Enter the Matrix
Produced in tandem with The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions with a reported budget of over $30 million, one of the biggest game budgets to date, Enter the Matrix set the bar for success somewhere between the clouds and Pluto. And like the Matrix sequels, it failed to live up to expectations in nearly every respect.
The game, released in the US on the same days as The Matrix Reloaded, was supposed to fit into the expansive Matrix universe. As two minor characters from the films, you went out on your own adventure. Unfortunately, that adventure more or less devolved into navigating ugly hallways, fiddling with busted AI and wading through bugs. The game was, what many reviewers called, blatantly unfinished.
For Atari, that meant little in terms of sales. The Matrix name alone, accompanied by an over-hyped marriage of The Matrix video game and film narratives, scored the game a massive amount of pre-orders.
Too Human
A running industry joke for nearly a decade, Too Human development began on the PS1, moved on to the GameCube, and eventually released on the Xbox 360 in 2008. While initial impressions of the game looked favorable, once folks got their hands on it, wonky controls and repetative enemies made the experience pretty forgettable. Threats and challenges from game designer Denis Dyack did little to stem the tide of so-so reviews.
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State of Emergency
Rockstar followed their 2001 surprise hit, Grand Theft Auto III, with the equally incendiary State of Emergency. A third person "murder simulator" in the finest since, SoE pedaled an anarchic message with shameless depravity, violence and gallows humor - the staples of a Rockstar success story.
Unfortunately for the studio and early adopters, the game's similarities with GTA ended at the third person perspective. Neither a sprawling sandbox game nor a competent beat'em up, State of Emergency disappointed fans unreasonably hoping for a Liberty City-esque experience. Thus the title made the short walk from the new release shelf to the bargain bin faster than a copy of Jumpers.
Perhaps State of Emergency was ahead of its time. The concept, to play the role of a citizen who, pent-up with hatred for his or her Orwellian government, incites mass rioting to provoke social change, sounds distinctly next-gen. Just imagine the Liberty City streets of GTA IV covered with thousands of rioting NPCs. Or maybe drawing comparisons to GTA is exactly what got us into this mess.
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The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Like all Nintendo games back then, Ocarina of Time was delayed and delayed and delayed some more. Finally a year after it was supposed to come out, gamers got one of the best games ever made, with a massive adventure, great characters and a lovely horse named Epona. It's the benchmark for all past and future Zelda games and it managed to meet the ridiculous expectations that had been set for it.
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Sewer Shark
Sewer Shark's merely a synecdoche of the SEGA CD hype machine. Eager to stay ahead of their competition, SEGA followed up the Genesis with the SEGA CD and the 32X, two add-ons that would inject the core system with pure awesomeness. In reality, the later was a ruse to provide revenue while the Saturn launched and found a user base, while the former provided full-motion video, improved audio and a wealth of miserable FMV games.
The FMV game is a relic of gamer past. In a nutshell, you control a film by pressing key buttons at appropriate moments, the right press launched the next snippet of the film, and the wrong press resulted in failure and the scene rebooting. I might be underselling it here, maybe.
Sewer Shark promised a true film experience. Just check out that headline. Yes, pretend it's a game. Pretend it's a fun game. Pretend you're having fun. Pretend you don't regret dropping six months worth of allowance on this hunk of worthless plastic and silicon chips.
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Grand Theft Auto 4
We all expected Grand Theft Auto to make a splash on next-gen consoles, no doubt, but no one expect it to be the Citizen Kane or The Godfather of the medium, not even Rockstar loyalists.
Who knew it would take a Pulitzer Prize winning author to put in perspective GTA IV's astronomical praise? Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, bemoaned the lofty accolades for the crime drama with a thoughtful piece, applauding Grand Theft Auto 4 and its creators, but asking gamers set to set their bar higher, and expect more from their favorite pastime.
In the end, Diaz saw through the glass clearly. Grand Theft Auto 4 was definitely game of the year material, but best game ever, that's something we can determine further down the road.
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Super Mario Bros. 3
Some games have lots of commercials.
Some games have trailers.
Some games have screens.
Some games have previews.
One game had a full-length movie.
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Spore
If a game's creator has to de-hype his own product, then the hype train has left the tracks.
Before Spore's release, videogame visionary and Spore creator Will Wright, generously doled up some Spore damage control:
"When people don't know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way you want them to be filled in. That's true of almost anything. Then, when the actual thing comes out some people will be disappointed that it's not 'hardcore enough' or it's not 'easy enough' or that we didn't do this or that. We've gotten to that point any additional hype isn't serving us well. It's a concern."
Did it work? Well, no. If you promise video gamers the stars and the moon, literally, you better deliver. In hindsight, Spore's an excellent mish-mash of genres with a savvy character creator and a friendly community. But universe in a box it is not.
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Shenmue
Its hard to blame SEGA for the hype engine they built into Shenmue. With their past three systems - SEGA-CD, 32X and Saturn - flopped and abandoned, they needed a mega hit to redeem their name and put Dreamcasts under televisions across the globe. So, with the help of the Yu Suzuki, the master game designer behind titles like Outrun, Space Harrier and Virtua Fighter, a 16-chapter story across many discs and sequels, and a level of detail and realism then unseen, SEGA launched its not-so-maiden voyage back into the dicey waters of the hype ocean.
We all know how the story ends. The ship sinks.
Shenmue, like many SEGA products before it, was ahead of its time. The Dreamcast, while powerful, only allowed Shenmue to be a crude facsimile of reality. That's not to say Shenmue's a bad game, but after hours of selling knick-knacks, racing fork-lifts and buying items that serve no real purpose, truth hits you like a punch from Lan Di, your hero's antagonist: this is just another RPG.
Maybe Shenmue's tragic demise is for the better, as it set the ball in motion for its spiritual successor, the wonderful (and under-hyped) Yakuza series.
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Fable
Early on in Fable's development it went by Project Ego, and unintentionally appropriate name for a title that's ego soared. Promising a fully customizable character that you could scar, tattoo and, with the help of father time, age, Peter Molyneux and Blue Box Studios proffered a concept that previously only lived in RPG gamers' wet dreams. Imagine, a world where characters reacted to your actions, you could play the role of good or evil and your decisions affected a sprawling story.
That game was released as Fable II.
Fable I, on the other hand, was a competent action roleplaying game filled with creativity and lush graphics. Game changing, mold breaking and ground breaking: it was none of the above.
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Killzone
When promoting your latest video game, beware the label "-killer." Halo-Killer, Mario-killer, Final Fantasy-killer, these are dangerous labels, not because these games can't be topped (they can), but because every little moment your game doesn't measure up, it falls flat. It could have great graphics, but if they're not better than Halo, well, tough apples. It could have a phenomenal spell system, but if Final Fantasy tops it, well, rough nuts.
So, when various magazines proclaimed Killzone a "Halo-killer" it didn't take a soothsayer to predict a turbulent release. Thanks to an occasionally stuttering frame rate, glitches and bugs and unreliable AI, reviewers dished up humdrum scores.
Fortunately for developer Guerilla Games, the title sold over two million copies anyway, and inspired Sony to publish a sequel that launches this month. Luckily, Sony and Guerilla learned their lesson from Killzone, and kept Killzone 2's expectations low and hype lower. Er, wait.
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Rise of the Robots
Rise of the Robots' plusses:
-A soundtrack by Queen's Brian May
-At the time, stunning pre-rendered graphics
-FMVs
-A handful of magazine cover spots
-The first simultaneous release on all formats
Rise of the Robots' minuses:
-Gameplay
-Fun
-Only one playable character
-Controls
-Fun
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Final Fantasy VIII
How can you follow up one of the most beloved video games of all time without a hype monsoon?
You can't.
With magazines chomping at the bit for exclusive screens and previews, content trickled out for over a year leading up to Final Fantasy VIII's release. Naturally, fans developed an idea of what they just knew the game would be-a bigger and better Final Fantasy VII. While Square, rightfully planning to one up the Final Fantasy predecessor, took FF VIII in various different directions. Unfortunately, those directions weren't what the massive fan base had in mine when they booted their fresh copies on launch day.
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Everquest 2
How do you know you're sequel failed to meet its hype?
Fans stick with the original.
Ba dump bump, we're here all week folks.
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Diakatana
Hot on the heels of Romero's hits, Doom and Quake, Diakatana was set to be the next innovative step in First-Person Shooters. 24 levels, 4 distinct time periods, 64 monsters and 25 weapons: Romero had high aspirations for the title. Worse, he planned to develop the game in a mere seven months with eight artists (Quake's content took six months with a team of nine).
Diakatana missed its original release date for Christmas 1997, natch, and missed many more to follow. The team grew, the game was ported to the Quake 2 engine and problems mounted like cars in a highway pile up.
On April 21, 2000, Diakatana went gold for PC. It sold a measly 200,000 copies.
While we're sad Romero failed to follow through on many of his promises, there's one promise we're glad he didn't keep: making us "his bitch."
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Pokemon
From the minds of genius marketing gurus and game designers came Pokemon. Like Transformers, Pokemon was a multimedia assault, with cartoon shows, toys and video games at the outset. And more than 10 years later, every Pokemon game sells in the stratosphere. Sure, it's like drugs for children and it encourages addictive behaviors, but, on the flipside, Charmander's pretty damn cute.
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Metal Gear Solid 2
After the huge success of the first Metal Gear Solid, a sequel was inevitable. Hell, they even blatantly teased it at the end of the first game. Hype didn't really go into high gear until the first trailer, though, showing a bad ass Solid Snake kicking ass on a cruise ship. A pack-in demo with Zone of Enders took it to another level, with fans hoping for little more than the messiah of video games. The end result didn't exactly live up. Despite excellent graphics for their time, a protagonist shift and an incoherant plot line made MGS 2 one of the low points for the series.
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Halo 2
I remember the first time I saw the art design for what would become Halo 2. The devastated streets, the detail rich characters and the weapons and vehicles that promised an unholy amalgamation of masterworks in technology, game design and graphics all seemed to shout, "best game ever." After all, this was the sequel to an FPS that defined the Xbox, and Microsoft's always been notorious for funneling cash into its major investments like gold into a swimming pool of money.
Over the months leading up to Halo 2's launch, cross-brand advertising, bombastic previews and the empty promises that this story would change game narrative forever (sound familiar?) brainwashed me.
What I got was a mediocre single player campaign, and solid multiplayer. That's nothing to scoff at, but second coming of Christ (or even Marathon), not quite.
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ET
Only one game's hyped as as the worst ever made: ET.
While ET runs like a crippled horse and looks like warts on cow dung, I assure you it is not the worst game ever made. Not even close. Try Custer's Revenge on the Atari 2600 or Ghostbusters on the Commodore 64 or just make your way through the original Gameboy catalog. That's right. I said it. Degrassi goes there.
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WOW I have never heard of some of those games
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