What was your WORST buy of the year?

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For me, it'd be NFS: Most Wanted. Just got bored and frustrated with the game after about an hour of playing it, nevermind the fact that I paid full price and you can get it at most places for $35 now.

My least favorite game of the year is The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition, but I actually finished that. I also paid full price for Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and barely got 4 hours of play between the multiplayer and campaign. So I guess that was the worst buy, but TW2 is the one I remember least fondly.

I was just thinking about starting a thread like this. I guess black Friday and steam sales make you reflect on your gaming life.

Mine would Diablo 3. This is not a comment on the quality of the game. I appreciate the quality. I just knew I don't like those types of games, but got caught up in the hype and have now played through half of it and will likely never play it again.

As kind of a preview of what I'll be saying in the inevitable GOTY thread(s), looking back I'm finding it hard to really feel anything about the games I've played this year. No real low or high points.

Skyrim or a used copy of Madden 2011.

This isn't really a judgement of the games, though I was a little disappointed with Skyrim.
I'm basing this on a Money Spent / ( Hours of Play * Fun Had) and I only put in about 18 hours on Skyrim and zero on Madden. I've become super selective on what games I pick up these days and I'd spend more time listening to gaming podcasts than playing on average.

Mine would be the contract I got into with Blizzard thinking I might actually start playing WoW again. I downloaded the game again, played for about an hour, realized I wasn't missing any part of it and haven't touched it since. Nevermind the fact that I've been out of the country since before Diablo 3 came out so I haven't even touched that yet. I hope you enjoy my money, jerks.

Mine's definitely Diablo III, even though I got it on a special discount. It actually occurred to me last night when I was reinstalling a bunch of games to a new drive that I haven't played that in months and wasn't anywhere near finishing it and I honestly don't care. I love the genre to death but aside from the always-on DRM, broken auction house balance, server problems and missing features that were supposed to be delivered by now and haven't, the game feels like they stripped out much of what made Diablo great. Whether that was in the interests of monetization, streamlining or something else I don't know but I just don't find it very good. I will keep it installed and finish it at some point but I think I'll be done with it after that. Clearly I'm in the minority based on how it's sold but I just don't like the direction Blizzard as a whole is going right now.

A few months ago I installed Windows 7 (yes, finally). And I reinstalled some games and what not. Diablo 3 did not get reinstalled then. Still haven't reinstalled it. Ya, its the gaming purchase I regret this year. Pretty much what that post above me said about it applies, so do a cut&paste of that one here.

IUMogg wrote:

Mine would Diablo 3. This is not a comment on the quality of the game. I appreciate the quality. I just knew I don't like those types of games, but got caught up in the hype and have now played through half of it and will likely never play it again.

I'm in the same boat. Played a couple hours tops. Those games are a chore to play to me now

A bunch of 2 dollar TF2 keys that gave me crappy stuff like a Strange Crusader's Crossbow. Really, Valve? I thought we were friends.

For those of you disappointed with Diablo 3, give it another shot, it got better with the 1.05 patch

Skyrim. Bought it at full price and played less than 2 hours.

Heroes of Might and Magic VI.

Bad, bad oMonarca.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Skyrim. Bought it at full price and played less than 2 hours.

I don't know what it is, but I couldn't get behind this game like everyone else was. I played the crap out of Oblivion and Morrowind, but either times have changed or the game did more than I though.

Probably a tie between Diablo 3 and Borderlands 2.

Apparently Forza Horizon, which just dropped to $14.99 not a month after I paid full price. Love the game, but geesh!

Kingdoms of Amalur and Darksiders 2. I bought both for full price, and they are still in their shrink wrap. I could get either for a fraction of what I paid for them.

I would say Uncharted and Gravity Rush on Vita, too; both are free on PS Plus now.

oMonarca wrote:

Heroes of Might and Magic VI.

Bad, bad oMonarca.

Man, I forgot about this one. This is definitely it for me as well. I played a bunch of it, beat one campaign, and was thoroughly done. That game is exhausting. I got it for the multiplayer, only to realize that it didn't have the "real time" feature of V where people could take turns at the same time, VASTLY speeding up the game.

Kingdoms of Amawhatever. Got a lot of play out of it for like $35 bucks, but I really didn't like it at all. All of that playtime was wasted time where I could have been playing Skyrim or Assassin's Creed II or something.

spider_j wrote:

Kingdoms of Amalur and Darksiders 2. I bought both for full price, and they are still in their shrink wrap. I could get either for a fraction of what I paid for them.

Although that's more an issue of game prices falling off soon after launch, that's also something that gets me about the whole day-one DLC thing. Companies should be making you feel good about shelling out on their game, making you feel like because you felt good enough about a game to rush out and buy it that you're getting lots for your money (at the point it's most expensive) and not "hey, you don't mind if I reach in your pocket for a bit more money for the 'full' full version, would you? otherwise you just got the incomplete version".

MisterStatic wrote:

Apparently Forza Horizon, which just dropped to $14.99 not a month after I paid full price. Love the game, but geesh!

That's a crying shame as Horizion has one of the top spots in my current GOTY list.

Anyway, following the dollar to time played idea, I'm going to go with Witcher 2 (360) and SSX. Payed full price for both and put only a few hours into each.

The head scratching part is that I was completely stoked for these titles. Pouring over previews, chatting them up in the Catch All topics, hunting down the best pre-order deals.

Taking it a step further, I even recall having glowing initial impressions for W2 and SSX. But something just happened where things stopped clicking. I found the combat in Withcer needlessly obtuse and fussy and was turned off by the "stick to the trails" traversal coming off of Skyrim. SSX was a rush to start with, but terrain obsticals (bottomless crevasses, too-tight tunnels that made you corkscrew against your will) just killed the pacing and natural flow of past SSX titles.

What kills me is that I see good games in both cases. Heck, I even tried to restart Witcher 2 at least 3 times. But a bad combination of design flaws (some minor that wouldn't bother most) has turned me off these titles.

It's strange 'cause I can think of minor niggles in lots of games that I love to death, but I'm able to happily overlook them. Yet if I can't get pulled in with a tiltle during the initial honeymoon phase, then those same flaws can be a death sentence.

Borderlands 2, full price. I put hours and hours in expecting it to finally 'click' but it just never happened for me. I think I'm probably an hour or two away from finishing it and I've been meaning to go back and do the final mission for a while, hasn't happened so far, probably never will.

I was going to say Diablo 3, but honestly I had fun my first couple playthroughs. Therefore I have to say paying for a SWTOR subscription through May. I kept hoping the game would get better and that Bioware would continue the excellent storyline instead of focus on raiding and lackluster PVP. Once again Star Wars breaks my heart.

jdzappa wrote:

I was going to say Diablo 3, but honestly I had fun my first couple playthroughs. Therefore I have to say paying for a SWTOR subscription through May. I kept hoping the game would get better and that Bioware would continue the excellent storyline instead of focus on raiding and lackluster PVP. Once again Star Wars breaks my heart.

I did the same thing. Recently I got an email from them saying that since it went F2P, all of my subscription payments got turned into in-game credit. I think that's just a last ditch effort to bring people back to the game though.

I think people are attributing WORST to disappointing.

Since you can't resell games, I think most of them are right.

oMonarca wrote:

I think people are attributing WORST to disappointing.

Since you can't resell games, I think most of them are right.

?_? I resell games all the time. Blew through the Witcher 2 so I thankfully made back $35 on it.

I was referring to Diablo 3, so I forgot about consoles

NFS Most Wanted is the best racing game I've played in the past few years. I just had to get that off chest.

Back on topic, I bought a few JRPGs this year (Resonance of Fate and Eternal Sonata) which I only put almost an hour into each. I hope to put more in Persona 3 Portable, but I'm only at about 3 hours so far and I haven't played for several weeks. I want to play a good JRPG, but I haven't found one that clicks recently.

The worst part about digital downloads is that you can't get at least a portion of your money back for that crappy game you bought

LeetMonkey wrote:

For me, it'd be NFS: Most Wanted. Just got bored and frustrated with the game after about an hour of playing it, nevermind the fact that I paid full price and you can get it at most places for $35 now.

Ditto. I played maybe two hours worth and was constantly annoyed the entire time. Criterion hasn't made a good game since whatever the last Burnout title before Paradise was.

Spacechem for the iPad. Although it was only a couple of dollars, it took me about three minutes to realise that I was never going to play the game again.

Probably Guilds Wars 2, but not due to any fault of the game. I thought I was ready to play a MMO again and realized after a week of playing it I wasn't. I do hope to get back to it at one point, so hopefully it won't be always be a regretful purchase.

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