Remember that feeling of unwrapping your Xbox on the day you received it? Remember the excitement and suspense you felt to get your hands on that controller? Do you recall the sheer joy you felt when the console powered up and began to buzz away happily as it loaded your new game? And finally, do you remember that feeling of disappointment when you became aware that the game for which you purchased this console, is actually terrible? We do and today we are going to talk about some of the most disappointing Xbox exclusives to date.
Titanfall
A title from Respawn and EA held huge potential. Respaw tn, founded by former Call Of Duty contributors Vincent Zampella and Jason West, and EA, known for Battlefield, the BF: Bad Company series, and Medal Of Honour, set the stage for a first-person mech shooter that was anticipated to change the world, but unfortunately, it did not.
Originally hailed as the ‘COD killer’ and exceptionally unique experience, Titanfall released and made waves in its first week. Winning 60 awards at E3, and Gamescom, and Tokyo Game Show, Titanfall then followed with yet-more accolades – so what went wrong? Why was this highly anticipated game so much of a let-down to the gaming community?
This was because, regardless of the feedback and press, the game just wasn’t that good. The removal of the single-player campaign resulted in a more multiplayer-focused experience. The gameplay itself resembled existing Call of Duty games too closely, and the resolution war raged fiercely, dooming any game unable to operate beyond 720p.
Titanfall promised so much, yet delivered so little. Luckily its sequel went on to rectify a large amount of these issues and was also released on other platforms, so it isn’t all bad!
Ryse: Son of Rome
They say the average man thinks about the Roman empire daily, and how could we not? The Roman empire was one of the most expansive, enriching (for a select few people) and architecturally impressive periods of our shared history. This obviously extends to warfare and the equipment used therein. So a game based IN that particular environment should change the gaming world as we know it, right?
Well, yes. However, if you add in a vanilla campaign, terribly drab voice-acting and over a hundred separate “quick-time-event” sequences, you have a recipe for disaster.
Ryse: Son Of Rome should have been a gore-filled trawl through one of the most interesting times in humanity’s history. However, the obsession with competing with PlayStation just became too much for accomplished Crysis developers Crytek.
If we strip back the surface, Ryse: Son Of Rome is yet-another pretender to the single-player pantheon. With little in the way of substance and nothing in the way of replayability, Ryse: Son Of Rome is destined forever to lie in the ruins of the former Roman empire.
Perfect Dark Zero
Perfect Dark was a masterpiece in so many eyes. Long before we were being told it was ‘woke’ to have a female lead in a game or movie, Joanna Dark was a Nintendo institution. With her James Bond-esque suaveness and Peter Parker-like comedic timing, she was a heroine for all. It makes sense then that when Perfect Dark Zero was announced at Nintendo Space World in August 2000, people were excited. People were excited again to see Joanna back, in what was promising to be “the evolution of Perfect Dark.”
The game was created by Rare, at a time when Nintendo had a 49% stake in the company. This ostensibly made them a second-party developer.
Many delays and fake-reveals were to follow the initial advertising campaign, until the game finally released in 2005. It has to be said, once gamers got their hands on the game, they were less than impressed.
Perfect Dark Zero suffered badly due to the delays, releasing at a time where EA was trouncing the field with Star Wars: Battlefront II and studios were releasing James Bond games – what felt like – daily. The over-saturation of the market, the lack of creative ingenuity, and the console exclusivity doomed this particular spy-espionage-thriller experience to remain top secret for most, for many years to come.
Kinect: Star Wars
Wielding a light-saber, battling baddies and saving the girl, that’s what Star Wars is about – how then did Terminal Reality and Lucasarts miss the mark so spectacularly. Especially, given the introduction of their take on AR/VR?
Microsoft had early plans for a Star Wars game since the development of Project natal, later released as Kinect. The system configuration lent itself to the fantasy-fulfilment one feels when picking up a lightsaber, and the ability to do that in a game was a no-brainer. Or so it would seem.
Formally announced at E3 on June 6th, 2011. The trailer was shown, alongside some of the game. The crowd went wild. People were excited and rightly so. However, once the game is on the shelves, the cracks begin to show.
Once the hype was over for the release, people came crashing back down to Earth and the game failed spectacularly. As of April 2021, the game had only sold 1.3 million units. That may seem like a lot, but considering the IP on-topic here, it is merely a pittance. The game failed, and developers and publishers alike began releasing statements. Lucasarts’ Lead Producer on Kinect Star Wars stated, “No-one wants to look like a kid playing Star Wars in front of their friends.” Regrettably, Kinect: Star Wars marked the final release under the now-defunct Lucasarts publishing label.
The game relied far too heavily on the hard-ware, which was price-prohibitive for so many, and banked on the nostalgia of gamers who didn’t traditionally interact with the Kinect system, to make sales. Unfortunately this all means that Kinect: Star Wars is doomed forever to circle a supernova somewhere in a galaxy, far , far away…
Crackdown 3
The first Crackdown launched way back in 2007. It rode a delicate knife-edge between satire, action and open-world chaos. The sequel came out 3 years later and expanded fully on the original formula. The third game faced multiple delays and a five-year development time. This delay did not result in the game that Crackdown 3 should have been. Instead of capitalising on the series’ personality and capping off a perfect trilogy, Crackdown 3 disappointed the market.
It is by no means a broken game, just exceptionally vanilla. The combat is unimaginative and the world increasingly samey throughout the game. Crackdown 3 delivers a lifeless wasteland, and results in a largely forgettable affair.
Quantum Break
Coming from the minds of Alan Wake and Max Payne, and starring Game Of Thrones royalty, Aidan Gillen as the antagonist, with Shawn Ashmore taking on the main role, Quantum Break should have been a slam-dunk for Remedy Entertainment. The game was first announced on the 21st of May 2013. Trailers were shown at major industry conventions including, E3 and VGX.
The first gameplay demo was shown to the world at Gamescom 2014. Director Sam Lake, said the demo would make viewers ‘Speechless’. The game cost between $10-25 million to make, which makes it a very ambitious passion project. Unfortunately this did not translate into sales and reverence, as the game sold 276K copies in its first week. This momentum did not continue into the game’s life cycle. The sales dried up due to the forgettable nature of the gameplay and the ‘jack-of-all-trades’ nature of the plot.
Unfortunately, Quantum Break just happened to be one-step too far in the direction of ‘games like movies’ for most players, and it failed to deliver on any of its promises.
Sea of Thieves
A first-person pirate adventure, where can work with or against other players while searching for treasure and defeating pirates, how can that possibly go wrong? Sea of Thieves answers this question wonderfully.
Rare and Microsoft jointly showcased their effort to the world during Microsoft’s conference at E3 2015. Describing the game as “the most ambitious project from Rare”, Studio director Craig Duncan went on to say the team was introducing “horizontal progression”, in which players would only earn cosmetic items as they achieve a higher rank; all items have the same attributes, so endgame content would not confer gameplay bonuses to experienced players.
The Rare development team voices all non-player characters entirely, aiming to flesh out the world. Unfortunately, this does not work. The world within Sea of Thieves feels bland, uninteresting and ‘game-by-numbers.’
In recent years, continuing support and DLC have helped the game find its audience, but upon release, it fell far short of delivering the promised seafaring adventure.
State of Decay 2
State of Decay is, without doubt, one of the most fun times any zombie-killing-lover can have on almost any platform. It finds a perfect balance between babying survivors and managing a community, and occupying total agency as a free-lance zombie vanquisher. How then, did State of Decay 2 get it so wrong?
Announcing the game on 13th June 2016, Microsoft stated that the game would be available to play at no extra cost to Xbox Game Pass subscribers. The Collectors’ Edition was releasing at the same time. This edition did not feature State of Decay 2.
State of Decay 2 released in Spring 2018 amid games like God of War on PlayStation and the cross-platform long awaited action-adventure game, Dark Souls Remastered. The release date along with the “copy-and-paste” nature of the game itself and finally the astronomical hype, all combined to ensure that State of Decay disappointed the vast majority of gamers on day one. Had the sequel focused in a more dedicated way to the real-life survival aspects of the Zombie Apocalypse hypothetical model, State of Decay 2 could have gone down in history as a ground-breaking experience, however as it stands, State of Decay is just a forgettable experience with nothing real to say, and no staying power once the ‘campaign’ – such as it is – is over.
With over 20 years behind it, Xbox was always going to have some serious stinkers among the many, many masterpieces. Hopefully, the games in this list can go down in history as learning experiences for their prospective developers and we will never get another terrible Xbox exclusive again – we can only hope.