This is a second part of another article, click HERE for part one.

Hype can both make and break a videogame. In some cases it’s good – great word of mouth can take a game from relative obscurity and push it into being something of an unlikely blockbuster. It’s been proven many times that a good marketing strategy and goodwill with fans can get people to do marketing for a company, and some indie games especially benefit from this. On the other hand, consumers have fallen for publisher hype (usually pushing pre-order campaigns) only to have any expectations dashed moments after starting the game. This isn’t a new occurrence either, videogames are definitely an entertainment medium susceptible to every old trick used by film companies for the last 100 years. All a lot of publishers care about is getting their money, no matter how slimily they get it. It’s only been recently when consumers have been able to strike back and demand concessions, such as refunds, so maybe times are changing.

Publishers aren’t the only culprits here, fan hype can also be just as bad, and perhaps even worst most of the time. People are either setting others up for disappointment, or bullying others into buying something all the time – neither of which are healthy for the industry. Perhaps companies rely too much on those aforementioned fans becoming their own marketing team at times? Either way, I have collected a list of what I believe to be some of the most egregious examples of this throughout history. Remember, just because a game is on this list does not mean it is a bad game or “over-rated”, but that it was over-hyped to a large degree before release. In many ways, this sheer overexposure to a game can ruin the game due to bad reviews, or unfair expectations, and in other cases, as you will see, some games were overhyped for no real reason at all.

These are in no particular order.

Fable – (XBX, PC)

The culprit: Peter Molyneux at it again

The following is a quote by Peter Molyneux on his XBox game, Fable:

“It’s gonna be the best game ever.”

Well … Fable was a popular, and well received game, but many felt that it lost out on that particular tag-line. This was mainly due to the fact that Mr. Molyneux is known to toot his own horn, so to speak, when it comes to early interviews about his games. In these early interviews for Fable, Molyneux hyped up features such as the ability to play as a woman, multiplayer, the ability have kids, and a feature that allowed the player to watch as trees grow in real-time. All of these sounded, frankly, too good to be true, and they were. Once the game finally released, minus much of its promised content, a very vocal group of “would be” fans began to cry foul.

Peter did have the good graces to apologize later on in the Fable Forums on Lionhead Studios:

“I have come to realize that I should not talk about features too early so I am considering not talking about games as early as I do. This will mean that the Lionhead games will not be known about as early as they are, but I think this is the more industry standard.”

Problem was, he began to hype Fable II soon after, and the circle began anew.

Conduit – (Wii)

The culprit: Fan Over-expectations

High Voltage’s The Conduit was a solid, and very fun shooter for the Nintendo Wii. The problem is that while learning about the game, a few “core game starved” Wii fans began to treat the game as a holy miracle set upon the Earth to change humanity. With features like a customizable HUD and controls, things were looking up for Wii gamers as High Voltage Software seemed to be determined to give fans what they wanted. When reviews began to pop up from various agencies, a typical backlash began to occur for any review that seemed to paint the game in a bad light. Many expected the game to get perfect scores and sell millions of copies in a few short days, but this is a ludicrous idea as it is a new property from a studio not known for this type of game. Suddenly, battle lines were drawn amongst fans wanting to play “team sports”, and words began to fly. This game, more than many of that era, seemed to be a lightning rod for the mid-2000s console wars nonsense. Rampant HD vs Wii debates went on in many message boards, and I dare say that it pushed people away from the game.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess – (Wii, GCN)

The culprit: Fan Over-expectations

Whenever a new Zelda game comes out, it’s always a big deal. Although the successful The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker game did well and was critically acclaimed, many were sad that it abandoned a few conventions (such as realistic graphics) found in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. When fans saw the first trailer for Twilight Princess, it seemed to be a message from Heaven itself to these starving for a successor for the highest regarded game in the series. People went on hype mode, and never stopped until the game released. While Twilight Princess did exceptionally well, especially in the West, It didn’t fare nearly as well in Japan, due to many feeling that it was too similar to Ocarina of Time. Looks like Zelda faced a no-win situation for Nintendo.

KIllzone – (PS2)

The culprit: The “ Halo” killer

Whenever a media outlet or game publisher begins to add a tagline to a game such as “The Halo Killer”, expectations always go up to a ridiculous level for no real reason. It has happened in the past with games such as Dark Cloud for the PS2, once touted as “The Zelda Killer” by Sony Execs. The game was fun, but it wasn’t as memorable as Zelda. Flash back to the PS2 game Killzone, and someone got the bright idea to hype it up as “The Halo Killer”, which sabotaged its sales. The game did well, and spawned sequels, but many could not get over the somewhat mediocre review scores and mixed bag graphics. I have a feeling that the reviewers went into the review expecting “The Halo Killer”, and were greeted with “The decent, but not as innovative as they said” game. General rule: don’t say that your game kills anything as it may be “the (insert company’s name here) killer”.

Lair – (PS3)

The culprit: new control scheme

Just like a few of the launch Wii titles, Factor 5’s Lair suffered immensely from being a first game to use a new control method. This caused the game to suffer from wonky controls to the point where a patch was later implemented that took away the Sixaxis in favor of more standard controls. Sadly, Lair also caused Factor 5 to have money trouble. This was due to overproduction based on expectations that the game did not meet.

Metal Gear Solid 2 – (PS2, and later X-box)

The culprit: Bait and Switch

If you ask anyone about Metal Gear Solid 2, you should end up with one of two outcomes: “I loved the game” or “#@#%%….. I HATE Metal Gear Solid 2!!”. This polarity comes partly due to an immense marketing strategy that I feel harmed the game in the long-run. Demo discs, website features, and magazine hype really made people want to play the game, sooner rather than later. All anyone wanted was to lace up those boots as Solid Snake and sneak around in cardboard boxes yet again. When the game finally came out, people were horrified to find out that the series’ main protagonist, Solid Snake, was a side character for most of the game, and that he was replaced with a new guy named Raiden. This “Bait and Switch” angered a few to the point of boycotting the game and other futile endeavors. Had Konami or Hideo Kojima just been more upfront about the actual plot of the game, a lot of the animosity would have likely not occurred.

Enter the Matrix – (Multi)

The culprit: Marketing ploy for an anticipated movie

I could write an entire segment about how the second film in the Matrix franchise, Matrix Reloaded, was “overhyped”, but the sci-fi epic didn’t just get hyped by its lonesome. Atari had been developing a tie-in game that was promised to be just as immense and explorative as the film franchise. The innovators of the “bullet-time” fad promised that anything Neo could you, you could also do. This then kicked off an immense advertising campaign that saw pictures from the game on billboards, TV ads, commercials and just about everything else that month. I worked at a retail store at the time, and this game ended up giving us all sorts of banners, cardboard standees, and just about anything else one could imagine. We didn’t get anything like that for most games, which leads me to believe that Atari threw down some serious cash for the marketing. When the game and movie came out, both were lauded for the special effects and slammed for just about everything else. Enter the Matrix was condemned as a bad knockoff of the game Max Payne that did not come close to achieving anything the developers promised. Soon after Atari ceased as a game publisher.

Grand Theft Auto IV – (Multi)

The culprit: Reviewers’ over-excitement

A video game review, by practice, usually shows one person’s critique of a particular video game based on a predetermined value set, and is usually followed by some sort of grade. Using these guidelines one can see how different games stack up against each other, and whether you should consider buying it. When a game called Grand Theft Auto IV came out, all norms of game scoring seemed to be tossed out the window. There were more than a handful of review sites that listed the game as “the best game ever made” and literally broke down their own scoring systems giving the game insane scores like 11/10. I guess it’s as Nigel Tufnel says in the movie Spinal Tap.

In the film, Nigel (the guitarist of this fictional rock band) pointed out to director Marty DiBergi that the settings on Tap’s Marshall amps could extend beyond the standard 10 mark. Nigel stated “You see, most blokes will be playing at 10. You’re on 10, all the way up, all the way up…Where can you go from there? Nowhere. What we do, is if we need that extra push over the cliff…Eleven. One louder.”

So there you go, when you want to invalidate your scoring system, just take it up to eleven!  11 means it’s better!

Halo 3 – (360)

The culprit: Marketing push that no game has ever seen

There is no doubting that Halo 3 was a huge success, but when you factor in the marketing costs for the insane amount of TV time the game got, action figures, toys, and even its own soft drink, you’d think that someone was being a tad silly with the funds (it was reported to be a 10 million dollar budget at the time). The entire week before the release of Halo 3, a lot of people were in Halo hysteria mode, chugging gallons of Mountain Dew Game Fuel, buying said Game Fuel at 7-Eleven in a Halo branded cup, watching specials on Spike TV and G4, and playing Halo 2 online.

Now let’s imagine that you are not a Halo fan for a bit. That week must have been hell.

Spore – (PC)

The culprit: So overhyped that Will Wright even says it’s overhyped

In an article with Escapist Magazine, Will Wright said the following:

“There is a certain amount of pressure. When people don’t know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way you want them to be filled in. That’s true of almost anything,” he continued. “Then, when the actual thing comes out some people will be disappointed that it’s not ‘hardcore enough’ or it’s not ‘easy enough’ or that we didn’t do this or that. We’ve got to the point any additional hype isn’t serving us well. It’s a concern.”

Will Wright is a smart man, as this is what exactly happened. Many years of delays and fan anticipation later, the game was released to mixed reviews. Granted, many of these reviews were more commentary on the intrusive DRM that the game contained, but let’s just say that many were less than happy with the game. From the beginning, Spore had been billed as some insane super-computer driven artificial intelligence system, which is a tad silly. Many folks got mad when the game finally came out and they could see the final product. These folks discovered the truth: they were playing a sim game/ god game/ and creature creation game, not the Matrix.