For consistency sake, let’s say that any game that’s >or=7/10 at what it’s trying to do while having a popular perception of being a <5/10 game in general would count. Want to specify that this is more about the perception of the game compared to, say, a game just being really niche.
My personal Go-to for this would probably be the Callisto Protocol, because while it certainly did have some troubles at launch they were massively overblown. IMO most of the hate for it comes down to people expecting it to be Dead Space 4 with a new name, ignoring the devs the multitude of times they said that it’s something else before release, and then getting mad when it released and wasn’t dead space 4 under a new name.
Cyberpunk 2077 is the poster child for this. That game was easily 7/10 even when it came out as a buggy mess. Now that it’s had a few years of polish, it’s much better than 7/10.
But the public perception was bad mostly because of unmet expectations. I don’t know if I’d call them “unreasonable” a they were set by the devs themselves, but either way, the game was and is much better than a lot of people think.
- It was announced way way way too early.
- Announced “It will be finished when it’s finished” on that way too early reveal.
- Years later, it’s not finished, but tough shit, the studio is out of money and the shareholders are pushing for release.
- It was released unfinished. Oops.
- Years later, it is now closer to the original expectations.
- Still no wall-running, so a lot of things they hyped and were expected are still unmet.
- The Flathead was supposed to be a thing you kept throughout the game, but they never got the AI pathing right with it, so they dropped it.
Well you’re mostly right in your original post, game was a solid 7/10 on release, but the studio just did so much disservice to themselves by hyping it up for nearly a decade before release, and especially hyping a bunch of stuff that never made it into the final product, and on top of all that breaking their own promise to not release until it’s finished.
The whole reason people liked The Witcher 3 was people were convinced the multiple delays to release “made it a better game.” It was at that moment that CDPR built the image that they won’t release a game “until it’s done.” They now had their own studio history working against them when they made the promise of “It’s finished when it’s finished” and people were expecting that. People loved that CDPR was so dedicated to the gamers that they wouldn’t let pesky things like money-men push a game out too early when it’s half-baked. Oops, they did exactly that with their next game, which absolutely shot all that goodwill from the players right through the heart, especially after already waiting nearly a decade for it.
In the end, are the expectations really unreasonable if the studio themselves were the people who built the hype those expectations were based on?
The problem is that they advertise it a certain way and sell preorders, and then the game doesn’t live up to what they advertised. Worse, they didn’t allow anyone to review the console versions which were so unplayable that Sony removed it from the store. It would have been fine if people knew exactly what they were paying for, but they were misled.
Sure, it was unmet expectations but even if the expectation was just 'it works", they still didn’t meet it. And that’s kind of the bare minimum to even be legal when you’re charging money for it. I disagree that the console versions were 7/10 on release - more like 1/10.
I don’t know what to tell you, I played it on Xbox just fine. Played the whole game through from start to finish and had fun. I believe the issue was with last gen consoles specifically.
And again, I think a lot of the criticism was reasonable. But my point is that the game itself was and is fun, but suffers because of the bad reputation it got at launch thanks to some ill-advised (intentional understatement alert!) decisions by CDPR.
Yes, the issue was with last gen consoles. I don’t think that matters to the point I am making, nor that it worked for you personally on your setup. It worked okay for me too, but I was on a high-end PC.
No Man’s Sky is still, in my opinion, trying to make up for what it was on release. It’s a great game now. Not my jam as I find it far too expansive for my tastes, but I can’t knock it for what it is today. I think it’s a work of art and the seamless planet travel is pretty damn cool.
I really enjoyed Watch_Dogs, despite the shit it got at the time.
I got it for free and really enjoyed it. The main character is the epitome of beige and bland generic gruff white dude but the game did quite a lot new and had some good ideas.
The second one was even better, it’s very meme heavy in its characters but if you can tolerate them the gameplay is even better and the story is better too.
Metal Gear: AC!D
It was such a great adaptation of stealth-action, but people didn’t like that it had “Metal Gear” in the name. I absolutely adored the card collecting and deck-building, and the very deep, seemingly-emergent combos you could pull off.
I’ll throw my hat into this ring with Monster Hunter Rise. I often spend my time browsing monster hunter content and almost every time Rise gets brought up it’s just to talk about how much worse it is than World. I’ll say it now, yes I also prefer World to Rise, but holy fuck do I still love Rise.
To start with, let’s compare the two. Monster Hunter is developed by 2 teams who take turns making games. World was developed by the mainline team who are known for more grounded and polished games. Rise was developed by the portable team who are known for flashier and more experimental games. Most players started the Monster Hunter series with World (it’s Capcom’s #1 best selling game of all time after all) and so going from the high detail immersive World to the action packed fast paced Rise was extremely jarring. A massive portion of the hate just comes from the fact that it was different.
Also, as you can probably guess from the name, the portable team makes games for portable systems, such as the Switch, which immediately gives them less power to work with system-wise. Couple this with the fact that Rise was developed during the pandemic, and Rise was really dealt a rough hand. Graphically it’s a massive downgrade from World, and it even ended up releasing without an ending or any non-scripted elder dragon fights.
In spite of all this, even though Rise lacks a ton of the personality and charm of World, it’s still an absolute blast to play! The combat is stellar, and while it may not have the weight World had, its fluidity and high adrenaline action makes it some of the best in the series. The sunbreak expansion especially really improved the game in every single way, fixing a ton of the issues people had with the base game. I feel that most players already moved on after base Rise and so didn’t get to experience that improvement unfortunately.
TL;DR play Monster Hunter Rise. It’s really good. Just don’t go in expecting the same experience as World.
