There is hardly a more bitter disappointment in the world of video games than when a highly anticipated title turns sour due to a nightmarish launch. If some have managed to get their heads above water after a terrible shipwreck, their image will forever be tainted by this indelible stigma.
As good human beings that we are, we like to retain the negative rather than the positive. We therefore offer you a small selection of the launches, in our opinion, the most disastrous in the history of video games, for titles which had everything to succeed.
Anthem (2019)
If we exclude Mass Effect Andromeda, which could be considered a misstep, BioWare was until then held in very high esteem by players. So when the renowned studio offers us its vision of the looter shooter with classy exo-armours, in a lush and magnificent world, we could only quiver with impatience. Not true ?
What was our disappointment at the launch of Anthem! Aside from its downright enjoyable gameplay, nothing else could save the game from drowning. Insipid universe, rickety content, bugs and performance problems of all kinds, Anthem is the perfect textbook case of a failed launch. So failed that the project never recovered, and unless there was a miracle with Dragon Age 4 and the next Mass Effect, such could also be the case for BioWare…
Battlefield 2042 (2021)
Let's stay with the Electronic Arts stables for a while with one of the flagship multiplayer FPS franchises, and more precisely Battlefield 2042. Sold as "the ultimate opus of the franchise" with 128-player maps and spectacular tornadoes Crossbred with a hero shooter, the latest baby from the Swedish studio promised great things on paper. On paper, yes...
The reality was unfortunately quite different. Performance, latency, netcode issues, all kinds of bugs, missing essential features and contemporary Clone Wars have made the future of Battlefield more uncertain than ever. Six months after its release, the game seems to have barely left its beta phase. And a game as a service with no new content after so long is like shooting yourself in the foot, so to speak.
Marvel's Avengers (2020)
Speaking of heroes, let's dwell on the well-winded gathering of Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix. While the MCU was in its heyday, the idea of ​​controlling the Avengers in a co-op action-RPG seemed like godsend to fans and publisher alike. Only, Hulk seems to have made his nervous poo and destroyed everything in his path…
Now you know the music: riddled with bugs, performance issues, and mechanics that simply didn't work properly, Marvel's Avengers managed to sabotage itself, without Thanos even having to lift a finger. The adoption of a very controversial economic model, the slowness of the teams to correct the game and add new content only hastened the inevitable.
Fallout 76 (2018)
Until now confined to single-player games, the Fallout franchise holds a special place in the hearts of RPG fans. The idea of ​​an MMO in this fascinating universe has made more than one fantasize. Thrown into a nest of Radroaches, a small team at Bethesda intended to make this fantasy a reality. But the result turned out to be a radiation-poisoned present.
Scandalous merchandising and monetization, visually crappy, gameplay unsuited to a multiplayer game, bugs and performance issues, some of which hadn't been fixed since Fallout 4, the launch of Fallout 76 looked like a nuclear apocalypse. But, like nature, the game has slowly but surely recovered, and is meant to be, four years after its release, a not-so-unpleasant experience… on the Game Pass.
No Man's Sky (2016)
To wrap up our tour of catastrophic launches, let's head off into space with Hello Games' long-controversial title. In parallel to Star Citizen, No Man's Sky promised us another highly ambitious space experience as rarely seen in video games. Only here it is, it takes several tries before a rocket takes off without exploding...
Everything led to believe that Hello Games had had eyes much bigger than its stomach. The promise to visit trillions of planets ended in disaster that seemed to point to the outright death of No Man's Sky. But the small studio held on and, six years later, its title is now held in high esteem. Like what, aiming for the stars is not impossible when you give yourself the time and the means for your ambitions.
We have emptied our bag of our most bitter disappointments at the launch of a game. It's your turn to share with us your most painful memories on the subject. Group therapy can work wonders.
