10 Video Games That Put Fans In Denial
Accept the truth - these games had HUGE problems.
Denial is one of the most powerful tools we as humans have, to ignore the truth blatantly staring us in the face in order to preserve our own pride, or because we're simply unable to accept the reality.
In terms of video games, there's nothing more crushing than buying a game day one only to get it home, tear off the shrink wrap, and quickly realise it's not the great time you were hoping for.
But rather than accept a crippling dose of buyer's remorse, it's far easier to rewire your thinking and just refuse to concede that you've made a disappointing purchase, right?
As that initial hype fades and the honeymoon period lifts, however, fans are eventually able to see a game for what it is, rather than what they so desperately wanted it to be.
Now to be clear, not a single solitary soul was in denial about something like Aliens: Colonial Marines being a certifiable trainwreck.
But these 10 games were so promising and highly anticipated that, whether merely disappointing or flat-out bad, fans turned to good 'ol self-deception to make sense of it all...
10. Anthem
EA and BioWare's years-in-development action-RPG Anthem was supposed to be the next big thing in the AAA "games as a service" sphere, yet its launch was, well, a bit of a disaster.
With a generic, minimal campaign, a piecemeal loot loop, agonisingly long loading screens, and terrible matchmaking, Anthem was pilloried by the press upon release. Worse still, it wasn't long before reports emerged of the game's troubled, rushed development.
To their mild credit, BioWare accepted responsibility for the unsatisfying release, and promised the game would be "fixed" through patches.
This led many fans to convince themselves that a No Man's Sky-esque resurrection was on the cards, that Anthem was just a few updates away from being the game everyone paid to play in the first place.
Yet 18 months since release, BioWare's promised "relaunch" has yet to come to fruition, and with each passing month it surely becomes far more likely that EA quietly drops the project and moves onto other things.
Though Anthem is indeed a better game now than it was on release, holding out hope for the full-fat experience we all expected to see back in February 2019 would be mighty foolish.