The featured image for my Magikarp Jump article is officially the featured image for all Rants from now on. Just pretend the fish aren’t there.
Let’s all face a harsh reality – there’s a lot of games out there, and they can’t all be zingers.
The end of the calendar year yields many top lists of top things, but for whatever reason, I tend to most enjoy focusing on the negatives. Sometimes it takes a negative to make a whole bunch of positives, after all. Playing one game that doesn’t exactly blow my skirt up might make me change my gaming trajectory for the better, and play something totally different next that hits me far better. See how I put that positive spin on there?
Let’s talk about the games I played in 2017 that were full of disappointment! Some games were terrible, and others just didn’t hit me right – but all of them were major league disappointments.
Miitopia
Like the two titles releasing close by, Ever Oasis and Hey! Pikmin, I had this one pre-ordered. I really didn’t know exactly what to expect, aside from an RPG with Miis. I love Miis and had a heck of a fun time playing around in Tomodachi Life, so this seemed like a natural fit, right?
Unfortunately, it could barely hold my attention. I don’t how in-depth I expected this game to be, but it clear wasn’t doing it for me when every 20 minutes I would save and quit when it asked me if I wanted to.
Miitopia, to me, was proof that while a concept can be super fun and charming in short bursts, sometimes that doesn’t translate well into a full-fledged game. I played this one for about 2 hours before moving on to something different. While I love the concept on paper, I felt like I was watching the game play itself for the most part, with little actual gameplay required from me. Perhaps the gameplay gets more in-depth later on, but sadly this didn’t hold a torch to the two 3DS games I played before it.
Oddworld: New n’ Tasty!
I don’t know why I suddenly had an interest in playing this game, but I got it really cheap during a Steam sale, once again proving that Steam sales are an evil marketing ploy to make games infinitely unspecial, to the point that people go nuts over them and then put them on the list of games that they’ll never play.
Now if you’ve played any Oddworld games (aside from Stranger’s Wrath which is a 3D open world type of game), you probably have contemplated suicide from repeatedly failing certain sections, just like I did. So immensely enraging this game is, that I actually uninstalled it twice, just to reinstall it again and start over with a fresh mind.
I absolutely cannot stand games that test my patience and not my skill, or at least games that feel like they’re messing with me. This game went straight into the trashcan a total of three times, and you couldn’t pay me a million dollars to play it again. Still bitter over the $2.99 it cost me.
Fast RMX
Purchased out of desperation for something to do during the first week of owning a Switch after getting bored with Zelda after the first two hours, like many others I went ahead and purchased Fast RMX. The price was right for a digital title and I figured a fun little racer would hold me over until Mario Kart 8 Deluxe came out.
It became quickly evident that the rubber banding in this game was so bad that despite feeling like I had mastered my particular vehicle, I would always lose. I mean, I would lead for 90% of the race, but 10 times out of 10, at the last few seconds, I’d be passed by 3-4 other racers. I ended up rage quitting because I can’t stand rubber banding that’s this dramatic.
I had intended on 100% completing this game, and after the moment I realized how bad the rubber banding was, I quit and haven’t started it back up since.
I do recall reading that they addressed some of these concerns to make it a little less cheap, but it already left a sour taste in my mouth, so into the Retirement pile it went!
Final Fantasy X
I actually contemplated putting this up here, because I think I was enjoying myself for a decent part of the game. The issue was that this thing just didn’t know when to end. It’s not even a long game by Final Fantasy standards, and truth be told, I don’t even want to say that it was a bad game.
The battle system, as far as turn-based battles go, was incredibly fun to use and I truly enjoyed it, and I am a harsh critic when it comes to turn-based battle systems!
However, this is a list of games that disappointed me in 2017, and I had Final Fantasy X on my bucket list for years, since I first witnessed a short playthrough of it at a friend’s house many years ago on the PS2.
It’s hard to put my finger on where it went wrong, but I go into far more detail in my post from a few months ago: Final Fantasy X: Did We Pass My Stop?
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Thaaat’s right, ending off the list for the disappointments this year is a game that I have desperately tried to like. 2017 marks probably the fourth or fifth year in a row I have tried and failed to get through the second Zelda game for the Nintendo DS.
Traditionally not a fan of the touch-screen Zelda games which also include Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks remains one of the few Zelda games I haven’t actually completed. And you know what? I am totally fine with that.
Every single thing in this game is geared around fluffing up the play time. “Go all the way here”. “Oh, something is wrong all the way over there”. “Ok, fetch me a thing from over there, then come back here”. “Great, now go back to there”. This is the entire game.
While it doesn’t have the same pain in the neck dungeon that you have to replay several times like Phantom Hourglass did, the overall control scheme just drove me bonkers. First of all, when you have to cover most of the screen with your hand and a stylus, it gets in the way of, you know, actually seeing the play screen. Would it not have worked to use the top screen as the play screen, and have the player simply use the touch screen to control Link? It still would have worked fine, and you’d actually be able to see what you’re doing! Metroid Prime: Hunters did exactly this and it worked extremely well. Ok, minus the guaranteed carpal tunnel syndrome.
Garbage. 0/10. I hate this game and I’m never playing it again.
And there you have it – five disappointments from the past year! It’s important to remember that for every game that didn’t click with me, there were at least five that did, and there is something good about being disappointed sometimes. After all, if you don’t know what you didn’t like, how can you know what you did like? Or something like that.
What games didn’t make the cut for you in 2017? Vent about it in the comments!
nostalgia trigger 
I enjoyed Miitopia, but can see why other people wouldn’t. Being able to control all the party members would have been nice, although it would have made the game too easy.
Gaven’t played Final Fantasy X is years, but I liked it a lot back in the day. I sunk loads of hours into Blitzball. One thing we can see eye to eye on is that the Zelda games on 3DS were ruined by those controls.
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Hours into Blitzball!? You deserve an award! Hah, it definitely hit people differently as it’s a big love/hate thing. I could see it being fun once you understood what was going on, but the learning curve seemed impossibly steep for me to even entertain the idea. Plus, I just wanted to go and kill more stuff.
I plan on trying Miitopia again, I just need to play it with the same mindset as Tomodachi Life, and give it maybe a half hour at a time.
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My disappointment list would probably start with Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Having enjoyed the other Xeno-games I was surprised by how hard I bounced off the Switch sequel. I toughed it out, though, and started enjoying it more around the 11-hour mark.
I was also sorely disappointed in Super Bomberman R, Has-been Heroes, Snake Pass, and Middle-earth: Shadow of War.
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I get where you’re coming from in FFX, believe me… I enjoyed it but there was also stuff that just wasn’t quite right with it that stopped me from thinking it was a truly good game.
I’m glad you said that about Oddworld because it’s one of my other half’s favourite games and he keeps trying to get me to play it. It seems like the sort of thing I’d like, but I just found it unnecessarily annoying in places. I put it down to the fact that I’m not keen on platformers, reading your post though I feel a bit more justified in saying it’s not very good.
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I was surprised by the presence of FFX on this list, if only because I didn’t know about your backlog, but that was the beginning of the end and of divisiveness in the series as it seems to me. I liked FFX and played through it a few times but it is when the series began distancing itself from what it meant classically. At least to me. My biggest disappointments in 2017 were Super Bomberman R, Oceanhorn, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I think I enjoyed pretty much everything else?
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Definitely with you on Super Bomberman R, Oceanhorn (although I was disappointed by its XB1 launch years ago, not 2017’s Switch version), and Xenoblade 2. I’m thankfully warming up to Xenoblade 2, though not by very much — just more than I was in my first 11 hours.
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To give credit where it’s do, Xenoblade 2 did become more enjoyable after gaining some party members. The beginning was a drag. I’m at Theosis right now and it’s starting to drag again. Not sure what else this game could do to win me over.
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Part of me wants to shelve it in favor of something else, then double back after I’ve distanced myself. Sometimes that works.
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I loved the first Xenoblade and took an 8 month break after about 40 hours so.. gotta do what ya gotta do!
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I had to do the same with Persona 5 and ended up loving it.
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I think that’s really great if you’ve got a system, or a good memory. Personally, if I leave an RPG for a length of time, I have to restart it 😥
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Oh, I’d restart it, for sure! I have the memory of a goldfish, so I’m surprised Persona 5 felt like riding a bike after being away for a month at 50+ hours in. Kudos to games that provide in-game journals and story recaps you can access at any time. Compendiums rule.
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Yeah when I found out how useful those were it was a godsend! I don’t know if I have it in me to restart XenoChron2, specifically because I like collecting the blades but the RNG is crazy!
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I absolutely *hate* that aspect of the game, just as much as I hated it in Destiny with engrams.
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Haha yeah to clarify, I hate the randomness and how tough it is to get rare, but I enjoy the collectible aspect of them. They’re like Pokemon and a rotatable roster of essentially equipment is pretty cool to diversify the party… if you can get any at all. I’m around 25ish rares right now and I popped 30 rare crystals and close too 90 commons and got nothing.
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I do like collecting things, I just wish there was no randomness. Or, at the very least, a guarantee based on the crystal’s rarity and not “now you have a chance at a rarer Blade, BUT you can still get garbage! enjoy!”
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Wow, I totally thought I was doing something wrong, that kept giving me terrible blades! I finally got an actual rare blade but it sure took tons of attempts.. not sure I’m a fan of the random nature of it either!
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Nope, just RNGsus feeling like you haven’t prayed enough.
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More guarantee crystals for ultra secret blades would’ve been awesome.
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Yeah, anything that would make it feel less like I was doing something wrong. At one point I had like 10 blades before I released them all since they sucked.
On another note, is there any point to keeping shitty blades around? Like should I send them on missions and stuff? Or is that then wasting potential leveling up on blades I don’t plan to use in combat? So many questions…
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So I don’t have any definite answer but I’ve been keeping a chunk of commons around with useful abilities that help reach hidden areas or get missions done faster. Other than that, they’re cannon fodder.
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I can’t really say there was a game I played in 2017 I was particularly disappointed with. To be honest, I haven’t played Phantom Hourglass or Spirit Tracks, though from what I’ve heard, the latter is a step down. Final Fantasy X seems to be a “love it or hate it” deal.
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