Question Of The Month Reader Responses: Issue #262

In issue 260, we asked readers what their biggest disappointment of 2014 was. Destiny was predictably divisive among players, but other big titles received their share of shame as well. Here are some responses.

Detest-iny:

• For me it's Destiny. I have the same complaints as all the others, such as its lack of content and repetitiveness. I'm also disappointed with Bungie due to the fact that loyal Halo players (which in my mind is a considerable amount of people who own an Xbox) have been left out to dry due to the PlayStation-exclusive content. It's ridiculous that I have to wait until fall of 2015 to have the same content as someone with a PlayStation just because I own an Xbox. Did I not pay $60 like everyone else?  
  
  Ian Dupery
• Destiny. I spent $100 on the special edition because I had faith in Bungie (Halo is one of my favorite franchises), and I feel betrayed. The total lack of story, very little content, and no incentive to make friends is beyond frustrating. Easily the biggest disappointment of the year for me.
  
  Nick Stancato
• Destiny really disappointed me. The game has a lot of polish and a conceptually grand scale, but the gameplay is horde mode mixed with Dinkle-bot escort missions. The classes and unlocks work well, but getting them is tedious. The leveling system is atrocious and just shoves the grind-centric gameplay down our throats. Destiny oozes potential, but left me horribly underwhelmed.
  
  Joshua Terry
• Unquestionably, my biggest gaming disappointment of the year is Bungie's Destiny. As a huge Halo fan that felt middling about Halo 4, I fully expected Bungie to lay out and deliver a massive universe of fiction along the lines of Halo. Instead, I played through a husk of a Bungie game with enough minute-to-minute fun to carry my Hunter to Level 27, but upon seeing details of the first expansion, I tossed my controller in frustration at Activision and whatever influence they may or may not have had on the game's structure.
  
  Cory Hanks 

Titanfail:

• I somehow missed the memo that Titanfall was not going to have a campaign mode until I sat down on the couch with the game and saw there wasn't one. So I think Titanfall not having its own campaign would be my biggest disappointment.
  
  Josh Jensen
• I'd have to say my biggest disappointment in 2014 was Titanfall. And I may catch some flak for that, but I felt the game got super-SUPER hyped and it didn't quite live up to that for me. It's a really fun game, with awesomely new and innovative mechanics, but in the end it didn't quite add up. The campaign was a joke, and the multiplayer system seemed haggard at best.
  
  Ethan Leach

Assassin's Creed: Pew-nity:

• This year has been filled with titles that didn't meet my expectations (Destiny, The Sims 4), but Assassin's Creed: Unity really takes the cake. Don't get me wrong, the game is gorgeous, and a giant leap from where the series started, but it's still a letdown. From the boring plot to the fact that the only meaningful female character I've yet to encounter is the dreaded love interest, it leaves a lot to be desired. These things are largely a matter of opinion, but coupled with stunning bugs such as civilians clipping through the ground and inverted faces, the game is nearly unplayable.
  
  Ashlyn Comiskey
• Assassin Creed Unity on PC. I was so excited until I saw that the optimization is awful. You need a $3,000 machine just to run it, and they didn't port it to last-gen consoles.
  
  Nick Haselton

More Triple-A Anguish:

• There are quite a few games that have been pretty bad this year, but when it comes down to it, Halo: The Master Chief Edition takes the cake. While the updated visuals are stunning and the gameplay is great, the reason most people bought it is to relive sticking their friend's warthog on Blood Gulch with a plasma grenade and watch and listen to the chaos that ensued. But upon the release of the game, this was nearly, if not completely, impossible. I waited over two hours trying to get into an online match in vain. To have a game be released with a completely broken matchmaking system and your response to basically be "Oops, our bad..." You deserve to get the dunce cap for worst game of the year.
  
  Josh Engelbrecht
• My biggest disappointment was Infamous: Second Son. The reason is that while the game was marketed as an extensive experience( like the first two), the actual game was like buying a ridiculously expensive mansion, only to find that the mansion is filled with cheap IKEA furniture.
  
  Christian Matista
• The biggest disappointment for me would have to be Thief. I was looking forward to a new first-person game that depended heavily on stealth, and I really liked the steampunk aesthetic. The entire concept was intriguing and that is why I was so excited to play it. However, I found that the game had many noticeable audio glitches. When you rely heavily on being able to hear an enemy’s footsteps to avoid detection, the audio is pretty important. It also was jarring trying to follow the storyline when many of the characters move their mouths only to have no words come out. I ended up exchanging the game and buying Dishonored, and found that game to be exactly the same concept. I was amazed at how Dishonored, a game created in 2012, was so much better than a game created in 2014. Shouldn’t technology be moving forward?
  
  Amber Watson
• The biggest gaming disappointment I encountered this year was The Elder Scrolls Online. After getting incredibly excited for Skyrim-like combat against other players and my friends, it just ended up grabbing the less appealing aspects of MMOs and having almost broken PvP combat.
  
  Ned Herrington

The Hardware Hurt Locker:

• My biggest gaming disappointment is that no publisher released a game for the 3DS that makes full use of its features. AR Games, which came with the system, is still the best example of a game that uses not only augmented reality, but also glasses-less 3D, image recognition, and showcases the graphics-rendering capabilities of the system.  Lots of games make use of the 3D, but very few use augmented reality and even fewer use image recognition. I was hoping that this would be the year that there would be a full-length game (let's face it, as cool as AR Games is, it's still just a collection of mini-games) that combines all of the things the 3DS can do into one amazing game.
  
  John Enfield
• Last year, I boarded the hype train and bought a PlayStation Camera with my PS4. Since the peripheral sold out at launch, I hoped that E3 would bring news about more social and gaming features. Instead, I got a few more voice commands I'll never use.
  
  Ben Davis
• Biggest gaming disappointment of the year? The never-ending PS4 updates for broken updates by Sony. They always break something while fixing something else.
  
  Kerem S.

Cash Concerns:

• My biggest gaming disappointment this year would be that I can't afford, nor have the time, to play all the games I wanted to play.
  
  Kerry Brown
• My biggest gaming disappointment of the year is not having money to actually buy games. Now I get to watch all my friends play Super Smash Bros. 4 and Pokemon AS/OM, while I wait for Christmas to get Smash and my birthday to get Pokemon. All the while they'll be taunting me and saying, "Well, you shouldn't have spent your money on Hyrule Warriors or Mario Kart 8," or, "There's this thing called a job" (in the most degrading and snooty way possible). By the way, the person who tells me to get a job works for his dad and was gifted his job, so it gets really on my nerves. I wish I had a job or parents who could afford to get me crap I don't need, but I don't, so just lay off. Sorry. Just needed to get that off my chest.
  
  Christian Dorny

'Nuff Said, Indeed:

• One year of waiting for Heists in GTA Online. ‘Nuff said.
  
  Pernell Costa Jr.

Really?:

• The biggest disappointment this year for me was Sonic Boom. I was actually fine with the idea of changing the Sonic formula, as long as it was a good game. But that wasn't the case. I had such high expectations after Sonic Colors and Generations, as I love those games, but it was just garbage. I hope Sonic's comeback happens soon, because I don't think he can make it through another piece-of-crap game again.
  
  Logan Miller

What was your biggest disappointment of 2014? Share it in the comments below!