Most overrated/over-hyped games of all time?

[Cyclone Jack]

For me, I'm going to say:

Half Life (and HL2): I just didn't see what the big deal was with these games. I played them, beat them, and thought they were slightly above average FPS games.
Portal 2: I really, really, really liked Portal, but I thought Portal 2 was horrible. The gameplay was good, but I thought the story was complete throwaway garbage, I hated the voice acting, and I felt like half the levels (or more) were just filler. I played it a second time on mute, and it was a little better, but still too much of it felt like filler.
Call of Duty (series): I enjoyed the first two, but after that I just didn't care for the series. MW did a decent job in trying to pull it into the modern setting, but the levels were too simple (though they looked good), and it hasn't pulled out of that rut since (especially the map layouts). I've seen modders put out better content that the CoD sequels.
Halo (series): I enjoyed the first game, but the sequels were all either rushed out the door, or quick cash-ins.
Final Fantasy 7 & 10: I thought 7 was horrible and 10 had great combat attached to an abysmal hold-you-hand-story. I'd add 9 in there, even though I liked some of the character/world design, but most people didn't like it, so I wouldn't call it overrated. (I've only played 1, 6, 7, 9, 10, so I can't say how the other games are)
Command & Conquer: Red Alert: I absolutely loved the original C&C, but RA was, IMO, one of the biggest let downs in my gaming career. The story was horrible and it lacked any of the charm that made the original game great. The cut scenes felt tacked on, and the game itself was awful. Though I will admit, I loved modding the mine vehicles into Flame Tanks...then I LOLed when the AI actually started building them (as they never would build the mine vehicles).

I'm sure there are others, but these are the ones that have always stood out for me.

[zera]

I will be slaugthered for this but warcraft 3.
That game had a great single player campaign but it was an rts game and as an rts game it was unbelivably bad. It's almost more rpg than rts and I feel what it did to the rts genre was a disgrace. Slow champion orientated play does not belong in a serious rts which is like 20% single player and 70% competitive multiplayer (last 10 goes for custom maps etc).
Halo. Any console shooter that is focused on multiplayer shouldn't be considered good.
Skyrim.
Really? the main story line wasn't that good and the combat was the only reason I played it (also finishing thing I start with is sorta ok). People keep saying it's so good and there is so much game in it when basicly u have 20h tops of gameplay then a shit ton of fill on the side which is fine but it shouldn't be praised for the amount of content.
Mass effect (all of them on pc and actually throw in bioshock and all the games in the genre)
God the Play feel in all these games are so horribly bad. I might be a cod player (which is just a bad game on pc these days) but the feel in these shooters is so bad I haven't been able to play through one of them for the story. It's really a shame that they spend so much time on a game without having the gameplay feel right which I guess is because of the concept of making a console game then doing somth with it on the pc. Story might be all good on a console but on a pc I want the aim etc to feel fast and crisp not like I'm telling some guy what to do and he then have to interpret it and move slowly cause he's not in that good of a shape

[Adam Jensen]

Portal 2: I really, really, really liked Portal, but I thought Portal 2 was horrible. The gameplay was good, but I thought the story was complete throwaway garbage, I hated the voice acting, and I felt like half the levels (or more) were just filler. I played it a second time on mute, and it was a little better, but still too much of it felt like filler.

WHAT!!!!

How can you put CAVE JOHNSON on mute?

[Scram]

D3
Swtor
Skyrim
Wow

[Dabrix32]

The only good thing about Halo was multiplayer and killing all of my friends until they told me to go home.

[Uoyredrum]

I will be slaugthered for this but warcraft 3.
That game had a great single player campaign but it was an rts game and as an rts game it was unbelivably bad. It's almost more rpg than rts and I feel what it did to the rts genre was a disgrace. Slow champion orientated play does not belong in a serious rts which is like 20% single player and 70% competitive multiplayer (last 10 goes for custom maps etc).
Halo. Any console shooter that is focused on multiplayer shouldn't be considered good.
Skyrim.
Really? the main story line wasn't that good and the combat was the only reason I played it (also finishing thing I start with is sorta ok). People keep saying it's so good and there is so much game in it when basicly u have 20h tops of gameplay then a shit ton of fill on the side which is fine but it shouldn't be praised for the amount of content.
Mass effect (all of them on pc and actually throw in bioshock and all the games in the genre)
God the Play feel in all these games are so horribly bad. I might be a cod player (which is just a bad game on pc these days) but the feel in these shooters is so bad I haven't been able to play through one of them for the story. It's really a shame that they spend so much time on a game without having the gameplay feel right which I guess is because of the concept of making a console game then doing somth with it on the pc. Story might be all good on a console but on a pc I want the aim etc to feel fast and crisp not like I'm telling some guy what to do and he then have to interpret it and move slowly cause he's not in that good of a shape

Warcraft 3's hero oriented gameplay actually worked pretty well, and since the game was fairly big on the competitive scene for years I'd say "unbelievably bad" is quite the stretch. It had a great campaign and multiplayer, I can see how the hero-oriented gameplay would be a turnoff for some hardcore RTS fans but to call the game bad is just kind of...what?

Halo has never been multiplayer focused, it just had a good multiplayer that was big on the pro scene for a long time (for all of the games), but the single player campaigns for all of the games were very well made with great storytelling and a lot of detail and work put into them. There wouldn't be books, and a possible movie coming out if it was a multiplayer focused shooter. It actually cut a better balance between the two than 90% of shooters out there. Also, what does it being a console shooter have to do with anything? I'm mostly a PC gamer but why discount it for being on a console? Just because it would be better on PC doesn't make the game itself bad. Overrated? Perhaps. But not bad by any stretch of the imagination.

Skyrim - to each their own. I thought it was a great game but it definitely has a lot of flaws for both fans and newcomers to the series, it's not for everyone, but I could agree maybe it's a bit overrated.

Mass Effect/Bioshock - Why lump these together? Granted I've never played a Mass Effect game but I've seen videos and I'm not sure why you're lumping them together since they seem to be nothing alike. I do get what you're saying about the controls though and it does bug me about a lot of shooters out there, like Fallout 3 (even though I think it's a fantastic game), it seems like a lot of the more "RPG-ish" shooters on the market have pretty bad control, for both PC and console.

Opinions are opinions but I saw your post and had to reply to a few points there because to me they don't make any sense.

[Mormolyce]

Dunno what everyone else was expecting with D3, it's pretty much exactly what I thought it would be. I had fun playing it, no real complaints. Although they really did take way too long to release PvP, that's the only legitimate argument I can see out of all that stupid rage and QQ on the net about it.

To be honest, games are in a pretty good place at the moment and have been for years. I get nostalgic about games from the old days and sometimes a franchise goes in a direction I don't like but on the whole, games are fine. Especially compared to say, movies, which have been mostly abysmal for decades.

Hmm. I've had trouble getting into the CODs. Also I've always felt RE4 was overrated. It was a pretty good game but too much of a departure to be a true RE to me. Especially because it's no longer survival horror. Basically if they'd made it as its own game and hadn't called it RE I'd have been happier with it.

Also their F2play model is garbage. You still basically have to sub to play the game as you dont get 100% of the game like you do with GW2 or Tera.

TOR's "F2P model" is not F2P. It's just an extended trial.

---------- Post added 2013-02-18 at 03:41 AM ----------

Mass effect (all of them on pc and actually throw in bioshock and all the games in the genre)
God the Play feel in all these games are so horribly bad. I might be a cod player (which is just a bad game on pc these days) but the feel in these shooters is so bad I haven't been able to play through one of them for the story. It's really a shame that they spend so much time on a game without having the gameplay feel right which I guess is because of the concept of making a console game then doing somth with it on the pc. Story might be all good on a console but on a pc I want the aim etc to feel fast and crisp not like I'm telling some guy what to do and he then have to interpret it and move slowly cause he's not in that good of a shape

I sort of agree with you with the clunky controls but Mass Effect is an RPG not an FPS. Well it has some FPS elements but still. It's supposed to be more about story and squad tactics/use of cover than sheer run and gun.

[Sam the Wiser]

Zelda and D3.

[Mormolyce]

sure the game that is always called "the best game of all time" isnt overrated... okay sure O-O

So if everyone says a game is "the best game of all time" it MUST be overrated? It's not possible that they're right and it's true?

Personally, I loved Ocarina, but not as much as Starfox 64! I don't think I could narrow down "best games of all time" to even the top 10... but Civ 2 and TIE Fighter would be in there as well...

[BrerBear]

I don't think I could narrow down "best games of all time" to even the top 10... but Civ 2 and TIE Fighter would be in there as well...

I love you.
TIE Fighter was definitely my top game of all time until WoW came along.
As for overrated...
Final Fantasy <Anything>
Metal Gear <Anything>
E.T. for Atari 2600. Oh yeah, I'm old and I went there.

[WarpKnight]

Most Nintendo franchises are incredibly overrated imo, they keep churning out the same games over and over again and for some reason nobody seems to notice..

Zelda in particular.

[zera]

Warcraft 3's hero oriented gameplay actually worked pretty well, and since the game was fairly big on the competitive scene for years I'd say "unbelievably bad" is quite the stretch. It had a great campaign and multiplayer, I can see how the hero-oriented gameplay would be a turnoff for some hardcore RTS fans but to call the game bad is just kind of...what?

Halo has never been multiplayer focused, it just had a good multiplayer that was big on the pro scene for a long time (for all of the games), but the single player campaigns for all of the games were very well made with great storytelling and a lot of detail and work put into them. There wouldn't be books, and a possible movie coming out if it was a multiplayer focused shooter. It actually cut a better balance between the two than 90% of shooters out there. Also, what does it being a console shooter have to do with anything? I'm mostly a PC gamer but why discount it for being on a console? Just because it would be better on PC doesn't make the game itself bad. Overrated? Perhaps. But not bad by any stretch of the imagination.

Skyrim - to each their own. I thought it was a great game but it definitely has a lot of flaws for both fans and newcomers to the series, it's not for everyone, but I could agree maybe it's a bit overrated.

Mass Effect/Bioshock - Why lump these together? Granted I've never played a Mass Effect game but I've seen videos and I'm not sure why you're lumping them together since they seem to be nothing alike. I do get what you're saying about the controls though and it does bug me about a lot of shooters out there, like Fallout 3 (even though I think it's a fantastic game), it seems like a lot of the more "RPG-ish" shooters on the market have pretty bad control, for both PC and console.

Opinions are opinions but I saw your post and had to reply to a few points there because to me they don't make any sense.

First off the reason wc3 was big was because there was no other alternative (given some of the people who played it actually liked it yes). Several former wc3 pros that turned to sc2 (which I like but from a pro perspective is a step down from sc:bw in skill) is a way better game and they only played wc3 cause they didn't know/tried sc:bw (or for some of them failed at it cause it was such a mechanic game).

About halo. it's always praised for being the best shooter or so by gaming sites which is why I call it overrated. Not because it's a bad game but because it's still not good by any margin considering it's a fast paced shooter yet played on a console inspite of the limitations (playing on a joystick might be fine for a lot of games but for shooters it means the game will never be great). There might be story but the majority of people I hear talk about it talk about the multiplayer.

Skyrim : Overrated not because it's a bad game (I think it is but trying to go objective in this response) but because how short of a game it is if you do not like playing a game without any progress etc etc. I never called it bad I said that people who keep hailing it as epic cause of the thousand of hours it has are wrong which imo makes it overrated.

for the bioschock me clumping this is because of how little emphasis the modern rpg/Shooters put on the game feel which imo should always come first and in a shooter kills the experience completely if it isn't there. Just for reference even if it's acompletely different genre, kingdoms of amalur reckoning was an amazing game when it game to feel allthough it came short in other departments yet I will remember that game as way better because of how it made me feel while playing it.
So I did not clump them together cause they are alike but because they all fail to emphasiss controles which should be one of the selling points in an rpg thats action focused (shooter in any regards should be very responsive which they all fail to do).

And just as a side note I did say this as a pc gamer. Maybe I could say different things about the whole shooter thing if I played on a console and wouldn't blow my brains out just thinking of it. Also to be perfectly clear I love racing games and snowboarding games on console just so it's not a hate towards console games.

[Rorke]

Fallout 3. The worst piece of crap I've ever played. The skill system was horrid and the ugly environments that made Dragon Age 2 seem like it had good visuals. It was basically a sandbox FPS with little to no RPG elements. The character you played as seems so separated from the rest of the world that nothing seemed like it mattered whatever your character did. Sounds like Skyrim.

Speaking of bad games that try to come off as RPG's, Borderlands is another terrible terrible game. I remember my friends going ape shit over this. Glad I didn't buy that crap and borrowed it.

[Uoyredrum]

First off the reason wc3 was big was because there was no other alternative (given some of the people who played it actually liked it yes). Several former wc3 pros that turned to sc2 (which I like but from a pro perspective is a step down from sc:bw in skill) is a way better game and they only played wc3 cause they didn't know/tried sc:bw (or for some of them failed at it cause it was such a mechanic game).

I agree with SC2 being better than WC3 and being much more balanced in general (and with the SC:BW statement), but for one thing, I doubt that any WC3 pro in the history of the universe didn't know about starcraft. Failing at it because of its mechanics? I can see that more but if they're a professional gamer they generally aren't going to fail at a game and then move on to something easier so they can be pro at that instead. That's not the general mind/skillset of pro gamers. I don't really buy that. A lot of people moved on from SC to WC3 because it was newer or they liked it more, but that's personal preference anyway so it's irrelevant. My point is that WC3 isn't a horrible strategy game, it's just different from most of the others on the market because they tried something different with the hero system.

About halo. it's always praised for being the best shooter or so by gaming sites which is why I call it overrated. Not because it's a bad game but because it's still not good by any margin considering it's a fast paced shooter yet played on a console inspite of the limitations (playing on a joystick might be fine for a lot of games but for shooters it means the game will never be great). There might be story but the majority of people I hear talk about it talk about the multiplayer.

True, it does get a lot of praise by most gaming sites but that's because it's probably the most polished shooter in the history of console gaming in just about every aspect (this goes for the whole series). The game being on consoles doesn't mean the game isn't great, the whole series is very well done but I agree a bit overrated in a lot of ways. People playing console shooters will never ever ever ever be as good as people playing on PC, but that doesn't make it bad. They're just highly polished and balanced games with a lot to offer on both the SP and MP fronts in general. I'm sure somebody is going to quote me on that and say LOL THEY IZNT BALANCED but yes, Halo games have much more balanced combat than the vast majority of shooters and they take way more skill to be good at. This is completely regardless of the skill cap between console and PC shooters, this is to do with the game itself and how it plays.

Skyrim : Overrated not because it's a bad game (I think it is but trying to go objective in this response) but because how short of a game it is if you do not like playing a game without any progress etc etc. I never called it bad I said that people who keep hailing it as epic cause of the thousand of hours it has are wrong which imo makes it overrated.

Skyrim is one of those games where the amount of hours you spend on it are up to you. It does have a lot of content, but if you want, you can finish it very quickly. Same goes with Morrowind and Oblivion. It's not a "how fast can I finish this" game but rather one where you're meant to explore and do all of the side missions and extra content. If you can finish absolutely everything in Skyrim in 20 hours you are probably the greatest gamer ever. But like I said, I agree a lot of the game is overrated.

for the bioschock me clumping this is because of how little emphasis the modern rpg/Shooters put on the game feel which imo should always come first and in a shooter kills the experience completely if it isn't there. Just for reference even if it's acompletely different genre, kingdoms of amalur reckoning was an amazing game when it game to feel allthough it came short in other departments yet I will remember that game as way better because of how it made me feel while playing it.
So I did not clump them together cause they are alike but because they all fail to emphasiss controles which should be one of the selling points in an rpg thats action focused (shooter in any regards should be very responsive which they all fail to do).

And like I said before I agree on the control part but I still wouldn't lump two completely unrelated games together to make that point.

And just as a side note I did say this as a pc gamer. Maybe I could say different things about the whole shooter thing if I played on a console and wouldn't blow my brains out just thinking of it. Also to be perfectly clear I love racing games and snowboarding games on console just so it's not a hate towards console games.

I play both but I'm primarily a PC gamer like I said. And yeah adjusting to playing shooters on a console from PC is rough but with enough practice you get used to it. I can transition and play pretty well on both now since I worked at it.

[icedwarrior]

Speaking of bad games that try to come off as RPG's, Borderlands is another terrible terrible game. I remember my friends going ape shit over this. Glad I didn't buy that crap and borrowed it.

It's stuff like this that really makes me sigh. I have no problem with you disliking a game, but at least explain your reasoning. You gave ZERO reasons. Zero. I will grant you that there wasn't a story, at all. But it was still a lot of fun in co-op.

[notorious98]

Command & Conquer: Red Alert: I absolutely loved the original C&C, but RA was, IMO, one of the biggest let downs in my gaming career. The story was horrible and it lacked any of the charm that made the original game great. The cut scenes felt tacked on, and the game itself was awful. Though I will admit, I loved modding the mine vehicles into Flame Tanks...then I LOLed when the AI actually started building them (as they never would build the mine vehicles).

Don't lie. You didn't like Red Alert due to an alarming lack of Kane.

[Deleted]

FF7 obviously, very very good game, but so much ppl seems to think this is the best rpg ever made and it only go downhill from there..

[Vespian]

My list would be;

The Witcher 1 & 2.
- Flimsy storyline, bad controls, sex as an additional gimmick with the sole purpose to sell the game. 2 Actually had even worse controls than 1.

Kingdom of Amalur.
- It's just so bad on so many levels, I can't even begin without never ending.

[Sanitius]

Clearly FF 6, 8 and 9.

People go apesh*t crazy about how they dislike 7 and how good the other are, but they are not.

[McNeil]

Command & Conquer: Red Alert: I absolutely loved the original C&C, but RA was, IMO, one of the biggest let downs in my gaming career. The story was horrible and it lacked any of the charm that made the original game great. The cut scenes felt tacked on, and the game itself was awful. Though I will admit, I loved modding the mine vehicles into Flame Tanks...then I LOLed when the AI actually started building them (as they never would build the mine vehicles).

The Red Alert series were always planned to be more silly than serious. For a great story, Westwood already got the Tiberium series, and they wanted to try different things. The story is as simple as it can get, Einstein travels back in time to eliminate Hitler. Only to find out that Stalin will be taking over Europe instead.

I personally prefer the Tiberium series over Red Alert, and I find the Tiberium series pretty underrated compared to Red Alert. I really loved RA1 and 2 trough, but the Tiberium universe is more richer and amazing. Red Alert is just for some lulz