Bioware is going to fall into that camp for me unless Mass Effect turns out to be good. I loved the original Baldur's Gate and thought KOTOR was quite good (although I didn't love it as much as many do), but Neverwinter Nights wasn't quite what I was hoping it would be and Jade Empire was a major letdown. I haven't written them off yet but I get the feeling that the media just assumes everything they make will be gold. I'm not convinced of that yet.

Overhyped enough for you?

Sacriligeous as it may sound, I think that Bungie and Square-Enix are two of the most overhyped game developers/publishers I'm familiar with.

Bungie should be obvious. Both Halo 2 and Halo 3 have some cool, incremental additions to gameplay that the previous iterations didn't. That said, overall the games are fairly solid retreads of the previous iterations too. I think Bungie's a little overhyped, especially this third time around, when the hype is even more than it was for 2, and I thought that was overhyped.

Square-Enix is one of my favorite developers, but even so, I think that they've gotten a bit overhyped over the last several years. Too many solid non-Square-Enix jrpg's are overlooked while mediocre or slightly above-average ones from S-E are hyped like crazy because hey, it's Square-Enix!

I miss the Romero.

Yeah they should have rented a shack out in the middle of no-where and spent that money getting the game to actually be fun instead of killing millions of insects as game play lol!

TURBO FROG ATTACK!

I definitely think Bungie is overhyped, though they do make fun games. Halo 2 wasn't (and still isn't) as great as everyone says it is. We've seen with Halo 3 though, that they can make a good game when they actually try.

Destination Games (the poopstorm of Tabula Rasa)and even though they haven't released a game yet Flagship Studios. I just finished watching a few new videos of Hellgate London and one ten minute long gameplay video and found myself severely underwhelmed.

3D Realms.

Here is a company that claims to be self-funded and is apparently raking in the money and they haven't released a game in like 10 years. You have to admire a company that can turn one game into a lifetime of royalties. Imagine working on a game with no deadlines. They have truly stumbled onto the holy grail of game development.

I prefer the 'old testament' God of Square. The Tri-une God of the 'new testament' is lacking in something... i think it could be Mana

I know i'll get flamed for this because everyone knows what i think on the subject but Valve are an over-hyped developer.
Sure, they make decent games - not great but good. However, they can't project manage to save their lives....

Although i love me some Duke, i would say that 3DRealms are over-hyped but they haven't released anything for a long time now and as such they are over-under-hyped.

I think that Bungie are over-hyped with regards to Halo... but i believe that they could make another great series like Marathon or even an updated Pathways into Darkness if they were given the chance.

Oh yeah and Blizzard are SO over-hyped it isn't real. Just make Diablo 3 and i'll forgive you...

/rant

Sidetracking briefly here, but I'll just say this: watching Diablo 2 videos was always horribly dull and not exciting to me. Playing Diablo 2, on the other hand, was blissful. Watching Hellgate videos is ok but still pretty dull. On the other hand, .

I respect the man. John Carmack had a ton of good things to say about Romero in Masters of Doom and id's games lost most of their originality after he left.

Marathon was a great series as well. I used Halo 3 as an example because it reminded me that Bungie knows what they're doing.

But are their games the messianic comings that people believe them to be?

Those ports where not made by 3DRealms internal teams... it's the difference between Raven and id.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one Irongut old boy. Generals and the expansion were quite innovative and very much a departure from the tired GDI vs Nod storyline.

I would say Bungie as well. They've released a number of good games (and the Halo games are by no means bad) but I don't believe they're the second-coming of gaming as many others do. I like Molyneux and a lot of what he's done in the past (I personally think Dungeon Keeper was awesome) but lately, he has heavily overpromised and I think some of those titles have taken a lot of hype away from those that deserved it more (like how Black & White stole StarTopia's thunder.) I think Team Ninja has been overhyped in many ways. Ninja Gaiden is an awesome game that I respect a lot but Dead Or Alive is a weak fighting series to me and the Xtreme games are just laughable. Itagaki acts as though he's the lord's gift to gaming and though I think a lot of that is a marketing persona since he didn't used to be like that at all and suddenly changed one day. I think BioWare is awesome but were it not for their hype in the community, I don't think Neverwinter Nights would have been the success it was.