2017 was a hell of a year for the gaming industry in general.
A lot of things have happened. There had been multiple controversies and scandals revolving around the community that it’s anyone’s guess which direction video games are going to take. It’s hard to say that this is the golden year for gaming in general. There had been some good games that came our way, but there had also been quite the letdowns. We’re here to take a look at the top 5 gaming letdowns for the year 2017. For it to count as a letdown, people have to be expecting it to be good.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle
How hard can it be to get your beat-them-up-game right? It’s clear that this new Power Rangers installment is nothing but a bad cash grab. Absolutely no effort or passion was put into making this. You’ve got the one same soundtrack playing over and over again throughout the whole game. There’s not much variety whatsoever. You just go from beating one boring enemy to the next in uninspired levels. Even the previous Power Ranger beat-them-up games from a long time ago did it much better. You can play it multiplayer of up to four players, but that just means suffering with your friends.
Mass Effect Andromeda
When Mass Effect Andromeda came out, it was subjected to a lot of negative reception and for good reason. The game was just very unpolished and characters felt rather uninspired. For the Mass Effect franchise to be taking on a new galaxy system, one would expect it to be the same caliber as the previous Mass Effect installments, but it’s not. Granted, that Andromeda has big shoes to fill and a lot to improve on but generally it was just a step back from what the previous installments had to offer with its many bugs and glitches and the occasionally cringy dialogue that it’s just difficult to take seriously in any way. It’s clear that Andromeda should’ve taken a few more months—if not a whole year—of time in development polishing and rethinking newer directions. While it’s not a train wreck of a game, as the core gameplay can be fun, Andromeda ultimately needed more polish and better writing.
Valkyria Revolution
As a big fan of Valkyria Chronicles, having been through the previous installments, Revolution was a huge let down. It had nothing of the charm that Valkyria Chronicles had—having opted to take away its robust gameplay with a more Dynasty Warriors approach to combat. And while it can be fun at time, it just doesn’t quite work in general. To top it all off with a terrible story and mostly uninteresting generic characters, Valkyria Chronicles was a train wreck of a game. Granted, it’s a new approach to the game just one that doesn’t really add anything to the franchise in general except be a blemish on its history. Revolution proves that Valkyria Chronicles isn’t meant to be a hack-and-slash game. The frequent loading in between cutscenes doesn’t help add much to this game at all. Revolution is technically a more action packed version of Valkyria Chronicles instead of a more tactical one. Even as a standalone game independent from the Valkyria Chronicles name, it’s just bad, plain and simple. Fortunately, we have the new Valkyria Chronicles 4 to look forwards to.
Star Wars Battlefront II
There’s a lot to say about style over substance. Amazing graphics don’t necessarily make for a good game. While Battlefront 2 can classify as a working game, there is a lot to improve on and it is a few steps backwards from its previous installments not including its most recent predecessor Battlefront 1. While the story had some interesting things to add to the lore of the newly released Star Wars Episode 7 and 8, gameplay was somewhat of a generic shooter. Multiplayer in total is also generic shooter where everyone just went off to do their own thing. While it’s not quite as pay-to-win as everyone accuses it of it’s not quite the satisfying experience either. Star Wars Battlefront 2 is not the game we deserve. All this without even touching the microtransaction/loot box controversy.
Destiny 2
It’s not a bad game. If you look at it from a newcomer’s perspective, it can be rather fun to pay. But that’s just about it. For those who have played its predecessor, they’d realize that Destiny 2 is technically just a more improved version of the first one with nothing really new to attract the old players from coming back. It’s not one of the worst of this year’s, but it is still somewhat of a letdown. Destiny 2 capitalizes on its fun gameplay, but doesn’t quite deliver and take full advantage of its own premise. When it comes down to it, it’s not really all that bad and doesn’t deserve to be on this list the way it is. What’s really a real letdown though, is that Bungie was caught reducing XP Gains and lying about it. That’s just shameful.
And there you have it, the top 5 letdowns of 2017. Now you don’t have to agree with this list as some of the games included can be quite fun to play. But for us, this is some of the biggest letdowns of last year. Hopefully, 2018 will be a better year for gaming, but seeing as 2017 already has a lot of good games released that can be quite the bar set high. But it can be hoped that 2018 doesn’t have as many letdowns nor controversies.
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