Oh, I have no idea if it was a failure or not, I just personally didn't enjoy it. It didn't have the same feel to it - I just liked SM64 because it had fantastic gameplay but still sorta 'looked' like Super Mario Brothers.

Every Warcraft game ever made.

Every Halo after the first one.

Every Mario and Sonic game after the first three for both respectively.

Goldeneye. I hated the shitty ass controls. Still do.

I played my copy for under an hour - I kept failing the stealth section in the tutorial level, skipped to the main storyline, died repeatedly in the first couple of minutes, and decided the dull storyline and incredibly unappealing stealth-shooter gameplay weren't my thing. And yes, I know, blasphemy - but hey, I didn't like Splinter Cell either. If you're going to have completely unforgiving level design, work on your controls so the player isn't defeating himself.

Right now, Test Drive Unlimited 2. It's great if all you want to do is free-roam, but the races (especially the timed ones) are annoying as hell given the poor handling of the vehicles in race conditions. And the licenses in order to take part in the races? Even worse. Not to mention that each new patch appears to break the offline game even more than the one before it =/.

I bought Gran Turismo 3 once upon a time. My roommate knocked on my room door because I had been playing and complaining with steadily increasing volume for two hours. I had yet to get my license to drive - on any races at all. I returned the game the next day after playing for two more hours, getting a license, and being unable to place in any races.

Heroes of Newerth. It seemed like it was going to be the perfect replacement for DotA at LANs, but they decided to limit the game to Internet-only, so there's not much we can do with it now.

I had pretty much the same experience with Gran Turismo 4. I only kept it as I could at least use the practice option and it features the only car I'd really want to own if I ever bothered to own a car.

Bioshock. It was a very poor shooter IMO, and the whole plasmids thingy wasn't that interesting after a few hours. I forced myself to finish the game since I had read the ending was good. The story finally took off, but not the gameplay. Good thing the game was not that long : a few more hours and I would have given up.

Dawn Of War: Soulstorm

I REALLY wanted to love this game, I really did. The Adepta Sororitas were an army that came out after I stopped playing 40K (though since I never had an opponent, the word playing is somewhat misused) so I was rather interested to see how they'd work out. I was also hoping to have a return to the more story driven campaign after the dark heresy risk map approach. The flying units sounded potentially cool as well. I was never interested in the dark eldar (they just seemed redundant) so I wasn't expecting anything interesting out of them.

Sadly my expectations about the dark eldar were the only ones that came true.

The campaign was exactly the same risk thing with a few extra territories (which were, amazingly enough, practically identical to the main game ones), the air units were frankly shit and implemented badly and to top it off the sororitas were chickmarines with flamers and what was essentially a greater daemon as a super unit

-----This is underwhelming-----
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-----This is soulstorm-----

Souldstorm would have worked if Dark Crusade had not come out before it - it left soulstorm without any real novelty save new races and the air units to really expand the game upon. Thus I think a lot of people felt cheated at a new game price on something that was really a light expansion to the main game.
Myself I got it through the THQbundle on steam one holiday season so it was ultra cheap ;) But yes I didn't find it that thrilling after so much Dark Crusade ;)


However Soulstorm isn't my bane in this thread its Sword of the Stars - I've got the whole game and expansions and I want to like it. Its got some great cartoony artwork that I like; interesting species; interesting ideas - but but I just can't get on with it. I think its mostly because I've not worked the game out and it can take a very long time on larger maps (and if you've not worked it out the ai crushes you either in one swift stroke or through a very long attrition where you just don't quite get the position to push back nor really defend that well).
I'll work it out someday I will!!

I have this trouble with all 4X games. I thoroughly enjoyed what I've played of SotS, but like you, I purchased the game and all the expansions and find myself completely bogged down in it. I read the immense manual and have tried to learn to play it, but I've yet to spend the time sitting down and really learning by doing. It reminds me of Evil Genius - in that game, you'd have to be very lucky or have foreknowledge of potential expansions and technologies and what rooms you'll have access to and need to use in order to have any hope of using your first island properly, so you really can't expect to win the first few games - they're more learning experiences than anything.

Alpha Protocol, I read good things about it on this forums and I knew I should expect some technical problems but I was ready to disregard that as long as the gameplay and story were interesting. What I got was underwhelming to say the least: bland, generic and uninspired graphics and it looks like something a mod team could have made in a couple of weeks using freely available textures and models. Also the story starts slow and there is nothing that could make me want to submit myself to its horrible gameplay to get to a more interesting part. In short I expected something like Mass Effect in a different setting but the game fell short on every regard.
I wanted to like Braid too but its pretentious "story" made me lose interest.

Dragon Age: Origins, uhg:(

Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor

The Force Unleashed 2

Bulletstorm. Everyone says it's the amazing kind of stupid, but when I play it, all I see is stupid.