Updated 23 May, 2012, 6:39 pm IST

Disappointments of 2008 - Part II

20 Dec, 2008, 5:11 pm IST | by Nikhil Singh

We list out all the games that let us down this year.

Condemned 2

In spite of relying on cheap scares to a very large extent, the original Condemned manage to re-invent the action-horror genre through some key innovations — the most prominent of which, was the intense first person melee combat. With scarce ammunition, guns were barely used throughout the game, so the emphasis was always on close-range fights. Condemned 2 was very similar to the original, but it screwed up on some very fundamental aspects. For one, the game was too generous with ammunition, making it an ammo-hoard-fest. Also, there were a ton of annoying bits that would make you want to tear your hair out; an example of which is an area that was covered in tar, where every few steps a pod would open up above you and a creature would come lunging at you, which got incredibly annoying and repetitive after a while. While Condemned 2 wasn't all that bad a game, it was a very mediocre horror title when compared to the original

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

The online shooter market really opened up over the last few years, with a plethora of new elements such as unlock systems, class systems and innovative vehicular combat being thrown into the mix to yield some interesting results. Quake Wars was just that - an interesting 'result' of a hotch-potch of features that didn't gel together too well. While the game sounded like a sure-shot winner on paper, it's implementation left a lot to be desired. For one, the class system became a little complex and illogical at places, with a few classes having their special abilities overlap each other and lot of useless abilities being thrown in for the heck of it. Then the game had some really complicated maps, each of which had a learning curve of their own since objectives were scattered all over the place, making it frustrating for the new player to get a grip on things. The biggest flaw however, was the game's pacing - such fast combat just doesn't go well with so many complexities. Using your special abilities while indulging in gun-play became a chore more than anything else, making it a bit frying for all but the most obsessive online-FPS addicts out there.

Frontlines: Fuel of War

Here's another another ambitious shooter that failed miserably; Fuel of War was aimed at being a futuristic shooter with a persistent unlock system and tight gameplay. What we got instead, was a game that would just refuse to start up. Frontlines was riddled with technical issues that barred people from even playing the game initially. When you did get started, the game featured some horrendous framerates. Then there were a mother-load of issues with Punk Buster for many people, making the game completely unplayable for them. If you did get past all these issues, all you'd be rewarded by was a sub-par shooter which tried too hard to seem deep, but underneath it was just another shooter that was poorly designed, and implemented.