8 Great Trailers For Underwhelming Video Games
It all started so well.
Do you remember THAT Halo 3 reveal trailer, or a certain Gears of War teaser, backed by Gary Joules' Mad World?
Trailers that were so great that the game immediately resonated with you?
A great video game trailer can sell a game to an audience before they've even seen any gameplay. As video games have slowly begun to match the film industry in the use of powerful cinematics, a powerfully shot trailer has become a vital promotional element for a video game in the modern age.
However, a trailer is never a guarantee of the final product, and while making a good cinematic trailer has become a bit of an artform, there are instances where developers just couldn’t stick the landing when it came to the full game.
Many trailers are guilty of showing off elements of early concepts for the game that didn’t quite make the final cut, graphics that are downgraded in the retail version, and in general, just cleverly hiding the bad aspects of the game.
There are scores of great game trailers that resulted in less than impressive video games, and these are just a handful of the times we've been burnt bad.
8. Dante’s Inferno
The story behind this dark and gritty, very loose adaptation of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century poem, the Divine Comedy, is an interesting one.
While the source material is ripe with what this game needs it to be, it stumbled at being exactly that. Another hack-and-slash game in a market saturated with superior titles of the same ilk.
While this game can be heavily compared to the God of War series, it pales in comparison to what is the quintessential hack-and-slash game for the seventh console generation. And while he makes a valiant effort, Dante is no Ghost of Sparta.
It is fun to play to a point but the latter two thirds of the game however, feel like a bit of a slog with repetitive and uninspired gameplay.
That being said, there was something magical in the 2010 Superbowl commercial that had audiences everywhere hooked. It was an awe-inspiring trailer featuring Dante literally jumping into the depths of Hell after his wife juxtaposed to Bill Withers' song "Ain't No Sunshine." An unabashedly ambitious trailer displayed on the biggest marketing stage of them all.
It’s a shame more wasn’t made out of this game. A damn shame!