EA caught charging for demos
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The MMNTech GOTY Awards 2022: Biggest Disappointments
You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why. Because Santa Claus might bring you some of these terribly disappointing games. We’re making a list, and checking it twice, to warn all those clueless grandparents out there which games to stay away from during their holiday shopping. So without further adieu, let’s see which games of 2022 didn’t exactly ignite our Christmas pudding.
A note on “woke” games
Over the years, we’ve covered a lot of “woke” games on this list. After nearly a decade of this type of content, it’s just expected that if the marketing focuses on “diversity and inclusion”, or being updated for “modern audiences”, it’s probably going to be pretty bad. Remember this is biggest disappointments, not necessarily worst games. So we’ll no longer be including titles that are bad specifically for being woke, though it can be a mitigating factor in our decisions.
Dishonourable Mentions
The Callisto Protocol
This one squeaked just under the wire. Supposedly a spiritual successor to Dead Space, the only horror players were facing was poor performance, with it having numerous issues on Xbox and being borderline unplayable on PC.
Google Stadia
Yeah, few people were surprised when Google announced they were shuttering Stadia this year. Though it is a big disappointment for the handful of people who did use and enjoy the streaming service. At least Google did the decent thing for once, and refunded people for the games they’d bought.
Gotham Knights
People loved the Batman Arkham games. They’re classics in the stealth-action genre. People hoped WB would deliver something similar for next gen with Gotham Knights. Instead it was a dull and ugly looking game that ran poorly on consoles. WB tried blaming the Series S for holding them back, but in reality it’s just their team doesn’t know how to optimize their code.
The “How the Saints Glitched Christmas” Award goes to…
Saints Row Reboot (Volition/Deep Silver)
Saints Row is a series that has a special place in my heart. One that legit helped me get through some tough times thanks to its wacky plot and just being the ideal game to just fart around in. Maybe even better than GTA in some respects. The 2022 reboot though is all kinds of special, and not in a good way. One which begs to be nailed with the Penetrator in a round of Professor Genki’s Mind over Murder.
When we saw the trailer featuring a bunch of privileged looking college kids, we knew something was up. No Boss, no Shandi, no Pierce, no Johnny freaking Gat?! What the hell was this? Well, it turns out our suspicions were correct. What we got were a bunch of hipsters trying to start a gang in order to pay off their student debt. This might very well be the video game version of that “hello fellow kids” meme. Of course it got woke, but it was also quite literally broke. To the point of making the PC port of Saints Row 2 look moderately competent. Resulting in many hilarious glitches that now litter the bowels of YouTube. Basically, this was a Saints Row game in name only.
Adding to the hilarity, the game was originally due out the same week as Eldin Ring, but was pushed back to August. Likely because Volition and Deep Silver knew it couldn’t compete against such a juggernaut. So instead they pushed it to August, against Xenoblade 3. Oops. The game sold so poorly that parent company Embracer Group folder Volition and moved the team under Gearbox. Imagine screwing things up so bad that Randy Pitchford begins looking like your best option.
The racing to the bottom award goes to…
Gran Turismo 7 (Polyphony Digital / Sony)
Gran Turismo is perhaps the most prestigious franchise in the driving genre. Largely considered to be the pinnacle of hardcore racing simulators. A position it’s held since way back on the PS1. Yet it had been nearly a decade since fans had gotten a full fat release, not counting multiplayer only GT Sport back in 2017. Everyone was excited to finally get back behind the wheel with GT7 on the PS5. Only to find out the game was plastered with more monetization than your typical NASCAR.
GT always had a grind element to it, but GT7 dialed that up to eleven in order to force players to purchase its copious microtransactions. Microtransactions which were very pricey indeed. Some cars alone could cost up to $200 USD alone. Polyphony Digital president Kazunori Yamauchi came under fire trying to defend the practice, claiming the price of the cars reflected their real-world counterparts, to “convey their value and rarity.” Which might just be up there with “sense of pride and accomplishment” in terms of corporate tone deafness.
Furthermore, the game had an always-online requirement, even for single player. Which became a bit of a problem when servers went offline for 30 hours back in March. Sony compensated players by giving them a whopping $10 worth of in game currency to spend on microtransactions. Cheap. Of course GT7 did end up selling very well, proving why these same issues keep cropping up year over year.
The gotta catch all them bugs award goes to…
Pokémon Scarlett and Violet (Game Freak)
Pokémon. It’s not just the biggest video game franchise in the world. It’s the biggest media franchise period. Bigger than even Marvel and Star Wars. So you’d think with all that money, Game Freak could develop a rich and well polished, open world game that would absolutely knock the socks off all the would be trainers out there. Ah, ha ha, you sweet summer child.
We’re really seeing a trend here when it comes to big budget games releasing half-finished. And believe me, Scarlet and Violet has more bugs than a cave has Zubats. Aside from general poor performance, players noted things ranging from falling through the environment, to character models suddenly warping into grotesque Cronenberg creatures. On top of that, the open world just looked drab and pretty rough overall. It took all the flaws with Legends and amped them up.
Hardcore fans tried to defend the game by claiming it was due to the limited power of the Switch. Others were quick to point out that there were far more detailed games out there that ran just fine on the hybrid. Xenoblade came up a lot, since it’s a similarly large scale, open world JRPG. Even Witcher 3 ran better. Plus while the hardware could possibly excuse the low frame rates, it certainly didn’t excuse the other bugs. In reality, the game had been rushed out for the Holiday season, by a team that’s had over five years working with Switch hardware, but still can’t optimize for it. The situation got so out of hand that Nintendo reportedly began issuing refunds to some players. Which is something they never do. Execs at Big N and the Pokémon Company are sure going to be doing a lot of Koffing and Wheezing trying to clean up this Muk.
And the award for the most disappointing game of 2022 goes too…
Overwatch 2 (Activision Blizzard)
Ah, Blizzard, our old friend. The single most notorious studio in the industry right now. What would be a biggest disappointments list without you? Of course most gamers have come to expect their games are crap. But some of actually still do have a respectably large fanbase. Overwatch being the king of kings these days. The arena shooter that spawned so much Rule 34 has dominated the most popular game charts ever since it first started emptying Zoomer’s parents wallets back in 2016. It’s also huge in the eSports scene. So an awful lot was riding on its sequel. And with the backlash and bombs mounting, Blizzard certainly needed something good to wet players’ whistles. So did they? Of course not. But not quite in the ways you’d think.
First off, many players accused the game of being a pretty lazy update to the original Overwatch. Something we’ve seen quite a bit from online shooters lately. But what really irked fans is they got rid of loot boxes, for battle passes. I never thought I’d see the day when eliminating loot boxes would be a bad thing. Kids. Am I right? (Get off my lawn!) The game also doubled down on further monetization methods and required even more grinding for basic cosmetic items since going free-to-play. And to add insult to injury, of course there were server issues at launch, leading to some hilariously long queues for players to get in.
These battle arena games don’t really appeal much to me. But I think its fair to say that Blizzard has hardly redeemed its only really successful property in recent years. It’s not really bad, it just completely failed to live up to its lofty expectations. Which makes it an easy winner of our most disappointing game of 2022.
