Wasted Potential: Games That Should Have Been Better (by Carl B.)

August 17, 2011, by Carl B. - There are some games that showed great amounts of potential through their various pre-release trailers, screen shots, and press releases, but never fully captured the level of ambitiousness originally promised. You've played many of these games – they're fantastic titles that do a ton of things right, and even pioneered innovations in the games industry. When you're playing them, though, you can't help but think that these games could have been so much better with a few changes or additional features. In no particular order, here are the greatest games with the most wasted potential.

Shenmue

Shenmue, released on the Sega Dreamcast in 2000, was Yu Suzuki's brainchild. The title, which has gone down as one of the best available on Dreamcast, was a highly ambitious JRPG with a large, expansive world. The game's world is made up of four urban areas, each differing in size and equally detailed. Shenmue's narrative is simple enough: Ryo Hazuki's father has been murdered, prompting him to seek revenge. Despite the great detail of the game's world – a world so detailed that it features a real-time bus system – Shenmue still has some glaring issues. The first of them is the game's controls; for some reason, Sega thought it would be a good idea to map character movement to the D-pad instead of the analog stick, essentially making Ryo move like a tank. Another huge fault with the game is its progression. Shenmue plays out like a detective title, especially early on, as Ryo goes around a large town asking various characters about a suspicious black car and where to find sailors. The final glaring problem with the game is the lack of intuitive combat – the game is hardly a JRPG. There are a few fight sequences in the game, but they play out more like a stripped down version of Virtua Fighter.

Fallout 3

I was never able to get into Fallout 3, and at the time, I couldn't put my finger on the reason why. The concept is great: explore the dangerous world of the Capital Wasteland after a nuclear war hundreds of years prior that wiped out modern civilization. At first I thought my dislike for the game was based on the fact that it is far too similar to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but then I played Fallout: New Vegas and was hooked. Then it dawned on me: the problem with Fallout 3 is its setting and narrative. For a game that has such an emphasis on exploration, there's nothing to explore. The Capital Wasteland is ravaged, and worst of all, plain boring. The world of New Vegas is far superior, and ultimately made it a much better game. I understand that the world is completely destroyed in Fallout 3, but does that make it a good game? Consider this: if a game that perfectly captures the boringness of ice fishing is released, does that make it a great game? By the mindset gamers and media have with Fallout 3, the ice fishing game would be the greatest game ever made because it's so immersive that players actually think they're ice fishing. But in reality, it would be a terrible game. Ice fishing is boring, no how perfect the recreation is, and so is an empty, destroyed world.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

In some ways, as iNintendo co-founder and Graphic Artist Chris P. would say, the wait for Super Smash Bros. Brawl was more exciting than the game itself. Nintendo would reveal one feature about the game every day until the release of the game, no matter how big or small it was. Sometimes it was the reveal of an insignificant item, and sometimes new characters such as Meta Knight would be revealed. Like the rest of the games on this list, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a great game. Its biggest downfall was the amount of hype leading up to release, leading us to believe this may be the greatest fighter or party game – whichever genre you prefer – of all time. What we got instead was a title better than Super Smash Bros. Melee in some respects, but inferior in others. This was during a time where Nintendo and online were less compatible than they are today, if that's even possible. The prospect of being able to play with friends via Internet play was one of the biggest reasons for Brawl's hype, and ultimately, one of its biggest failures. The online mode worked roughly 80% of the time for friend matches, but when it came to random online matches, the game only worked about 10% of the time, and when players actually found a random match, it was very laggy.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

My very first video game was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I've beaten every game in the series more than once (excluding the CD-I abominations, naturally), but Phantom Hourglass is the only game in the series that I just can't stand. Firstly, why do we have to control Link with the stylus if there's a perfectly good D-pad on the system? Some of the touch screen uses for items were genius, but controlling Link with the D-pad would have been much better. That's not my biggest complaint with Phantom Hourglass, though, and that's not the reason it wasted its potential. After every dungeon is completed, players must return to a central dungeon called the Temple of the Ocean King. New floors then become unlocked, but to reach those new floors, players are forced to re-do ones that they've already completed, making for a highly repetitive and frustrating ordeal. Thankfully, Nintendo made amends with The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, which also features a central dungeon.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Nintendo had a chance to bring back classic, Super Mario World style fun with New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Instead, players ended up with a rehash of New Super Mario Bros. DS, only it supported four players at the same time. Multiplayer in a Mario game? It was more of a chore than fun; the screen would only continue to scroll to the right if all four players were alive and moving that way. Levels take forever to complete if players have friends that are even slightly incompetent.