Dragon age 2 - should never have bought it ruined Dragon Age for me after that.

Command & Conquer 4 - biggest disapointment for me ever. How to kill a great series in 1 go. Had bugger all to do with th original series story was tacked onto another game change a few units and call it C & C. Even the story was crap and made nosense and where the hell where the aliens thar pplayed a large part in the previous C & C i think they read the script said sod this we will inade somewhere else and buggered off from earth.

I gotta say i'm suprised to see quite a few of my favorite games are what other people realy didn't like (all thats missing is Alpha Protocol, but I'm sure that will come up) Hellgate, Guild Wars Factions and Total Annihilation

But I'll agree with DA2 or lets make a sequel that has nothing to do with the first game and ruin all the decent gameplay.

The ultimate disappointment with a game for me would have to be Spore. It was hyped (and developed) as something like a science geek's wet dream. Then, about a year before release, they changed the focus of the game, and what ended up being released was a cute, casual The Sims-wannabe, with a lot of the cool functions shown during development removed.

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening - I loved DA:O, I enjoyed the story and the characters and felt that my Warden was a fleshed out person who made some tough choices by the end... then Awakening hit and so many of the great things about the main game were just tossed and the "integration" with the main game was a tenuous thread at best [opinion remember folks].

Dragon Age 2 - I shouldn't have been disappointed, I saw the videos and was worried by what I noticed there... but the game itself just; well I haven't been that disappointed in a game in ages.

Mass Effect 2 - people laud this as an awesome game... they love it more than ME 1. For me it was a disjointed rail car ride through pre-scripted stops that lost much of what made ME 1 so amazing for me. [No, I will not argue about it - tired of being shouted down by fans of ME 2]

Master of Orion 3 and Unreal 2.

Nuff said.

Good point. I had forgotten about that one.

The concept seemed intriguing enough (decisions made at the multi-cellular stage of evolution rippling all the way up to the highest level of civilization), but then I got the distinct feeling when playing it that the developers had byten on more than they could chew.

The cellular stage was not bad (if not remotely realistic). It was all downhill after that.

For me, I don't think anything can quite top Neverwinter Nights 2 in this regard. After putting an enormous amount of time into NWN1, I knew this would be impossible to spoil! Everything is already there, just polish up the graphics and you're set!

I actually quite liked the plot, but the gameplay and mechanics were from the pits! Gone were the fluent animations, replaced by characters wobbling there like something out of an inane jrpg. Camera hated me, floor tiles grabbed me, the inventory was a confusing mess. The worst thing however, was the way it also made NWN1 seem dated in comparison and now both of them are old and ugly. :(

A more recent disappointment was Mass Effect 2. Loved everything about the first one. Hated every single change introduced in the second part. Like planet exploration, in first one you roam around the terrain in a cool craft, in the second you rub a planet in radar mode. Sure, the exploration in the first one was repetitive and took a long time, it's sure faster in the second. But does anyone actually enjoy rubbing planets?

I'm still avoiding Dragon Age 2, actively trying to downgrade my expectations so the disappointment won't be all overwhelming when I inevitably take the plunge.

I was quite disappointed with LA:N, on saying that, I dont think any R* games deserve the hyped scores they get.

I'm going to have the go with the first Fable (haven't played any of the others). I remember throughout development there was a lot of talk about all the great innovative features that they were going to include. Ultimately it wound up as a roughly 12 hour hack and slash without much depth at all.

Maybe saying "overhyped" is better. In my case I was expecting a lot from Total Annihilation because everyone said it is so much better than e.g. Starcraft, and I simply loved Starcraft. But to me TA was mainly mediocre, if not a poor, game. A generic C&C clone I'd say.

Maybe TA was not really a similar game at all as SC (which I was expecting because everyone was comparing them), but the things I really liked in SC were missing in TA, like the story, different units and wildly different (yet balanced) factions. Playing SC with Terrans, Zerg or Protoss was like playing three different RTS games, while playing both factions in TA felt just like playing the same game through twice.

Also I didn't understand why TA had so many different units which resembled each other so much. Maybe I liked the rock-paper-scissors kind of gameplay in SC more, gave at least some reason to make different kinds of units.

I liked the music in TA quite a bit, though. :)

Then again, I must say that later playing Age of Empires and Mythology games spoiled Starcraft a bit, it felt much simpler game after them.

I don't play strategy games online, so I have no idea if TA was the king in that domain.

Black & White

While technically good, it ended up as something far less than Lionhead's hype made it out to be. I put maybe 20 hours into it before it dawned on me that it lacked any actual gameplay.

Diablo 2. I spent many, many hours playing Diablo and loving it, and I was incredibly hyped for the sequel. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it stripped away almost everything that made the first game so good. Diablo was a game; Diablo 2 is a loot generation script with a GUI.

Mass Effect 2. The first game was incredibly flawed, but I enjoyed it very much, certainly far more than I expected. ME2, however, I just can't finish. The game does actually correct many of ME1's failings, but unfortunately, it doesn't replicate its successes. It started out okay, but the sluggish plot and unlikeable characters eventually drove me away.

Scrapland. I bought it on release because I loved Alice. I played it once and haven't bothered with it since.

Mother 3. Earthbound is my favorite JRPG of all time, and I've been itching for Mother 3 ever since they were promising it for N64. When I finally got my hands on the fan-translated game last year... I found it to be a soulless husk with none of the spark, warmth, or wisdom that made Earthbound such an incredible game.

Deus Ex 2. After hearing what everyone else thought I held off on buying the game until it hit the bargain bin. Paid $9.99 for it. (wanted to pay $80.00 for a collectors edition but there was far too much negative buzz right at release, so I held off).

Even expecting it to be bad I was still disappointed. Unified ammo??? No skill system??? ridiculous hud, very short game, lousy xbox limitations, etc, etc.

I recently played through it again anticipating the third game coming up. If DX2 had come out first, it might not be all bad. Having come out after the original... its pretty ridiculous with all the downgrades. Sadly, I'm expecting DX3 to come out riddled with DRM meaning I'll not get to play it. Lucky for me, both New Vision and Revision look to be finishing up production and will give some nice replays of the original ;)

need for hot pursuit 2010 don't know about the pc version but the ps3 version sucked especially after they patched it long loading times, forced difficulty , insane ai , no story at all

oh although both unreal 2 and quake 4 were decent games but they never brought back the hype and pretty much faded away fast, lets not talk about doom 3 and unreal 3