2008 was a year of some really big releases. Many old franchises returned from hibernation, alongside the new-blood that hit the market with the promise of delivering excellence. Needless to say, many of them ended up falling short of being remotely awesome, and as a tradition we're going to discuss some of them. Nash put up his list of disappointments yesterday. Here's mine.


The promise of rich gameplay and an active, action-oriented combat system lured many of us weary MMO-fanatics in to the Age of Conan. The game showed a lot of promise with its dark, gritty world (which was unheard of in the MMO space) and voice acted quest-lines that would keep the adventurer within intrigued. To an extent the game managed to deliver! When you start off the game, you're introduced to the land of Tortage, the pirate bay that's under economic depression. The storyline was incredibly tight, with some epic quest-lines and impressive voice acting, which was a ton better than reading quest text as you did in World of Warcraft. Finally, about when you hit level 20, you head out from Tortage and into Hyborean land, and that's when the game went completely downhill. The voice acting was replaced by uninspired quest text, which wouldn't be an issue if the game hadn't spoiled us by making us used to voiced over quests in the first place! The questing got all to dull soon enough, and by the time you hit level 40+, the game became a shameless grind of uninspired quest chains. Also, the class imbalances shone through, making it close to impossible for many classes to engage in PVP action. To us, Age of Conan was a rollercoaster ride, with no highs after a certain point. A real shame - it had so much potential.


Since the birth of the current generation of consoles, I've fantasized of a survival horror game on these new platforms, that's at par with the first couple of Silent Hill titles. After the last few terrible Silent Hill games, the movie certainly made it seem like there was still scope for the franchise. Since Homecoming was the first game after the movie, my expectations from the franchise were rekindled. Unfortunately, Homecoming was no where close to the original Silent Hill games. While the game seems a little reminiscent of the first Silent Hill, it quickly draws you in to a zombie slaughter-fest. The main draw of the franchise has always been the combat difficulty that made even the most basic monster hard to kill. This completely changed in the past few games, as this time around the protagonist has some intense combat training that allows him to slices through most of the zombies with relative ease. Monsters are no longer the threat they used to be, drowning down the feeling of dread quite extensively.