8. Dead Island
What We Expected: A visceral open-world survival horror title in which your strength of stomach will be pushed to the limits by a ravenous zombie horde.
What We Got: I can't help but feel that Techland were really hurt by their game's own brilliant marketing, both the awesome posters (as pictured above) and that incredibly memorable teaser trailer which depicted the transformation of a young girl into a zombie. It stuck in people's minds, even though it didn't show a scrap of gameplay or give any indication what the title was really like. And then the truth hit me like a freight train within minutes of popping the disc in my PS3. Though the game has been relatively well-reviewed, to me it's one of the most disappointing games of the last 5 years, an incredibly generic, forgettable open-world action game that suffers from repetitive quests, a lack of customisation, and most of all, no emotional engagement whatsoever. It's also as glitchy as anything, which meant I didn't make it more than a few hours into the game before returning it. Awful.