2011 was another year of amazing gaming experiences and, for me and select other gamers, it passed virtually without issue. Unfortunately, many others seem to have gotten the short end of the pointy gaming stick. In other words, even though 2011 offered some of the greatest games released this gen, a few screw-ups, mishaps, let downs, and straight-up bad decisions made some gamers feel like the industry’s only real goal was to get them to grab their proverbial ankles. Without further adieu – and in no particular order – we present the most defining video game letdowns of 2011.
Kinect’s Lack of Appealing Games
When Kinect first came out, I didn’t think much of it. I ended up receiving it for Christmas though, and after playing the sports, adventure and dance games, I found the peripheral to be quite a lot of fun. After exhausting the games I had for Kinect, I waited expectantly for more. Sadly, those that followed throughout the year had me scratching my head in confusion. The one game that actually looked any good, Blackwater, met with cripplingly bad reviews. Where are the awesome experiences and game changing interactions Microsoft promised when it first announced Kinect?
I was good all year, so I’m hoping that this Christmas the video game gods will smile upon me and actually start delivering games for 2012 that make good on what Kinect could really do for gaming.
Duke Nukem Forever – Ruining A Classic
A completely outdated, decade old FPS that should have never seen the light of day, was released this year. It featured a famous, but misogynistic and cliched early 90′s character who just didn’t evolve quite enough to make an impact. Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed the original game on my PlayStation. After playing the newest Duke adventure on my 360, however, all the fond memories I once had turned sour and much cursing ensued over the “new” title. Thankfully I just rented it, but still I wish I hadn’t.
The point is not to bash Duke Nukem the character. The problem was the inability of the game’s creators to bring enough new gameplay and character traits to Duke to make the game appealing to a new generation. In a modern world filled with titles and series as amazing as Mass Effect, Skyrim, Uncharted, Gears of War, Batman, and more, it was foolish to assume the exact same gameplay, humor, and flat cliches from 1991 would stand out now.
Skyrim Lag, Glitches & Other Issues – Awesome Game, Ugly Performance
Do you play Skryim on PS3? Is your save game over 7MGB? If you answered ‘yes’ to both of these questions there is a roughly 33% chance that you have experienced regular, game-ruining lag. I’m currently playing the title on Xbox 360 and there have been three instances in the 48 hours that I have played so far, of noteworthy lag. When I heard about the amount of lag certain PS3 owners have faced, my heart immediately went out to them. Compounding the problem is that stalwart players who stubbornly continue to play through the lag seem to only make the problem worse for themselves. Bethesda has, of course, published a few workaround steps one can take to relieve these issues, but a full fix remains elusive.
While lag has been the single biggest issue the otherwise stellar Skyrim has faced since launch, there are a few others that deserve brief mention. Crashes on all three platforms are just too regular to ignore, mission-ruining glitches are common, and nonsensical, immersion ruining non-player character behavior is (humorously) abundant. No reaction to putting a bucket on a stranger’s head? Hilarious.
Skyrim is amazing, no doubt about it, and GameJudgment awarded the game a full 10 out of 10. It’s just too bad that for some, particularly a minority playing on Sony’s HD console, the experience has been excessively damaged.
Dead Island – More Glitches than Skyrim?
Don’t get me wrong, I really love this game. I love this game so much that when my game froze and I lost everything I had spent fifty hours collecting and achieving, I actually went back and built my character back up again. I was able to bring my character back, albeit 4 levels lower than where it had been, which does bode as a good sign for the overall fun Dead Island offers. But losing everything still sucked.
Not even Skyrim glitched so bad I lost everything.
The PlayStation Network Goes Down
For six days the PlayStation Network was down without a single word from Sony as to what was going on. Ignorance, in this case, was certainly bliss, especially when the eventual explanation came out. The truth was that many of our personal details, as well as our credit card information, were in the hands of hackers. The PSN was down for almost a month and in the meantime panic ensued. 77 million, yes, 77 FREAKIN’ MILLION accounts were not only unable to function online, but the personal information for every one of them had been taken.
Overall, the PSN was down for 23 infamous days in what is arguably the biggest ‘let down’ of the year – and likely the whole current generation. I should be clear that the screw up wasn’t a problem with the PS3 console. It was the decision by Sony to take literally zero steps, yes, ZERO security steps, to protect user information by leaving their entire database, aside from credit card info, unencrypted. This means that Sony was storing your passwords, emails, physical address and other private info in a completely readable form. As the Daily Telegraph pointed out, “If the provider stores passwords unencrypted, then it’s very easy for somebody else – not just an external attacker, but members of staff or contractors working on Sony’s site – to get access and discover those passwords, potentially using them for nefarious means.”
Sony did provide every PSN and Qriocity user with one year of identity theft protection, but I’d rather just not have my identity stolen in the first place. Oh well, here’s some free downloadable content to make you feel better, because everyone loves Little Big Planet.
What do you the readers think? Did you have a bad experience this year I didn’t cover? Let me know about it in the comments below.
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And Duke Nukem was spared a mention because…?
Please excuse my ineptitude, only half the list was shown on my browser >.<
With the inclusion of Duke, I agree completely!
yah i understand about the Dead Island thing. Its annoying that you have to keep playing and playing till you are saved. And i agree with Patricks friend, I wouldn’t want to go back playing it after I got 97% completed, exspecially third head of cerebeus, that mission was alot harder than Medium, the zombies, like had a glitch war, they did everything they couldnt.
i do think all of these where good things just had there own down sides.
kinect is great just needs more games. skyrim is awesome just needs some bugs to be taken care of
>Skyrim
>PS3
>PS3
Here’s your problem.
I do mention twice that I love the game Dead Island. I agree yes it was awesome, so much so that even when I lost everythng I went and rebuilt my character. The problem came after the patch which was frusterating and it wasn’t just me that it happened to, I talked to half a dozen people who had the same problem and unfortunately quit playing all together because of it. That doesn’t make it a broken game because I can still play it but it is a problem worth pointing out.
A friend of mine actually made it 97% of the way through the game before his save file was corrupted. He never touched or again and I totally understand why.
More cliches, did you just copy the exact same list from every other site? Lots of people had their Skyrim files corrupted, more than dead island actually.
And dead island was awesome, but you probably stopped playing before the fixes came (the fixes that will never come for Skyrim)or you just never liked it. Just because something bad happened to your save doesn’t mean the game is broken, it just means you can only see the world through your own eyes (like a child).
Pretty damn good list, actually. I think you made a good case for each to be on this list anyway.
I do feel that you should have added the Wii U announcement and the subsequent de-valuation of Nintendo’s stock.