Games have a usual routine of building hype pre release. The launching to a massive player base who have been waiting for them and then finally settling in for a long run of fun times for all…most of the time. Sadly though some games can’t keep hold of a decent player base a drop into obscurity faster than a reality TV winner. So I thought I’d make a little list to remind us all of those games that believed their own hype so much and then either disappointed us all or just couldn’t keep hold of those fans they did have.
There’s no order here since they all have their own merits but if you have any ideas I’ve missed or not mentioned then feel free to comment!
5. EVOLvE (2015)
Evolve released a couple of years ago with a huge hype train pulling into the station. So many people I knew wanted this monster hunting multiplayer mash up and the gameplay and style seemed to be a winner. Still, no one seemed to buy it… not long after release Evolve’s severs were becoming a wasteland with games taking upwards of 15 minutes to find simply because no one was there. This ones a big disappointment since Evolve is actually a brilliant game with an interesting style and tense, exciting gameplay. If you can get a few friends together and all pick up this gem you won’t be anywhere near as disappointed at developers Turtle Rock probably were!
4. The Division (2016)
You know what’s a great multiplayer co-op shooter? Destiny. What’s NOT good is a rush job copy cat game like The Division. Released 2 years after Bungie Showed us all how a MMO shooter should be done, The Division built itself a nice little crowd of excited players through some gorgeous trailers and the promises of massive multiplayer shoot outs and exciting story missions. Upon release we were met with a boring mess of missions and desperate attempts to emulate the success of Destiny without any of the charm or lore. After only a few months The Divisions servers might as well have had tumble weeds rolling though and not ever periodic updates can bring the fans back anymore. Just let it die Ubisoft…
3. For Honor (2017)
Speaking of Ubisoft, Another of their games graces this list and this time it hurt me personally. As a man who identifies with Vikings I was so excited for For Honor. An exciting fighting game with realistic combat physics and cool looking characters? I even pre ordered! And that’s not a common thing for me! Then I finally got it. Like a lot of other players I was bored. Like really bored really quickly. In fact I don’t think the game even lasted a month before servers started to empty and it got harder and harder to find a match. It’s a lot to do with For Honor just not providing much variety with matches just becoming a game of cat and mouse after a while chasing each other to ledges and hoping to throw each other off. Even the odd DLC character add ons only boost the player base for a few days at best before the core players are left all on their own again.
2. No Man’s Sky (2016)
There will be A LOT of people reading this no all nodding their heads in agreement. No man’s Sky is probably the most memorable example of the hype blinding us all to the truth. With glossy trailers and a premise that blew us all away, No Man’s Sky had us all hooked before release. We couldn’t wait to start exploring the universe, taking part in giant space battles and meeting all the strange and interesting creatures on countless earth-sized planets! Upon release we found ourselves exploring a universe that was just dull. The planets shown in trailers were just not there to find.
The space battles weren’t nearly as epic as people thought they would be and the creatures found were definitely more strange than they were interesting with the randomly generated animals having confusing and just broken designs. A lot of players were angry. Feeling cheated and lied too and soon pre owned copies of No Man’s Sky flooded game stores as people just wanted to get rid of it and the anger it brought. More recent updates have somewhat redeemed this massive game and made it much much more fun to play but it’s unfortunately too little too late for most players!
1. Pokémon GO (2016)
Who doesn’t love Pokémon?! Those adorable little creatures have kept us happy for years as we’ve made them fight for money! So when it was announced that we’d get a smartphone Pokémon game that would bring the aforementioned beasts into the real world through the magic of Augmented Reality we were all understandably excited! People even started messing with the app store just to get access to the game before it was released in their region.
For a few months you couldn’t do anything or go anywhere without hearing about or seeing people messing around on their phones trying to catch an elusive Pokémon in the area. For such a simple premise it really brought a lot of people together and for a while everything was fantastic. Then it just all seemed to go away… people stopped playing the gyms started dying out and reality came flooding back in and I’m still not entirely sure what went wrong. It just seemed like people, I don’t know, remembered they had lives. Even adding new Pokémon from later generations and a few legendries hasn’t been enough and now if you hear the sound of Pokémon GO on someone’s phone you think “really? Still?”.