Jun 11th, 2019, 07:34 AM
So, a while ago, a friend of mine got me thinking, and decided to note on how I can be so cynical when it comes to hype culture in gaming. As such, I decided to chronicle an adventure of how I came to be this way starting with the first year I ever started gaming: 1997, the year Star Fox 64 came out. I was all of 4 when I bought it for my friend's birthday, and I've been gaming ever since, so let's take a look at 22 27 years of gaming through the eyes of games that never lived up to their own hype. A note though: while many of the games are arguably bad, I do have a few surprises in store if you're just expecting this to be a list of bad games.
1997: Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero
A bad idea from start to finish, this game tried to make a platformer out of a fighting game engine. Because that was going to work. (Then again, they did it with Batman, and I actually remember that being a lot of fun) Janky controls and cheap death traps combined to make a game nearly unplayable, and then you add on the fact that this game was meant to be a story about Sub-Zero's past despite not telling us much about Sub-Zero (or even being about the right Sub-Zero!)
1998: (Jurassic Park) Trespasser
I want you to cast your mind back to 1998. Just try to think of the technology that was just coming out. Could it have built lush, open, explorable landscapes? Complex AI that had multiple emotions it kept track of? Hell, the ability to follow you into buildings without breaking the game engine! Given that this would have been difficult ten years later, Trespasser was a game that just set its goals too high, and came out as a tragedy as a result. And the less said about the arm, the better.
1999: Superman (64)
HOO, DADDY! The myth. The legend. The undisputed king of bad games! A terribly coded, poorly thought-out mess, this is what happens when you mix Warner Bros. meddling with Titus incompetence. This was leeching off the Animated Superman series, too, so it's not like this wasn't a big deal when the game came out. And yet, it is now legendary as one of the worst games of all time, though not without stiff competition!
2000: Daikatana
"John Romero is about to make you his bitch." That was an actual ad that was taken in an actual magazine, as well as telling you to "Suck it down." One of the father's of Doom, his leaving Id Software to do his own thing was watched with the world's eye, wondering what masterpiece he would come up with. It ended up being a poorly written mess of an FPS with AI so brokenly terrible, it made the game almost impossible to play. Needless to say, John Romero got a much needed sobering up from this splash of cold water.
2001: Black and White
Oh, hi, Peter Molyneux! I'm sure we won't be seeing you again! This one is actually different, because this was, by all accounts, a good game! But, the gaming community soon turned on the game, realizing it wasn't really the hottest thing since sliced bread when it came down to it. It promised a lot, and it admittedly delievered some of it, but it was another case of Molyneux hype: promising the world, and only delievering a scrap of it.
2002: Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly
The first Spyro game not developed by Insomniac, and the first sign of trouble on the horizon for a great series. Short, buggy, bad controls, everything about it seemed WRONG! It didn't help matters that it actually messed up a kid to the point of the publishers being sued after he had an epileptic seizure because of the game bugs. Thankfully, the series has gotten past those trying times...right?
2003: Batman: Dark Tomorrow
This one is another one of those tragedies of gaming. Starting out as an open-world exploration game on the Gamecube, the problems started when Microsoft said they also wanted to publish the game. This meant that they had to completely scrap what they were doing, and they ended up making a static camera monstrousity of a game. Poorly designed thanks to the rush job, and the good ending never even being hinted at lead to one of the worst games ever made.
2004: Fable
It all started with an acorn. Yet another case of Molyneux hype, this game promised to be the epic RPG people were waiting for. You could play anyway you want, and your class would change to accomdate it. A complex morality system. The game would age as you played, where you could plant an acorn and watch it grow into a tree. And then it came out, and it was...alright. It was pretty good, actually, but it wasn't the awe-inspiring RPG we were promised. He aimed for the stars, and landed right on the Sun.
2005: Advent Rising
Imagine if Mass Effect came out 2 years before it did. Because that's basically what Advent Rising was trying to be. It was going to be an epic trilogy about your ascencion into literal godhood, and it even had a million dollar prize attached to it for finding all the game's hidden glyphs. And then the game came out, and it was mediocre. Soon, it was eclipsed by Mass Effect, and was eventually forgotten.
And I remembered that.
2006: Sonic the Hedgehog ('06)
Another legend of bad games, this was Sonic's 15th anniversary. And to celebrate it, we got the worst Sonic game of all time. Broken, unpolished, badly executed, and the LOADING TIMES. This poorly optimized joke of a game wasn't helped by its story, and the less said about that, the better. It's actually incredible that the series survived such a killing blow, but it seems to have recovered. At least it did, right up until the Sonic movie trailer came out.
2007: Bioshock
I still remember one of the promo videos that came out for this game. It was an epic fight with a Big Daddy that used all the mechanics the game had to offer, and it culminated in a bone-chilling moment where you slowly approached the now-defenceless Little Sister, as the screen slowly fades to black. And this is another great game, but it committed an unforgivable sin: It wasn't System Shock 2. The very fact that it was a spiritual successor to one of the most revolutionary FPSes of our time damned it before it could ever make it out the door.
And I remembered that.
2008: Spore
Will Wright's baby. After making the beloved Sims series, he wanted to make this God game where you can create and evolve your own creatures from microbe to spacefaring. When it came out, it was well enough received, but it wasn't what it promised to be. The gameplay loop was shallow, the creature creator was just bad (to say nothing of the porn), and OH YEAH, it ended up being one of the most pirated games of all time thanks to its SecuROM DRM. It was good, but it wasn't great, and that was the sin it committed.
Honorable Mention: Too Human
Yeah, I'm skipping 2009. Screw you, it's my list. Besides, I think this gaming coming out of Development Hell is worth talking about. Originally announced in 1996, it didn't see the light of day until 2008, after multiple console changes, redesigns, and the less said about the Epic lawsuit, the better. Even without that problem, the weird "control-stick combat" controls and mediocre gameplay put the nail in the coffin for this one the moment it was released.
2010: Final Fantasy XIV
"But Final Fantasy XIV is good now!" I can already hear you cry. Yes, yes it is. But it wasn't when it first came out! Boring, grindy, repetetive, and lackluster, SqueEnix actually issued an APOLOGY for how crap the game was! No one apologized for the other games on this list! This would have been the worst Final Fantasy game ever released if Final Fantasy 13 didn't exist!
But this list isn't about my petty grudges.
2011: Duke Nukem Forever
Yet another legend, this time from Development Hell. Spending 11 years in development, Duke Nukem Forever was the long-awaited sequel to the Duke Nukem series that had the eternal problem of Chasing the Dragon. "The Dragon" being the concept of the "Perfect Shooter". Sent back to the drawing board every time it was close to finished because a new game would come out, 3D Realms soon folded before the game could come out, and it's only thanks to the "generousity" of Gearbox Software that the game finally saw the light of day. We WILL be hearing from them again...
2012: Medal of Honor: Warfighter
The end of the first World War II FPS series, Medal of Honor Doorfighter was another victim of "Chasing the CoD" that went modern after Modern Warfare dropped, and everyone was trying to do what Call of Duty did, thinking it would make them gobs of money. This is the way the game series ended: not with a bang, but with a whimper.
2013: Aliens: Colonial Marines
Oh, yeah. You knew this was coming. The game that has at least one reviewer still personally offended about being lied to about it, Gearbox thought it was a good idea to off-load most of the development to a studio no one had heard of, and hope for the best. Poor AI (later discovered to be caused by a typo in the source code), mediocre gameplay, and a terrible story combined to create what can only be described as a stab in the gut to fans of the series. Battleborn was karmic retribution for this game...
2014: Destiny
Remember when I said this list wasn't about my petty grudges? I'm making an exception here, because of what this game did to me. I remember the beta coming out, and deciding to give it a go. I still remember talking with my friends while playing the game, and saying "I feel like I'm going through the motions; this game just feels like Borderlands." I still remember them saying how I was wrong, and how this game was one of the greatest things ever, and how I just was looking at it the wrong way! And then, within 6 months, you know what they were saying? "Eh, it was okay. It got boring after a while."
...And I remembered that. And yes, I'm still bitter.
2015: The Order 1886
I want you to imagine a game where the Knights of the Round Table fight werewolves and vampires with steampunk weaponry designed by Nikola Tesla. Now I want you to make that game boring. Because that's what The Order is: a boring game that is only barely even a game, because it tried too hard to be a "cinematic" experience, and came off more as an interactive movie because of it. It's actually almost funny how bad this game is. At least, it would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
2016: Mighty No. 9
I actually had a tough call to make, and I decided to go with this instead of No Man's Sky, mainly because I didn't want to reference Peter Molyneux again, but also because of the debacle of a schedule this game had from Kickstarter to coming out. What was promised to be a spiritual successor to Megaman Legends eventually twisted and morphed in front of the world's eyes into a lackluster Megaman clone that was NOT what the backers were promised. It remains, to this day, a stain on the very idea of crowdfunding, and not many games I've referenced have done that much to destroy something.
2017: Mass Effect Andromeda
Oh boy, what can I even say about this game? Well, thanks to EA's mandate that their games use the Frostbite engine (which is notoriously crap for any thing not an FPS), this game was screwed from the word go. In fact, it's actually impressive that the game came out as well as it did, but bugs combined with a mediocre gameplay loop and a stupid story to create a game that immediately nuked a Bioware subsidiary just as it was starting, and put the entire company on thin ice with EA. And it's only gotten worse...
2018: Fallout 76
It had to be. Of course it did. Despite being a game that nobody wanted, Bethesda decided to make an online-only survival/crafting game out of Fallout, and failed to even do that much. What can only be described as a perfect measure of Bethesda's incompetence, this bugged nightmare of a game didn't even have the gloss that it's other games had to keep people from hating it for the bugs. This game is terrible, and the fallout from the various controveries surrounding it continues to entertain to this day!
What do you guys think, though? Am I being unfair to a few games? Can you think of other contenders? I did skip 2009 because it was a BANGING year for game releases (when I was discussing potential releases to talk about, the best we could come up with that fit the criteria was Halo 3: ODST!) I'm also not including 2019 because, well, we're in it. After all, Borderlands 3 still has a chance to disappoint me after Anthem. Well, it's been 2 years, and we're almost done with 2020, so I think I can add to this list. So, two more games, and I can think of no other two to honor than these.
2019: Anthem
Of course it would be this. Of course it would be Bioware's inadvertant attempt at making Destiny in 1 year despite 7 years of pre-production; it will never not be this. Yes, after Anthem came out a dull mess of a game and we learned just how troubled the production was, I'll be honest: I was laughing. I was whole-heartedly laughing, because I told my bastard friends what was going to happen. My name is now Cassandra, and I can see the future! Repetitive gameplay, a hackjob of a story that seems re-cut to pieces to salvage what was made, and the Tombs of the Legionnaires! This game managed to fail upwards into being one of the highest-selling games of the year, and I will never understand how that could happen...
2020: Cyberpunk 2077
HAHAHAHAHAHA! It's Fallout 76 all over again! The buggyness, the controversies, the unending fallout that continues to slap us in the face! I LOVE IT! Please, continue to course correct, CDPR! There's no way you could make it any worse than the dumpster fire that is currently happening, between the character customization options not living up, to the graphical problems, to being refunded and removed from storefronts. It's a beautiful thing, and you're bringing a tear to my eye...
2021: Balan Wonderworld
I had friends who told me a different game should be here, but I have to go with my heart on this. Balan Wonderworld, the platformer that Yuji Naka was championing for SqueEnix, cratered so hard and so thoroughly that it has single-handedly killed any other platformer SqueEnix would ever make. This was his one shot, and he threw it away on an attempt to "simplify the controls" to the point that there's only one friggin action button, and all the face and shoulder buttons do it! Not to mention the development time wasted on making over 80 outfits. It's honestly a Tragedy.
2022: Overwatch 2
The sequel that no one asked for, Overwatch 2 is legitimately impressive because of how well it cratered itself. Over-monetized with Battle Passes and an IMPRESSIVE amount of grind, things weren't helped by forcing players to hook a cell phone with an active contract (no pay-as-you-go allowed), and the game in general being completely unnecessary given that, you know, Overwatch existed and was summarily murdered to force everyone to play it. The only good news about it is that it's free to play. Whatever. Pokemon SV almost won over this, until a friend brought up an important point: people actually ENJOYED Pokemon SV on release!
2023: Atomic Heart
You're probably looking at me like I'm crazy right now, given the number of games that thoroughly cratered this year, but this one is different. This one actually has pathos. A Russian-developed game that wasn't smoke and mirrors, Atomic Heart was a shooter that took place in a retro-sci-fi 1950s, where the Soviet Union is collapsing amidst a robot uprising. It had an actual ad campaign with advertisements on TV and even Youtube! I actually knew about this game before it released, and once it finally dropped... silence. It was warmly receieved, and then promptly forgotten about. That is a fate that the Redfalls and Gollums of 2023 wishes they had happen to them, but also makes Atomic Heart, in a way, far more overhyped than any other, because even negative hype is still hype.
1997: Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero
A bad idea from start to finish, this game tried to make a platformer out of a fighting game engine. Because that was going to work. (Then again, they did it with Batman, and I actually remember that being a lot of fun) Janky controls and cheap death traps combined to make a game nearly unplayable, and then you add on the fact that this game was meant to be a story about Sub-Zero's past despite not telling us much about Sub-Zero (or even being about the right Sub-Zero!)
1998: (Jurassic Park) Trespasser
I want you to cast your mind back to 1998. Just try to think of the technology that was just coming out. Could it have built lush, open, explorable landscapes? Complex AI that had multiple emotions it kept track of? Hell, the ability to follow you into buildings without breaking the game engine! Given that this would have been difficult ten years later, Trespasser was a game that just set its goals too high, and came out as a tragedy as a result. And the less said about the arm, the better.
1999: Superman (64)
HOO, DADDY! The myth. The legend. The undisputed king of bad games! A terribly coded, poorly thought-out mess, this is what happens when you mix Warner Bros. meddling with Titus incompetence. This was leeching off the Animated Superman series, too, so it's not like this wasn't a big deal when the game came out. And yet, it is now legendary as one of the worst games of all time, though not without stiff competition!
2000: Daikatana
"John Romero is about to make you his bitch." That was an actual ad that was taken in an actual magazine, as well as telling you to "Suck it down." One of the father's of Doom, his leaving Id Software to do his own thing was watched with the world's eye, wondering what masterpiece he would come up with. It ended up being a poorly written mess of an FPS with AI so brokenly terrible, it made the game almost impossible to play. Needless to say, John Romero got a much needed sobering up from this splash of cold water.
2001: Black and White
Oh, hi, Peter Molyneux! I'm sure we won't be seeing you again! This one is actually different, because this was, by all accounts, a good game! But, the gaming community soon turned on the game, realizing it wasn't really the hottest thing since sliced bread when it came down to it. It promised a lot, and it admittedly delievered some of it, but it was another case of Molyneux hype: promising the world, and only delievering a scrap of it.
2002: Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly
The first Spyro game not developed by Insomniac, and the first sign of trouble on the horizon for a great series. Short, buggy, bad controls, everything about it seemed WRONG! It didn't help matters that it actually messed up a kid to the point of the publishers being sued after he had an epileptic seizure because of the game bugs. Thankfully, the series has gotten past those trying times...right?
2003: Batman: Dark Tomorrow
This one is another one of those tragedies of gaming. Starting out as an open-world exploration game on the Gamecube, the problems started when Microsoft said they also wanted to publish the game. This meant that they had to completely scrap what they were doing, and they ended up making a static camera monstrousity of a game. Poorly designed thanks to the rush job, and the good ending never even being hinted at lead to one of the worst games ever made.
2004: Fable
It all started with an acorn. Yet another case of Molyneux hype, this game promised to be the epic RPG people were waiting for. You could play anyway you want, and your class would change to accomdate it. A complex morality system. The game would age as you played, where you could plant an acorn and watch it grow into a tree. And then it came out, and it was...alright. It was pretty good, actually, but it wasn't the awe-inspiring RPG we were promised. He aimed for the stars, and landed right on the Sun.
2005: Advent Rising
Imagine if Mass Effect came out 2 years before it did. Because that's basically what Advent Rising was trying to be. It was going to be an epic trilogy about your ascencion into literal godhood, and it even had a million dollar prize attached to it for finding all the game's hidden glyphs. And then the game came out, and it was mediocre. Soon, it was eclipsed by Mass Effect, and was eventually forgotten.
And I remembered that.
2006: Sonic the Hedgehog ('06)
Another legend of bad games, this was Sonic's 15th anniversary. And to celebrate it, we got the worst Sonic game of all time. Broken, unpolished, badly executed, and the LOADING TIMES. This poorly optimized joke of a game wasn't helped by its story, and the less said about that, the better. It's actually incredible that the series survived such a killing blow, but it seems to have recovered. At least it did, right up until the Sonic movie trailer came out.
2007: Bioshock
I still remember one of the promo videos that came out for this game. It was an epic fight with a Big Daddy that used all the mechanics the game had to offer, and it culminated in a bone-chilling moment where you slowly approached the now-defenceless Little Sister, as the screen slowly fades to black. And this is another great game, but it committed an unforgivable sin: It wasn't System Shock 2. The very fact that it was a spiritual successor to one of the most revolutionary FPSes of our time damned it before it could ever make it out the door.
And I remembered that.
2008: Spore
Will Wright's baby. After making the beloved Sims series, he wanted to make this God game where you can create and evolve your own creatures from microbe to spacefaring. When it came out, it was well enough received, but it wasn't what it promised to be. The gameplay loop was shallow, the creature creator was just bad (to say nothing of the porn), and OH YEAH, it ended up being one of the most pirated games of all time thanks to its SecuROM DRM. It was good, but it wasn't great, and that was the sin it committed.
Honorable Mention: Too Human
Yeah, I'm skipping 2009. Screw you, it's my list. Besides, I think this gaming coming out of Development Hell is worth talking about. Originally announced in 1996, it didn't see the light of day until 2008, after multiple console changes, redesigns, and the less said about the Epic lawsuit, the better. Even without that problem, the weird "control-stick combat" controls and mediocre gameplay put the nail in the coffin for this one the moment it was released.
2010: Final Fantasy XIV
"But Final Fantasy XIV is good now!" I can already hear you cry. Yes, yes it is. But it wasn't when it first came out! Boring, grindy, repetetive, and lackluster, SqueEnix actually issued an APOLOGY for how crap the game was! No one apologized for the other games on this list! This would have been the worst Final Fantasy game ever released if Final Fantasy 13 didn't exist!
But this list isn't about my petty grudges.
2011: Duke Nukem Forever
Yet another legend, this time from Development Hell. Spending 11 years in development, Duke Nukem Forever was the long-awaited sequel to the Duke Nukem series that had the eternal problem of Chasing the Dragon. "The Dragon" being the concept of the "Perfect Shooter". Sent back to the drawing board every time it was close to finished because a new game would come out, 3D Realms soon folded before the game could come out, and it's only thanks to the "generousity" of Gearbox Software that the game finally saw the light of day. We WILL be hearing from them again...
2012: Medal of Honor: Warfighter
The end of the first World War II FPS series, Medal of Honor Doorfighter was another victim of "Chasing the CoD" that went modern after Modern Warfare dropped, and everyone was trying to do what Call of Duty did, thinking it would make them gobs of money. This is the way the game series ended: not with a bang, but with a whimper.
2013: Aliens: Colonial Marines
Oh, yeah. You knew this was coming. The game that has at least one reviewer still personally offended about being lied to about it, Gearbox thought it was a good idea to off-load most of the development to a studio no one had heard of, and hope for the best. Poor AI (later discovered to be caused by a typo in the source code), mediocre gameplay, and a terrible story combined to create what can only be described as a stab in the gut to fans of the series. Battleborn was karmic retribution for this game...
2014: Destiny
Remember when I said this list wasn't about my petty grudges? I'm making an exception here, because of what this game did to me. I remember the beta coming out, and deciding to give it a go. I still remember talking with my friends while playing the game, and saying "I feel like I'm going through the motions; this game just feels like Borderlands." I still remember them saying how I was wrong, and how this game was one of the greatest things ever, and how I just was looking at it the wrong way! And then, within 6 months, you know what they were saying? "Eh, it was okay. It got boring after a while."
...And I remembered that. And yes, I'm still bitter.
2015: The Order 1886
I want you to imagine a game where the Knights of the Round Table fight werewolves and vampires with steampunk weaponry designed by Nikola Tesla. Now I want you to make that game boring. Because that's what The Order is: a boring game that is only barely even a game, because it tried too hard to be a "cinematic" experience, and came off more as an interactive movie because of it. It's actually almost funny how bad this game is. At least, it would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
2016: Mighty No. 9
I actually had a tough call to make, and I decided to go with this instead of No Man's Sky, mainly because I didn't want to reference Peter Molyneux again, but also because of the debacle of a schedule this game had from Kickstarter to coming out. What was promised to be a spiritual successor to Megaman Legends eventually twisted and morphed in front of the world's eyes into a lackluster Megaman clone that was NOT what the backers were promised. It remains, to this day, a stain on the very idea of crowdfunding, and not many games I've referenced have done that much to destroy something.
2017: Mass Effect Andromeda
Oh boy, what can I even say about this game? Well, thanks to EA's mandate that their games use the Frostbite engine (which is notoriously crap for any thing not an FPS), this game was screwed from the word go. In fact, it's actually impressive that the game came out as well as it did, but bugs combined with a mediocre gameplay loop and a stupid story to create a game that immediately nuked a Bioware subsidiary just as it was starting, and put the entire company on thin ice with EA. And it's only gotten worse...
2018: Fallout 76
It had to be. Of course it did. Despite being a game that nobody wanted, Bethesda decided to make an online-only survival/crafting game out of Fallout, and failed to even do that much. What can only be described as a perfect measure of Bethesda's incompetence, this bugged nightmare of a game didn't even have the gloss that it's other games had to keep people from hating it for the bugs. This game is terrible, and the fallout from the various controveries surrounding it continues to entertain to this day!
What do you guys think, though? Am I being unfair to a few games? Can you think of other contenders? I did skip 2009 because it was a BANGING year for game releases (when I was discussing potential releases to talk about, the best we could come up with that fit the criteria was Halo 3: ODST!) I'm also not including 2019 because, well, we're in it. After all, Borderlands 3 still has a chance to disappoint me after Anthem. Well, it's been 2 years, and we're almost done with 2020, so I think I can add to this list. So, two more games, and I can think of no other two to honor than these.
2019: Anthem
Of course it would be this. Of course it would be Bioware's inadvertant attempt at making Destiny in 1 year despite 7 years of pre-production; it will never not be this. Yes, after Anthem came out a dull mess of a game and we learned just how troubled the production was, I'll be honest: I was laughing. I was whole-heartedly laughing, because I told my bastard friends what was going to happen. My name is now Cassandra, and I can see the future! Repetitive gameplay, a hackjob of a story that seems re-cut to pieces to salvage what was made, and the Tombs of the Legionnaires! This game managed to fail upwards into being one of the highest-selling games of the year, and I will never understand how that could happen...
2020: Cyberpunk 2077
HAHAHAHAHAHA! It's Fallout 76 all over again! The buggyness, the controversies, the unending fallout that continues to slap us in the face! I LOVE IT! Please, continue to course correct, CDPR! There's no way you could make it any worse than the dumpster fire that is currently happening, between the character customization options not living up, to the graphical problems, to being refunded and removed from storefronts. It's a beautiful thing, and you're bringing a tear to my eye...
2021: Balan Wonderworld
I had friends who told me a different game should be here, but I have to go with my heart on this. Balan Wonderworld, the platformer that Yuji Naka was championing for SqueEnix, cratered so hard and so thoroughly that it has single-handedly killed any other platformer SqueEnix would ever make. This was his one shot, and he threw it away on an attempt to "simplify the controls" to the point that there's only one friggin action button, and all the face and shoulder buttons do it! Not to mention the development time wasted on making over 80 outfits. It's honestly a Tragedy.
2022: Overwatch 2
The sequel that no one asked for, Overwatch 2 is legitimately impressive because of how well it cratered itself. Over-monetized with Battle Passes and an IMPRESSIVE amount of grind, things weren't helped by forcing players to hook a cell phone with an active contract (no pay-as-you-go allowed), and the game in general being completely unnecessary given that, you know, Overwatch existed and was summarily murdered to force everyone to play it. The only good news about it is that it's free to play. Whatever. Pokemon SV almost won over this, until a friend brought up an important point: people actually ENJOYED Pokemon SV on release!
2023: Atomic Heart
You're probably looking at me like I'm crazy right now, given the number of games that thoroughly cratered this year, but this one is different. This one actually has pathos. A Russian-developed game that wasn't smoke and mirrors, Atomic Heart was a shooter that took place in a retro-sci-fi 1950s, where the Soviet Union is collapsing amidst a robot uprising. It had an actual ad campaign with advertisements on TV and even Youtube! I actually knew about this game before it released, and once it finally dropped... silence. It was warmly receieved, and then promptly forgotten about. That is a fate that the Redfalls and Gollums of 2023 wishes they had happen to them, but also makes Atomic Heart, in a way, far more overhyped than any other, because even negative hype is still hype.