I was actually wondering if I'd see Duke Nukem Forever mentioned, I never played it although I saw it got roasted pretty bad. Some people I've seen on youtube who've reviewed games I was on the fence about that I tend to trust also mentioned it was just not up to expectations.

(FPS history being varied, it was never my favorite genre but I loved the HEXEN series, DOOM (I think everyone who likes classic games plays DOOM still > _ >), I haven't gotten to replay Goldeneye64 but I enjoyed it a lot in the multiplayer style with friends, I even enjoyed playing the original Medal of Honor multiplayer with family years ago. Outside of that I was kind of mixed bag about the Halo series, didn't hate it but preferred other games, never got into Call of Duty games so have no opinion, really liked some of the Duke Nukem games I played, even the PS1 Duke Nukem. It is a genre I don't feel I'm knowledgeable enough in to weigh on properly as most of the modern popular games I've never played)

I normally manage to avoid games that aren't worth playing, but the biggest "look how they massacred my boy" moment for me was coming back to World of Tanks around 2014-15 after a 2-3 year absence. I'm not sure what happened, but the meta was to just rush forward and end the battle in literally 5 minutes. Back when I played, spotting was king and battles were often decided by the scouts. It was a much more deliberate pace. The new meta was disgusting. I wonder if it's still that way.

Yeah these MMO games usually dumbed down to carter to kids with attention problems , they cant sit on their asses for a minute no wonder rushing is the preferred game style.

Witcher 2

I am not sure of the biggest but this year Yesterday: Origins. Why did they have to change all the interface from the first game, that was working, and make it so clumsy? I might try again for the story but it was a downgrade from the first epidode.
Sad to see that now the good dtgreene seems to be under downvote attack like Gamezranker, downvote me as well folks! This forum gets more toxic by the day.

Why would I be so dumb to buy a game that would let me down? Never happened to me, I always do due diligence before spending my money to avoid any kind of disappointment and it pays off.

Well, the Street Fighter II Amiga port. One disk was scrached and the seller wouldn't change it, and the port was awful. Many Gameboy and Amiga games, expecially those with a famous IP.
Day of the Tentacle, the Italian dub was unbearable and I turned the voices off, and it was a disappointment as all Lucas games after IJ&tFoA (but S&M Hit the Road and Grim Fandango were fun at least).
I actually bought too many ugly games whose names are forgotten now. Expecially when I had to trust only zine reviews and boxes art.

don't get me started about nwn, and suddenly you can go at it alone, oh and with 1 friend of course, who you can switch for another friend when your done with being friends, now of course this seemed like traditional pc dnd but with more characters per party the switching is less.. obvious ( though still a horrible asset of any such a game ) still my younger self did enjoy himself a lot with the game

It's not really a bad game, but coming from BG1+2 and PS:T and expecting something even more awesome...

Middle-earth: Shadow of War, i watched this one trailer where they showcased a scripted event with an orc you recruit. i was surprised to find that in that >= 2 minute video they showed more than half the scripted events with a recruit in the game.
the rest of the game is very grindy. you have to take over orc outposts in at least 5 maps. i would say there is at least 10 outposts on each map excluding a giant castle you have to invade, also on every map. about 80% into the game in a scripted event all your progress taking over enemy territory is erased in a scripted event. and you have to go back and re-take that territory before the game will let you play the ending.

there are "story missions" but generally all of them are unrelated fetch quests.

you need a lot in game currency to unlock the most useful skills but this comes so rarely it will take a long time before you can do much with your character.

admittedly about 20% into the game i used cheat engine to acquire a lot of in-game currency and gems (recommended). however even after this the time spend upgrading your recruits at 5 levels a turn was unacceptable for me.

this is one of the worst games I've ever played. the developers made a goo enough core, but it seemed they just multiplied every mission so you have to do it 50 times, i got tired at about three.

TLDR; the marketing got me, game was clearly designed as pay to win. sure they took out the marketplace but they left everything else that depended on it leaving a game that's still grindy, even after cheating for infinite currency and crafting materials.

Been gaming since the mid-80s, and with memory being a funny thing I think I'll stick to the "gOg era" and catalog.

Here are a couple, and they come from completely different internal (me-based) perspectives:

Metro 2033. There was a lot of hype about this game, followed by complaints about how it wouldn't play nice on any except the very most potent PCs of the time. Okay, so it's supposed to be graphically WOW. Sure. But when you buy it long after release, that's not an issue. The gameplay just left me flat. Seemed like a rail shooter, along with some arbitrary restrictions to make the game harder than it needed to be, mostly with the 'economy'. Yeah, I get it: survival shouldn't be easy. But a game should be fun, right? This one wasn't fun - for me, anyway.

Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos. I adore this game. Love the space combat, graphics are great, controls were done well, the story is good, and you get a lot of freedom considering it has a linear story: only a few times are you forced to continue the story, and mostly instead you can fly around exploring and doing whatever you feel like. Good music, good 'world'... just a really well done title with gameplay that holds up yet today.

The letdown is that it ended when it did. You can tell that there was more planned for the game, and this was verified by a member of the development team who often provided help in the game's forum. Basically said that there was a 4th, larger, chapter planned, but it never came to fruition because of business reasons. The other letdown is that it wasn't particularly mod-friendly, so it didn't get the mod love that many other games have experienced.

Not many games have left me wanting more more more, but this one did. And it couldn't deliver. That's not to say it's a short game, because it isn't. But I feel that there was a lot of playtime left on the table with development stopped in order to get it to market.

I could mention Dragon Quest 4 DS, as the English version lacks the party chat that was in the Japanese version (and apparently counts for around half the total dialog in the remake).

(Note that the original Famicom/NES version did not have this feature, so it wasn't an issue back then.)

I had a problem with Mankind Divided. (I had just finished Human Revolution. It was okay. I haven't really been drawn back to play it again, though, even though subsequent playthroughs can start with more toys.)

Human Revolution does have an escape-triggered pause screen, which is good for me, but also has a lot of complex menus to navigate.

Although I have since advanced past it, I was turned off by the first major battle (before the credits!) because it was not clear what to do. (Now I know that the game wants to create a branching plot line from this early point —— whether the protagonist can save the NPC as well as the central mission to stop the helicopter taking off —— but the game had failed to interest me up to this point, which was a shame. I was enjoying the preamble; I even remarked that the cover system tutorial was fun in and of itself, but that battle was just chaotic.) And what is up with the default key for tossing a grenade [G] located between the default interaction key [F] and the holster current weapon key [H]?
Of course, then I hit a crash-to-desktop video bug when I was attempting to reach the first checkpoint on the first city. I suppose I should generate a trouble ticket ….

Of course, before that, I was most disappointed by Invisible War. I have finished the game a couple of times but it was just such a let-down after the first one that I can't even justify re-buying it here. I have zero interest in replaying it, it was just too shallow.
If you haven't already I would recommend playing the second expansion, Underdark. It is head-and-shoulders better in every way. It has a couple of great characters and much better locations to fight in, and you must participate and lead other third-party troops in a couple of set-piece pitched battles, like Icewind Dale 2.

My nomination would be NwN2.
I was really hyped to play it, to the point of buying several copies on release (for gifts to others) but, due to circumstances not related to gaming, I was unable to play it until recently, when I re-bought it here from Gog.

I have had trouble bringing myself to play it, now, since I find the interface quite cumbersome. (The menu/s are not very mouse-friendly; having to use both hands on the keyboard to control the game, as well as the mouse for directing the protagonist, just gives me more opportunities to miss the appropriate key at the correct moment.) When I compare it to, say, other turn-based games like XCOM, with its beautiful interface design (I don't need a keyboard to play it) I have trouble justifying all the extra fiddling.

Speaking of Dragon Quest, Dragon Quest 8 was also a bit of a letdown, with its fixed party, use of a skill point system (instead of the DQ6/7 job system), and slower-paced combat, compared to previous games in the series.

I enjoyed Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song more, aside from the fact that some of the music (including the normal battle theme) would give me headaches.