The 6 Biggest Disappointments in Video Games of 2016

Happy New Year’s gamers! We’re counting down the hours today largely because we can’t wait for this year to be over.   After a divisive political season that ended up defying all expectations, the grim reaper working on stretch goals this year to take out so many notable people, and such hits as Zika or Brexit, we’re ready to just be done with this entire year.

Video games were not immune to 2016’s suckiness. Among rampant game delays and lackluster games that fell way below expectations, 2016 was a tough year for gamers.

Here now are the Six Biggest Disappointments in Video Games for 2016.

6. The Witness isn’t Wearing any Clothes

Let’s get this out of the way. The Witness is not a good game – despite the ridiculous perfect scores it got from many major sites. The follow up to Jonathon Blow’s tremendously satisfying and multi-layered Braid promised depth, intrigue, and insight. Instead we got line puzzles. So many damn line puzzles.

Mr. Blow vehemently tries to defy expectations of a linear experience, reward structure, or any sense of narrative which distills the experience down to a sterile, lifeless puzzler that seems to actively hate the player. The scenery isbeautiful to behold but frustrating to explore because just as you start to enjoy yourself the game thrusts another obtuse line puzzle in your face.

The Witness is like a time share pitch, beautiful to visit but a torturous chore to endure

We’ll never understand why The Witness received such high praise and coverage while the remarkably similar and vastly superior The Talos Principle faded into relative obscurity.

5. No Man’s Sky Takes Us All for a Ride

We’ll be talking about No Man’s Sky for years. How could a game that had so much hype (even appearing on Colbert’s Late Show) be so disappointing? The devs hit a sweet spot of geek escapism promising endless universes to explore and seamless loading times from hiking across a desolate planet to taking off in your personalized ship.

Knowing they got away with over promising and under delivering makes this much more maddening to see

The trailers, press events, and every interview Sean Murray gave promised us the world so when we finally coughed up the full purchase price to realize this wasn’t that game, things got heated. Gamers collectively tried in vain to pressure the dev team to explain themselves for months. Where’s the multiplayer? Where are the complex alien species? Where are the damn sand worms? To this day we still don’t have an answer. Instead, we have a new master hype man in Sean Murray which is incredibly fitting as Peter Molyneux seems to be fading into oblivion. Speaking of which…

4. They Slayed Lionhead

Microsoft made the decision back in April of this past year to shutter one of its prized dedicated developers, Lionhead. The studio was famous most notably for the flawed but fun Fable series but we also thoroughly enjoyed its other games like Black and White and The Movies. For many years the company was led by infamous gaming icon Peter Molyneux but since his departure they struggled to find a champion to provide a vision for future games. Their last project, Fable Legends, failed to impress even with a free to play business model. Still, we’re sad to see so many talented developers that provided some quality games in the past two decades let go.

Not saying we needed Fable Legends, just sad to see the talented developer go.

3. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is Boring

How the hell could Dice screw this one up? The original Mirror’s Edge was one those rare original IPs to become an instant classic showing off really what the Xbox 360 could do. The first person parkour game felt like a tech demo that thankfully went retail and ended up being one of our favorite games of last generation.

You guys couldn’t be bothered to try to create the illusion of a vibrant city beneath us?

Its sequel however is uninspired at best. It isn’t necessarily the open world structure that’s to blame. Instead missions were distilled down to simple arbitrarily timed fetch quests and bizarre challenges that felt like a tremendous waste of time. If you need any more evidence that the devs either didn’t care or were forced to forgo much of the game for production deadlines, check out the ludicrous ending sequence that’s told almost entirely in cutscene. At least the original let me kick that guy out of the chopper.

2. Nintendo Takes Another Year Off

We’ve written often about Nintendo and their perceived strategy of self-implosion but geez it’s hard to watch. They barely did anything this year. Splatoon was 2015 and Mario Kart 8 was 2014. Their misplaced obsession to convince us the gamepad is a wise design choice failed miserably with Star Fox Zero. They now seem laser focused on trying to sell us on portable console gaming with the Switch that will feature Skyrim (a 4 year old game). Their big plays for 2016 ended up being the classic mini NES and Super Mario Run for phones which just feels lazy. Everyone seems certain that the next Zelda will fix Nintendo’s relative obscurity but that really didn’t work for Twilight Princess or the subsequent Skyward Sword so we’re not sure why everyone feels like this one will be different. Ocarina of Time was outstanding, but that was nearly 20 years ago now.

So you expect me to buy Skyrim for the third time?

1. Coop is MIA

This has not been a good year for console coop. Crackdown got delayed again into next year, the fantastic Shadow Warriors 2 won’t get a console release for a while, and most notably Dead Rising 4 randomly dropped cooperative play which was arguably the only reason to play the last two DR titles.

We’ve had to hunt to find solid cooperative titles all year. Our year in coop was measured by Ubisoft’s The Division, Warhammer: End of Times – Vermintide, Gears of War 4, and Watch Dogs 2 which despite having only a handful of missions may end up being about the best cooperative experience we’ve had this year.

We’d never thought we’d be so thankful to a sequel to Watch Dogs but we’re desperate for quality coop gaming

Compared to last year’s Far Cry 4, Dying Light, Evolve, and Halo 5, 2016’s anemic coop offerings is a shame.