Great Expectations, Big Disappointments: Top 10 Underwhelming Games of 2024

Introduction

So we're halfway through 2024; time keeps moving. Like every year, we take a look back and see how things are going so far. We've talked about the best games of 2024 in this first half, but now we've got to talk about some of the most disappointing. So far, we've got 10 games. Let's get started with number 10.

South Park: Snow Day

Before South Park: The Stick of Truth came out and ended up being one of the best TV show-to-video game adaptations of all time, there was 1998's South Park. This was like this weird little miserable first-person shooter where you throw snowballs at turkeys in really weird bleak environments. This game was notoriously terrible. So now, even though South Park: Snow Day is meant to be a follow-up to The Stick of Truth, it's really more like the first-person shooter from back in the day. It's boring, it's empty, and it's barely even funny, even though they're wearing the costumes and continuing the story from the last two actually good South Park games. 

This one is not an RPG and has pretty much nothing to do with those old games. It's like the video game equivalent of stolen valor. Cartman is dressed up like a wizard; you might say this is going to be good if you played Stick of Truth, right? No. This is boring. You're just running through these dull levels engaging in some really lifeless, forgettable combat. It's more fun with friends, but at this point, watching paint dry is more fun with friends. The game just isn't good enough. They even took a step backward with the graphical style. They figured out how to make a South Park game look like the South Park show, and then with Snow Day, they went back on all that and made weird, fully 3D graphics. I don't know what the idea was with this one, but it was a bummer for South Park fans for sure.

Silent Hill: The Short Message

This is a free game. It was released for free. How can that be disappointing? Well, it managed to find a way. It's been 12 years since we've actually gotten a real game in the series, and most people don't think Silent Hill: Ascension counts. And now, after all this, this is what they gave us? This is what Konami gave us? You don't want to judge it too harshly because it's free, but even going easy on this bite-sized little story game, it's just still not good enough. Sure, it's got Silent Hill elements. At least it borrows from the most superficial elements of the second game, like an otherworld and an unkillable stalker character, but it's all very surface level. It doesn't actually feel like those old games in the ways that really should count. 

Even that would be acceptable, I guess, if the gameplay wasn't so basic and the writing wasn't so abysmally bad. The idea of a Silent Hill story that involves high schoolers isn't a terrible idea, but all this story can manage is a collection of cliches. The central conflict barely boils down to anything. It's completely ridiculous and impossible to take seriously because nothing about this even feels real. There's nothing else to even focus on. The gameplay is extremely basic. You just walk around, walk forward to progress the story, and occasionally run from a monster. That's it. The entire experience is riding on the quality of storytelling, and it just falls flat on its face. Halfway through 2024, this Silent Hill revival project isn't going so hot. We're 0 for two so far. Get it together, Konami.

Star Wars: The Battlefront Classic Collection

This should have been a layup. At the time this collection came out, you could buy and play these games on PC and they'd work just fine. The original Pandemic-developed Star Wars Battlefront games are beloved and respected to this day. I played the hell out of these, and there are a lot of other people who prefer these to the EA-made follow-ups. There's just a certain charm that these old games have that the modern games lack. They're far from perfect, but they're fun. It would have been nice to get a slightly cleaned-up version of those old games that fixed a few technical issues on PC, added matchmaking, and made those playable on modern consoles. 

It should have been a license to print money. But the final product at launch was so slipshod and incomplete that the player base bailed, and the whole thing is pretty much dead now. There were so many unforced errors here: the massive file size from the upscaled textures that still look pretty bad, the introduction of new bugs and glitches, the terrible performance in multiplayer, and the server issues on launch day. The whole thing was a mess, and even though some of that has been fixed quite a bit, it was really just too little too late. What was the idea here, guys? The Battlefront Classic Collection should have never come out in the state it was in, and they probably shouldn't have used uncredited mod assets either, but that's a whole other story.

Homeworld 3

This one had a very long time coming. Homeworld 2 released way back in 2003, and while it's not everyone's favorite Homeworld game, this series has a small but rabid fan base who will latch on to anything even remotely Homeworld-related. There's nothing quite like these games. On the surface, they're RTS games, but the three-dimensional movement and unique atmosphere really make them stand out. When Homeworld 3 was announced, people were cautiously optimistic. But when some fans started playing the final product, the Metacritic user score says it all. 

Is Homeworld 3 that bad? No, it's not going to end up on any worst games of the year list or anything like that, but it is disappointing for some, and that score is more reflective of that. Many gameplay features that worked just fine in the original games are not working as well in this one. The default unit scaling is bizarre, pathfinding can be messy, and units won't quite do what you want them to. In some aspects, it feels like a little bit of a step down from a game that came out more than 20 years ago. The story is unfortunately not great. It takes all the worst things about StarCraft 2's writing and multiplies them here. It's just a storm of cheesy characters and cliched writing. 

We already have a modern game that's much closer to the style and atmosphere of the original Homeworld games: Homeworld Deserts of Kharak. That game more or less nailed what people wanted out of a Homeworld game without being set in space. So what went wrong here? Until we get some kind of postmortem, it's impossible to say. If you're not a huge Homeworld fan and can look past some iffy gameplay spots and bad writing, then it's not a terrible game. But for some of the really hardcore Homeworld people who were literally still playing Homeworld 2 right up until this point, those people are disappointed.

Foam Stars

This hollow attempt to mimic Splatoon actually had some promising ideas and could have been a fun alternative for people who were getting tired of playing as a squid who was also a kid. But the lack of creativity in the game modes and the absurd amount of microtransactions made this one a wash. Where Splatoon is unique and characterful, Foam Stars feels bland. It feels like corporately mandated fun, with flat Fortnite-like characters running around dull, sparkly arenas. For some reason, even though you're explicitly not squids who are kind of famous for releasing ink, your characters in this game have a mysterious power to generate foam. 

They literally can have foam generate from their bodies. That's the lore. Why make it exactly like Splatoon when there's no reason for it? Just make it like they have foam guns. The gameplay is very Splatoon-like with a bit more surfing, but you're covering the walls and floors in foam. Characters can move quickly through it if your color is better. You can move around more, and when you're in an enemy's color, you move around slower. The only significant difference is that the foam can actually be layered, so you can make makeshift hills, cover, and towers. The monetization is really absurd, and this isn't a free-to-play game either. 

There are some microtransactions that cost more than the game. These types of games need a hook to really rope people in. There needs to be something that stands out, or at the very least, they need to do something better than every other game out there or who they're competing against. Foam Stars doesn't either. It's not as good as Splatoon; it doesn't have the character of pretty much any other popular multiplayer shooter. It's just a completely forgettable game, and that's a shame.

Endless Ocean: Luminous

If you're a Nintendo fan, this actually had some real hype behind it. It was revealed in the February Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase and was the premier trailer. It was the last one shown, which is usually reserved for something pretty big. Even if you don't care about the Endless Ocean series, the trailer and its placement got some people's attention. So it's disappointing how mid-tier mediocre the final product ended up being. The concept is great, sort of like a more exploration-oriented Subnautica, but the execution is fatally flawed. Here's the one thing that sunk this game: it's randomly generated. 

So the environment you explore is different every time you go back to it, which is supposed to make it endlessly interesting. But it doesn't work here. It had the opposite effect. Nothing is handmade; nothing really feels like it has any purpose behind it, so it just feels like a jumble of assets in the middle of an empty-looking ocean. The wildlife can look awesome, but everything else is just boring. There are no deep sea trenches to explore or secrets to uncover because it's all just random stuff spread around equally. Subnautica knew that a carefully crafted world is so much more interesting to explore. Unfortunately, Endless Ocean: Luminous was just boring and got very middling reviews and was mostly forgotten about.

War Hospital

You may not have heard of this one, but there was actually a decent amount of excitement around War Hospital. The trailers were pretty slick, and the concept is a good one. It's a management game where you control a hospital during World War I. You've got limited resources and a seemingly endless line of patients who need your help. There's potential there for a bleak but rewarding experience, kind of like This War of Mine or Frostpunk mixed with Theme Hospital. What we got was a glorified mobile game full of bugs. The gameplay is very basic and far too much time is spent on fiddly little bits like discharging patients and rotating staff rather than the real high-level hospital management and World War I stuff. 

The hardest part of the game is the first chapter, and then after that, you're on cruise control for the rest of it. It's weirdly balanced. There's just not enough going on here to keep it interesting, and it's even lacking in thematic elements that would at least make the story engaging. It's just a misfire all around. It's a dull, buggy experience that lacks the tactical depth and decision-making you probably wanted from this type of game. If you want to play a bleak World War I game with similar production value that's actually good, check out Last Train Home. It's more of a management game RTS hybrid, but the train management stuff is still more interesting than anything in War Hospital.

Phantom Fury

Ion Fury was and still is one of the better games to come from the boomer shooter revival that we're currently knee-deep in. So when the trailer popped up for a sequel to Ion Fury, there was a lot of hype. People wanted a follow-up, but not like this. On paper, it sounds like the ideal sequel. It's gone fully 3D, there are tons of interactive environments and elements. It sounded kind of like Duke Nukem Forever that we actually wanted. Then the demo came out, and it wasn't great. It was a total mess. 

The controls are not good, and the actual final game wasn't that bad, but it's unfortunately still not our favorite. At the very least, it's not as good as Ion Fury. The previous game was made by different people this time around, maybe that's part of it. Phantom Fury just isn't good enough. It's kind of janky, it's not the most fun to play, the ambition is there, and you've got to respect a dev who's trying to make a Half-Life 2 style game. That's never going to be easy, but they needed to give this one more time in the oven. It's way better than Duke Nukem Forever, so that's good, but it still falls short.

Skull and Bones

We've been laughing at this one for years, rubbing our mitts together with every delay and piece of bad news coming out of the studio that was making it. We all joked that this was never going to come out or that Ubisoft was just burning money. But I've got to say, some people out there were legit excited about this game. They just wanted a new pirate game to play, something to scratch that Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag itch and an alternative to Sea of Thieves. I was still hoping for the best with this one because I love pirate games. 

There aren't enough of them. Unfortunately, right from the start, this thing was designed to disappoint. A new Ubisoft pirate game, but you're just the boat. You only control your character in small non-interactive, floaty towns and little islands where you collect treasure and do multiplayer live service stuff. There's no ship boarding or ground-based combat at all. The actual ship-to-ship combat is simplified. It's a live service game, but you still have to pay full price for it, and yes, there will be a season pass and microtransactions. Are you excited yet? That is the pitch. There's not really anything good. Expectations were rock bottom for a lot of people, but the final product was still disappointing. 

It wasn't unplayable or anything, and some of the combat mechanics and weapon designs were smooth, but the fun factor just wasn't there. There's no sense of adventure or excitement, just boring fetch quests and your usual games as a service bloat. It's playable but not engaging, which is a problem for something that's supposed to be a forever game meant to monopolize your attention. As a live service game, this fails. As a regular game, it fails too. It's not a total disaster; it found a little bit of an audience, and you never know, Ubisoft might support it long term and blow it up into something like For Honor or Rainbow Six Siege. But for us, it's just not very fun.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

What else could be number one at this point? I don't even know where to start. Rocksteady went from making the Arkham games—the most innovative and exciting mainstream Batman games—and then they pivoted to this, an undercooked live service game. The frustrating thing for me personally is how much potential there is here. The feel of shooting the guns, some of the traversal feels really good, and some of the banter and voice acting can be cool. The world they built, this Metropolis, is interesting. We get to see Arkhamverse DC heroes. Also, the concept of a story where you kill the Justice League had the potential to do something unique and different. They killed Batman, which people didn't like, but there was a way to kill Batman that actually would have been pretty cool and interesting. 

But they squandered and wasted every opportunity. Coming from a developer who made such tightly designed, incredible single-player experiences, it's hard to describe just how disappointingly basic everything is. The whole game is spent on repetitive time-wasting activities. There are only a couple of little mission types, the open world map is small, and the campaign is super short. The end game isn't much either. Everything they've released since hasn't been enticing. I don't really know what more to say about this one. It still hurts to talk about because I love Rocksteady, I love Batman, and I was hoping something good would come out of this. But unfortunately, nope.

Bonus: Supernormal

This was inspired by Allison Road, a game that looked awesome and was inspired by PT. There was legitimate interest in this game around the time it came out in early 2024, but it's not exactly what people expected. It's not very good, and there's a big reason why. The developers behind this called themselves Hitori Day Productions and claimed to be first-time developers, but they're not. They're actually just a renamed Jukai Studios, which is really just one guy. What was the game they made before this one? It was Stray Souls, notoriously one of the worst games of 2023. Stray Souls is one of those games that has to be seen to be believed. 

It was shockingly, unbelievably bad with bizarre dialogue, weird laughable horror, and it was extremely short and cost $30. It was rough. That explains so much about why Supernormal also is not good. It suffers from a lot of the same problems, but it's more boring bad rather than funny bad. If everybody knew that this came from the same people that made Stray Souls, nobody on the planet would have been interested in this. The developers changed their name to fool people, but it was still an absolute bummer. Another spiritual successor game inspired by PT falls flat on its face. Will we ever get anything like PT again? I don't know for sure.

Conclusion

Those are the 10 games that were disappointing from the first half of 2024. Again, not all these games are the worst ever, but they were disappointing for a variety of reasons. And then, of course, we had some real stinkers like South Park: Snow Day or Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Let us know in the comments your thoughts and picks for disappointing games. That's all you really got to do. Thanks for reading, and we'll see you guys next time.