| greenmedic88 said: In the current gen, the Wii probably leads in this category of "mis-hyped" games, typically in support of the notion that the platform was/would become more relevant in terms of third party support. Or maybe that should be third party support in the form of hardware selling exclusives. The Conduit, as already mentioned is the first that comes to mind. The mislead was in regards to the visuals from a tech standpoint, but also as new exclusive IP that would show all those doubters that the Wii can have and will have more compelling third party exclusives. A lot of the same pundits either wrote the game off post release, or fell silent. Only a small minority carried on about how good the game was. Madworld was a big exclusive title that was supposed to show how the platform was viable for "adult" titles and shake the family console only image. Post release, most pundits wrote it off or fell silent again. Red Steel 2, not hugely hyped, but supposedly another title that would prove the viability of third party WIi exclusives as well as demonstrate the significance of Motion Plus, and another title that quietly came and went to a mediocre response at best. Final Fantasy XIII on the Xbox 360 in hindsight was one of the biggest bombshells (closing announcement for MS at E3 '09) that so many got so pumped up and worked over by yet in reality upon release, really didn't change much of anything. I'd bring up Haze again for the PS3 as a "Halo killer" but it's not the first game to be falsely hyped by being compared to the cultural phenomenon that is Halo; just one of the worst. I can't think of any post Crysis/Crysis Warhead games being hyped as AAA VGA card upgrade worthy PC titles, but if there were, they would probably belong on this list. |
The only one of those three that the community was really at fault for hyping was The Conduit. It was clear that the developers were trying to do nothing more than deliver a competent FPS experience (which outside of the nasty online glitches, they succeeded in doing). Poor sales i would hinge utterly on the lack of local multiplayer, but the games overall blandness was ignored by the community, almost as a sort of inversion of the stereotype "hardcore gamers go ape for grey-n-brown FPSes," we figured since HVS was trying to make a grey-n-brown, that they would succeed, but it was clear the game did too little to differentiate itself (even compared to Goldeneye, which aside from pure brand strength, worked to make itself "different" than other major FPSes of our day, and did so well in a world where "different" usually means "dumbed down")
MadWorld i don't think was ever hyped as such, or people who did had no awareness of the developers' history. MadWorld beat God Hand into the ever-loving dirt, and probably edged out Okami PS2 (though sales for that are hard to come by) and Okami Wii individually. Before Bayonetta, it was Clover's* best-seller, and that means expectations should have been low, and i had always thought they were low
Red Steel is a shame, but that one's more Ubisoft's fault. Ubisoft succeeded with the original Red Steel, but the overhaul they made was too significant, and while they made some of the right changes (motion plus and just overall functional sword controls), they brought it too far away from an FPS, the worst part of which involved stripping local multiplayer. To date we *still* haven't had anyone aside Nintendo smart enough to make a goddamn local multiplayer swordfighting game. (glares at Lucasarts). Red Steel 2 was a prime opportunity to do some good for the Wii platform as a whole, but Ubisoft bungled it, though again more in a tragic way than the idiotic way most 3rd parties bungle their Wii efforts
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
