Missed Opportunities / "It could have been great!"

We have all stumbled across video games of all approval ratings. We've played critically acclaimed games, we've played underrated gems that didn't get that much attention, we've experienced games being super big in one point of its life before fading into obscurity, we have played games that "were really not that bad", and we've also played bad video games that we regret buying or downloading.

But enough talk with that ubiquitous crud. We are here to discuss what i like to call "missed opportunities". A missed opportunity in this context means of a video game that you felt could have been good if they were handled more properly. A lot of these "missed opportunities" are built upon either an enormous amount of hype, a colorful background, a great track record, or basically some upstart company whose proof-of-concept will be the jumpstart to their careers, but they end up being bad for a couple of reasons. Basically, yes they were bad, but for some reason some of these games have some sort of glimpses of brilliance or redeemable things that could have made them otherwise good games. Other times, we've come across games that could have been great, loaded with a ton of wasted potential, thus missing an opportunity to be a great game that could have shaken the market and the industry, or at least our hearts and our murderguns. Occasionally, we come across a rather decent game, but for some reason, we feel that there could have been done more to it.

So, here in this thread, let us talk about what you feel are some video games that are "missed opportunities". What if these games were handled better and actually ended up as great games or at least better than what we've got? Could these missed opportunities have shaken the market instead of being jokes often talked about when it comes to discussing bad video games? Could have some already decent games could have been even better games than they were?

Le discuss!

(Also, YES I will be talking about those 5 games pictured above soon, but your own ideas and posts matter more first. HAZE Will be my top priority once i get a copy, and i learn how to play an FPS in a controller so i don't end up like Polygon. #Shotsfired)

(I might actually do a review + analysis of HATRED (of all games, yes) and try to actually "defend" the game in a better light since I remember for a certain point in time, I was actually quite enthusiastic with this game's existence)

There are many I go into excessive detail over - and I will as soon as I collect my thoughts - but there is one in particular I need to get off my chest right now:

Tales of Zestiria.

Tales of Zestiria was an absolute disaster. It had a wonderfully endearing cast, spectacular soundtrack, an interesting premise where the world had already gone to hell and people were living in constant fear, and the fluid, engaging combat system all Tales games have. But it didn't do anything with them. The story went nowhere and it ultimately trailed off in one of the worst endings I have ever seen in a JRPG, ever. The cast were never developed and never really explored outside of one or two very minor incidences and inside the usual skits. The combat system was wrecked by the fact that it took your surroundings into account, so if you were ambushed in a corridor you could easily get stuck on or behind the walls. It was literally Nothing Happens: The Game. I've been very critical of the Tales series since Symphonia, but I can appreciate the follow-up titles as games that, whilst they're not as good, are still good in their own right. There is nothing good about Zestiria. It's a disgrace.

...and then there was the equipment upgrade system. This was a GREAT idea; fusing different weapons with different skills . But they neglected to incorporate this into the item drop system, so actually getting the weapons you wanted, let alone the skills? Damn near impossible. It should have been such a simple, easy to understand, and flexible system that would have let you create some amazing weapons. Instead it was a nightmare grindfest that had you relying upon luck of the draw with Normin and having a substantial amount of money. It was so poorly executed that it was ridiculous.

So yes, Tales of Zestiria. What you get if you throw all the right ingredients into the pot but then forget to turn the oven on and leave the mixture to sit out on the window for about a month. It should be a capital crime to miss opportunities like this.

Welp, lets go with an Obvious one. Sim City! (last one)

Was pretty hyped for it, me and 2 of my friends were supposed to start playing it together in the same region as soon as it came it. How awesome wouldnt it have been? Enjoying the singeplayer part like in the old games, but then trading and building a completly new region with your friends! One person makes a town wit a lot of docks and work, one person makes a Gambling town with a lot of tourism and moneu, and wone person makes a town with a lot of education and skyscrapers!

But then the game came out. Disaster struck us. EA happened :P

After 3 weeks of fighting with connectivity issues, we finaly got the three of us in the same stable server. Then we found out that you cant make truly different cities. If you dont play industry in you tourist city, your people will leave. If you dont place schools in you docking.industry city, people will leave. 80% of your city is always the same, only 20% you can change without breaking your own city.

So yeah, I had really big hopes for that game. but sadly, it sucked ;)

I have some other games I want to rant about, but thats for a different day.

Hmm.. Time to say some things about this game again.

I'm not 100% sure if it fits here, but it's definitely somewhat of a missed opportunity. I'm talking about Beyond Good & Evil.

Have you heard of this game? There's a big chance that you haven't. It's not weird. It's an old game, released in late 2003. I don't even remember how I initially got the game anymore. I was VERY young. If I remember correctly, I got it on one of my birthdays. It was for PC, which I was very much in to already. I've played the game a LOT. It had everything it needed. It was actually even hard back then, as I was pretty young. There were puzzles, hidden objects, there were minigames (like that table hockey like game in the acude bar against that shark person that is almost unbeatable, or the hovercraft races, and I suppose the whole animal photography is a minigame on its own as well).

The game is absolutely amazing. It feels like the graphics are actually great, for a game that's already 13 years old. I can't even believe it's 13 years old. And the music, oh my god one of the most beautiful soundtracks I've heard. And the story, just thinking about it now almost makes me tear up. The story is so good. It's very well though out.

But, the problem is, the game never sold. It was a commercial failure. The game was directed by Michel Ancel and the beautiful soundtracks are composed by Christopher Herald.

Beyond Good & Evil 2

Now this is the true saddest part. The announcement of Beyond Good & Evil 2. Will it come? Have they given up? Are they still working on it? Will we ever hear more about it? It's all hopes and dreams. One of the first things we heard was at the end of 2008. They told us that Beyond Good & Evil 2 has been in development for a year and the development received total freedom from Ubisoft to make the game how they want. Between then and now, there's been a lot of talking about whether the game is still in development, or on hold. There's been various rumors and sayings. Most of the rumors of the game being put on hold has been debunked, but it looked quite grim when the news came out that Michel Ancel left Ubisoft Montpellier because of internal issues. But, there's also being said that he's still working on the game with his development team. Maybe with his own studio, maybe still with Ubisoft.

We got a teaser of the game, which is 8 years old already.



We even got some gameplay/trailer leak.



The authenticity of the trailer was confirmed by Michel Ancel at E3 2011.

I've actually been quite out of the loop on Beyond Good & Evil 2 myself. It's sort of easy to forget about, as it has been years now. We're already in 2016. But, we heard very good news. 26 January it was reaffirmed that Michel is still working on the game, and on 1 of April Ubisoft has filed trademark for the BG&E IP. (https://www.dualshockers.com/2016/04/01/beyond-good-evil-resurfaces-in-new-ubisoft-trademark-filing/)

I'm still very excited. I still hope very much that the game will be released. I've never really cared a lot for next gen and I don't really have a next gen computer or console, but if I needed so for Beyond Good & Evil 2, I'll definitely upgrade. I'm also very excited for the soundtracks, because they'll be composed by Christophe Herald again.

I don't know if this completely fits in this thread, but I take my opportunity to let people know about this game. It's a great game and more people should know about it.

As long as you feel like its a "missed opportunity" for something that could have changed the gaming market or something, its okay to say it. We are here to listen and discuss.

Okay, before I get into the process of playing Haze and Hatred (OH GOD HELP ME!), Imma rant a bit about a game that I actually like, played for a couple of months, but then i realized there are things wrong with it, but this is all in my worldview so bite me in my... oh wait.. xD. And its part of the discussion, refering to this question: "Could have some already decent games could have been even better games than they were?"


BORDERLANDS 1. because this is a game that I've played long enough for me to actually say something about.

OH WAIT!? NOOOOOO! BOOOOOOOOOOO HOW DARE YA TOUCH BORDERLANDS XIN! YOU MOTHER...

hold on people, I bet Uranus that i love Borderlands. Call it what you say it. Borderlands is something but I'm here to actually discuss on things that I felt were missed opportunities in the game:

So I've been silent on this but having played Borderlands (1 and a bit of 2 somewhere in an alternate universe) has got me thinking of what could have made this game a lil bit better, and it has something to do with the whole "flow and control"..

so, we know that Borderlands 1 came around the year 2009, the same year and time period where Call of Duty was basically being the king of the FPS market. So that means, the whole "iron sights" and "gun withheld sprinting" became two mechanical norms in the more modern FPS shootin age. Okay, that's my theory, but why Borderlands? Because Gearbox and 2k thought that yes, let us put those same mechanics in our own Action FPS-RPG game that will blow the market away! WEEEEEEE..

But here's the thing. Why would you put "Call of Duty" style sprinting in a game where most of the encounters and firefights are basically short to medium ranged effective, with much of the combat is rather extended meaning, it takes time to kill things. The "CoD sprinting" really conflicts with the flow of combat in the game were 90's style circle strafing is the key to victory in the many encounters in the game, especially against the many boss fights in Borderlands. You are basically conflicted with two things... You want to circle strafe (O-strafe), and moving faster while aiming your firearm to shoot an enemy while avoiding enemy fire all at the same time, is the whole point of O-strafing. But no, instead, we get these CoD style controls that are not designed for the likes of Circle strafing at all. You can still basically just circle strafe with base movement but the thing is that the player characters generally move like they were walking CoD soldiers so the point of O-strafing dangerous encounters is really risky.

So the point is, the "combat flow" of Borderlands is really messed up for me. Its like Gearbox has no idea on how to put perfect combat flow in a first person shooter game, and that's not going to be the first time that I'll say some venom against them (heck it was never the first time i said something critical with Gearbox and first person shooters). The main reason why Doom and its contemporaries and CoD and its own contemporaries work well with their designed control schemes because their respective games respectfully complement the way they have designed the games in terms of combat and how enemy encounters work. In Borderlands, its a mixed bag. A really mixed one. its something that you may all not understand the first time reading this, but if you've played the game long enough, You'll know what I'll mean.

So TLDR: The missed opportunity here in Borderlands is simple: A perfect "combat flow". I already mentioned that the reason why Doom and 90s fps games overall AND CoD and its contemporaries fit well with their respective control schemes because its how they have designed their respective games. The main reason why FPS games are the way they are is that most of the most well designed ones make you feel that you are ONE with the game. I feel that the combat flow in Borderlands is really messed in a way that it feels like it has an identity crisis. You are split between wanting to circle strafe and shoot, or risk the rather mixed bag of mechanics and get your face torn off.

I can only imagine how MUCH BETTER Borderlands would be if the control scheme and design was better. Borderlands could easily be the GOTY with BL2 being a potential GOAT just because a much better "combat flow" was in the game.

So please Gearbox, if you ever make Borderlands 3, here's a simple solution to make your game EVEN BETTER in terms of flow and combat: Keep the iron sights aiming, since at least you get that part of the shooting mechanics right. But please dear god remove the CoD style sprining and just put a 90's shooter style "Run mechanic" where you basically just move faster while holding the damn Shift button (or whatever key is bound into). It will complement the gameplay way better than how it was for your 3 BL games. Just imagine picture perfect circle strafing and shooting in a Borderlands game. none of that CoD style sprinting that I really do not see fitting well. It will basically make the game feel even better to play and make the encounters, especially the boss fights feel even more fluent and enjoyable, rather than being a chore to work with.

Oh and i almost forgot, that stupid floaty Halo-like Jump also has to go. Gearbox, figure out a new Jumping thing with your characters in Borderlands 3. I want straight up Bunny hopping and Strafe jumping!

PS: Those who have played Borderlands will probably remember how unnecessarily tedious some of the boss fights were. Like Motharakk in Playthrough 2.5. OH GOD!

Alright, time for the longer-ish part two. These are coming to me in fits and starts.

Xenoblade Chronicles X. This is easily the most depressing one, because I bought a Wii U for this game. I was ridiculously excited for it. I waited a month on top of the release date so I could have it for Christmas. The world was beautiful and I loved every second I spent exploring it. The opening premise was exciting and had me motivated to keep going. The core cast was fantastic. But the story...whaaaaaat the hell. I don't know how to describe the story and it's sheer lack of anything resembling worthwhile intrigue. The most interesting characters were killed off at random after a couple of appearances. The traitor angle was never really explored in any great depth, and the fact that you HAD to use Lin and Elma for every story mission made the side cast kind of pointless...which is a real shame, because some of them were really interesting. The story and cast just weren't integrated properly with the world and never really developed...which is a real shame, because this could have been better than Xenoblade Chronicles if it had of been. Easily. Getting that Skell and the flight unit and having total freedom was amazing, and the exploration was highly satisfying. But the story really let this one down. What might have been...


Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. How long did we wait for a sequel to The Lost Age? They packed so much into this, but in my opinion they focused on the wrong thing in terms of story – which also ended poorly, and with no sign of another game it's even more maddening – and the game itself was far too short and far too easy. What makes this a missed opportunity is that the setup for it is pretty much perfect and delightfully unique: the psynergy puzzles and Djinn system which ties into character abilities and stats hasn't really been duplicated in any other JRPG since...how could they mess this up?!


Pokemon Battle Revolution on the Wii practically SCREAMS this. It failed to capture the magic of Pokemon Stadium on the N64 and didn't even attempt to replicate the brilliance of Pokemon Colosseum or XD on the Gamecube. It was just...3D Pokemon tournaments. It was uninspired and dull, and they could have done so much with the Wii motion controls, online capabilities, and the very concept of it. They really dropped the ball on this one. It was serviceable for what it was, but it should have been so much more.


Dare I slip Final Fantasy XIII-2 into here? Yes, I think so. Serah was leaps and bounds better than her older sister; she received real character development, had a stellar voice actress, and she was genuinely likeable. Stripped from her two shields – Lightning and Snow – she didn't lean on Noel, but stood on her own two feet, and I genuinely liked her. Coupled with the menace of Caius and, whilst the plot was a trainwreck, the character development was brilliant. My biggest issue lies in the half-arsed monster capture system. Instead of giving us access to previous party members – or better yet, all-new ones, because lord knows none of XIII's cast was any good – we're made to supplement with monsters. This was beyond disappointing, and spoke of just how rushed the game actually was. The same can actually be said of Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, which would have been so much better if you could have played as Alice and Decus as had been originally intended, and if they'd have bothered to put more than five minutes of thought into it. Monster capture systems are a far cry from proper party members in story-driven JRPGs. If they'd taken the time to develop these games, both of them would have been much better than they were.


Lightning Returns is another missed opportunity for the story, too. After the dramatic finale of XIII-2, we're stuck with bland older sis and we've lost everything remotely resembling characterisation...it's like what happens every time Ash leaves for a new region. Lightning wasn't any more captivating this time around either. If they'd have taken the time to explore things properly – or better yet, brought back Serah under mysterious circumstances with her previous development intact, or let us play as literally anyone else – this game could have been spectacular. But instead, we got...this.


OH. Oh. How about we talk about the entire Sonic the Hedgehog franchise? I have yet to see a single scathing comment about Sonic Generations...well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but the reception to that game was overwhelmingly positive. For years, we'd cried out for classic Sonic. We got it, and we got the better bits of the 3D incarnations too. Sonic Generations was amazing. So, why, why, for the love of Robotnik, WHY, have Sega been reinventing Sonic constantly since then, and WHY have they settled on Sonic Boom, which has had overwhelmingly negative feedback?! The missed potential in Sonic the Hedgehog is massive. It defies comprehension and comparison. It defies belief. It defies reality. WHAT is going on here? Are Sega THAT allergic to money?


...as a small side note, in the West at least Ar NoSurge: Ode to an Unborn Star was a bit of a missed opportunity by circumstance. The game makes a lot more sense with Ciel NoSurge, because it builds directly on it, but the game was never released over here. It's the sequel to the game we missed. Maybe it would have seemed better if we'd have had the first part too. Maybe.


Metroid: Other M actually comes to mind here too, because asides from the first-person sections which were phenomenally awkward, the gameplay was pretty damned brilliant. They had the potential to make a fantastic game here, giving us some much needed backstory on Samus and actually turning her into the badass femme fatale we've always known she is. This was the chance to cement some of Metroid's implied characterisation in stone. What do we get instead? A weak, sexist, utterly out-of-character performance which casts Samus in the worst light possible, filled with ridiculous stereotypes and painfully cliché plot devices which never go anywhere and utterly destroy years of character development. Samus is a pioneer of sorts; it was a shock back in the day to find out that she was female, and she's always been extremely strong as a character: she kills space monsters for a living, for crying out loud. Nothing stands in her way. She's like a female version of the freakin' Doomguy...or she was. Other M ruined that, and it was a real wasted opportunity. I think that more than anything else is what makes it so utterly unforgivable.



The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword gets a shout here for its motion controls. Swordplay was great, and so was aiming, etc...but literally everything else was awful. Having to do EVERYTHING with motion controls really ruined the experience, because it stopped being intuitive and started being a right pain in the backside.

MegaTagmension Blanc + Neptune vs. Zombies and The Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes were both wasted opportunities for the fact that they region-locked online multiplayer. The whole point of online multiplayer is to play with other people you can't reach otherwise. For crying out loud! More the wasted opportunity in that I had people I could have actually played the games with, too.

The second story arc of Fire Emblem Awakening (a.k.a the story after the 2 year time warp) was kind of a missed opportunity. It failed to give the story and characters more depth. The whole thing done with the Valm invasion was just a waste of time imo. It felt like the developers just slapped it onto there just so they can make the game another 10 chapters longer. I want to know how Chrom dealt with Emmeryn's death, what Lucina did for those 2 years, heck what anyone did or felt at all. One of the things I disliked about Awakening the most was that no character gets any development after their introduction chapter. IT ANNOYS ME SO MUCH! The support system is hardly an ample replacement, because nothing in the support conversations has anything to do with the story at all. The sad thing is that the beginning of the game gave the title so much personality (remember when Vaike lost his axe and Sumia tripped on nothing?), but by Chapter 14 (or w/e), the only characters that you feel like even exist in the game are Chrom, Lucina and Robin. I get that since characters can die (especially in Casual mode), it'd be hard to incorporate them into the storyline, but come on, I'm perfectly sure the 3DS system could've handled multiple story paths depending on who was still alive. I still have yet to play Fates, but I'm honestly not expecting it to fix this issue. I just hope the story has more depth in it after the "choose a side" chapter is done.

So this is more of a preview of things to come, and hopefully will push through as long as I get the copy of the game, and our PS3 says on our household.

So i flipped a coin, and i probably decided on what I shall be reviewing, showcasing, and be analyzing for the following weeks on why i consider this said game as a "missed opportunity"

DA DA DA DA DAT DAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!


Haze is a first person shooter developed by the now defunct Free Radical Design, the same studio responsible for the Timesplitters series of games, and published by Ubisoft.

To give some background to this game, Haze was originally set to be released on the 2 big consoles of the previous generation and on PC, but Ubisoft decided that the game must become a PS3 exclusive. It even had E3 trailer shenanigas that gave the game such a massive hype, with the media claiming that it could have trumped the Halo series. The media at that time have predicted that with the E3 hype that Haze had, it could have been the juggernaut that stood against Halo, specifically the 3rd title, Halo 3 on the 360.

In my own perspective, i had friends who already owned PS3s while I was stuck not having any of that gen's consoles say that considering the hype and the background of Haze, and it being made by Free Radical Design, it was going to Kick ass, smash faces, and even tell Master Chief to suck its yellow ***k. How could i blame them? The trailer was so good, the hype was so massive, and heck just seeing the preview of the box art was enough to sucker a couple of people, myself included.

I want to emphasize that magnificent looking box art. Yes I said it folks. Haze's boxart is AMAZING. You have a close up picture of the game's protagonist, holding his sidearm near his head, and with his helmet cracked open by a stray bullet or some other object, he is staring at you with his exposed eye, giving you this vicious looking glare where its telling you that YOU SHOULD PLAY THIS GAME! THIS GAME IS GOING TO BE AWESOME. ITS GOING TO BE BLOODY, ULTRA VIOLENT, SUPERMURDEROUS, EXTRA EDGY, ANTI-WAR, WAR IS HELL! HAAAAAAAAZZZZZZEEEEEE!!!!!!

Could this have been the "Halo Killer, the "Chief Slayer", the PS3 Exclusive to really make it worth the time and money!? Could have Haze done what Killzone didn't do?

For some of you, you may have already known the ending of this story, but you may have only read something like its reviews upon its release, and other people's claims as well. But was Haze really that bad? Was it so horrible that it led to the death of a promising company, the same company/studio that gave us Timesplitters?

Tune in next time when XIN finally gets his copy of haze, convinces his sister to go out with her boyfriend so that Xin can play their PS3 and dwell into the depths of Haze? Will Xin ever build his super hot new gaming PC so that he can review Hatred and even play DOOM to its core (even though DOOM should not be even mentioned here)? Like. Comment. Subscribe! oh wait, this isn't youtube.