Video games are hard to make. As players expect more and more from developers and technology becomes more complex, that probably becomes more of an understatement with each passing year. Translating your vision of a perfect game into reality always requires changes and sacrifices, and sometimes the finished product just doesn’t quite reach its lofty goals.
Nobody wants a game to fail, but the truth is that things don’t always work out. The bigger and bolder an idea, the harder it’s felt when it doesn’t land. From total flops to winning concepts that fizzled out, these games couldn’t quite put theory into practice.
7Humankind
History Fell Out Of Balance
Let me say this straight away: I absolutely lovedHumankindwhen it launched. It brought Amplitude’s signature style to historical 4X games and, in another world, could have been the fabled “Civ-Killer.” However, itsstandout feature ended up being what held it back the most.
Rather than picking a single nation in Humankind, you wouldchoose a new Culture with each passing Era, gaining their abilities and synthesizing them with your previous Cultures. It introduced a cool draft mechanic, but in practice it was woefully unbalanced; some Cultures, notably the Harappans, Khmer, and Japanese, were so powerful that there waslittle reason not to take them if they were available. The game that promoted customization and synthesis became arace for the best draft picks.
6Immortals Of Aveum
A Triple-A Cautionary Tale
Immortals Of Aveumwas a big-budget fantasy epic with Metroidvania-style exploration and some impressive visuals. A shooter where you fire off spells instead of bullets is a cool idea, and Aveum had its moments, but overallit was just okay… which wasn’t enough to justify its price tag or to get players interested when it went on sale later.
Ascendant Studios lost a lot of money on its debut title. It’s a shame, but it goes to show that in a market as saturated as this one, triple-A games need to provide an experience proportionate to their budget if they want to stand out.
5Sand Land
Ran Out Of Gas
The resurrection of Akira Toriyama’s 20-year-old manga as an animated series made a perfect opportunity for aSand Landvideo game adaptation. On paper, it’s a great idea; the game takes you through the full story of the manga, thenexpands into a second chapterthat explores the neighboring Forest Land and the conflict between Fiends and Angels.
While Sand Land’s vehicle combat is fun when it’s at its best, those moments are rare and the rest of the game istoo clunky to make up the difference.It’s a shame, too, since the manga and anime really showcase the unique whimsy that made the late Toriyama’s work so special.
4Payday 3
The Heist Did Not Go According To Plan
The long-anticipated sequel to one of the most beloved co-op games of all time naturally had some high expectations from players. We can debate whether the missions available at launch where good (I quite liked them), but what really killed Payday 3 was its always-online functionality and the inability of the servers to handle the predictable volume of fans trying to get in on the criminal chaos.
After weeks of frustration with thousands of playersnot even being able to play the game at all, it didn’t matter whether it was any good once you actually managed to log in. The damage was done, andPayday 3’s concurrent player count has struggled to break a thousand ever since.
3Star Trek: Infinite
Boldly Going Right Back To Stellaris
Stellarisgave us galactic warfare and politics on an unprecedented scale, and it wasn’t long before theStar Trekmods started rolling in. Imagine the excitement, then, when anofficial Star Trek 4X gamewas announced, following the Stellaris gameplay model!
As it turned out,Star Trek: Infinitewasbasically just another Stellaris mod, and one that stopped receiving support soon after launch. What could have been a continuing mission to explore strange new worlds has instead ended on a cliffhanger.
Red Tape Is More Effective Than Headshots
Undead Inccan be a fun time, running your own Umbrella-style pharmaceutical company and bailing out before the consequences of your misdeeds catch up with you. However, with repeated playthroughs its problems start to become more and more apparent.
There’s anawful lot of setup that you have to dobefore you’re able to start churning out monstrous bioweapons, and a lot of your efficiency is dependent on the randomized map layout. It’s entirely possible to lose a game without so much as creating a single zombie, turning your dreams of creating the next Raccoon City into little more than a failed pharma startup.
1The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum
Nobody Won The Argument
I was cautiously optimistic whenGollumwas first announced. I had envisioned a more stealth-orientedShadow of Mordor, chronicling the skulking killer’s misdeeds between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Daedalic had a good track record up to that point, so surely the game would be decent at the very least.
The actual product, of course, was acomplete disaster.Delays turned into an unfinished title that was pushed out the door with glitches galore and boring gameplay. What could have been a neat LotR spinoff becameone of the most maligned games of the decade so far.
