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[Catastrophic lolcats]

What's the true meaning of Christmas? Regret!
This is a thread that pops up on pretty much every single gaming forum but it's always a fun one.

"Rules" (they should be obvious)
State the game or games that you regret buying in 2012!
It can be any game of any year as long as it was purchased in this year.
Give a small (or long if you're inclined) justification as to why you regret it.
Feel free to debate people's justifications but remember to keep it civil and respectful.

My example.
Inquisitor from GOG, Christmas sale deal.
Although it was extremely cheap I didn't find all that much enjoyment from the title. The animations were jerky. The combat extremely slow paced at the start. The UI was extremely small on higher resolutions. The font design was rather hard to read and again too small.

The game throws A LOT of text at you. Big massive walls of text with a lot of information. Although in theory this might come across as a good thing I found it just way too overwhelming to get immersed into the universe. Every single person wanted to spew out their whole uninteresting life story to me and exactly what was going on in the area.
I found this method of storytelling rather strange due to the gameplay being a rather standard aRPG in the vein of a "Diablo-clone". It seemed like the gameplay and story telling was almost always at odds. The storytelling would take you completely out of the flow of the aRPG combat since you had to stop every now and again to read massive walls of text and attempt to retain the information.

The gameplay was pretty standard aRPG stuff as previously mentioned. I'm not really into the whole aRPG/"Diablo-clone" genre so I can't really give a detailed explanation about why I disliked it. All I can say is that the combat felt extremely slow at the start. The attacks felt "sticky" and there didn't seem to be much finesse. Magic or ranged didn't exactly strike me as amazing (didn't try melee). Finally there seemed to be a "stamina" bar as well as the standard HP/MP one which didn't seem to regenerate quickly at all, making it another thing you had to guzzle potions for.

There's obviously been a lot of work put into the universe and writing but I just couldn't find myself becoming immersed due to the way storytelling and gameplay was handled. Let this be a cautionary tale for developers to understand that gameplay and storytelling are best used to complement each other instead of having them completely segregated.

[Shadowlord]

Dead Space 1 and 2 on Steam, because the first seems to be a terrible port and the second still includes additional DRM (not sure if it's a bad console port as well).

[Alkhemia]

Soulcalibur V The game felt pretty incomplete and the online only is a spam fest.

[JWNoctis]

Frozen Synapse.

A bit pricey and not exactly to my taste, as I found out afterwards. I know it's a good game, and maybe one day I will learn to enjoy it.

Also, woe befall that deal sweetener in the package.

[lordcooper]

Hinterland and Achron.  Both truly beautiful concepts that were let down by mind bogglingly bad design elements and underdeveloped mechanics.

To a lesser extent SPAZ, GSB (turns out I just don't like that genre) and the Dawn of war II games.

[Sharp]

SPAZ as well, Civ 5 (although it was free with XCOM, I regret installing it though)

Fight Night Round 4, bleugh can't believe that got recommended for me, however UFC Undisputed 3 which demo I have is amazing fun so I might be getting that as a nice prezzie for myself this xmas.

[Alkhemia]

SPAZ as well, Civ 5 (although it was free with XCOM, I regret installing it though)

Fight Night Round 4, bleugh can't believe that got recommended for me, however UFC Undisputed 3 which demo I have is amazing fun so I might be getting that as a nice prezzie for myself this xmas.

ehhh not liking Civ 5, Civ not your cup of tea?

[Chattox]

Honestly? Sleeping Dogs. I know it was a well made game, it was just... eh.

[Sharp]

ehhh not liking Civ 5, Civ not your cup of tea?

Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri are two of my favourite games. Civ 4 and 5 in comparison are a pile of steamy shit (in my opinion). Brian Reynolds made the civ games fun. AI might be better in 4 and 5 but the gameplay is just horrible.

[fenrif]

Iron Brigade: I really really love the game itself... But GFWL makes it such a terrible regret, and I can't enjoy it. It pops up every 2 minutes, pauses the game, and tells me I've been disconnected. It's seriously the most annoying thing ever to happen in a game I've played.

Dear Esther: Bought this on the recommendation of a friend. It's not even a game, you just walk around. What a terrible pretentious chore of an experience.

[JWNoctis]

Dear Esther: Bought this on the recommendation of a friend. It's not even a game, you just walk around. What a terrible pretentious chore of an experience.

Walking around is sometimes an experience in itself.

And yes, it really feels more like a visual novel instead a game, and it does feel a bit bland - at first. Playing stuff like this with the mindset for almost any other game would indeed be very boring, since it would in effect mean nothing more than walking around some fancy terrain.

[Facekillz058]

Borderlands 2.
It is too slow-paced and some times frusteratingly difficult in alot of parts. Namely, when I got to fight a badass fire thresher in the caustic caverns. Let's just say, about 50 trys later, he still wasn't dead.
And alot of the time it's too easy, like, with the crystalisks, just walk around them and stabby stab.
Borderlands used to be all about mowing down everything, and then needing to try to defeat the bosses. This game was pretty much the other way 'round in alot of parts.

Guild Wars 2.
I bought this game out of hype, sadly, and it was a let down. The combat just gets so repetitive after the first 2-million mobs die.
Event's are cool, but they are most the same thing, with different names.
All and all, this game was about a 6/10.

[Aptus]

These are my regretted purchases this year.

Prototype 2:
One of the worst optimizations I have ever experienced for pc, the game is completely unplayable (as in slideshow with horrendous mouselag) even on lower settings (and I have a fairly powerful computer that run most things on max or atleast high settings.)

ArmA 2 for DayZ:
Never got into it, just felt clunky and dull.

Kingdoms of Amalur:
MMORPG but without the fun of actually having other people to do silly shit with. Probably one of the worst RPG's I have ever played.

Dead Space:
Nothing but jumpscares and terrible controls.

Krater:
Seemed promising when I read about it but it turned out to just be... boring. As in really really dull.

They Bleed Pixels:
I should have learned from Super Meat Boy that I just can not play these games even though they seem so fun. Ragequit after about 30 minutes of play and never went back. Pretty much exactly as my SMB experience :p

Thats all I can think of for now at least.

[EDIT] Removed a bazillion extra returns that appeared for some reason, this would never happen if all forums were forced to use LaTeX!

[debvon]

Going to have to second Guild Wars 2.. sadly. It's just so shallow right now. I mean sure, there's a lot of content, but it's all so repetitive. Even "end game" is repetitive as all hell. You basically grind dungeons with frustrating groups of strangers just for shiny armor models that have the same exact stats as stuff you can get otherwise. That's end-game, currently. What about replay value? Well.. yeah, there are a lot of different classes to play. But when you have 75%+ world completion on one character, playing through it all again on another one is not exactly exciting.

So the game has flaws. It's not terrible, but it didn't live up to the hype. I didn't expect it to either, I bought it (not entirely due to the hype, but) because I was a huge guild wars 1 fan. I hope they add some depth to it.

[miauw62]

Surprised noone said "War Z" yet.