[MikaelS]

So basically, what AG's you reckon had a lot of potential but something really ruined it and left you disappointed?

I think Curse of the Monkey Island ( Monkey Island 3) had great potential, it WAS a great game...but just when you feel like the game's getting started, it ends. It was just so very short.

I think it could've been one of the best all time ( maybe even best Monkey Island) if only they had made it longer.

[eXo]

Originally Posted by Tower of Power

So basically, what AG's you reckon had a lot of potential but something really ruined it and left you disappointed?

I think Curse of the Monkey Island ( Monkey Island 3) had great potential, it WAS a great game...but just when you feel like the game's getting started, it ends. It was just so very short.

I think it could've been one of the best all time ( maybe even best Monkey Island) if only they had made it longer.

CMI is gold to me compared to MI4. Talk about throwing potential away. I personally think the task of taking a well liked franchise (which played upon 3 games worth of running jokes) and turning it into a boring humorless cameo fest would be difficult... yet that develop team made it look easy.

Kings Quest 8.... I think that one speaks for itself. But then again, I suppose I'm speaking of games which had good franchises behind them, not so much great potential within the game itself (MI4 and KQ8 are wrecks from the start without the franchise they are based on, imho).

I suppose the most lost potential will always come from established brands though. Even though I have played through KQ7 more then a few times, I never loose the feeling of wishing it was a bit more like KQ6 and a bit less like a Disney movie.

As far as games which started out great and quickly went to the world of WTF, I felt Hell: A Cyberpunk Adventure fits that.

Good actors (dennis hopper), a Bradbury/Philip K Dick style story, and intriguing graphics for the time left a lot of potential.

A plot that quickly goes conspiracy theory on you sort of killed the second half of the game for me (not to mention the hokey repetitive animations...)

[MikaelS]

Good and well reasoned post. Let's hear more of these from other people!

edit: Yeah, as I said MI3 was still a great game nevertheless depth. It just could've been among the very top. It's better game than MI4 for sure.

[BerserkerTails]

King's Quest 7, bar none. The series started an upward climb of excellence with number three, getting better with four, staying just as good for five, then hitting it's pinnicle with number 6. After such a long time of consistantly good KQ games, number seven was a huge let down. What annoyed me so much was that Rosella didn't even seem like the strong-willed character she was in number four, she was just a dumb valley girl.

[Draco2.5]

Fahenheit is another game that I think most will agree went awry.

For me ... Tex Murphy UAKM and PD were both ruined by bad graphics and a terrible interface. Then again, maybe if I had played them when they first came out I would feel differently.

EDIT: Oh yeah, Quest for Glory V was another one that so close to being an incredible game. Unfortunately, because of a few issues, it was just an OK game. Kings Quest VIII also followed in the same suit.

[cwapitm]

I felt that Journey to the Center of the Earth could have had potential if it weren't so buggy and if the characters were more developed with better voice acting.

[Crapstorm]

It might be easier for me to list the adventure games that didn't go wrong.

[MikaelS]

Originally Posted by Draco2.5

Fahenheit is another game that I think most will agree went awry.

Same here. Game started very good and interesting. In the end it started to remind me more and more of Matrix. And why the hell it had to become 'save the world' thingy again? I think it would've been better off to try less ambitious story there.

It was a good game, but I liked it less and less towards the end.

[eXo]

Originally Posted by BerserkerTails

King's Quest 7, bar none. The series started an upward climb of excellence with number three, getting better with four, staying just as good for five, then hitting it's pinnicle with number 6. After such a long time of consistantly good KQ games, number seven was a huge let down. What annoyed me so much was that Rosella didn't even seem like the strong-willed character she was in number four, she was just a dumb valley girl.

'valley girl' sums her up really well. Damn she was whiny.

I preferred the Valanice levels.

[Kolzig]

About Monkey Island games, Curse was an awesome game, it blew my mind away, but the ending ruined a lot. I hate that kind of sequences where

Spoiler:

the villain or any other character starts filling up the plot holes and telling every frigging thing that has not been answered yet.

MI4 was even worse, it did everything even more badly IMO.

[LeisureSuitedLooney]

Many of Dreamcatcher's games had potential, but fell apart for me. Dracula: Resurrection, for example kept building up the promise of the great, scary confrontation with Dracula...yet he makes an all-too-brief appearance, and leaves the player waiting for the NEXT game to arrive.

Or there's Necronomicon, a game with a bland look, graphical glitches, and the ability to render HP Lovecraft dull. I used to buy games by Dreamcatcher at the beginning, because I really hoped that the games would live up to the ambitious concepts, but they were soooo generic and repetitive.

[OneFlesh]

I thought Fahrenheit had a lousy ending (or last hour or so, plotwise) but the game itself was still solid - it's still my favourite from the past few years.

Biggest "coulda, woulda, shoulda" games would be:
- Runaway: nice animations and an interesting, if derivative, plot, but awful characterisation, cliches and ridiculous puzzles with no consideration of alternative solutions killed it.
- Murder On The Orient Express: nice characters but zero gameplay

And most of all:
- Black Dahlia. I loved Ripper and was hoping for more of the same, but this was a mess - awful Myst-style puzzles made it a chore to play.

[Terramax]

Al Emo - protagonist' voice.

The Longest Journey - unbelievable voice acting and boring dialog. Soundtrack wasn't even enough to be called medicre. Character models in cutscenes terrible. Story that just dragged on meaninglessly.

Broken Sword 3 - Linear story with no exploration, boring, dark locations and music (the light hearted music was fantastic, making me resent the alternative so much more), the coincidence with Nico again (should have dropped her) and levels weren't exotic enough.

The Dark Eye - completely linear - animation is quite inconsistant, disorientating story requiring players to aimlessly walk around interacting with anything and everything unless they know Poe's original stories.

[Risingson]

Runaway. Some consistency (cook the butter where?), some less topical situations and jokes, and some clues would have made this a masterpiece.

Still Life: though it's really good, a bit more clues in the cookies puzzle would have been welcome.

Police Quest 2: we don't need another hero. A bit less over-the-top and the game would have been excellent.

Police Quest 3: just improving the arcadish parts, fixing some dead-ends and improving some backgrounds would put the spotlight in the great writing this game has.

Sam&Max: a bit more clues, and in my case, a good translation, were the things I missed most.

The Black Mirror: speed! some speed please!

Return of the Phantom, Igor Objective Uikakonia... GET RID OF THE MAZE.

Curse of Enchantia: having less actions, let's say, 10 instead of the 24 there were, would have made this game a bit more amusing.

All the Frogwares games: getting rid of every pixel-hunting, using puzzles in chain, adding some wit and humor in the dialogues, adding some light and vivid colors and make understable puzzles would help.

Zero Zone: a bit more of marketing would have helped.

[Hammerite]

Dreamfall - good, but not what was expected at all.

Same goes for Broken Sword 4.

[OneFlesh]

Return of the Phantom

I don't know how I forgot this - I was expecting a great game based on the introductions but the whole thing ended up just wandering round an abandoned building finding secret passages.

[jcornwall]

Still Life. Just as my faith in modern adventure games was being restored through its excellent story and presentation, it turns into a friggin arcade game. I stopped playing after that.

Back to the classics, I'm going to name pretty much all of the Sierra games that had dead ends. Deaths are fine, dead ends are a no no. I played a lot of them in spite of that (they were still classics) but the enjoyment could have been so much more without that nagging feeling that you left something behind.

[Hysteria]

Originally Posted by Draco2.5

Fahenheit is another game that I think most will agree went awry.

WHAT, what, whaat?
Are you crazy? For God's sake...
What about Scraches? Game is just awful and pathetic like stupid Post Mortem.

[Kolzig]

Well Fahrenheit was one of the weirdest and worst games in recent years.

The first 50% of the game was very good and got you excited about the game, then the second part was like cold slap in the face AND a kick in the balls.

It really does show that the game was originally meant to be a multi-episodic game.

[Panthera]

I agree with Fahrenheit. It was like the developers thought "Oh, now we've built a big story with lots of plot twists and theories, but we haven't a clue how to make all this come together and end, so we'll just put in everything we can think of"..

Edit: Oh and Dreamfall. Great characters, great art direction, and story build-up, but ruined by stupid control choice and fighting technique. And I also feel that they did about the opposite of Fahrenheit.. They built up all the plot, and just quit.. I felt that the game had no closure at all, it's like everything Zöe did din't matter..