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Not me personally only because I have yet to play it, but what inspired me to ask is the discussion surrounding Mario Strikers: Battle League. When it was first announced in February I remember people being pretty hyped, especially since it had been 15 years since the last entry. After release I’m mainly seeing people dissatisfied, not so much by the gameplay as that has been noted as being good, but by a major lack of content that won’t come until later via free updates. This has been Nintendo’s strategy with all their sports games on the Switch, and yeah it’s a huge double edged sword. On one hand at least Nintendo does these updates for free rather than charging for things like new characters and modes, but on the other this strategy has lead to these games feeling like they’re simply not worth buying at launch when it’s probably going to be a few months before they feel complete anyway. Can’t say people are sending the strongest message though, much like with FIFA the latest Mario Strikers is selling pretty darn well in Europe, with France alone making up the majority of the sales.

There's quite a few game that come to mind when I think of it, but I think one game that has disappointed me quite a bit is probably Fallout 4, and maybe to some extent fallout 76.

Fallout 76 looked awesome in the previews and at one point I was considering buying it, but I'm glad I never did because that game should have never released in the state it had in the first place. Drained any hope I had in Bethesda making a competent multiplayer game for their IP's outside of ESO.

Oh hey you made me remember UT3 hold flak cannon to head

Probably not to the degree you're thinking of, but SMT V let me down in the story department.

I remember having just finished second area of the game when I went to check out the Artemis DLC. The store page mentioned that it's intended for mid-game, which I interpreted as meaning smack-dab halfway through the game. I thought "Probably can't beat it now, right? I'm only two areas in. I'm gonna check it out anyways because Artemis looks cool".

So I did. And I beat her.

My suspicions were confirmed like another 20-30 hours of gameplay later, granted, but it isn't so much how little story there was as it is how the story was paced. Each sparsely-placed plot point moves the story so far so quickly, that the whole thing feels incredibly rushed even with a 60-hour playtime; if that makes sense.

Edit:

Oh yeah, I just remembered Monster Hunter Rise.

I feel like I'm slowly becoming a MonHun genwunner; Rise just…it just bores me. The funny thing? I attribute that mostly to the wirebug mechanic. An exciting new feature that assists in traversal over these new open-ended maps! That's fantastic, Capcom! But you know what it makes me think of those new open-ended maps? Nothing. Just as the gods bother not with the intricacies of man's creations from up in their thrones, these wirebugs and parkour mechanics save a lot of time at the cost of attachment to this world you so lovingly created. The skies are the limit, and the ground becomes nothing more than a collection of generic vaguely-circular arenas.

Oh, but it lets you dodge monsters more easily! Big whoop, Capcom, us dual blades users have that niche filled already, and you want to make it even easier? Give me a bloody challenge or by heaven I will sit here and mope.

Sorry, this is just turning into a rant now; I'll stop.

Dawn of War III
Everyone waited 8 years for that and it may well have been the deathblow of the series.

This was out already by the time I bought it, but Dragon Age 2 to a much lesser extent. The whiplash you going from Origins to it is immense.

Rome 2 Total War really hurt .

I'm a huge TW fanboy, although I don't care for the direction the franchise is heading now with the warhammer games (History > fantasy, imo). Anyways, Rome 2 was unparalleled to the previous games that came before it in terms of production and marketing. The hype was big to say the least, the live action trailer alone put everyone on the edge of their seats!
Then came release day…it was an unmitigated disaster. I mean on par with how Cyberpunk or BF2042 were at launch, it was blatant the game was rushed out the door. Worse yet, they removed long established features from previous games and implemented a bunch of odd/highly unpopular game-design choices. A lot of them were later reworked or completely revoked through patches

Unlike DoW3 above, Rome 2 did eventually have a happy ending. It took a year and a half, but Creative Assembly was able to salvage the game into something decent. Still feel burned about it, I had never looked so forward to a single game and have been let down so tremendously.

Balan Wonderworld was a big oof for me. I got excited to see what they could've come up with: unique style, fantasy-rich worlds, tons of costume power-ups…
…Then the demo came, when i played it my heart sank. I saw the potential what it could've been but it was a typical case of being too ambitious. Tons of great ideas poorly executed. I hoped things would be set right in the final releas but alas, the reviews were not good. In the end i didn't even buy the thing because it was way too expensive for what it was.

I partly agree with Sugarly Salt for Rise but for different reasons. I find the wirebug feature pretty cool and not that gamebreaking (Glaive flying has never been so much fun!). However, i was not happy with the state the game was released at. There was no endgame to speak about, only after half a year of updates it was finally fixed. We can probably blame Covid for that mess but it was pretty annoying. Sunbreak doesn't have this issue fortunately. The endgame is pretty solid and there's plenty to grind for.

Oh I do have an example of something I did play: Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly. I love the original Insomniac Spyro trilogy and at the age of 12 I was super excited to hear a fourth game was coming to the Gamecube. Young me didn't really care it wasn't the same devs, I was just happy to know a new Spyro was on the way. When I finally played it though I couldn't help but feel that something was "really off" about the game and it just didn't "feel" as fun as the prior three entries. By the time I finished it this was probably the first time I felt really "empty" upon completing a game. Outside of the music, which was still done by Stewart Copeland (the dude who composed the music in Insomniac's trilogy), Enter the Dragonfly just barely felt like the PS1 games and left such a sour taste in my mouth. Later learning about how troubled the development was basically helped confirm why it was such a disappointment. Because of this game I never really gave A Hero's Tale a shot (which I now regret as apparently it was much better), but I did later play the "Legend of Spyro" trilogy which was alright (and I admit I mainly played it because I was intrigued by Elijah Wood playing Spyro in those games).

Company of Heroes 2 was one I was deeply disappointed by on release. The campaign was not great, the multiplayer was unfun, the winter gimmicks were stupid, and the inability early on to set up matches how I wanted them was frustrating. I hear people say that mods saved that game but it also took a ton of DLC and I still think the final product is inferior. It led me to Men of War though so I'm comfortably staying in that crowd instead.

Dawn of War 3 was fascinating because of how that demo just torpedo'd the entire franchise in an instant. A lot of the problems I saw in DoW3 cropped up first in CoH2. I don't know why game devs try to push for esportization of video games. It just makes it feel super unnatural and unfun.

My biggest disappointment was Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.

It just felt like the anathema of the Wolfenstein games I loved playing, predominately the 2009 reboot and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

The story tried to push too many IRL political points that were popular at the time, to the point where I couldn't tell if this it was supposed to be a parody or not. The parts with the black lady were especially cringe and felt kind of racist, like the old blacksploitation films of the 70's-80's.

All in all, the story felt like something that didn't belong in the universe and was just really jarring to the point it broke any sense of immersion I had.

The gameplay was a chore, because it was a de facto stealth game.

Sure, you could go in guns blazing, but for the first half of the game that was suicide because of how fragile you were. By the time you got your buff super soldier body that could take a reasonable amount of damage, you'd already spec'ed into stealth so it was pointless to change now.

This rendered the vast majority of the arsenal a detriment to the player.

The firefights weren't fun either. In the event of going loud, you'd rush to the nearest piece of convenient cover and plink away at the enemy simply because you were either in an arena so wide and empty that you'd be gunned down before you got anywhere or you were boxed in to tight corridors with no room to manoeuvre.

I think the thing that pisses me off the most though is that I played Wolfenstein: The Old Blood before this and the The New Colossus just felt so unimaginative in comparison.

You had supernatural elements. You had advanced, but janky technology. The environments were varied and interesting. The plot was interesting and felt like it was an actual story taking place in-universe. The villains were eccentric, but not to the point of parody or offensiveness.

It was a great little expansion that showed what Machine Games could do.

And there was just none of that imagination and fun in The New Colossus.

All of the technology was shiny, clean and efficient. The environments were sterile. There was no fantastic enemies or creatures, just generic robots and dudes with guns for the entire thing. I couldn't take the main villain seriously because her entire character was "Eveeeeeeel" and nothing else.

This.

All of this.

Just makes me feel sad.

Because this could have been something truly great, but they just dropped the ball entirely.

@Soup King
Ya know what's funny is Wolfenstein as a series started as a stealth franchise in the 1980s (yeah id Software didn't create the IP, it was a company called Muse that went out of business in 1987 so id were able to buy the IP for cheap), so in a weird way Machine Games are simply harkening back to the IP's roots by having proper stealth mechanics in their Wolfenstein games (plus I'd argue stealth was first brought back into Wolfenstein with "Return" by Gray Matter). Also I was under the impression their games are supposed to be throwbacks to 70s grindhouse cinema, but I know not everyone is into "purposely over-the-top" stuff.

Imo the bigged problem with The New Colosus was how it had that marvel attitude of “we can’t take ourselved too seriously” that and how there was somehow a gisnt Venus base when the one on the moon wasn’t that big

Mario Party Island Tour was one I was fucking disappointed in cause I LOVED Mario Party DS, and hoped that Island Tour would be like that. Instead it ended up being just like 9 and (a couple years later) 10. Sure, there’s no car, but the boards are still linear and shit. Also the Bowser Tower mode sucks

chronicles of riddick, assault on dark athena. the first, and last, game that I have ever pre-ordered. it was just so dissapointing compared to butcher bay, both in the stealth, the combat, and the final boss being a puzzle boss.

I built my entire gaming computer out of my desire to play Cyberpunk 2077, matching my future machine's specifications to play Cyberpunk as optimally as possible.

I didn't even get to the final product before losing interest, as soon as the mentioned that the game was going to be entirely in first person my hype for the game dropped like an anvil. I did eventually buy the game for $30 for Xboxbut I haven't even got out of the tutorial.

Dinosaur Planet that got completely overhauled into becoming StarFox Adventures.
Just like ending of ME3, I will never be not salty about it.

90% of the games shown at E3.

Only thing I got real hyped for and it not only delivered but surpassed my expectations in the last 2 years was Elden ring

I was looking forward to playing Sonic Colors Ultimate, since I passed up on buying the Wii version when it first came out and I thought I would really like it. Then I heard of all the glitches in the game and I realized that perhaps I shouldn't waste my money on it.

So I've been playing Elden Ring for the first time. I'm a big fan of the Soulsborne games and have been looking forward to Elden Ring since its reveal, but haven't been able to play it until now.

Holy
Crap
The bosses suck--complete--arse

I'm at Malenia now and I've not found a single boss fight that I actually like. Malenia herself, when I first fought her, seemed like a fun fight; lifesteal notwithstanding--a straightforward melee duel against a legendary swordswoman, weaving through her graceful strikes until you can launch a counterattack when she lets her guard down. Then that one move happened and my hopes were dashed. Each subsequent attempt felt like a wave of epiphany crashing down on my mind as I realise the common elements that I loathe in nearly every boss: aggresiveness, inconsistent combo lengths, general tankiness, homing attacks, AoE attacks, homing AoE attacks, all of which with such ridiculous damage that they can put near death if not outright one-shot a heavy-armoured character with high Vigor.

Makes me miss the Gank Squad from DS2.

I too am a huge Soulsbourne fan, but I also found Elden Ring to be a mixed bag. It's on my bottom list of Fromsoft games, only ranking it slightly above DS2.

I had immense fun during the early hours, Stormveil castle being the highlight of the whole experience since it reminded the most of classic DS. I did enjoy Margit and Godrick boss fights. But afterwards my fun tapered off tremendously with each new zone. It just overwhelming how "big" the game is and the staggering amount of recycled enemies & bosses made the game lose a lot of charm. Recycling was something that came up in the previous games, but the previous games didn't take a literal hundred or more hours to do and see everything. The previous games were a lot more concise and one play-through was easily digestible so such problems were easily forgiven. That's not the case with Elden Ring. I couldn't stomach playing the whole thing again, not for many, many years which is something I thought I'd never say. I've finished the previous games dozens of time, even DS2 which I have a soft-spot for despite it's genuine issues.

What's more, because how big the game is and how much freedom you are given from the get-go, I found the pacing to be ruined. The latter half of the game becomes such a cakewalk that every boss I came upon never lived up to the initial challenge I had facing the first 2 I came across. What was a challenging game at first became a chore and I couldn't wait to be done with it.

I absolutely agree with you on the game's scale and structure.

One thing I love about the previous games is the sense of a "journey" that they had; rather than the whole realm being open and free to explore, you had a linear series of locations that you travel through on foot, and most locations were built like an intertwining series of tightly-designed corridors rather than a large, open space.

Elden Ring does feature a journey of its own and a series of separate "zones", but despite how much bigger Elden Ring is compared to its predecessors, many of its locations feel like they're part of the same dull rocky landscape. Nothing gave me the feeling like in DS3, where you went from the swampy forests of Farron Keep, to the dark, enclosed spaces of the Catacombs of Carthus, and emerged on the other side into the moonlit, snow-covered Irythill; now that felt like an adventure. My favourite location in the entire game is the underground around Nokstella and Nokron, just because of how pretty the pseudo-skybox is.

Pokemon's Gen 4 remakes were this to me. I'll be frank, I missed out on Gen 4 and I hoped they would be so much better. I liked some of the QoL additions, but I felt the game had no challenge.Maybe I should emulate Platinum instead.

Oof, agreed, those games hardly added anything new. At least HGSS and ORAS significantly shook things up and introduced new things.

Far as hype leading to disappointment, the most I got with that was from Brink. I remember seeing the trailers for it a decade ago only to buy it for PS3. The game ended up feeling meh which is disappointing since the story it had was a more interesting take of "ragged looking under class thugs" vs "well groomed and clean looking cops" in that while one mission has you defend a bomb that's being launched at an empty tower, the opposite version of it has you being told that the building is full of civilians and the bomb has to be stopped. Ultimately an interesting premise, shame the game ended up crap.

Only one to come close sort of was Duke Nukem Forever though in regards to that, it was more of mere curiosity than pure hype after seeing posters of it at a Gamestop not far from where I live. Even the cashier was surprised the game was being released. Needless to say, I didn't expect much and I still found it a disappointing game. Ironically the strip club level was the best in the game but that's way less for the sexual and way, way more for the fact that it was an interactive level. Walking simulators can be mocked and all but a level that was essentially a walking sim gave me more entertainment than the other 99% of a game that consisted of shooting aliens. Way to go, Randy Pitchford.