5. Left 4 Dead 2

This would have been number one on the list if I’d still been playing the first Left 4 Dead but I hadn’t played it for months before Left 4 Dead 2 released.

For me, Left 4 Dead grew stale around February time, the multiplayer component was cool at first but grew incredibly fusty incredibly quickly and the single player portion?

Well, the demo released ahead of the game way back a year last October took away any thrills I would have had from the final retail product.

Left 4 Dead as a single player experience is pointless, though that won’t come as a shock to any of you who have played it. The fun is to be had in multi-player. I know that and I after playing it myself can appreciate why it is so popular.

But, Left 4 Dead 2 is just lazy. Why so many media outlets are going nuts for the game is beyond me. Calling it Left 4 Dead 2 is crazy as it’s at best Left 4 Dead 1.5.

This is not what a bona fide sequel should look like and yet, I never read a review that highlighted the flaws in Left 4 Dead 2.

I played the game for a few hours and after the first hour, it felt like I was playing the first game. Okay, I could see the sun and yeah, there were some new enemies but the rest of the game felt and looked EXACTLY the same.

As disappointments go, for me it wasn’t a massive one, I wasn’t really expecting anything radically different. Where my disappointment is placed is not in the game itself but in Valve for adding a 2 to the title.

Left 4 Dead 2 is not a sequel in my opinion. Is it a continuation of the first game?

Yes it is.

But a bona fide sequel?

No. And Valve know it’s not.

4. Halo: O.D.S.T

Okay, now Halo O.D.S.T wasn’t a massive disappointment as I was never really looking forward to it in the first place.

It was well-publicized that the game would be nothing more than a glorified expansion pack but still, for Bungie to release a Halo game this bland is unbelievable.

Even as DLC Halo O.D.S.T would have felt underwhelming but the fact that they released it at retail left a funny taste in my mouth.

Sure, the gameplay on offer in the flashbacks was pure Halo heaven but the story surrounding those set-pieces was forced and offered up only to prolong the game rather than compliment it.

I have no idea what the hell the story was about in Halo O.D.S.T and while that is generally the case with Halo games, O.D.S.T was different in that Bungie built the game around the story, the actual story was the focus point and when your focus point is at best blurred your lasting impression of said game tends to be a negative one.

Like I said, the gameplay parts not set in that darkened hub world was were Halo excelled and actually offered up some of the best Halo action we’ve ever seen in the series but the story that Bungie wrapped those parts in was contrived and forced and ultimately only served to soil the experience.

The old saying; “Don’t give up your day job” springs to mind whenever I think of Halo O.D.S.T. and hopefully, next time out (Halo: Reach I’m looking at you) Bungie will simply stick to what they do best and just give us a tight shooting experience where the story is secondary.

3. The Conduit

Man I got sucked in by the hype for this game.

Before its release everybody was talking about how it would be the best FPS on the Wii and I really bought into all that.

But!

What I didn’t realize until I actually played it was that even though it may indeed be the best FPS on the Wii, in the cold light of day, that doesn’t mean it’s a good game.

The Conduit, if released on the Xbox 360 and PS3 would have barely registered a murmur on the gaming Richter scale.

The story was bunk, the controls were nothing special and the weapons were at best meh…

The Conduit is distinctly at best a B-Level title which only stands out coz it’s on a platform that’s the home for mainly C-Level titles.

2. Ghostbusters: The Video Game

Before I start ripping on Ghostbusters: The Video Game, I want to make one thing clear; I actually enjoyed the game.

I have a real fondness for it but I can’t help but feel that it should have been better.

It was my love for the franchise that made me over-look the ropier elements of the game. Had it not been for the fact that it was Ghostbusters then I would have probably never even finished it.

Let’s make no bones about it, Ghostbusters – The Video Game is a poor video game, average at best and the truth of the matter is that it didn’t have to be that way. I mean, it had plenty of time in development, unlike other games based on movie properties; it didn’t have to meet any release deadlines. They could have taken their time.

But, they didn’t take their time, or at least it didn’t feel like they took their time.

The game felt rushed and you got the impression that during the initial design meetings, the developers looked at the franchise and figured that all us gamers wanted from a Ghostbusters game was to be able to wield proton packs and fight Marshmallow Man and basically that’s all we were given.

At least that’s all I remember from the game, sure other stuff happened but for some reason my brain has blanked the rest out.

Disappointing.

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

After Call of Duty: Modern Warfare changed the way I looked at the FPS genre I really expected Modern Warfare 2 to blow my mind.

But the fact of the matter is it didn’t.

For me, the single player portion felt rushed story-wise, it seemed that Infinity Ward didn’t actually realize what it was that made the first Modern Warfare such an engrossing single player experience. I get the impression that Infinity Ward thought that all we wanted were explosive set pieces but that’s not what I wanted from my experience. What I wanted was to connect with the story, I wanted to feel the situations not just play them. The action was so over-the-top I never really felt like all the crazy shit was happening to me.

I’ve never felt such a disconnect with a character before, heck, I never knew who I was or why I was fighting. The shit that goes down in Modern Warfare 2 is so ridiculous that I found myself laughing at the story and okay, there were some “hell yeah!” moments but those moments were never driven by any fear that what I was doing mattered in any way whatsoever.

For a single player experience, last year’s World at War was a superior effort, at least with that game I knew what was going on.

And five to six hours for a game as heavily hyped as Modern Warfare 2?

Don’t get me started on that. See, I don’t play multiplayer though if I did, I would probably play Modern Warfare 2 but the fact of the matter is I don’t and I think that Infinity Ward didn’t care about people like me. It felt like all their effort was directed to the multiplayer component and that the single-player game was just something that they were forced to include.

Now don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy Modern Warfare 2 but not as much as I enjoyed the first Modern Warfare or World at War and it wasn’t because I had unrealistically high expectations for the game, no,  it was simply because Infinity Ward didn’t try as hard as they could have to make the experience anything more than B-Movie popcorn fodder.

I’ve heard some people say that it felt like a Michael Bay movie but in my opinion, Michael Bay, for all his faults, would never have crafted a story as poor as the one Infinity Ward did for Modern Warfare 2.

Related posts:

1. Bunch Of Fives – Top 5 Games Based On A Movie Franchise – 2009
2. The Wait Is Over! Modern Warfare 2 Video Review!
3. IGN.com – Avatar The Video Game – Video Review
4. Activision Hit Back At Claims Modern Warfare 2 Was Banned In Russia
5. Modern Warfare: Reflex Wii Video Review (IGN.com)