Honesty 2024 was a really terrible year for gaming from big disappointing titles to piles of steaming garbage and massive amount of company lay-offs and awful business practices. But we are here for the games that while they may not be the most awful games, they still had major things holding a lot of them back. These are the biggest disappointments of the year.
10: Star Wars Outlaws
Developer: Massive Entertainment/Ubisoft
2024 has been without a doubt the worst year for both Star Wars and also and most importantly for Ubisoft with a multitude of failed games to delay the upcoming Assassin's Creed Shadows to 2025, and then you have this. Star Wars Outlaws may not be awful and it tries to tie itself in between The Empire Strikes Back & The Return of the Jedi. The game did look really amazing in terms of the presentation, there were a bunch of different activities that you could partake in but it is just that Star Wars Outlaws is like every other Ubisoft open world game that has been released from over the past few years and doesn't do a whole lot different in comparison. The amount of stealth was repetitive and the game did suffer from a fair number of technical problems. It was really nothing spectacular even for a Star Wars game and it failed to meet sales expectations.
9: Lego Horizon Adventures
Developer: Guerilla Games/Studio Gobo
Lego has had a ton of decent games most of which are just turning out simple licensed games that are movie related but with a Lego skin and with also Lego Fortnite taking steps forward and there are a fair number of kids that enjoy them. Then you have Lego Horizon Adventures which takes a popular PlayStation series of games into the Lego world. It was just a strange direction for the series to go and how it all feels is just simplistic. It still has the weak point mechanics from the previous Horizon games but everything else was just simple and repetitive and the game suffered from having very little people even caring for it. The developers were just desperate to try and get something out and hope it caught on and even more sad is that they brought this to the Nintendo Switch and it still did poorly. It shows that not all Lego games are of equal quality.
8: Funko Fusion
Developer: 10:10 Games
Ever collected those miniature Funko Pop Toys of many recognizable movie and game icons that people grew up with? Well, if you loved those you would possibly have heard of a Funko Pop licensed video game that came out this year. Despite all of the available licensed character roaster like Back to the Future, Mega Man, Team Fortress 2, Scott Pilgrim VS The World and Five Nights at Freddy's and so on everything about Funko Fusion was underperformed and undelivered. The game has very dull and unrefined combat with very repetitive mission structure and even with the recognizable the story is just bad and I mean really bad. The money that was spent on this game should have been spent on just collecting all of the toys that Funko Pop has got its hands on instead.
7: The First Descendent
Developer: Nexon
Here is another one of those shooters that tries to follow the footsteps of other loot shooters and that is The First Descendent. It is a Free-to-Play MMO where you play as different classes called Descendents who process mysterious powers that make them somewhat act differently from each other. You get dropped into an area where you take on quests, fight enemies and get loot and all kinds of materials for better gear to improve your character. It plays fine and the shooting is okay for the most part but the issue that it doesn't really do anything new and the game is ruined by the pay-to-win tactics that game businesses usually go for. The game is insanely grindy as the only way to get any kind of progression is either hours and hours of doing the same repetitive quests over and over to get your gear powered up for new more challenging missions or by purchasing permanent upgrades with real money through microtransactions. It did get popular as it got over 1 million players within the first week of release but the game's pay-to-win design choices ruins what should have been a half decent loot shooter.
6: Foamstars
Developer: Toylogic/Square Enix
Oh, Square Enix, you just can't get it together with those live service garbage that you keep throwing out only for them to die out but I'm surprised that this one hasn't announced its time for shutdown yet. This is Foamstars a Third Person Shooter Multiplayer game that tries to replicate Nintendo's Splatoon series where you shoot Foam to cover up areas of your team's colour for your team to quickly move around in and dominate against your enemies. It certainly plays okay and the mechanics work well plus it can be fun at times with other people. The problem is that there is little variation to any of the characters and they are not the most interesting to care about, there is few game modes on offer and the Story Mode Missions are so boring and forgettable. What made it worse is that the player base declined so fast that players online struggled to even find anyone online who even remotely cares to play this. So Foamstars went from launching as a Free Game for PlayStation Plus Subscribers in February to then being a priced game before eventually deciding to go Free-to-Play in October, that would have been fine if the game had content that was meaningful for the price tag but the game has a Season Pass and very minimal content that isn't worth the asking price. I'm still surprised that this game hasn't shut down yet compared to the other Square Enix stuff that gets shut down in like months.
5: Helldivers II & God of War Ragnarok & Until Dawn on PC
Sony has done somewhat of a decent job of bringing some of the PlayStation franchises to the PC with Uncharted and also the Horizon games and even PC players may not have had the PlayStation consoles to play them they can enjoy the PC versions of the famous PlayStation games (excluding The Last of Us Part I & II). Then out of nowhere when Helldivers II, God War Ragnarök and the remake of Until Dawn came to the PC Sony implemented a PlayStation Account requirement in order to play them on PC and every single PC player hated this idea and got so angry at Sony to the point, they review bombed the games SOOOOOOO hard on Steam. Although Sony dropped the PlayStation Account requirement for Helldivers II but they still force you have a PlayStation Account just to be able to play God of War Ragnarök and the Until Dawn Remake on PC and players are still outraged by that. Also, the Until Dawn Remake much like The Last of Us Part 1 Remake barely feels like a remake at all but rather a remaster that doesn't offer up anything new to it other than a new minigame and a new ending and it costs £59.99 which isn't worth the asking price. At this point it would probably be better just to get a PlayStation 5 console and the games on that if they are gonna continue to go along with the PlayStation Account requirement.
4: MultiVersus
Developer: Player First Games
Back from it was in Beta MultiVersus looked to be a somewhat competent platform fighter with many characters from the Warner Bros Universe like Looney Tunes, Scooby Doo, Batman, Adventure Time and Game of Thrones. After that it shut down to give itself refinement until 2024 where it resurfaced and running on the Unreal Engine 5 with Cross-Play and Cross-Progression support. However, it wasn't the full launch that players had hoped for as many of the features were oddly missing from the game such as Ranked Matchmaking, a Free-for-All PvP mode and also post-match results which didn't get added back in till later updates. They also worsened the gameplay as it slowed down really badly and the characters had way less move sets than they did originally making the game far too simplistic and stale. Adding more salt to the wound was the egregious monetization which is WAY worse than it was in the Beta as players were expected to pay real money for any of the new characters that got added in. Want to play as the Joker? or maybe The Powerpuff Girls? Or maybe Jason Voorhees? like it is just unbelievable and disgusting how much you could be spending just to be able to play as them. Congratulations Player First Games for taking what could have been a good platform fighter into a complete cash grab.
3: Dragon Age The Veilguard
Developer: Bioware
Bioware have had their recent screw ups especially with Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda then there was this one where it could have been their chance of redemption but alas it is not to be. Dragon Age The Veilguard went through changes with game design and staff which meant the game was going to get delayed time and time again. It went from being announced as Dragon Age Dreadwolf to then being renamed to Dragon Age The Veilguard and finally getting released this year. The problem is that the game doesn't resemble much like a Dragon Age game but almost something else entirely, for starters it went for an Action RPG approach which might be fine but the combat mechanics and the enemy designs are just overly repetitive and you can't control your other characters unlike in other games. By far the worst thing about the game is the storyline, the dialogue suffers from having some of the most cringe worthy writing whether it is for the overall story and romance it is unbearable and the meaningful major decisions that you get to make are too few and far between. It just doesn't feel much of a Dragon Age game at all, especially the overall tone of it that just doesn't suit the game. After the long-troubled development cycle and changes that it has went through everything about the game is more evidence of Bioware's dwindling reputation sinking further and further as the game ended up suffering from massive backlash from fans and also for low sales and very little players.
2: South Park Snow Day
Developer: Question
Adult Comedy Show South Park has always had the worst time on the gaming scene but The Stick of Truth & The Fractured but Whole were actual quality amazing and genuinely funny games that lived up to the show's charm and then you have this game and oh my dear god what did they do with this? South Park Snow Day may take up the fantasy role playing storyline and follow from the previous games but however the game's shift in tone, style and gameplay single handedly destroys everything that those games accomplish. Instead of an RPG we get a generic Co-Op Action game with Rogue-like elements yet doesn't have any kind of depth to anything, instead of South Park's cartoony art style we get a simple 3D looking game that looks so bland and so uninspired. Worst of all is that the humour doesn't live up to the show's charm because everything just feels ever so slightly toned down and tame. This was just not the way that the developers should have gone with this game and I “Question” what the developers were even trying to accomplish with this. The worst of all is that in case this game didn't send enough players into an outrage there is also a Season Pass and I mean just let that sink in. At this point anyone with common sense would have thrown this game out into the blizzard and let it freeze to death or waited for the Snow Day to pass and go back to School.
Honourable Mentions
Xdefiant (Ubisoft)
Senua's Saga Hellblade II (Ninja Theory)
Open Roads (Open Roads Team)
Alone in the Dark (Pieces Interactive)
Visions of Mana (Square Enix/Ouka Studios)
1: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Developer: Square Enix
And here is the biggest disappointment of this year and it is (no surprise) a Final Fantasy game. Granted it may have some things about that are faithful to the original FFVII like the Cloud and Sephiroth backstory, the Queen's Blood minigame is dope and is surprisingly a lot of fun and it does have the Gold Saucer minigames also but that is about it. Once you look past all of that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth just continues with the same utter nonsensical alternate reality storyline garbage that Final Fantasy VII Remake tried to do previously. The world despite being out of Midgar still isn't anything bigger or better than it was in the original game, all of the new characters including ones who were seen in Final Fantasy VII Remake are utter stupid morons including Chadley who have no depth or anything that benefits the storyline of FFVII and honestly, they are better off dead. The action orientated combat is still super underwhelming and sub-par at worst with no refinement aside from adding a Synergized mechanic from the stupid Yuffie Chapter from Final Fantasy VII Remake which is just a combined super slow attack from party members that takes too long to execute and isn't worth the pay-off. Lastly the clever puzzle sequences from the original are replaced with new sections that are just padded out with some mandatory boss encounters not seen in the original. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth just tries too hard to rebuild Final Fantasy VII like what they did with Final Fantasy VII but instead creating many new stupid & ridiculous plot devices that don't make sense and still acts more like Kingdom Hearts then it does Final Fantasy VII. Even worse is that we still have to wait for the third part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake project to come out, which will take another couple of years for that to come and all I can think is how is it going to get any worse than it already is?
Written By Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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