My 2023 Gaming Disappointments: A First-Person Rant

Well, 2023 was supposed to be an incredible year for gaming, right? We got Baldur's Gate 3, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and so many other bangers. But, as I sat there with my controller, I realized the year also served up a veritable buffet of letdowns. I'm not just talking about games that were outright broken (though there were plenty of those). I'm talking about the ones that had the potential, the hype, the pedigree… and then face-planted right at the finish line. These are the games that left me sighing, muttering, or just staring blankly at my screen. Here’s my personal, deeply subjective, and slightly salty rundown of 2023's biggest gaming disappointments.

Atomic Heart: The BioShock That Wasn't

Oh, Atomic Heart. You looked so promising with your retro-futuristic Soviet vibe and creepy robots. I was ready for a spiritual successor to BioShock! What I got was… something else. The combat felt clunky, the progression was underwhelming, and the open world? Pure filler. Constantly respawning enemies and boring collectibles made exploring Facility 3826 a chore. And don't get me started on our hero, Major P-3. His dialogue was a masterclass in cringe, dropping F-bombs at the most bizarre, dramatic moments. It was like the writers used a "How to Sound Edgy" manual from 2005. The Xbox version was a technical mess too, with framerate issues galore. A fascinating premise, utterly wasted.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – The $70 Expansion Pack

As a long-time Call of Duty fan, I was hyped. Task Force 141 vs. Makarov? Sign me up! Then I played the campaign. Four hours. That's it. And half of it felt like recycled Warzone content with these boring "Open Combat" missions that stripped away all the cinematic spectacle. The multiplayer? Well, it's functional now, but at launch it was rough. Missing modes, wonky spawns, and… 16 maps from 2009's Modern Warfare 2? Sure, they got a facelift, but charging full price for what felt like a glorified map pack was a bitter pill to swallow. In 2026, we expect more from a premium release.

Cities: Skylines 2 – A Buggy, Charmless Metropolis

I poured hundreds of hours into the original Cities: Skylines. So, my excitement for the sequel was sky-high. Imagine my shock when I booted it up to find a game missing key features from the first game's post-launch updates, like airports! The shift from the beloved Steam Workshop to Paradox Mods was a community gut-punch. But the real killer was the performance. The developers themselves warned it wouldn't hit benchmarks, and boy, were they right. My city looked… dull. The colors were washed out, buildings on slopes looked bizarre, and the charm of creating a living city was buried under technical woes and an obsession with realism that forgot to be fun.

Forspoken – Cringe and Technical Glitches

This one hurts. A new IP from Square Enix with a cool magic-parkour system? Yes, please! Then the demo dropped. The open world felt empty and lifeless. And the dialogue… oh, the dialogue. Protagonist Frey's banter with her magical cuff was so painfully "how do you do, fellow kids" that I physically recoiled. The full game's combat and traversal were genuinely fun, but they were shackled to a mediocre story and, at launch, some brutal technical issues. It sold so poorly that the studio got absorbed. A classic case of great ideas executed poorly.

The Last of Us Part I (PC Port) – A Masterpiece, Mangled

One of the greatest games of all time, finally on PC! This should have been a victory lap. Instead, it was a disaster. The port was horrifically optimized. On high settings, my game was a slideshow of flickering textures and random crashes. Trying to play on Steam Deck? Forget it. The shader compilation load times were longer than some of the game's cutscenes. It was so bad that the Steam review page became a wall of anger, forcing Naughty Dog to scramble with patches. In 2026, a botched PC port of a flagship title is simply unacceptable.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum – The Pinnacle of "How?"

Where do I even begin? This game is a legend, but for all the wrong reasons. It somehow made one of fiction's most iconic worlds feel boring and ugly. The graphics looked a decade old, the platforming was janky, the stealth was broken, and Gollum himself controlled like a drunk hobbit. The camera was your true enemy. The tragic behind-the-scenes stories of crunch and studio closure just added a layer of real-world sadness to the whole mess. It wasn't just disappointing; it was a historic low point.

Mortal Kombat 1 (Switch Version) – A Different, Worse Game

On PS5, Mortal Kombat 1 is a gorgeous, brutal fighting game reboot. On the Nintendo Switch? It's a horror show. The visual downgrade wasn't just expected; it was apocalyptic. Character models were textureless blobs with bulging eyes. Stages were barren. Animations broke, heads floated, and load times were eternal. Coming from the surprisingly solid Mortal Kombat 11 on Switch, this felt like a betrayal. Switch owners paid the same price for a fundamentally inferior product.

Overwatch 2 "Launch" – The Promise That Wasn't

After a year in "Early Access," Season 6 was supposed to be the full release of Overwatch 2. What did we get? The same aggressive microtransactions (remember the $45 Diablo 4 skins?), a competitive mode in disarray, and the gutted PvE experience. The promised Hero Mode with talent trees? Scrapped. The PvE missions we did get? Locked behind a $15 paywall. It felt like Blizzard took everything we loved about the promise of OW2 and monetized or removed it. Sure, they've promised big changes for 2024's Season 9, but 2023 was a year of broken trust.

Payday 3 – Always-Online, Never Playable

The heist was a bust from minute one. An always-online requirement met servers that immediately caught fire. I couldn't even play solo! For over a week, errors were more common than successful missions. When we finally could play, the problems ran deeper: a tedious progression system, dumb AI, and a shocking lack of content. Within a month, everyone went back to Payday 2. A decade of goodwill, evaporated by a disastrous launch and shallow design.

Redfall – Arkane's Uncharacteristic Miss

From the makers of Dishonored and Deathloop! A co-op vampire shooter! This should have been a slam dunk. Instead, Redfall was a empty, buggy mess at launch. The world felt dead, the AI was brainless, and the looter-shooter mechanics were utterly unengaging. No 60FPS mode at launch for a fast-paced shooter was the cherry on top. Even Xbox boss Phil Spencer publicly called it a disappointment. Arkane has tried to fix it, but the player base vanished. A tragic misstep from a brilliant studio.

Skull Island: Rise of Kong – So Bad It's Legendary

I had low expectations. But wow. This game challenged Gollum for the title of 2023's worst. It's a masterclass in wasting a great IP. In an era of awesome Godzilla vs. Kong movies, we got this: terrible graphics, endless bugs, and gameplay so boring it could cure insomnia. It didn't just fail as a game; it failed the legacy of Kong himself. It's the kind of release that makes you wonder how it ever got approved.

The Walking Dead: Destinies – Squandered Potential, The Game

The concept is fantastic: rewrite the story of The Walking Dead. The execution is a tragedy. This game is hilariously bad. The combat is clunky, the animations are stiff, and the graphics look like they're from 2013. Cutscenes are just static action figure poses with voiceovers. It takes one of the most beloved TV IPs of all time and turns it into a cheap, broken cash-grab. The disappointment isn't just in the quality; it's in the monumental waste of what could have been an amazing game.

So, there you have it. My 2023 hall of shame. A year of incredible highs was matched by some profound lows. Here's hoping the lessons from these stumbles make for a smoother 2026 and beyond. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go play something that doesn't make me want to yell at my monitor. 🙃