Summary
- Video game marketing can mislead fans: trailers like those for Metal Gear Solid 2 created big surprises and frustrations for players.
- Games like The Last of Us Part 2 challenge player expectations with shocking character deaths and perspective shifts, dividing the gaming community.
- Early trailers for games like Killzone 2 on the PS3 set unrealistic visual expectations, damaging the console's reputation for years to come.
When someone buys a video game, they generally expect an entertaining experience. This is not be everyhing, though. They also have expectations set by marketing and all the exposure they got of the game from posters and TV spots to the box art itself.
God Of War: Best Trailers In The Franchise
God of War is a franchise that has always generated a huge volume of hype. But which God of War trailers are the best in the franchise?
When a game throws a curveball of any sort, it makes it a lot harder to depend on these materials in the future for any release. The titles below broke gamers' trust in a variety of ways. Most of them still ended up being incredible games. Others, however, were universally panned.
7 Metal Gear Solid 2
Solid Snake Is Not The Main Character
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Metal Gear Solid 2 is widely considered one of the best games of all time, but it also pulled one of the largest pranks on fans when it came out in 2001. The marketing materials largely featured Solid Snake. Even the demo that came packed with Zone of the Enders let players control Snake on the tanker without hinting at another character.
Then, the full game reveals Raiden, who is the main character for the majority of the journey after the short tanker mission. It upset some fans who were looking forward to playing as Solid Snake, but it still ended up being a fantastic game. As time went on, people became less frustrated with Raiden as a character.
6 Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
The Game Pretends To Corrupt The GameCube Memory Card
Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem
- Released
- June 24, 2002
- Developer(s)
- Silicon Knights
- Publisher(s)
- Nintendo
- Platform(s)
- GameCube
The Nintendo GameCube lacked a lot of great horror games, but it still had heavy hitters like Resident Evil and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. The latter goes to great lengths to mess with gamers' heads. Sometimes, the screen will randomly appear to have shut off or the game will mimic a corrupt memory card notification, leading players to believe their files were all erased.
Best Horror Game From Every Year Of The GameCube's Life
The Nintendo GameCube may have had a relatively short lifespan, but the great horror games to experience help further immortalize its status.
This was before the age of cloud saves, so if a memory card was corrupted it meant the destruction of countless gaming hours. This was a truly traumatic experience for gamers of the early 2000s.
5 The Last Of Us Part 2
Takes A Page Out Of Metal Gear Solid 2's Notebook
The Last of Us Part 2
- Released
- June 19, 2020
- Developer(s)
- Naughty Dog
- Publisher(s)
- Sony
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
Fans had to wait seven years to play The Last of Us Part 2 and were really looking forward to another adventure with Joel and Ellie. The trailers seemed like it would be a joint journey once again, just with players controlling Ellie more. Then, a massive leak happened and shocked gamers with certain scenes that revealed the game's unique structure.
Not only does Joel die in the first hour or so, but halfway through, players control a new character, Abby. The game is specifically about the cycle of violence and revenge that destroys lives and entire communities, but the protagonist switch and early death of Joel really rubbed some gamers the wrong way.
The naysayers could not stop The Last of Us Part 2 from being revered as one of the best modern video games. Its metacritic score sits at a staggering 93.
4 Red Dead Redemption 2
Takes The First Game's Ending To An Extreme
Red Dead Redemption 2
- Released
- October 26, 2018
- Developer(s)
- Rockstar Games
- Publisher(s)
- Rockstar Games
Players recall how the first Red Dead Redemption ended with John Marsden's tragic demise and the epilogue where his Jack avenges his father's death. Red Dead Redemption 2 breaks gamers' trust not only by once again killing the main character, but by giving him such an undignified ending.
The game's protagonist, Arthur Morgan, is beaten to a pulp and left to die on a cliff. In terms of structure, the epilogue betrays players by basically being the length of a full game all on its own. This isn't a simple bow to a story; it is a whole other chapter that shows John Marsden building up his life before the events of 2010's Red Dead Redemption. Those who thought they could wrap it up quickly were in for a big surprise when the game went on for another four to six hours.
3 Aliens: Colonial Marines
This Is Not How The Game Looked In Trailers
Aliens: Colonial Marines
- Released
- February 12, 2013
- Developer(s)
- Gearbox Software
- Publisher(s)
- Sega
Bad games come out all the time and it is not necessarily a tragedy. However, sometimes it feels like the game is lying in the trailers and shows something that is not representative of the final product. This is the case with Aliens: Colonial Marines from Gearbox.
The trailers seemed like an intense FPS where players battle against Xenomorph hordes. The final game was indeed a shooter in the Alien series, but it looked way uglier than anything shown in the trailers and barely functioned as a game. It was so egregious that there was a lawsuit against the developer for false advertising.
2 Killzone 2
And Almost Every Early PS3 Game
Killzone 2
- Released
- February 26, 2009
- Developer(s)
- Guerrilla Games
- Publisher(s)
- Sony Computer Entertainment
- Platform(s)
- PS3
The PS3's early showcases became infamous for false advertising. Very little of what was shown in those early trailers was actually running on a PlayStation 3 or was even anything a PS3 could feasibly run. Killzone 2 was a particular standout because the demonstration was from the first-person perspective and looked the most like actual gameplay.
Forgotten PlayStation 3 FPS Games That Almost No One Remembers
The PlayStation 3 had several great FPS games, along with a few titles that have been forgotten to time.
To be fair to Killzone 2, the final game was no visual slouch, but the graphics on display in the announcement trailer are maybe only just now possible with the PS5. Presenting such unrealistic expectations for the PS3 was a huge mistake on Sony's part that damaged the console's reputation for years.
Motostorm was another game shown at the presentation with a similarly outlandish trailer. Though the final presentation did not match what the trailer showed, it was still a great game.
1 Duke Nukem Forever
Maybe It Cooked For Too Long
Duke Nukem Forever
Long development times do not equal great games. Duke Nukem Forever had an infamously long development cycle where it changed engines, added new features, and took out chunks of the game. It was supposed to come out in the late 1990s and did not come out until 2011.
Duke Nukem Forever is not a terrible game, but the final product does not reflect more than a decade of hard work. It is not as if all that time was spent polishing the gameplay. The final release ultimately feels like something that was patched together with duct tape and pushed out the door.
Best Duke Nukem 3D Mods Worth Playing
Duke Nukem 3D has a wide collection of mods, from faithful recreations of console ports to gameplay remixes, and these are the best of the bunch.