We’re just a few days short from finding out the winners of Unigamesity’s Best Games of 2008 awards, but there’s still a small (and rather unpleasant) step that has to be made now, just to make it easier for everybody to understand that huge budgets and obscene amounts of advertising are not the only things needed for a game to be considered a success. Because, as you will see, we will not talk about unknown, indie or low budget productions – we’re talking about products that we, as gamers, considered “smoking hot prospects” when they were announced. But we were proved wrong.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the Top Five Most Disappointing Games of 2008!

5. Age of Conan

Age of Conan was the game everybody (but mostly its developers) considered the “WoW beater”. It was described a while ago as a “mature game for mature people” and I was so excited it was coming that I was actually afraid I’ll become an addict and I’ll spend the rest of my life playing Funcom’s title. But Age of Conan did not manage to rise up to the expectations. And we were not ready for that many errors upon launch, we were not ready for the failing servers, for the tons of bugs the game kicked off with, for the lack of content… And, God, we were not ready for that “breast cut” on the female characters!

4. Facebreaker

It might be wrong, but I have always considered EA’s Facebreaker the first original IP in years. And, as the release date was nearing while zany screenshots and cool, funny details were flooding the internet, I was expecting the gaming world to be taken by storm. The controls were (and are) horrendous and overall the gameplay ruins all the goods of Facebreaker (the game still has some extremely well done and fun characters and… well… some enjoyable ring ladies who show up between rounds!).

3. Mercenaries 2

For a full and very detailed analysis on why this game is such a poor game, go check our Mercenaries 2 review. Or you can check the short version: first, the game was delayed for “further polishing” by its developers and I started to doubt I know what “polishing” means after I’ve played it. Second, it leaves such a bad taste of “GTA clone” with extra, pointless and mindless destruction that it simply cuts off the excitement that should’ve been provided by the visually appealing explosions. And third… well.. it’s just bad!

2. Haze

Goldeneye is probably the best Bond game ever made and one of the better FPS games in the genre, while Timesplitters is a synonym for “fun”. With such titles in the portfolio, we were all expecting from Free Radical a truly unique game, a truly unique experience. And Haze fails to offer any of that. Instead, it brings a poor storyline, a poor combat system and even some annoying voice acting. Overall (and unfortunately), Haze left us with the impression of an unfinished product and it was one of the biggest disappointments of the year. Sad.

1. Spore

It might seem strange for you to see here a game that was so highly rated in my review, where I said: “Spore is unique. Different. Thought-provoking. Fun.” – this definitely does not sound like disappointment. And, up to a point, it is not: Spore does not disappoint with what it is and the experience it brings, but with what it could’ve (and should’ve) been: a full blown, complex and complete life simulation and not a cartoony, cheesy game where Penis-shaped creatures run after food and dance and sing in front of other creatures in order to evolve.