While there have been a lot of great game releases in 2023, not all of them have lived up to expectations, including these 12 disappointing titles.
The gaming industry has had a very huge year in 2023, as some highly anticipated titles such as Baldur's Gate 3, Street Fighter 6, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and many more have finally been released. In fact, Nintendo has had one of its biggest years in recent years, thanks to some big first-party games like Super Mario Bros. Marvel and the highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Kingdom of Tears. Naturally, there have been some lows in this year's game launches, with some disappointing titles that haven't lived up to expectations, or just haven't lived up to fan expectations.
Disappointing games aren't always bad from a technical or performance point of view, as a lot of games can be considered fun or good overall. These games are here because they have some factors that are not up to par, like a bad release, missing the expected features, or just not what the fans were hoping for. Here are the 12 most disappointing games of 2023, in no particular order.
What initially seemed like a spiritual sequel to the BioShock series of the game of reason, Atomic Heart ultimately didn't reach that height. Set in an alternate reality in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, players are confronted with runaway robotics and biomechanical experiments in a place called Facility 3826. While this premise may be interesting, most players and critics agree that it doesn't reach BioShock heights, as the combat and progression systems end up being unsatisfactory compared to other games of the genre. To make matters worse, the Xbox version of Atomic Heart suffered from technical and performance issues related to frame rates, as well as some common game bugs.
In addition, the main character, Sergei "P-3" Nechaev, was not well received, often using swear words or clichéd dialogue, and often saying it at inappropriate or inappropriate times in the story. A lot of players are also tired of the open-world sections set up between more focused dungeon-style levels. The open world feels more like a filler used to extend the total length of the game, as the constant respawning enemies, uncreative boss fights, and collectibles aren't always worth the effort to find them.
Even as the Call of Duty franchise continues to generate significant revenue for Activision, Modern Warfare 3 stumbles more than usual at launch. Things didn't start well with fans getting an early taste of the Modern Warfare 3 campaign, which had a lot of anticipation ahead of launch, promising a showdown between Special Forces 141 and the returning classic Modern Warfare villain Vladimir Makarov. Unfortunately, this campaign was a big disappointment for fans, as it felt like stuff for a large part, relied heavily on what was taken from Warzone, and ended up being a very short, four-hour campaign. The idea of opening up combat missions didn't please many either, and it removed a lot of the tense, action-packed scenes that have always been a feature of Call of Duty campaigns.
While the multiplayer aspect of the series performed better for fans, there were also some pains for the community at launch, such as unreasonable respawn points in game modes such as Hardpoint, and the lack of some popular game modes such as Gunplay and Gun Fighting. While the game has 16 maps, they are not original, but taken from 2011's Modern Warfare 2, even though they have received visual upgrades and some tweaks. However, some people find this a tough game to accept, especially when the release of Modern Warfare 3 feels more like an expansion than a full game.
As a game inherited from the fan-favorite City Builder, which has years of follow-up content and community mod support, players might think that Cities: Skylines 2 will be feature-rich on day one, continuing the trajectory of its predecessor. Unfortunately, things quickly go awry, and players discover that the game is missing content that the original game only got later, such as airports. To make matters worse, while Cities: Skylines 2 did support user mods, they were moved to the Paradox mod library instead of the Steam Workshop, which was an important part of the previous game and disappointed many players.
At launch, Cities: Skylines 2 suffered from significant technical issues, including developer Colossal Order's confirmation that the game would not meet the desired performance standards at launch. Many fans feel that Cities: Skylines 2 is also pursuing more realism, but this comes at the expense of the game's overall performance and charm. The colors aren't as vibrant as their predecessors, and some buildings or structures don't look quite right if they're built on not exactly flat terrain. Players expecting the console version have also been informed that the PlayStation and Xbox versions have been abruptly postponed, with a new release window of spring 2024.
When it was first announced, Cursed Lands had a lot of advantages over Luminous Productions (a subsidiary of Square Enix) as there were a number of well-known personalities involved in its production, including Amy Heenig, Todd Stashevik, and Gary Whitta for the writing and Bell McChairy and Gary Schiman for the soundtrack. Unfortunately, the development of the game ended up going through many difficulties, including various game delays and other issues. Gary Whitta even mentions that the story of the Cursed Lands went through a lot of editing and revisions during development, and ended up being completely different from what was originally envisioned.
The pre-release demo has already disappointed many players, as it presents a lifeless and inspiring open world, and others have criticized the Curselands dialogue, which they find too "awkward" at best. Critics were also mixed, with some praising combat and movement abilities, but serious technical and performance issues affected the overall experience. A few months after its release, Square Enix announced that the game did not meet sales expectations and that Luminous Productions would be reclaimed as a support studio to "further enhance the competitiveness of the group's development studios".
While The Last of Us is still a very popular and profitable Sony production, and it has had another big year in terms of TV series, the series is not perfect in 2023. Fans are excited to see that the first game finally has a PC port, as this remake includes DLC expansions as well as unique enhancements and improved performance. However, the PC version also comes with some unexpected problems.
At launch, PC players noticed that technical issues, which were not present in the original or remastered, affected the experience, especially at high or ultra graphics settings. This poorly optimized PC version suffers from visual weirdness, erratic frame rates, and flickering textures, and sometimes the game crashes outright on high settings. To make matters worse, the game struggles to run on Steam Deck, and the main part of the problem is the long load times it takes to compile shaders. These issues led to The Last of Us getting negative reviews on Steam and other places, giving players a way to express their grievances and eventually catching the attention of Naughty Dog.
People were excited when they heard that there was a game featuring Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, but no one could have imagined what a terrible game it would be. Part of the disappointment is that it abuses one of the most recognizable IPs, The Lord of the Rings, which was created by Jr.r.Tolkien created a series that was a huge success through film adaptations, games, etc. On top of that, another big problem is that Lord of the Rings: Gollum also suffers from a ton of technical and game-related issues, with its graphics worse than many of the classic old games.
Technical issues ranging from frame rate drops to random crashes in character animations exacerbate already poor visuals, a camera that seems to be working against the player, and clunky animations. The gameplay is fairly basic, with Gollum only being able to perform a few simple tasks, and the stealth and platforming mechanics are poorly implemented. In addition to the poor reviews for the game itself, there were some disturbing details that eventually surfaced, about the poor working environment, the unpaid overtime of the employees, and the mismanagement of the leadership, which eventually led to the complete closure of the studio. Naturally, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum quickly became one of the worst games of 2023.
By all accounts, Mortal Kombat 1 is a huge success story for Netherrealm Studios, resetting the series' timeline in a variety of interesting and unique ways. However, Switch players are seeing a completely different game from the PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X S versions.
Players have discovered that the Switch version of Mortal Kombat 1 suffers from serious visual and technical issues. Obvious issues include the lack of detail in the character models and the scene itself, eliminating the realistic animations and nice visual details that exist on other platforms. Screenshots taken by players show characters with prominent eyes, textureless models, strange visual issues such as floating heads, glitches that cause animations to crash, and shockingly long load times. The experience was a far cry from the previous installment in the series, Mortal Kombat 11, which not only worked well on the Switch, but also looked better and was also well received by critics and players alike.
After almost a year, Overwatch 2 dropped the early access label in Season 6 on August 10, 2023. However, even though the game is considered a full release, it still lacks a number of important quality-of-life features, has a lot of concerns about the competitive side of the game, suffers frustrating bugs, and continues to support aggressive microtransaction practices, including the release of the controversial Diablo 4 style during Season 7**.
Season 6 also brought with it the highly anticipated PVE mission, although the feature itself wasn't what Blizzard had originally promised, downsizing and outright removing certain aspects of the mode, much to the frustration of fans. The biggest criticism is putting these PVE missions behind a paywall, forcing Overwatch 2 players to buy the first three missions for $15. In addition, fans were disappointed with the cancellation of Hero Mode, as well as the cancellation of the promise of character talent trees and highly replayable quests.
After the well-received announcement at BlizzCon 2023, Blizzard may turn things around with future content and additional changes. In particular, the competitive change in Season 9 has generated a lot of optimism. The addition of the Emerald Gun, changes to the ranking system, including a new tier, a new quarterly rewards page, and more, have left fans hopeful. It remains to be seen whether it will be successfully landed in Season 9 of 2024, but 2023 is clearly not its year.
This is the latest installment in the popular bank robbery series, and Harvest Day 3 continues the story of the crew after the end of the second game. Moving into a more modern area, capitalizing on advanced surveillance and the topic of cryptocurrency, the hype of this co-op shooter quickly faded due to the extremely chaotic and poor launch of Harvest Day 3. Even in single-player games, there is always a need to **, and the servers can't handle the influx of new players, leading to countless bugs, performance and technical issues. Things got so bad that Starbreeze came out to apologize and ended up fixing most of the server issues a week and a half after launch.
While issues dominate most of the headlines, Harvest Day 3 is also plagued by game-related issues, including a general lack of content, a cumbersome progression system, mediocre AI, and an empty story. A month after its release, Harvest Day 3's player base has largely disappeared, with platforms like Steam showing 10 times the number of concurrent players in Harvest Day 2 as in Harvest Day 3. To make matters worse, Embracer Group came out in November to confirm that Harvest Day 3 had failed to sell as expected, leaving the future of the series in doubt.
Coming from a developer with a proven track record, especially in the last few game releases, Redfall may have been seen by many as another easy win for the studio, but it ended up falling through. After many postponements, "Redfall" received extremely poor reviews from critics and fans alike. In fact, the release was so bad that even Phil Spencer spoke openly about the poor response to Redfall, as well as the general disappointment.
There are a lot of bugs plaguing the overall experience, and players are also experiencing inconsistent AI behavior, shallow game mechanics, and limited choices. In addition to the lack of 60FPS at launch, players also complained that the heist shooting elements, character abilities, and RPG mechanics were not very engaging or rewarding. Even though the number of players has dwindled a few months after its release, Arkane continues to release updates to improve Redfall, although the population is still very low.
Even though expectations for this game are already quite low, there is something to be said for a release that messes up even that. Putting fans in the shoes of the iconic character King Kong and exploring King Kong Island in King Kong Island: King Kong Rises, the game was released with little to no marketing or buzz. The reviews of Kongo Island: Kong: Kong's Rise were very poor, with critics and fans alike pointing out a plethora of bugs, poor graphics, and ultimately boring gameplay. For many, the game even challenged Lord of the Rings to be the worst game of 2023, something that many may not have expected after seeing the terrible reviews that game received.
The biggest disappointment of King Kong Island: Kong Rise is that it ended up wasting a popular IP that has recently received a lot of praise for big monster movie adaptations like Godzilla vs. Kong and the recent Apple+ series Monsters: Monsters' Legacy. To make matters worse, not only did the game tarnish a popular IP, but it also fell short of the legacy built by previous King Kong games, such as the 2005 name based on the Peter Jackson film.
Leveraging a popular and massive IP, The Walking Dead: Destiny looks like an interesting idea on paper, allowing players to essentially rewrite the history of the series by changing who lives and who dies, or even changing the behavior or alliances of certain characters. Unfortunately, the end result leaves a lot of dissatisfaction. Just like King Kong Island: Kong Rising, The Walking Dead: Destiny became one of the worst games to be released in 2023. This third-person action game features a lot of iconic characters, such as Rick Grimes and Daryl Dixon, retelling key moments from the early seasons of the AMC show, even though other aspects of the game are seen as ridiculously bad.
Combat is awkward, boss fights often involve bullet-sponge-like enemies, and character animations are clumsy and stiff. The editing scenes are completely similar to King Kong Island: Kong Rising, the characters are all static, and in each screenshot are arranged to look like action figures placed by unseen hands off-screen, and the graphics look outdated for 10 years. For many players, the most disappointing element of The Walking Dead: Destiny is the squandering of the potential of such a well-known IP.