From a gaming perspective, 2020 was one of the most unique years that fans have likely ever seen. While a global pandemic likely shifted the focus of every studio and company to some extent, this year also gave launch to a ton of major AAA releases and surprise indie hits. Moreover, 2020 also saw the release of two brand new consoles from Microsoft and Sony and while the launches have not been smooth due to shortages and issues cropping up, fans that were able to score a Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 have certainly been enjoying the newest tech.
While there were plenty of highs in 2020, the year also had more than its fair share of low points as well. More than a few of the following games were some which held a ton of promise but ultimately fell short of expectations at launch, making them the 10 most disappointing games of 2020 in no particular order.
Marvel's Avengers
Following the unprecedented success of Insomniac's PS4 exclusive Marvel's Spider-Man, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics revealed the multiplatform title Marvel's Avengers to an excited crowd at E3 2019. Taking a page from other looter shooter games like Destiny and Borderlands, players would play as iconic heroes such as Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, and more as they completed missions, acquired new loot to grow stronger, and customized their heroes with new skills and other forms of progression.
On paper, everything sounded really promising, but what was actually released just didn't live up to fan expectations. While many enjoyed the story and the feel of each of the heroes, the game began to suffer once the live service elements took over after the campaign finished. Worse yet, post-launch content which was expected to launch shortly after the game was delayed due to the California forest fires and the COVID-19 pandemic forcing the team to work from home, although this aspect is obviously due to the state of the world and not the game itself.
While the first Operation pack is scheduled for launch on December 8, the game has suffered mightily due to on-going issues with the experience, bugs, and a general lack of things to do. In fact, the PC fanbase has seemingly moved on as the game's population has seen a 96% decline since its launch in September. Worse yet, the latest quarterly financial report for Square Enix confirmed a 6.5 billion Yen loss and that the game only sold 60% of what the company expected. While Marvel's Avengers can still be saved, especially with its upcoming free DLC, Crystal Dynamic certainly has some work to do in order to get it there.
Godfall
After its reveal at the 2019 Game Awards and also being one of the first next generation games announced, Godfall certainly intrigued the PlayStation fanbase. Instead of featuring a typical class based system like in many other RPG style games, players would be able to switch between 12 different Valorplates which not only changed the player's look but would offer various benefits as well. Players could further customize their character through various items, pick between different weapons types, and battle enemies in what appeared to be combat inspired by the Dark Souls games through different worlds based on elements like Water, Earth, and Air.
Part of what made Godfall frustrating was the marketing which typically released curiously short snippets of game footage while lacking many of the core gameplay details that fans wanted to know more about. Unfortunately, after the game launched, not much improved as the game received at-best lukewarm reviews from critics and fans due to a forgettable story, gameplay that retreads and recycles content from mission to mission, and Valorplates that don't do enough to really feel different outside of their visual appearance. While most agreed that the combat is the brightest spot of this game, Godfall also suffers from a number of technical issues including the frame rate hitching, various bugs, and games that outright crashing which only drag the experience down further.
Warcraft 3: Reforged
For many fans, the classic RTS game Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos is a beloved title in the franchise. Considering it helped give birth to the massively popular World of Warcraft MMO, most hold this game in high regard. So when Blizzard announced a remake in 2018, fans were excited. Blizzard promised all new visuals, remodeled characters, brand new features, and a story that would be partially retconned to better fit with World of Warcraft.
After a delay pushed it into 2020, the game that fans actually got was one that was missing a ton of promised features, poor design choices, and was rife with technical issues. Fan response was incredibly negative and kicked off a massive review bomb campaign which eventually made Warcraft 3: Reforged the lowest ranked game on Metacritic by user score, an achievement which would stand until Madden NFL 21 came along months later. Fans were not only upset about the bugs and missing features which were promised by Blizzard after the game was announced, but the user interface, which was completely redesigned, was also heavily criticized.
Worse yet, all original copies of Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos were forced to update to the newer version due to Reforged sharing the game's client interface. This in turn made many Reforged gameplay decisions mandatory in the original. Blizzard also came under fire by announcing that it would be claiming ownership of user-created content made in the Reforged editor. While Blizzard issued an apology over the mess and offered full refunds, the damage had been done.
Crucible
One of the more wild rides in 2020 came from Amazon Game Studios. Attempting to break into the online character shooter market, Crucible represented Amazon's first original major platform game to come from its gaming division. Players could select from different heroes each with their own abilities and enter various objective based game modes. The other feature that Amazon was banking on was that Crucible was free to play on Steam, hopefully attracting player attention.
After launching in May, the game ultimately failed to catch on with fans, experiencing little to no marketing or fanfare from players and quickly settled in at 100-200 concurrent players. The developer surprisingly announced a month later that Crucible would instead move back into a beta state as the studio believed it launched too early and was missing many important features. Following the game being unreleased and pushed back into beta, things didn't get much better. Developer Relentless Studios announced in October that the team made the difficult decision to end development on Crucible. Not citing a specific reason for the decision, the statement did reveal that the studio wasn't able to find a healthy or sustainable future for Crucible and that the servers would be turned off for good on November 9.
XIII
This fan favorite shooter from 2003 got a new lease on life in 2019 when Microids and PlayMagic announced a new remake of the Ubisoft classic. One of the standout features of the original game was the comic book style visuals, which is an obvious reference to the game's origins from the 1984 comic of the same name. Originally intended to be released later in 2019, the game was delayed for an extra year of development time.
While there was excitement over what a modern version of XIII could be, the end product was likely much worse than anyone could have imagined. The biggest change was the art style, which essentially stripped out the personality of the original and substituted it with cel-shaded character models that look more at home in a game like Fortnite. However, the game also suffered from a staggering amount of technical issues and bugs, which only further dragged down the experience including poor AI-behavior, visual pop-in, and more. Things were so bad that PlayMagic and Microids issued a joint statement, apologizing to fans and promising to fix the game. Ironically enough, the original 2003 version actually outsold the remake handily in its first week, likely due to fans trying to send a message to the studio.
NBA 2K21
Fans of the 2K series of sports games have seen numerous issues plague the games in recent years, from the buggy mess that was WWE 2K20 to recent NBA 2K games which seemed to place a heavy emphasis on microtransactions while continuing to launch with a host of technical issues and bugs. There was some hope that this year's NBA game would turn the franchise around thanks in large part to the next-gen versions of the game being built from the ground up and bringing with it all new features like The City mode.
Following release, fans have found that NBA 2K21 once again falls short of expectations. Fans were already up in arms over the $70 price tag, but following release, attention is more on the gameplay than other things like visuals. The shot meter received a lot of criticism following the game's launch including from cover star Damian Lillard of the Portland Trailblazers as well. The next-gen version features unskippable advertisements, WNBA players were unable to access the new standout mode called The City, and some character models like Andrew Wiggins of the Golden State Warriors continued to look off. Fan frustration came to a boiling point in November as a new hashtag for Make2KFunAgain started to trend across social media.
Madden NFL 21
It takes something truly egregious to ultimately push players to attempt to dethrone Warcraft 3: Reforged as having the lowest user score on Metacritic. This year, fans rallied against Madden NFL 21, a game that ultimately became the best selling title in August according to the US NPD. However, that fact didn't stop fans from calling out EA for what many perceived to be missing features from the annual football title.
After launching in August, fans immediately noticed various bugs, lack of polish, and issues with the game including glitched player models, weird physics issues, and performance issues. Worse yet, the lack of new story content and major gameplay enhancements for the fan favorite Franchise mode led fans to get the NFLDropEA hashtag trending on Twitter, supported by loads of gameplay clips being shared of just how wonky the experience is.
While EA is slowly updating the game to hopefully reduce or remove many of these issues, the announcement of a special next-gen version of Madden NFL 21 priced at $70 only managed to kick the controversy right back up. It's unlikely that this new version will have many of the requested features included in it, so essentially EA is asking fans to purchase the game with a few upgrades but with many of the core flaws that remain in the current generation product. Thankfully, fans who have already purchased the game, can upgrade for free to next-gen, so the appeal of this $70 title is likely only for new players.
Disintegration
Although this is the first release from developer V1 Interactive, the pedigree of the studio gave fans plenty of hope that Disintegration would rival some of the best sci-fi shooters like Halo. The main reason is that the former Bungie developer and Halo co-creator, Marcus Lehto, heads up this new studio along with other talent from the industry.
Disintegration promised a sci-fi story about a group of outlaws attempting to stop a futuristic militant group from forcing the last remaining humans from undergoing a process called Integration, transferring the human brain into a robotic body to reduce demands on Earth's dwindling resources. While played from a first person perspective, players would be inside a vehicle known as a Gravcycle, letting players not only engage with the enemy, but issue commands to allied troops below. Thus, Disintegration combined first person shooters with real time strategy elements.
For all of the press the game received prior to launch, Disintegration arrived without much fanfare. Reviews were largely mixed on the game with many saying while it's an interesting idea, the experience just couldn't deliver on its potential and felt a bit shallow. Many characters came off as one dimensional, the hub space felt a bit lifeless, and ultimately, the game felt unpolished in some areas. Worse yet, the game's population seemed to dry up very quickly which significantly impacted the multiplayer components. Only a few months after launch, V1 Interactive announced that multiplayer support was coming to an end, ultimately wrapping up in full by November 17.
Fast and Furious Crossroads
The Fast and Furious franchise has evolved over the years from its meager 2003 beginnings to become an absolute money making behemoth. The last two mainline movies have raked in over a billion dollars in worldwide box office earnings, making this a highly sought after property. Considering this is ultimately a franchise about driving fast in expensive cars, it lends itself well to video games. Fans naturally got excited when Fast & Furious Crossroads was announced at the 2019 Game Awards and was being developed by Slightly Mad Studios, a developer well known for its racing game pedigree like Project Cars and Need for Speed Shift.
What's a bit strange then is Fast and Furious Crossroads released to generally negative reviews from critics and fans alike, with many calling it the worst game of 2020. Unlike the movie franchise the game is part of, Crossroads appears to be missing those drama fueled and thrilling moments, with most races boiling down to being simply dull and too easy. What also doesn't help is that the game's visuals appear to be quite dated, with many critics comparing it to a mobile game. In addition, the title has numerous issues including a camera which struggles to frame the racing on screen, poor controls, and uninspired mission design.
Cooking Mama: Cookstar
The Cooking Mama franchise took off in 2006, originally appearing on the Nintendo DS. The gameplay revolves around tasking the player with cooking various meals using the touch based screen based off of instructions from the character, Mama. The franchise exploded and has reached up to 14 different games, sometimes spinning off on other topics like gardening, babysitting, and camping. This year saw the sixth mainline cooking game launch for the Nintendo Switch, but things quickly fell off the rails.
Mere hours after launching, Cooking Mama: Cookstar was removed from the Nintendo eShop after a legal disagreement surfaced between the developer Planet Entertainment and the IP holder, Office Create. What confused a lot of people is that Cookstar launched without a public announcement or press release, leading many to question the game's authenticity. Office Create publicly condemned the breach of contract, accusing the developer of terminating its license to use the IP prior to releasing the product.
Worse yet, news that the game featured a special kind of blockchain technology to act as a cryptocurrency mining and data collection tool without the player knowing started surfacing online. While the publisher of the game denied these rumors, it didn't stop people from attempting to link that to the fact that more than a few Switch consoles were starting to overheat when the game was being played. Regardless, it wasn't a good look.