10 Massively Hyped Video Games That Were Instantly Forgotten

Video game hype is a fantastic marketing tool, but it can often lead to anticlimactic launches.

Anthem Bioware E3 2018 10
EA

Pre-release hype is a massive part of video game marketing. In such a competitive field, developers and publishers need to create as much noise about their product as possible in order to capture the attention of an audience with so much choice in games.

Unfortunately, with such hype it's a relatively common occurrence that the final product fails to live up to the expectations from fans that game studios have built up. Whether the marketing is too ambitious and unrealistic, or just downright misleading and inaccurate from the get-go, these games launch to very flat, if not negative reactions.

As patching games becomes more and more easy, games in turn are becoming far more streamlined. Launching with unfinished components and a multitude of bugs has become almost an expected practice from the Triple A games industry. Often meeting tight deadlines trumps QA testing for studios, resulting in products launching that barely resemble what was initially promised.

The games on this list are likely to leave you as disappointed as that time your mum told you that you weren't stopping at McDonald's because she had "even better burgers in the freezer." That lying witch.

10. Homefront: The Revolution

Anthem Bioware E3 2018 10
Deep Silver

Homefront: The Revolution was the 2016 follow up to Homefront. On the run up to its release, the concept of this new entry excited players. The game was pitched as a story-driven, open-world shooter set in the United States after an invasion from North Korea. The story was to see the player character lead a resistance against the North Korean regime which was currently dominating the country.

Whilst this concept was original and intriguing, the execution was rather lacklustre. There were positives to take from the game, mainly the open world format and weapon crafting system, but the story along with a litter of technical issues let the game down where it mattered most.

The narrative came across as lazy and clichéd, guns were often unresponsive and the game was near unplayable due to Day One glitches on launch. What could have been an innovative step forward for the genre ended up landing bang centre in the generic shooter camp.

Although the game was patched shortly after launching in order to fix its performance issues, it was too little too late. Fans had already moved on, leaving Homefront: The Revolution in supermarket bargain bins all across the globe.

 
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