RDR2, I eventually caved and bought it after months of friends telling me how good it is. But the movement and control scheme are just so bad it instantly ruined the game for me. Even qwop has better controls.

Cyberpunk 2077 CD project red was the golden boy after Witcher 3 and the dlcs. They could do no wrong. Of course their next game was gonna be critically acclaimed GOAT right? Nope. Dumpster fire. Couldn’t play it for more than 30mins without it crashing. Unimmersive and confusing. That’s when I learned corporate greed has no limits

The Outer Worlds.... Hyped so much for it... Even snorting through my nose at the outer wilds..... Thinking they use to similar name just clicks

Now the outer wilds is one of my favorite games of all time. And the outer world is currently sat in my steam library with less than 10 hours. Just couldn't engage me.

I'm not disappointed at the game but on myself.

I patiently waited for Elden Ring to go on sale, excited to play it. But the reality is i don't have enought time to play.

So what happens is I die a few times, restart my progress, die a few more, then my IRL game time has ran out. And I'm still where I started, no progress made,.

If i consistently evade enemies just to get far on the map, then what I've done is stunt my character progression and just horse around the map. I mean that's not playing, it's being a tourist inside the game.

Fallout 4....

I was patient on it. Mostly involuntary, but patient still. It was incredibly disappointing. So many amazing features from 3 and NV was gone. Speech is a joke. So you want to agree, agree but be an ass about it, disagree, or disagree and be rude about it.

Those are your options in every single encounter.

It's a good RPG game overall. Just not a good Fallout game.

I'm going to call it now and say Starfield...

Spore. 'nuff said.

The original Fable. I wasn't yet aware of Moleyneux's reputation as a liar and bought into all the neat shit that was supposed to be in the game. Like at one point he said you could cut a tree and then adventure for years in game and the scar would still be there. Outrageous to think now, but he also said there would be a dragon fight and even back then this wasn't difficult to make happen, yet it didn't even have a dragon.

Also Oblivion. I had found Morrowind and fell in love, went back and got Arena and Daggerfall and loved those, too. They talked about all kinds of things it would have and showed graphics that looked top tier in magazines during development. It came out and didn't look as good, was majorly dumbed down compared to Morrowind, and had even more technical issues. It was disappointing, but it still turned out to be a fun game regardless.

Elden Ring

It's just Dark Souls 3.5. Which is not necessarily bad if you really liked DS3 and just want more of the same thing, but I considered DS3 by far the weakest in the series to begin with, and playing the Nioh series after it has opened my eyes to just how much room for improvement there is in the DS series as a whole. From Soft has basically followed the same path as Bethesda - they used to make varied games until one of them randomly became wildly successful, and from that point onward they haven't had the balls to deviate from the winning formula and have just been remaking that same game over and over with a slightly different coat of paint each time. Which makes sense from a business point of view, I guess, but after this many repetitions, it's become clear to me From Soft is totally creatively bankrupt. Hell, it's been more than a decade since Demon's Souls, and they still can't even figure out a better counter to the "roll behind them and stab them in the butt" strategy than making enemy tracking ever more effective and their movements ever more spasmodic and unreadable in each subsequent game. The end result of this complete lack of willingness and/or ability to innovate is that despite being expertly crafted, Elden Ring feels very by-the-numbers and utterly soulless (if you'll pardon the pun).

When I finally played Red Dead Redemption 2. I usually don’t play this type of big budget game, but my friends loved it and kept talking it up. I waited for years for a steam sale until it was finally about $20. Also, I loved outlaws (1997) and was pretty keen for another cowboy game.

An hour of listening to guys walk through the snow and I was out.

The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion is probably my best answer. Remains the only modern Elder Scrolls that I've only played through once with no desire to return to. Feels clunky and sluggish, the world is washed out and bland, the enemy scaling is a slog, itemization is not interesting or impactful, the UI is uncomfortable, etc. While it does a lot of things better than Skyrim, I just can't bring myself to enjoy the experience like I did Morrowind, and I admit I've sunk far more hours into Skyrim as well.

Mirror´s Edge. 9/10 on Steam. I bought it during the last sales. The gameplay is playing again and again and again the difficult jumps until you make it. It's boring.

For me it's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. After Breath of the Wild I was super hyped for a successor. When they announced they were gonna reuse the same exact game world I was a bit worried but thought it could work if they do it well.

Well here we are with like 90% of the content being reused. The gameplay is more interesting than Breath of the Wild and the dungeons are better and so is the story. But my main draw for Breath of the Wild was exploring the world. All this fun is missing in TOTK. The new parts of the world like the sky and underground are pretty bland and not quite as much fun to explore as an entirely new game world would be.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It was so tedious to get through the opening area that by the time I got to the first dungeon I was getting tired of it. It did get better after that dungeon and the game opened up a lot more, but it one of my least favorite Zelda games.

there's one i'm currently under nda for that's still in testing and man. idk. hoping the next test flight feels better. theoretically close to release atm. sorry for vagueposting.

Planet Zoo.

As a kid who grew up playing Zoo Tycoon, I was STOKED for a new Zoo management game. I even built a whole new computer to run it.

Turns out it's more of a 3-D modeling program than a management/simulation game. And I don't have the time or patience to figure it out.

Diablo 4

Really loved the first cinematic and enjoyed the Beta. But I'm already bored after reaching lv 30. Haven't played it in weeks. I don't know, the MMO aspect kinda ruined the expirience for me and the combat isn't fun enought to keep me engaged.

Elden Ring. I was looking forward to a more mainstream Dark Souls with a story written by GRRM, but it turns out I just don't jive with those games at all, no matter how polished they are.

Hollow Knight. Finally bought this after getting the stream deck. I just remember thinking: This is it? This is what everyone has been raving about? I think I played it two or three times, then completely forgot about it.

Horizon Zero Dawn

I thought this would be right up my alley but I really did not like the protagonist and the fighting and exploring seemed kind of boring.

The Last of Us

This game gets praised all the time but it felt too limited and 'on rails' whilst the gunplay and stealth was not for me.

I don't really understand the premise. The point of being patient imo is to avoid the hype.

So I'll just answer the question if disappointment in games generally:

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It knew it was different, but it still didn't feel like Zelda to me, so it didn't scratch that itch I had. I'm enjoying Skyward Sword much more than BotW, the first dungeon just feels like I'm back in Ocarina of Time, the forest feels like Minish Cap somehow, and the premise reminds me of the original The Legend of Zelda (get the sword and go off on an adventure without knowing where you're headed). BotW is my least favorite Zelda game, mostly because of disappointment. When I heard Tears of the Kingdom was much the same, I didn't bother getting it. Maybe I'll get it eventually, but I have no desire to play it.

Borderlands. I had avoided the game so successfully that I knew nothing about it other than that it was a shooter RPG, but I knew it was popular among friends. I missed the window when it came out, so I figured I'd give it a shot. After about 15 minutes, I realized it was just a looter shooter and noped right out. For some reason, I absolutely hate the genre and was disappointed that's what my friends were so hyped for.

Lords of the Realm III. I loved Lords of the Realm 2 as a kid and played the original at a friend's house and enjoyed that too. So when Lords of the Realm III came out, I naturally wanted it. However, they threw out pretty much everything I liked about the previous games (strategy around county/resource management) and doubled down on everything I didn't like as much (sieges) and it just felt like a worse version of the Total War games. Because of this game, one of my life's goals is to remake Lords of the Realm by preserving the good parts of each game in the series, essentially to make the Lords 3 game I wanted.

So these days, I watch gameplay footage before diving in to a game, because that would've avoided my problems with each of the above. There isn't really a game I'm waiting for, I just have a big wishlist of games that looked interesting at one point that I'll review when I'm looking for a new game to play.

Assassin’s Creed III. I know it’s considered one of the weakest entries in the series, but I absolutely love the time period it’s set in. That alone had me excited. Decided to finally give it a try recently and quickly found out that all the criticisms are valid. It’s not very fun, the story is extremely bland, there are multiple glitches throughout, and the modern day sections are just the absolute worst. I don’t ever expect much when it comes to the AC series (especially the titles from that time) and can usually find something enjoyable in them. Not the case with III.

Outer Wilds. I just don't understand why everyone loves it so much. I thought it was boring.

Torment: Tides of Numenera
But I think I’m mostly disappointed in myself for not sticking with it. I joined the kickstarter, followed all the updates and was genuinely excited to explore the world being described.
When it finally came out I only played it for a few hours before losing all interest in it. Too much text and everyone seemed to have their life story to tell. Which is odd, because usually I love text heavy games with tons of lore.
Every so often I tell myself to give it a second chance, but never seem to be able to muster the energy to follow through.

Oh, quite a lot over the years, but to pick a few I can readily think of:

Cyberpunk 2077: My one big prepurchase the recent few years. And it turned out to be laughably bad. I mean I was expected it to be fairly buggy, but even given that it far outdid even my worst imaginations. Not only was the game insanely unbelievably buggy on release (and frankly it still is, they only patched the actual breaking issues not the constant barrage of weirdness), but it is just... not very good? It has pleny really good components, but the sauce sticking it together is devoid of any design or soul, leaving it to feel like a can of ravioli with too few actual ravioli in it.
Doesn't help that the main quest was, IMO, bad to the point of caricature. At least the handful of amazing secondary quests more than made up for that one. Still, overall one of my biggest disappointments of my 30 years of video gaming, especially in how underdesigned it is even ignoring all the bugs.

Divinity Original Sin 2, specifically co-op: I don't know. This got hyped so much for that particular feature. Yet while the combat moment-to-moment gameplay is hilarious in co-op, following the actual story - basically why I play these kind of games - felt supremely irritating, more so because of how frequently characters get forced into conversations the other player then has to opt into no matter where they were at the time or what they were doing. In a lot of ways I wish co-op would have been more restrictive, to more readily support co-op story consumption.
But it's also weird, because like I said, combat-wise the co-op is amazing. Still, was quite disappointed overall.

Overwatch 2: Feels like a cheap pick, but wow was this a disappointment. Between the dropped PvE, the frankly insulting replacement they're now rolling out for it and their complete unwillingness to acknowledge the switch to 5v5 in hero reworks and balance changes - and hence how half-arsed the entire balance feels - this makes me long for an OW1 clone that really just freezes OW1's state, as clearly trying to modify it didn't work out.

Ultima IX: I don't know how many here are old enough to remember this. It was so hyped. It looked so gorgeous. It was so amazing to see it all in this 3D. And then when it came out, not only could it at best run at glorious 10FPS on my machine (and I had a beast of a PC for the time), it was also buggy and underdeveloped enough that I figure it might just have been CDPR's inspiration for how they worked on CP2077. Plus, in U9's case, there's the extra insult that the story and dialogue is quite inconsistent with the previous games, which was a real head-scratcher. Just a disappointment all around. A really big one.

The Dig: This is a weird one to remember. Because in a lot of ways, I also would say The Dig is one of the best point&click adventures ever made. But it was so bewildering and disappointing to younger me, I just came off the supremely accessible and clever Fate of Atlantis having played it late, and there was so much hype for The Dig, so naturally I got it. I was so disappointed.
Now to be fair, looking back upon it now I can recognize that a mix of my hype and the way FoA went against a ton of industry standard for the time was priming me for said disappointment. It's a good game in a lot of regards, in particular in selling the actually alien vibe of it. But it also has "logic" that would make Sierra Games proud. At least I didn't have to use a necklace on the moon (IIRC) 😂.

Supreme Commander 2. Threw out all the things I respected from the first game and swapped in a bunch of trendy bullshit that I did not. A crushing disappointment.