9. Red Steel
What We Expected: Hyper-stylised samurai action, probably in the vein of the awesome House of Blue Leaves sequence in Quentin Tarantino's movie Kill Bill Volume 1.
What We Got: A gimmicky launch title for the Nintendo Wii that was so committed to making the most of the console's motion sensing capabilities that it actually failed to do that, or even provide anything at all worth playing. This samurai simulator (which it actually isn't) should have been a lot of fun, but it failed to reconcile the rather clunky nature of its being due to controls that would glitch out for seemingly no reason at all, as well as the fact that swordplay accounts for a very small part of the game. It just happens to be the part of the game that is also the most infuriating to play, leaving gamers running around their living room swinging wildly as though trying to catch a particularly evasive fly. And the graphics were pretty below-par even for the time, far away from the startling promise of that awesome cover.