Summary
- Hype breeds disappointment; pre-orders often end in regret and angry fans.
- Big-name launches shipped missing features, buggy systems, and hollow content, feeling rushed and leaving its players disappointed.
- Some games fixed things later, but the initial launch often permanently erodes trust and player retention.
Gaming is at its best when a community comes together and generates electrifying hype in anticipation of a new release. And in some cases, such as Elden Ring, the seemingly endless, over-the-top excitement is somehow met and exceeded, giving everyone exactly what they asked for. But, more often than not, you can expect things to go a bit south.
Unfortunately, when some games reach a fever pitch of online discourse, the end result doesn’t share the same fate, taking a 180-degree turn and sparking a barrage of bitter fans who were burned by pre-ordering and trusting that the game would meet expectations, sharing their displeasure online. Luckily, we don’t need to pre-order these days, right? Right?!
Dark Souls 2
Solid Game, But A Bad Dark Souls
Kicking things off, we have Dark Souls 2, which is arguably not the worst pre-order of all time, but one that will still stick with us until the end of time. While the game itself is pretty solid overall, it feels like a cheap Dark Souls clone rather than the direct follow-up from Demon’s Souls and the original Dark Souls. And there’s a good reason for that.
Hidetaka Miyazaki served only as a supervisor on this installment and focused most of his attention on the outstanding PlayStation 4 exclusive Bloodborne. As such, Dark Souls 2’s bosses, level design, and general world-building felt off, and not to the level of quality you’d expect. And, in most cases, bosses would be larger versions of the standard enemies, which got old very quickly!
No Man’s Sky
Where’s The Rest Of The Game?
When you think about getting duped by pre-orders and hype, No Man’s Sky is probably the first game that comes to your mind, and it deserves to carry that weight forever. While it is indistinguishable today and is actually an outstanding title, its launch was anything but smooth. It didn’t deliver many of the promised features that set it apart from everything else.
No Man’s Sky missed the mark in pretty much every conceivable way and just felt soulless, repetitive, and unfinished. We commend Hello Games for putting their heads down, fixing the issues, and adding tons of content for free, but sitting down with this release at launch was devastating, to say the least!
Battlefield 2042
Same Old Song And Dance
Ahh, Battlefield. The series is famously known for having a rallying cry from its community not to pre-order the upcoming title. While Battlefield 4’s launch was a disaster, Battlefield 1 and 5 (to some extent) weren’t nearly as bad, and Battlefield 2042 seemed promising from the trailers and the demonstrations, convincing everyone that the curse may have been broken.
Spoiler alert, it wasn’t. In fact, it was much, much worse than the previous two releases, as it lacked many promised features and featured some of the worst gameplay systems and mechanics the series had seen to date. This wasn’t a Battlefield title; it felt like a cheap imitation, with hardly any destruction, Operators instead of Classes, and some downright terrible map design. At least Battlefield 6’s launch was good, right?! Uh-oh.
Forspoken
Incredible Potential That Missed The Mark
Next in line is Forspoken, which is developed by Square Enix’s Luminous Productions, who you may remember from the divisive Final Fantasy 15. While we were on the side of the game, having terrible combat but loved Noctis and the rest of the cast, we were willing to give them another shot with their new IP, as it looked like it had so much potential early on.
Alas, Forspoken suffered a similar fate, with slightly better combat but far worse characters and world-building, which is extraordinarily sad to see, as there’s still something there that could have been very special. Unlike most titles on this list, this one just makes us sad that it didn’t pan out the way we’d hoped, and we hope they nail whatever their next project is!
Cyberpunk 2077
Console Gaming Woes
Depending on your platform of choice, this may or may not apply to you, as Cyberpunk 2077 was acceptable on PC, and an absolute dumpster fire on practically everything else. With game-breaking bugs for days, odd visual issues, and actual health risks, the launch of this title broke everyone’s hearts who trusted CD Projekt Red because of their excellent work on The Witcher 3.
While we can tolerate a buggy game to an extent, the fact that the entire reveal trailer wasn’t real in-game footage but was claimed to be is a huge no-no, putting their future projects on the ‘wait and see’ list to avoid being burned again. Yes, Cyberpunk 2077 is playable and better than ever now, but that’s not the point!
The Callisto Protocol
Horror, But In All The Wrong Ways
The Callisto Protocol
2.5/5
- Released
-
December 2, 2022
Everyone and their mother has been champing at the bit for EA to make a new Dead Space title, and when it was announced that Glen Schofield, the game’s original creator, had made a new studio to make its spiritual successor, we could not be more hyped for The Callisto Protocol if we tried. Sadly, the end result wasn’t quite what we expected.
The Callisto Protocol does some things right, but it gets so much wrong, taking the horror out of the game entirely, as you can see all the ‘scares’ coming from a mile away. The gameplay is also a bit too repetitive for our liking. And, to add insult to injury, the Dead Space Remake launched around the same time as this, which was the much better experience. What a shame!
Anthem
What Could Have Been
Anthem
2.5/5
- Released
-
February 22, 2019
Do you ever think about the games that could have been? And, if you do, why is it always Anthem? On a serious note, Anthem had immense potential, as its gameplay was extremely fluid, responsive, and exhilarating. Unfortunately, the moment-to-moment gameplay and objectives were a bore, and the forced servicey-type additions made everything feel like a cheap cash grab.
Anthem could still be going strong to this day if it had the proper backing from EA and launched in a more complete state, and nobody can convince us otherwise. But, as everyone knows, that was far from the case, and the hype died out the moment it launched, leaving a sour taste in everyone’s mouth!
Starfield
A Whole Lot Of Nothing
Oh boy, where do we begin with this one? Starfield is such a fascinating title, as it was marketed as a game that was in development for eight years, but launched with very little, having massive planets that were either empty or had one enemy type on it, to frustratingly shallow RPG elements, to an uninspired and decent-at-best plot with some of the most unlikable characters ever.
Starfield certainly has its fans, and that’s fine, but we were simply not one of them. The game felt lifeless and like it didn’t respect your playstyle whatsoever. Pre-ordering it on Steam specifically for mods was also a mistake since the modding community essentially abandoned ship. Bethesda, please, do not fumble The Elder Scrolls 6!
Mighty No. 9
Mega Man Fans Can Never Catch A Break
Following that, we have the infamous Mighty No. 9, which is up there as the poster boy of an anti-pre-order campaign. Considered a spiritual successor to the beloved Mega Man series, with the legendary and former Capcom producer Keiji Inafune as its lead writer, there was nothing but hype in the air for this title, with no possible way it could ever fail. Or so we thought.
Mighty No. 9 wasn’t only a flop, but it just had no substance, style, charm, or meaningfully unique or exciting ideas. We understand not meeting some expectations, but striking out on practically everything while making a ‘worse one of those’ is disheartening, especially after waiting years for it to come out!
Street Fighter 5
Capcom’s Dark Era Was Rough
Last, and certainly not least, we have Street Fighter 5, which may not be what some of you are familiar with if you jumped in later due to the unstoppable hype train that led up to the release of Street Fighter 6. While the Champion Edition is substantially better, the initial launch of Street Fighter 5 was abysmal from top to bottom, adding to the pile of terrible Capcom releases at the time.
Street Fighter 5 felt incredibly rushed, had horrendous netcode and matchmaking, suffered from lag, and lacked content for quite a while before they were addressed, let alone fixed. It was a rough time to be a Street Fighter fan, and that really didn’t change until roughly six years after its release, which is pretty incredible that people actually stuck with it that long!
