5. Brütal Legend
You had one job: Deliver on the trailers. There are some people in the industry who can do no wrong, and as much as in every other instance this would be true for Tim Schafer the way he advertised and promoted Brutal Legend all the way up to just before release was damn-near misdirection. The game itself still has one of the best premises ever concocted; you play as a muscled-up heavy metal roadie named Eddie Riggs (voiced by Jack Black) who after taking up a position with a godawful pop-metal outfit who sound like One Direction on guitars, magically gets transported into a universe where old school metal artwork and culture is brought to life. Featuring Ozzy Osbourne as your sage weapon-provider, a soundtrack comprised of everything from Motörhead to Mastodon and gameplay that appeared to be God of War hack n' slash with guitars, how could it possibly fail? Well, by having the majority of the game actually be a real-time strategy game, that's how. In a move that's still praised for the sake of originality, you control the troops and the battlefield overall by manoeuvring Eddie in a manner similar to that of the Dynasty Warriors games. There is some hacking and slashing to be had, but most of the time you'll be trying to round up troops to send somewhere else before sprinting off to protect a structure you need to stay up, only it to fall apart, sending you back to the very start again. It was agony, and when you had characters, cutscenes and weapons that were bursting with character and originality, seeing it all effectively go to waste in such a missed opportunity was heartbreaking.