I remember how much I heard about Advent Rising before it was released. In fact, it might be the first game I ever saw the trailer of in a movie theater. Then the game released and from what I remember it was only received as "average". Then there was the whole fiasco with the $1 Million contest that ended up canceled; supposedly because there was no way for the developer, Majesco, to make it fair.
36 Comments
Back 4 Blood. Was hyped as being the next L4D with the same devs but quickly died out within a year or two of release.
Anthem.
Too Human.
Brink.
IDK about the “next big thing” but I’m extremely disappointed that Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem never got a sequel (in spite of it being teased in the game itself).
Probably at least half a dozen of MMOs in the post-WoW era.
Daikatana. John Romeo was gonna make us his bitch…
… And then Daikatana came out 🤣
Heavenly Sword was supposed to be the next God of War
Haze
Spore maybe? Super ambitious, critically praised, not actually very interesting to play, and I don’t remember it have much staying power / lasting impact on gaming.
I loved Advent Rising. There was an ability that could “Force Push” objects, among others, and one boss in particular I’ve got strong memories of. He would stomp around and throw big ass rocks at you, and was effectively indestructible…unless of course you pushed his rocks back at him.
Took me 2 days to figure that out. Id get up in the morning, about 4 AM cause I couldn’t sleep until I beat this guy, and play for 3-4 hours until everyone else was up. Over and over I’d try. Never thought of using that ability until it happened accidentally. Probably one of the biggest “ofc” moments of my gaming career.
The twist was good, one of the first twists of my career too. Ugh. Wished a second would have taken off.
I fucking love Advent Rising
Microsoft had quite a few in their first generation.
Brute Force comes to mind. Microsoft were hoping it would do for their person shooters what Halo did for first person ones.
Shit there was one in the early 2010s that was hailed as the competitor to Borderlands and ended up failing miserably. I can still picture the cover but can’t remember the name.
Hellgate: London
Too human.
Scalebound made me stop caring about exclusives. Giant dragons are my shit and if drakengard did it twice on ps2 in like 2004 it could’ve been done in 2018
Anyone remember Hellgate: London?
Granblue Fantasy ReLink was supposed to cater to a whole new base of players, ones that haven’t played the gacha. Now it’s basically “remember that guy from the gacha? You can fight him”
HAZE — the halo killer..
Starbound. It was supposed to basically be Terraria 2, but ultimately became an inferior game in almost every way.
Had loads of potential though, it’s sad.
Evolve
Everything released by Bethesda.
Anthem. Jumping off shit simulator.
Shiny’s *Messiah*. Its biggest legacy is a Roblox sound effect.
Overwatch 2. Massive deflated nothing
A little bit off topic, but feels like that at some point every other, if not every, MMORPG was supposed to be a “WoW killer”. I think the closest one is FFXIV but even that hasn’t “killed” it.
Starfield
That takes me back… I should have the CD-ROM for that game somewhere… I have not seen mention of that game in literal decades. Enjoyed playing it, but the story wasn’t all that great. Though the whole “they throw rocks” sequence at the start was hilarious.
Killzone
Killzone 2 was marketed to be the next big thing for the PS3 and do for Playstation what Halo did for the Xbox.
Too human is one for me, I genuinely enjoyed it and wish it had taken off enough to get the sequels and full party multiplayer to be things.
I remember some hype around 7th Legion being a successor to C&C Red Alert but it flopped.
Post-apocalyptic setting. Two factions, the Chosen were chosen to live on huge spaceships to escape the dying Earth. But then they returned to reclaim the Earth and some Earthlings had survived – the 7th Legion. And they were upset they were left behind.
The twist was random cards which changed up the gameplay. Don’t remember exactly what now but some could damage enemy units, others probably gave buffs to things like speed or damage etc.
Titanfall
I remember that game. Tbh to this day I remember some impressive moments, like landing in a battlefield with nothing and beating an alien to death with my bare hands to get my first weapon. It was ambitious and done fairly well, it just somehow didn’t stick the landing enough to be memorable on a large scale.
I actually kinda liked Advent Rising
Duke Nukem Forever. Very sad that it was so bad.