Top Five - Most Disappointing Games of 2014

I'm personally not a fan of the term "worst" game. Because nobody buys a game based on their image of being awful and sometimes we bring our expectations or bias into the evaluation process. Hence we find gamers calling Thief or Lightning Returns the worst game of 2014, even though by most objectable standards, they're actually not bad. They were disappointed the game didn't meet their lofty expectations. With that thought, I present to you my top 5, most disappointing games of 2014.

5 - F1 2014 (PC /PS3 / XBOX 360)

Aside from the new Russian GP track and minor tweaks to the rules, this is basically the same as F1 2013. I'm going to put as much effort in describing this game as Codemaster did in programing it.

4. THE CREW (PC / PS4 / XBOX 360 / XBOX ONE)

The Crew is an impressive technical achievement, the scaled back version of the entire USA makes it the largest playground for any open world racing game on the market. Unfortunately the developers forgot they were making a racing game and we're stuck with a campaign filled mostly with lousy story based missions and a forgettable plot. Was this suppose to be a driving game or a new installment in the Driver franchise? Winning races gives you very little pay, so unless you're willing to pay real money for in game cash, you won't be able drive many of the cars in the game. The worst part is Ubisoft's decision to enforce constant online connectivity. There is no legitimate reason for this game to always been online and without the servers, it becomes an expensive coaster. Lizard Sqaud proved this when they took down the Playstation network over the Christmas holidays. So much for Sony's speech at E3 2013, calling for the arms of consumers with their promise that the PS4 will never enforce always-online functionality. Hmmm...

3. YOSHI'S NEW ISLAND (3DS)

There's nothing fundamentally broken about Yoshi's New Island. The controls are tight, the graphics are beautiful and it's a long game. Nintendo has earned it's reputation for quality assurance but all the polish in the world can't stop a game from becoming sleep inducingly boring. The lack of difficulty makes the paint by numbers platforming extremely monotonous and I hope the upcoming Yoshi's Wolly Worlds has the levity that New Island lacked.

2. RAMBO THE VIDEO GAME (PC / PS3 / XBOX 360) 

I love on rail shooters and it's saddens me they're now a dying breed. So I was really pinning my hopes on Rambo The Video Game being at least "enjoyable". I do appreciate the developers letting me play the PS3 version with the Playstation Move and gun attachment. But the terrible production values, broken cover mechanics and general laziness makes it hard to recommend this game to anyone, Rambo fan or not.

 

1. YAIBA - NINJA GAIDEN Z (PC / PS3 / XBOX 360)

On paper, this was an awesome concept. A Ninja Gaiden spin-off where you don't play as Ryu, but instead control a cyborg ninja who wants to kill Ryu. Combine this with a B-grade tone and comic book style graphics, this was an instant day one purchase for yours truly. Sadly the cheap enemies and terrible camera makes it one of the most frustrating games I've ever played. To top things off, there's only 3 boss fights (all of them bad) and the game can be finished in less than 4 hours. It's no surprise this game got a price drop almost immediately after it came out. I guess that's makes me a sucker for paying $70 for it on day one.