Gadgetory

20:16 saw some pretty awesome games come out but it also had its fair share of games that just flat-out fell on their faces I'm not talking about simply bad games I'm talking about games that promise so much or it's such a strong name to carry on that completely and totally failed hard kicking things off is battleborn now unlike the rest of the games coming up on this list battle points problem wasn't really itself it didn't make any particularly outlandish promises it's a new IP and the final game while not incredible isn't bad really it's only problem is a simple one it isn't overwatch while not really the same kind of game both of them came out of the storm of titles looking to capitalize on the success of MOBAs like League of Legends and dota 2 by making games focused on playable heroes with big personalities and minimal actual backstory battleborn accomplished this with Gearbox's sense of humor that many may recognize from the borderlands series and really in a void that may have sold perfectly fine but the sheer marketing and name power of Blizzard was enough to make anyone completely forget battleborn was even a thing the game's initial sales while not bad were still below what 2k games was hoping to see and the moment overwatch went live the game's player base and viewership on Twitch plummeted to near nothing the lesson the moment Blizzard announces a game competing with your own title you better make something pretty damn amazing if you want it to keep living next up is a fail that's much closer to my heart Mirror's Edge catalyst now while this game did an entirely bomb it is one of the many games that came out in 2016 that completely failed to recapture and in my opinion even understand what made its cult classic predecessor well good the original Mirror's Edge was simple and straightforward run as fast as you can through every stage once to complete the game's story and then several times more to do your best to rank on the games online scoreboards well after forever of not hearing anything about a new one ea dragged us along for a couple years with bits and pieces of info about a new impending Mirror's Edge only to finally deliver a game that was anything but like the original sure the core mechanics are the same you run from place to place and there's a time trial element but catalyst took things in a new unknown Cerie direction with the addition of a small and constrained open world you had a run back and forth back and forth across along with new RPG and leveling mechanics that didn't really need to exist and added nothing to the game's fun factor not to mention whole parts of the game referring you to fight enemies toe-to-toe when really the whole point should be just keep running throw in copious amounts of bugs and a bland story with a handful of underdeveloped characters and you get a perfectly blast sequel that completely missed what made the original great now speaking of weird not sequels slash reboots that failed to recapture classical gems this was also the year that we were graced with Star Fox zero twenty sixteen was not a great year for the Wii U the system officially saw the end of production way sooner than any previous Nintendo system and the number of great games to come out on it were a grand total of two pokken and Tokyo Mirage sessions whose a mileage may vary based on your taste Star Fox zero was hoped to be the other good game to come out in the system this year a sort of last hurrah for it and its last breaths but instead of a nostalgic returned one of the best n64 games we got an uncontrollable mess that while featuring levels that were basically remixes of classic favorites back to any of the charm they once had it tried to be a remake while doing something new at the same time yet nothing of what was added was really very good so instead of a faithful pretty remake or a brand new game and similar spirit we got a bizarre hybrid of the two ideas that gets muddled further by it's painful controls admittedly there is a decent game underneath all the problems but the time spent playing it would be better spent just playing the original game on n64 or even the remake on 3ds now while all these games have had their problems the next two really stood out this year the first of which breaks my heart the most on this list mighty number nine growing up the Mega Man franchise was one of my favorites and to this day Megaman X stands out as one of my top-five personal favorite games so when its creator Keiji Inafune a promised a spiritual successor on Kickstarter of course I was excited sadly the resulting game has become one of the landmark examples of what not to do when kick-starting a video game the core gameplay and direction of the game did show some promise of being a mr. paste Megaman but it pretty much suffered in every category terrible visuals an uninspiring soundtrack awful voiceovers weak level design and a bland story that made the whole package unappealing this game was in serious need of polishing in all core aspects with time instead spent on implementing all kinds of bonus features and added content promised by stretch goals like challenge levels and online co-op missions which were just as bland as the rest of the game doing nothing to elevate it there were some good ideas buried somewhere in here but it all just gets lost and how lacking the game is in every way and then we come to a game that should be no surprise a title that promised to be so much and met pretty much none of those promises at least at launch and that's no man's sky this was one of the most anticipated games of 2016 and boy did everyone's tone change about this game the moment it was released during its whole hype build up people were treated to visions of beautifully generated planets filled with plant and animal life that looked absolutely bizarre yet gorgeous what we got instead were procedurally generated worlds that more often than not followed five or six general patterns that you recognized more and more while playing the game that were often actually kind of sparse all animal life spread out in a way that made every world feel more barren than trailers and screenshots led many to believe the real breaking point for a lot of people though was the lack of clarity regarding whether or not the game supported some form of multiplayer all kinds of big things were said before about how the universe was so large you'd never encounter another player and while the exact phrase multiplayer was never used a lot of things were said that made people assume that was a feature all these differences between the game we were promised and the game we got led to a lot of anger including things like lawsuits for false advertising or just good old fashioned death threats and amid all this anger hello games did of course the worst thing you could do nothing remaining completely silent regarding all the problems for quite some time until eventually revealing some post-launch DLC and updates that while still not making the game what people were hoping for did add some cool new stuff to at least make the game we got whatever your personal feelings are about no man's sky there is no denying that it is easily the biggest video game fail of 2016 if only improving how dangerous pre-ordering is and how dumb hype can be