5 Over-hyped Games (That Totally Failed)

Gamers are excited for the long awaited release of Duke Nukem: Forever (the term “long awaited” may be an understatement). So after years of waiting and all the big hype that has build, will it be worth it?

If Duke Nukem: Forever fails; it won’t be the first time an over-hyped work of entertainment failed. As with cinema and literature, every so often hype builds for a work that’s in development. Over hyping something works both ways, it could generate enough successes (like Avatar or Call of Duty: Black Ops) or it could be like shooting yourself in the foot (like The Happening or John Romero’s Daikatana).

The following are five examples of games that were over hyped but failed to live up to the expectation of gamers and critics.

5. Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (2008) – A game develops hype in two ways; either the creative team dose an abundance of interviews with the press or pay for enough ads to flood every media format. Eidos Interactive chose the latter to build the needed hype for Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Unfortunately the result of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men varied.

The game was not worth the hype as it was meet with mediocre reviews by critics. On the bright-side it was a lot better than John Romero’s Daikatana. Thankfully all the issue with Kane & Lynch had been resolved for the sequel.

4. Enter the Matrix (2003) – In the early 2000, The Matrix was thought provoking film that encompassed elements of religion and philosophy in a Terminator style setting. So it was obvious gamers would be a group obsessed with this film.

Enter the Matrix was to be a side story to The Matrix: Reloaded as gamers take on the role of either Ghost or Niobe (two main characters from the film). Unlike other movie-games; Enter the Matrix was an expansion of the film. It included live action scenes written and directed specifically for the game by the Wachowski brothers.

Yet like most movie-games, Enter the Matrix was meet with negative reviews. Gamers were upset that they had to play as a bunch of side kicks and not Neo. Critics panned it for its bugs and glitches along with its poor tie-in. On the Brightside, The Matrix: Reloaded was a great movie.

1 2 3

Tags: John Romero, Enter the Matrix, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun, Driv3r

Problem? Report this post

Tristan Damen

May 28, 2011

As much of a broken mess that "Enter the Matrix," was, I would hardly call it a failure. Travel back to 2003 for the story below:

http://au.gamespot.com/ps2/action/enterthematrix/news/6030281/enter-the-matrix-sells-25-million?mode=all

2.5 million copies in just over a month! As if the movies weren't bad enough, people were lining up to pay good money for a horrible game.

Report | Reply

Bobby Krell

May 29, 2011

Well, the second and third Matrix movies made millions as well, but both of those were panned by critics. People were expecting to be on the start of a huge franchise and bought it simply because it was part of the Matrix. When that appeal dropped, so did the sales.

Define failure then. The article's title implies that the games were total failures, and "Enter the Matrix," would not belong on that list. It flopped with critics, yes; it was however, an undeniable commercial success.

Ryan Perez

Clearly the author isn't considering monetary success a factor when deciding whether or not a game is/was a failure.

I don't either; so I share his opinion. Except when he says The Matrix: Reloaded was a good film. :(

Keith Schloemer

When I saw the movie The Matrix, I thought it was so incredible and revolutationary that I watched it a second time, IMMEDIATLY after leaving that first viewing.

I so desperately wanted Enter the Matrix to be incredible. It was not. I agree completely with this author's assessment of it being a FAIL.

With the Romero/Cameron comparison, Cameron's a director and he knows his skill as one and keeps at it. So when you see Cameron as the director, you know it's going to be incredible, because he's doing what he's refined for years. Yeah he's got a big ego, but he can back it up. Romero on the other hand...

Don't get me wrong, as a part of a development team and a programmer, he has done incredible work, some of which changed PC gaming for the better. When he co-founded Ion Storm though, he went to a management/producer role which he's never done before and that's where we learned that while he can design some really good stuff, he's not really any good at marketing or production. Problem with that though is he had the ego to think he could something foreign to him and it turn out as it has in the past. The ego was as big as Cameron's, but he couldn't deliver.

Randy Snow

Well the way I see it really gaming doesn't have many stand out what they touch is always gold game designers. Sure we got Miyamoto, but it seems a lot of the stand out game designers burn bright then fade away, or burn bright then strike out. Well there is also Sid Meier, but he tends to stick to his genre...

Well I'll probably catch crap over this remark, but that's just how I feel.