What was your WORST buy of the year?

Xcom. Broke my rule on ordering before release in case of bugs and seeing what happens with DLC. Turned out to be buggy and with DLC plans I didn't agree with.

Borderlands 2. Making me wait until level 5 before I get any special abilities is far too long, and the guns are all samey and boring. I'm going to put more time into the game at some point just to see if it gets better, but really there's no excuse for a game not to be fun right out of the gate.

I was going to go for skyrim, but then I realised I had cast Diablo 3 out from my memory.

Koz wrote:

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.

This. I picked up Guild Wars 2 and it isn't sticking with me. It is clearly me, since I can tell the game is top both and I'm a man whore for spurrier titles. Hello SWTOR...

Also Crusader Kings 2. I love that people enjoy it but I just haven't been able to get through the learning curve.

Malor wrote:

Dragon Age 3 was probably my most disappointing purchase in the last, I dunno, five years? I don't think I've been that disappointed in a game since Dreamfall.

Are you from the futar? Temporal Paradox!

Mass Effect 3 was probably my worst purchase in the last, I dunno, five years? I don't think I've been that disappointed in a game since Dreamfall.

I'd already fixed it before you replied, juv3nal.

The Witcher 2 for me. Like Aaron D., I was really looking forward to it based on everything I'd heard, but it just didn't click with me at all. I thought the systems were obtuse, the world was restrictive, and the writing—almost universally lauded as mature and adult, and my main draw—was puerile and asinine ("a fourth-level curse"!). I gave it the old college try, and fortunately at least got $30 back for it. Then The Walking Dead came out and fulfilled those expectations I'd had for TW2.

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 Black Friday deal, it hasn't depreciated that much already (or at all, it's still $60 regularly AFAIK).

I really only bought a handful of games, maybe 3-4 this year. For that reason, I can't really say any of them were outright bad purchases. Still, I would have spent my money a bit differently given the choice again.

I'm a huge X-Com junkie having sunk hundreds of hours into the original. So yeah, expectations were high going into the remake. The remake is solid, but it's also buggy and lacks the same level of replayability due to the simplified strategic layer. It isn't so much a regretted purchase as wishing I hadn't spent so much to buy it.

Torchlight 2 is a bit of a weird purchase. I got it as part of a 4-pack, so not expensive. That said, I've played it for a grand total of 20 minutes, and I'm simply not excited about playing more if it right now. In other words, I could just as well have waited to buy it, so it feels like a bit of a waste right now.

Blind_Evil wrote:

My least favorite game of the year is The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition, but I actually finished that.

I'm trying to comprehend this but my brain can't process it.

Mine so far is probably Ragnorak Odyssey. I don't dislike the game, but I've overall urged on Vita games and I really want to dive into Persona 4 now after only putting an hour or two into RO.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier - this was grabbed at full price when I was drinking a lot.

Need For Speed: Most Wanted - A Criterion Game.

What the heck was that!?

Warriorpoet897 wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

My least favorite game of the year is The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition, but I actually finished that.

I'm trying to comprehend this but my brain can't process it.

Mine so far is probably Ragnorak Odyssey. I don't dislike the game, but I've overall urged on Vita games and I really want to dive into Persona 4 now after only putting an hour or two into RO.

At least two or three other people here have said the same, so I know I'm not alone. The background gameplay systems aren't intuitive and largely unnecessary due to the shallow combat, the scope is very limited, and while the plot is decent they managed to take characters I really liked in the Witcher novels and make them totally unlikable.

And it's not that this was the worst game, it's that everybody said it was amazing. To me it's nowhere near.

Oh I wasn't totally serious. I could see why the game might not click with people. I actually prefer the original Witcher, though the interface is much worse than the second one.

Worst purchase would probably be Darksiders II simply I should have held off on buying it since I already had a couple of games I was more interested in. I will go back and play more of it once the current crop runs out, but I really didn't need to buy it when I did.

All things considered though, that's a sign of a pretty good year overall.

Edit: Actually, make that Saint's Row 3. I picked it up after seeing it get so much love around these parts, but I guess I just don't like those types of games. A textbook case of being able to see why people enjoyed it, but it's not for me.

Sword of the Stars 2. Okay, that was a 2011 buy... but the pain lived on well into 2012. T_T

LeapingGnome wrote:

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

+1 on Skyrim but I didn't buy it full price I think 30~-35$. I think I played it more than 2 hours but it still doesn't justify this expensive buy.

I think Diablo 3 was #2 worst buy because It was really expensive (even though I subsidized it with gift cards) and I didn't play it enough to justify the price.

Diablo 3. I should probably give that another shot though.

Well, I didn't buy a whole lot of games this year (maybe 10 or so), so it's hard to decide... I guess it's a toss up between Borderlands 2 (I just couldn't into in, took forever to unlock my special ability, and I just lacked the drive to keep moving through it; very happy about my Marcus bobblehead, though) and GTA 4 which I bought on impulse because it was on sale and have yet to launch (not sure what I was thinking there, only GTA I played was Vice City and only for about 30 min).

I'm surprised how often I'm seeing Borderlands 2 on this list. I've already sunk way too many hours into that one.

For me, I think it would have to be Quantum Conundrum. That game was a huge let down for me.

For games that were released in 2012 I'm going to have to go with Borderlands 2. The writing was funny, but it dragged on far too long for me and didn't feel properly balanced for a single player (it's rare that I play a game MP and even then I play competitive games like CS:GO or SC2).

Games not released in 2012 would go to FEAR 3 or Prey.

You guys are all mentioning games that you don't like. I want to see really awful purchases, like a snuggie... or a fish on the wall that sings a song. Gotta be some really crappy impulse buys

Well this thread is in the "Games and Platforms" forum... though I did try to think of something non-game related. I couldn't think of anything...

We bought some bad potatoes.

DeThroned wrote:

You guys are all mentioning games that you don't like. I want to see really awful purchases, like a snuggie... or a fish on the wall that sings a song. Gotta be some really crappy impulse buys :)

I have so many lousy impulse buys I can't even keep track anymore

I fortunately don't have very many bad buys, but my worst at this point in the year isn't a game. It's Battlefield Premium. It seemed like a great deal when everyone was playing and I thought the first two map packs (Karkand and Close Quarters) were very good, but Armored Kill was sort of a mess on consoles. I played it for a couple weeks after its release, but I'm taking a break from the game now. There are not very many people playing now and most of my friends have moved on to BlOps2.

I suppose I got some value out of it and maybe I'll get more when the final two packs come out. I don't plan on getting the latest COD, so BF3 will remain my shooter of choice. It's not a total bust, but I am surprised by how precipitously the userbase dropped off after the AK maps were released and I'm concerned about the value going forward. Next time I'll probably choose to buy expansion packs a la carte.

=(

This just made me feel sad.

I'll squeeze in Brink from last year..

This year, I will go with Star Wars Old Republic.

Arma 2 and expansion; I semi-impulse nabbed them it during a steam sale with the intention of getting in some DayZ time but by then I never actually got around to playing DayZ as the hacker/cheater reports really flared up around that point and killed my interest :/ I have not and probably never will play Arma 2 itself either.

To take a different perspective on "worst" : My worst buy was probably an overclocked GTX 670 ($370). OK, so it makes newer games look awesome. But why do I need all this power when I'm usually playing three year old games? You'll have to ask my e-peen, I guess.