[:plant:] The Gamingforce Disappointment of the Year 2012: A New Skills Bitchfest - voting

Max Payne 3 and Mass Effect 3.

Neither is a bad game by any stretch, but they are, in a word, disappointing. I absolutely love the first two games from either series, so a third chapter was something to look forward to.

Due some really bizarre design choices and oddities, Max Payne 3 fails to feel like a great Max Payne game, but also ends up a fairly unsatisfying and often times frustrating cover-based shooter you simply can't play like a Max Payne game. The graphics veer from completely astounding attention to detail and advanced animation, to some very lazy and unfinished things here and there. The writing and cutscenes can be GTA4 standard one moment and very repetitive "oh no they got away again" the next. You'll struggle to actually have fun with the combat. You'd love to try and play it like a max payne game, but max will put away his gun (and aiming reticule) after about 5 seconds of not aiming with the new over the shoulder zoom button. You'd like to not be forced to crouch behind cover constantly, but if you don't press the go-to-cover button, enemies will literally shoot you through walls, as well as have incredible aiming accuracy and inhuman reflexes. Ultimately it's a fairly engaging narrative and a character study, hidden inside a fairly frustrating third-person cover shooter.

Mass Effect 3 has some great moments, but ultimately it is not what I want from Mass Effect. ME2 already gimped a lot of the things I loved about the first game, and the shooting is even more streamlined and emphasized than before. Skills said it well, you can't even holster your weapon, so the game plays like a straight up action game. As third person shooter, it's fairly good, but it's so much less engaging an experience because of it.

The less said about the ending the better. I don't consider myself entitled when I feel the ending failed to end such a long saga in a satisfying manner. It was not mysterious or open to interpretation, it was badly written and poorly judged. It made me want to not replay the previous games again because I know what's coming up.

I feel Bioware made a mistake making the Reapers attack at the start of the game. The whole game should have been about preventing the reapers from ever appearing in the first place. This would have left better room for world exploration and discovery like in the first two games.

Again, in no way a terrible game, but very disappointing, cause you can easily see how much better it could have been.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I like how Ence played three games this year.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Basically Shin has no idea why people disliked ME3 and he won't before he plays it himself.

Everyone enjoyed ME1 and 2 immensely, and that's exactly why ME3 is such a massive letdown of a final chapter. Not because they expect it to be this or that, but because the game and story overall fails to end the saga in a satisfying manner. As I said before, it wasn't open to interpretation or "brave" or "unusual", it was rushed and poorly judged.

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