for! – SHAWN PETRASCHUK
“Hahahaha, OH GOD, I’m dying, hahahaha! Forza Killer? REALLY? Hahahahaaaaa, come on now.”
Deception IV
With all its highs, 2014 also had some lows. My 2014 low point came in the form of Deception IV. The series is on its fourth iteration so it has to be doing something right, but I’m not sure I found what that was. It felt clunky, unpolished, and generally unfriendly to new coming players. The concept of the game is intriguing enough, but the actual execution left something to be desired. – ROYCE DEAN
Lords of the Fallen
I first saw Lords of the Fallen demoed at E3 this year. It was touted as a Dark Souls inspired adventure, with similar gameplay. Since I am a huge(!) Dark Souls fan, I felt this would be the perfect game to satisfy that itch after finishing Dark Souls 2. When the game was finally released it looked gorgeous, but due to many technical issues, a camera that sometimes had a mind of its own, and very sluggish gameplay, I found the game became almost unplayable at times. Many of these problems were not just limited to one system, but all of the platforms. It never should have been released in this state and almost seemed rushed out the door (unfortunately, this seems to be becoming a common trend in some “AAA” games). I really wanted to like it but I just can’t look past these issues, so this is why I have chosen it for my worst or most disappointing game of the year.– MATT CULLEN
Gaming’s Negative Press
What has been a disappointment for me in 2014 in regards to gaming is the negative light that gaming as a whole has been falling into. From GamerGate, to hackers taking down online services, to multiple games being released broken or unfinished, a lot of negative press has resulted. I’ve been gaming since the Intellivision and this is as bad as it’s ever been. Gaming is supposed to be an escape; it’s supposed to be fun. Reading Twitter to see those who hide behind the GamerGate movement to harass, belittle and make life miserable for others is just plain stupid. Hackers like ‘Lizard Squad’ who have taken all the publicity for putting XBL and PSN out of order during Christmas didn’t hurt Microsoft or Sony’s bottom line, they actually hurt those gamers out there who were excited to game with their new consoles. And finally, companies who let games release that were far from done (*cough* Assassins Creed Unity *cough*) requiring many on the fly patches, or games that promised so many things and didn’t deliver out of the box (DriveClub’s social aspect or Halo: The Masterchief Collection’s multiplayer fiasco). In the end people may or may not forget this kind of stuff, but for me, it’s been a rough year for gaming’s reputation, and I hope that 2015 is much kinder. – KIRBY YABLONSKI
“Those who hide behind the GamerGate movement to harass, belittle and make life miserable for others is just plain stupid.”
One Piece: Romance Dawn
I’ve played some real stinkers this past year, but by far the worst game I’ve played and reviewed was the absolutely atrocious One Piece: Romance Dawn. The story of Monkey D Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates had the potential to be a fantastic JRPG adventure, but instead, the game was extremely tedious, boring, with horribly dated graphics and repetitive game play. There really isn’t anything good to say about this game. It was a very poor way to introduce newcomers to the series, and a huge disappointment to long-time fans of the manga and anime. – JEN DINGLE
Tenkai Knights
Oh boy, what can I say about this game? Well, after playing it I can’t truly consider it as a real video game. It feels unfinished as everything achieves just the bare minimum to function. I was hoping for something at least decent since it’s based off an anime series, but even so I still hoped for too much. It feels more like a prototype and really should have had more work put into it. It’s just one of those situations where the video game really doesn’t do justice for the TV or movie version it’s based off of. You’re better off investing in the anime series than the video game this time around. – JUDI AZMAND
Rambo: The Video Game
There’s not a whole lot wrong with rail shooters, and that’s not why Rambo is a bad game. Rambo: The Video Game, is my choice for Worst Game of 2014 because it doesn’t really do anything right. The visuals are terrible, the gameplay isn’t exciting, and the game itself can be beaten in less than three hours. The worst part is that this experience is still being sold for $43.99. I honestly think you’d get more value spending about $10 on a ball and cup than you would spending that absurd amount on Rambo: The Video Game. Do yourself a favour and stay away. Stay very far away. – NICHOLAS PLOUFFE
“You’d get more value spending $10 on a ball and cup than you would spending $40 plus on Rambo: The Video Game.”
Line of Defense Tactics – Tactical Advantage
A title that I will always call Tactical Tactics is not just the worst game I`ve played all year, it`s the worst game I’ve ever played in my entire, albeit, brief existence. Never in my life have I seen a game that doesn`t have a single redeeming quality in its entire production. This wretched piece of pixilated filth is as pathetic as the creator`s blow up on Steam forums and other websites, where many commenters were banned and some reviewers were threatened with lawsuits. Man up and accept the fact you released a subpar product Mr. Smart! – LUCAS RAYCEVICK
Destiny and the Dark Below Expansion
DESTINY: Destiny isn’t BAD by any stretch; in fact some of my counterparts actually pegged it as their game of the year in our Best of 2014 article. It has solid shooting mechanics, and gorgeous visuals. Unfortunately that’s all it has going for it. The ‘story’ is AWOL, the characters are lame, and the content is inexcusably repetitive. The game that shipped is a far cry from the endless worlds of exploration and adventure Bungie was promising. Instead we got bad voice acting and ‘press x to scan’/initiate waves of repetitive enemies. People have played a lot of Destiny, but not because there is a lot of Destiny to play – they’ve instead spent countless hours farming one of the lord-only-knows-how-many-there-are currency types from the ONE mission type. Destiny ought to be GOTY, but instead it’s an underachievement of epic proportions. – PAUL SULLIVAN
“The game that shipped is a far cry from the endless worlds of exploration and adventure Bungie was promising.”
THE DARK BELOW: Full disclosure, I didn’t actually play any of The Dark Below, so it may be unfair for me to call it the most disappointing of the year. On the other hand, the way Bungie handled this expansion stopped me dead in my tracks after spending weeks obsessively playing the Destiny base game. Not only do I not want to play The Dark Below, I’ve lost enthusiasm to even play Destiny altogether anymore. I’ve made my gripes pretty well known more than once, but that’s how disappointed I was with how the expansion was handled. I had the Season Pass pre-ordered and ended up cancelling it. Gripes aside, the volume of new content offered in this expansion is pretty underwhelming (especially for Xbox users). Destiny was on my short-list for Game of the Year a month ago, and The Dark Below single-handedly pulled it from contention. – BRIAN CONNOR
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
This is probably harsh as there were lots of games worse than the Pre-Sequel. However, if you measure how hyped I was about the game against how much I enjoyed what it actually offered, the difference is staggering. The story was just alright, as was the game play and the characters. For all its hype, and all the promise that Borderlands 2 provided, the Pre-Sequel amounted to very little in the end. All of the charm of Pandora had been stripped out and replaced with a barren ugly world that I really didn’t want to spend any more time in than I had to. Nothing about this game was incredible. It was vanilla, and after Borderlands 2 I really expected the moon (pun INCREDIBLY intended). Better luck next time Gearbox! – RYAN MORIARTY
