Disappointment isn’t all that bad. To be disappointed you’ve got to be excited and enjoying yourself in the first place. It’s the yin to the yang, although it never feels particularly good when something you’ve been excited for fails to live up to your expectations.
Now, my actual biggest disappointment is Arsenal’s woefully stupid defence and turgid midfield but, in the sphere of gaming, I sadly cannot direct my ire at Raul Sanllehi. So, despite my huge, I shall stick to the world of games.
To be honest, it’s been a mighty fine year for me, it really has. The quality of the games has been outstanding and there have been a huge number which have lined up with my particular tastes, as you may have seen in a previous UFD on everyone’s favourite three games of 2019.
That said, it wasn’t all sunshine and butterflies. I have an enormous number of issues with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s multiplayer which really do sadden me. It’s a game right on the cusp of greatness. The core is strong. But some of the decisions made are just mind-blowing to me at this stage. Killstreaks suck as a mechanic, I thought we’d learned that by now. They definitely do not have a place in no respawn modes such as Cyber Attack. Then there’s poor weapon balance, atrocious spawns, an over-reliance on camping, and bang average map design. With a few tweaks here and there, COD: Modern Warfare could end up being fantastic though so, tentatively, it isn’t my biggest disappointment of the year.
Metro: Exodus would be a (dis)honorable mention but I think the real winner has to be Google Stadia. I didn’t even have particularly high expectations, I was just looking forward to mess around with it. The messaging around the launch has absolute sucked though, and none of the potentially unique benefits of Stadia are even ready. Just to top it all off, I feel Google flat out lied about the capabilities of its racks of Stadia hardware. For months they claimed Red Dead Redemption 2 would run at 4K/60. The same with Destiny 2. In the end they’re 4K streams but the games are being rendered at 1440p and 1080p respectively. You’re getting 1080p quality and forking out for the bandwidth of a 4K stream. That’s disgraceful.
Stadia needs reasons to use it. It needs exclusives, it needs promised features like save state sharing and crowd play, and Google needs to get on top of the messaging. For now, Stadia is an abject failure and it’s going to take some serious manpower to turn that negativity around. Whatever though, that boat has sailed.
So that’s enough of me successfully winding myself up. There was a whole lot more to love about gaming in 2019 than there was to be disappointed by, at least from my perspective. I’ve had an incredible time playing the likes of Outer Wilds, Resident Evil 2, Sekiro, Fire Emblem, and more. Not everything can live up to these standards though, sadly, which is just how it is.
With 2019 now pretty much consigned to the history books, what would you say goes down as your biggest gaming disappointment of 2019? Was it a hotly anticipated game which let you down? Or perhaps a graphics card which didn’t give you the FPS you hoped for? Misery loves company, so let us know below!
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I would say Doom Eternal's setbacks kinda sucked. But on the positive side, ive still got time to upgrade this ancient R9 280x and my monitor. Of course, surprisingly, I can max out dooms gfx and still get 100 plus fps.
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The pathetic launch condition of RDR2
Wolfensten: Youngblood
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Kingdom Hearts III. I waited 14 years to play a game that screamed 2005. I got bored very quickly and never went back. Wasn’t looking forward to playing levels based on Frozen and Tangled anyway.
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can't decide between new "GRID" and" Dangerous Driving", it's both garbage, and on top of that badly optimized
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Mine is Battlefield V TTK 5.2 update. After a rough start, the game was just starting to return to its old glory with Pacific Front update. It all ended with one unnecessary change to weapons damage models. Gunplay was the only good thing about BFV and now BFV doesn't have a single good feature. Ironically BF1 was the exact opposite. It had content, atmosphere, feelings, authenticity, sounds... Only its gunplay was weak.
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Anthem & GR Breakpoint are the big ones, followed by RDR2 (poor optimization & many bugs) & TD2 (good for maybe 70-100hrs, not more, Ubisoft might consider that a win but I have put much more hours on D2 & WF, so had good expectations)
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Half life being VR only
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The Division 2 (reskined Division 1, with 120$/€ price on it...), Rage 2 repetitive and boring FPS, Wolfenstein Youngblood-stupid shooter for kids, filled with dumb jokes and completely unnecessary looter shooter elements; and of course FC New Dawn and Ghost Recon The Division aka GR Breakpoint - I guess this is new trend for Ubisoft to ruin their own franchises... I can't even describe how terrible both of those games (especially GR) was. I guess Watch Dogs next on Ubi lis
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I got The Division 2 in a sale. I got the ultimate edition for £9.99 and I happen to like it
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Wolfenstein youngblood . Horrible HORRIBLE game. I hate it so much. One of mine favorite franchise got destroyed ,its not even fun anymore .
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yes, that game was weird, there was a lot of action but wasnt fun, and sometimes cringy
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I miss the old originality.Return to castle Wolfenstein was the last game that felt like Wolfenstein.Indiana jones mystery adventure with great shooting made that franchise truly unique and awesome.
New Wolfensteins have nothing in common.
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Daymare 1998 and Greedfall
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Red dead online...
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Another great day to be an Arsenal fan ...
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Rage 2.I loved the first game,but the second one was just a punch in the stomach.
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Jedi Fallen Order most definitely. That was a pretty disappointing experience.
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But overall I would say that nothing really disappoints me that much anymore in terms of games. Most of the games these days are a let down. I feel like great games just don't come out anymore, only 'good enough' games. It's been a long while since I couldn't stop playing one game for hours.
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Is it wrong for me to say Apex Legends is one of those games? I've clocked up hundreds of hours in that. Still love it. Not even that good at it.
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Not at all haha. I envy you
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"Rage" 2 for me.The direction they went after the first,the colourful palette - didn't work for at all.And that's why i didn't get it.
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The whole AAA gaming in 2019
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i would say RE 2 and plague tale is good at least for me
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entire 2019?
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Bethesda, and Borderlands 3.
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Borderlands 3, probably RAGE 2
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One would almost say Fallout 76, considering the amount of debacles that went through this year, you almost forget it was released last year... For this year, I feel like my expectations were low enough to not really be shocked. Anthem was major flop I guess, but then again, after hearing live services were involved, my expectations were very low. I guess buggy state of RDR2 on PC was probably it.
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what?? theres a new fallout game?? why i ditnt hear about it at all??? i bet its a fcuking masterpiece!!! Bethesda is secretly releasing fallout games nowadays huh? they know its gonna be great masterpiece anyway and decided ads for it would be a waste, great job todd :) cant wait to try it myself