Biggest let downs of '07

[Mr.Glass]

OK, we all have heard your top 5 for the year, but what let you down the most? Post 1 for each category, and make sure you put a reason why.

Games:
Guitar Hero III (Wii) - I played Guitar Hero II at my brother place over the summer, and got addicted. I eagerly awaited the release of this on the only console I own. I even preordered it, first time I've done that for anything since Jr. High. I got it, and loved it for the first week. Then my friend came over with a 2nd guitar, and I noticed the crappy sound. No stereo? On a rhythm game? How could that possibly pass QA???? I still play it almost daily, but never without the sound getting on my nerves. Shame on you activison, shame on you.


Movies:
Ghost rider - Continuing a long series of crappy adaptations of comic books. I don't know why, but i had hopes for this one. I really did. It sucked. When will studios stop trying to get another spiderman and start making original films again?

TV:
Traveler - Someone forced me to sit down and watch the pilot for this over a year ago. I was hooked. Again I waited. Summer came, and the show did not deliver in the slightest. Some exec decided it would work best if it went for the same format as Lost & Prison Break - painfully slow plot development. By the end of the season, all we are left with is more questions. Thankfully, this show has been canned.

[mormonrage]

Halo 3 - a tragic denouement for the trilogy, completely overshadowed by a number of other awesome shooters this year.

Mass Effect - the one game I was anticipating most this year--and it totally let me down. Where were the amazing story twists from KotOR? Hell, where were the amazing characters?

Bioshock - an amazing game, to be sure. But it was not at all what had been promised in previews and interviews leading up to its release--not even close. And the final 90 minutes of the game still leave a wretched taste in my mouth.

[Ryudo]

Zelda Phantom Hourglass,other than the nice visuals and fun music everything else about this game I hate..the controls the timed dungeons the sneaking around bits worst game purchase I made this year.

[skin87]

Top 5 (sorry, can't restrain myself) movie letdowns of 07

5 Transformers - The first half of this movie is painful to watch.
4 Spiderman 3 - Totally f'd up venom. Had they done it right it could have probably even spawned a successful side movie franchise.
3 ATHF Colon Movie Film for Theaters - What works in 15 minute doses didn't work as a movie. Also, the funniest/best part was the first 2 minutes of the movie. Everything else after was a bit of a let down.
2 Death Proof - The beginning is good, middle is horrendous, end is amazing. That averages out to good, but a QT movie shouldn't just be good.
1 Ghost Rider - Obvious reasons. Hopefully the sequel will deliver on their promise that they will make it as dark as it should be this time.


Biggest video game letdown

Nintendo Wii - I was so pumped when I was able to find one in January and it was hella fun for a few days. Then I realized playing shitty looking games by swinging your arm around gets old quickly. Since then, all I have used it for is super paper mario and a couple virtual console games. Once I finally play Galaxy, I will probably sell it while I still can get a high price for it used.



Biggest TV letdown

The OC ending - One summer day before my junior year of high school, I was flipping through the channels looking for a way to occupy my time til my friend got off of work. After passing it a couple times, I finally stopped on the season premier of the OC (that first season started before any of the fall premiers, it really was the only thing on). Unfortunately, I got sucked in. The next few weeks I watched it in secret, embarrassed that I found joy in the show. Before long I accepted it, became open about it, and my thursday nights rvolved around it for four years. The only other fictional tv show I watched at the time was Scrubs, and that was when I also found out that it was ending this season, so May of 07 was very sad for me. At least I have Chuck now.

[az0madman]

Games: Assassin's Creed: This was the first game that made me consider getting a next-gen system but the results were less then stellar. It's not to say I hated this game, but it's not nearly as exciting as the trailers made it. It ended up to be much more repetitive. This game would've been a perfect demo if we got to play just one assassination. But then it starts to feel like you're playing that same demo 9 times.

Movies: Transformers: Okay, I'll forgive this movie slightly since it's the first of what appears to be a trilogy, but the reason why I hated this movie is that the focus was on the humans. I get it, you got actors and this is Hollywood, not a children's cartoon, but I want my Transformers damnit! Hell, the only time the Decepticons ever talked was that brief interaction between Starscream and Megatron. Hopefully next one, it'll be more about the Transformers and less on the humans.

TV: Heroes: I caught up on the entire Season 1 during the summer. From start to finish, I just had to see episode after episode. I was dying to find out what was next as I downloaded the next episode in anticipation. On some days, I'd end up watching 3-4 episodes in one sitting. Then Season 2 came and I was just kind of disappointed... I don't know if it's because I was so spoiled with the first season where I watched episodes back to back, but S2 felt like the things we were seeing had no relevance to what the future holds. Everyone was off doing their own thing and we had no idea why and I never had any reason to care why.

[nextgenxbox]

Ghost Rider. Ugh.

[satori]

5. Cancellation of Journeyman
4. Buffy season 8
3. unable to use the PS3 to record television or stream it to my PSP in North America
2. Still no Real Audio streaming to the PS3
1. Serenity only released for HD-DVD

[YSSMAN]

Alright, lets give this one a shot...

#5 Spider-Man 3: After the awesomeness that was Spider-Man 2 (I still say it was EPIC), 3 left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I didn't care much for the main characters, the whole Venom thing just seemed like an afterthought, and well... Yeah. It just didn't sit well with me at all.

#4 Pirates! 3: Now, I didn't hate this one nearly as much as I should of, but much like Spider-Man above, it fell well-short of my expectations. The rather clear opening for a fourth installment really just ended up pissing me off by day's end, and that really is unfortunate, because normally I'd want to see the series continue.

#3 The Playstation 3: Yeah, this one didn't go over well either. Blame it on still being relatively close to the launch date, but overall, I still can't justify the purchase. The price game upset me, the push back of HOME was a disappointment, and we're still not any closer to MGS4 or GT5. I can wait, I guess...

#2 Television In General: Blame it on the writers strike, who knows, but TV sucked in 2007. Crappy reality shows, crappy regular shows, everything with promise dying out towards the end... I had a lot of hope for these shows, but of all that I regularly watch, honest to God, only House and Desperate Housewives kept me interested. Thank God for BBC America with shows like tha Doc, Torchwood, Top Gear, and the like...

#1 The Music of 2007: Yeah, I'm not a fan. Sorry to say it kids, but I'm still playing the hell out of the CDs I bought back in 2005 and 2006... There were very few records that were really worth getting this year. Honestly, you could have spent less than $100 to get your fill. I mean, come-on! Kanye West? Fergie? OneRepublic? Fallout Boy?

Kids, heres my secret for recovering whats left of 2007:

- Go enjoy Transformers, again
- Watch the hell out of Torchwood
- Get plenty of use out of your Wii, X360 and PC
- Go buy Paramore's RIOT! and The Kaiser Chief's Yours Truly, Angry Mob. Easily the two best CDs of 2007...

[Raythegeek]

Biggest disapointments of 2007.

#1. HD/Blu Ray War
This BS needs to stop. When two juggernauts compete nobody wins. Especially the customers who will end up investing hundreds if not thousands of dollars in a format that will end up being worthless in a few years.

#2. Music of '07
This is year was deffinatly the year of garbage. Less than a handful of good albums. To me the only highlight this year was Linkin Park, Nine Inch Nails, Norah Jones and a bunch of good live Dave Matthews Band albums.

#3 The writers strike
With no end in sight. 2008 may turn out to be the worst year in recent television history.

[=XcL=]

Movies:
Spiderman 3 (The phoned in movie of the year)

Games:
Guitar Hero Encore: Rock of the 80's (Bait and Switch ver. of "I Wanna Rock")

TV:
The Writer's Strike (At least The Daily Show, Conan and Letterman will be back tomorrow)

[mormonrage]

The OC ending
Is that the one SNL did a Digital Short parody of?

[nextgenxbox]

5. Cancellation of Journeyman

It is not official yet. There is still hope. Keep your fingers crossed both in the past and in the future!

[Serenity]

Movies;

Ghost Rider. I was SO excited to see that and so pissed when it sucked.

Games;

Haven't played in a while so I can't say.

T.V.

I'll go ahead and simply agree, "Writer's strike, I hate you!"

[DarthEnder]

I'm gonna have to go with Spiderman 3's treatment of Venom also.


Also...and this is gonna sound wierd...but when I got my Pirates 3 DVD, and there was no Writer's commentary on it. Presumably because of the strike. But I was really looking forward to that, because the ones they did for the first two just had so much interesting background information in them.

[poltah]

Spider-Man 3 and Pirates 3. Those movies were two examples of what's wrong in Hollywood right now. Waste of money. Waste of time.

[puddlefish]

300, Spiderman 3 and Pirates 3 were all terrible imo.

[matteekay]

Is that the one SNL did a Digital Short parody of?

Do what you sa-aaaa-aaaay....


Okay, so, I'm going to just toss most people's opinions of me into the toilet (not that anyone really has any at this point).....

Games:
I bought a Wii. Sadly, Alex was right; by and large, we get stupid gimmicks and not compelling gameplay.

TV:
The fact that "The Hills" is still on TV. And flourishing. Truly, we are all getting dumberer.

Movies:
*Inhales*
Knocked Up - Okay, it wasn't bad, per say, but after hearing how amazingly brilliant the movie was (LOL OMG R0X0RZ the scene where they're having sex was like, soooooo funnay!) from pretty much every source, I expected a hell of a lot more. And Seth Rogan's character arc was, approximately, underdeveloped ass who Heigl hates at the beginning to underdeveloped ass who Heigl likes at the end. Right.

Waitress - I should preface this by saying yes, I know the writer/director died, but I don't think that precludes me from judging the work (people do it to paintings and music all the time). I really disliked this film, even in the face of the universal praise and Nathan Fillion involvement; it felt like it was a cartoon script turned into an adult movie. Take Russel's character; everyone in the film tells us how brilliant she is, how gifted she is at baking, how pretty, blah blah blah... yet she stays with a cartoon villain of a husband, with no justification whatsoever. And then there's the lovely Dues ex Machina ending, the fact that Shelly felt the need to write herself into the movie in another semi-developed part that didn't add anything, and Fillion's guy, who only managed to garner feelings of total indifference. Blah.

Spiderman 3 - I could have been okay with Venom's minimal action. But then there was the dancing scene.....

Stardust - Just kidding. This movie is perfect in every way!

[AndyFM]

Stardust - Just kidding. This movie is perfect in every way!

You almost had me throw my monitor across the room at work when you put Stardust in there. Luckily I read the next bit before proceeding to get myself fired!! lol

and i agree with you comment about it! =)

[krypt]

videogames:
Ill admit GH 3 turned out to be less than I was expecting but without a doubt definitely assassins creed. Also i didnt love Galaxy as much as everyone else seemed to, I mean the only really fun parts were the trippy gravity things, other than that it wasnt very hard. And that had to be the easiest bowser fight ever

movies:
I didnt even bother with Pirates 3 after hearing what everyone said, but my biggest disappointment has to go to 30 Days of Night. Im a big fan of the comic book and they pretty much mutilated it. But i dont get why everyone hates spiderman 3 so much, I mean yea it couldve been better but i enjoyed it.

[darksydeavenger]

In no particular order:

TV

The Office - Wasn't as funny as the older seasons. Starting to feel forced now that Jim and Pam are together. *sigh*

Journeyman - Utter shit. I stuck with it for five episodes before completely losing interest in the boring characters and the contrived plot devices. They really could have taken it somewhere and I'm quite glad that the outlook is grim for this show.

Heroes - You can't polish a turd...seriously! I'm pretty sure I'm not returning for season 3.

Reaper - Loved the premise and pretty much all of it...until about the strike. The monster a week formula works only if there's an underlying arc to go along with it. And no...a love interest does not an arc make. An interesting idea would have been to deviate from the monster a week scenarios and really amp up some of these heaven and hell ideas and get really weird with it.

Dexter - Still an amazing show, but most of the second season was unnecessary. Really, what else is left for our hero now that he's accepted his dark half and most of his adversaries are quieted? A criminal a week styled season? Please. Been there! Done that!

Weeds - A weird ass season, and a disappointing one at that! Not really sure why they need a fourth season when the finale's closing moments brought everything full circle and everyone resolved their story arcs in such a tidy fashion.

Movies

Spiderman 3 - Complete and utter piece of shit, but a nice way to discontinue the franchise.

Pirates 3 - One giant pirate orgy of stupid, inane shit! Oh well...I kinda saw it coming from a mile away. OMG! Let's HAVE A MAELSTROM SHIP BATTLE! WEEEEEEE!!!!!!11! Suffers from the exact same problem that the last two matrix movies did. The writers forget how to write when they hit it big.

30 Days of Night - I laughed, but not because the movie brought me joy. I mean, Josh Hartnet's character becomes a vampire in the end?! I don't care if it's in the graphic novel..still a lame ending.

Transformers - Where the robots at and why do I have to stare at a jackass LeBouf for the entire movie?

300 - For my thoughts on this matter, I refer you to THIS (http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/300).

Comics

I mostly read webcomics and the only disappointment was the new Phoenix Requiem from the gal who drew Inverloch. But, that's mainly because it's taken a long ass time to get anywhere.

Something Positive - I wish I could have fun with this comic like I had in the beginning.

Video Games

Guitar Hero III - I'm starting to wear out on the franchise. The battle mode is a step in the right direction, but nowhere near enough to save anything.


And that's my rant-filled review of the the biggest let downs this year for me. Really, this year kinda pissed me off in that everything went to hell in a hand basket before I could even say tater-tot salad.

[skin87]

Spiderman 3 - Complete and utter piece of shit, but a nice way to discontinue the franchise.

How cute, you think the franchise is going to end. They have the rights secured through Spiderman 6 and they got $330 million reasons to at least make a fourth one.

[taozoo4u]

Movies
5)Norbit was not funny it was UNFUNNY
4)Pirates 3 Terrible
3)I Know Who Killed Me never really had hopes for this movie but on a scale of 1-10 it was a .2
2)as much as it kills my inner child to say this but i have to Spiderman 3
1)Pathfinder this was the biggest piece of dog *explicit* my eyes have ever seen, my hopes going in to see this movie were "Ok I'm gonna see an average movie with alot of combat" no what i got was a typical Hollywood ripoff being craped out of some high up execs ass and rubbing it in my face when i left this movie i wished i could go back in time and beat myself silly so i would be so Effed up i wouldn't know why i went to the movies to begin with.

Games
Warning this list does not contain Mass Effect or Assassins Creed yes i loved these two games

5)Puzzle Quest after so much hype about this game from Dan, Alex and Jeff and everyone on the forums i went out and bought this game and Oh My God i was so ashamed of myself for wasting well earned money.
4)Guitar Hero 3 Loved the first one, Hated the second one, Despised Rock the '80s so much so i traded it in the day after i bought it, so i didn't expect much from the third and literally 5min after i bought i had buyers remorse the only good thing i got out of this game was a guitar controller for rock band so the way i keep myself from going insane is i just imagine i bought a $100 plastic toy guitar that came with a mediocre game.
3)Crysis don't get me wrong this game was beautiful but after one play through on the extreme difficulty or whatever those crazy kids are calling in now was no fun to play again. this was just a reason for me to buy my new computer

Jesus this is taking forever

2)Halo 3 bad graphics bad story bad characters bad ending bad everything

1)Halo 3seriously this game was so bad i had to put it down twice but this one is counting as the MP I'm sick of going on XBL and having a group of 9 year olds screaming Fag and other obscenities at me, seriously where are the parents for these kids.

[darksydeavenger]

How cute, you think the franchise is going to end. They have the rights secured through Spiderman 6 and they got $330 million reasons to at least make a fourth one.


The estimated budget for Spiderman 3 was roughly $258,000,000. $330 million isn't all that much when you do the math. And you'll notice that Spiderman 2 did better with a smaller budget, as did Spiderman 1. Roughly $260 million is a much better profit than $72 million.

All I'm saying here is that the writing is on the wall at this point. Unless they do something amazing in the next one, I don't foresee the series lasting all that much longer.

[skin87]

That's only domestic box office. Once you factor in overseas box office plus dvd and merchandise sales, they made more than enough profit to justify continuing the use of their license.

[darksydeavenger]

I guess my point is just that each new Spiderman movie is more expensive than the last, and that given Spiderman 3 was on par with Batman Forever, I would be surprised if it even made it to a fifth movie. Just because they can, doesn't mean that they should.

[sugarsickness]

I guess my point is just that each new Spiderman movie is more expensive than the last, and that given Spiderman 3 was on par with Batman Forever, I would be surprised if it even made it to a fifth movie. Just because they can, doesn't mean that they should.

I think you mean Batman and Robin.

[darksydeavenger]

I think you mean Batman and Robin.

I was being generous. :D

[johnnysix]

Transformers - Where the robots at and why do I have to stare at a jackass LeBouf for the entire movie?

That jackass LeBouf was the best thing about the movie. If only you could take the "Michael Bay" out of Michael Bay movies I might be able love them. The effects kicked ass, but I just hate all that slow motion, forced emotion bullshit that Bay sticks in his movies. What was with all that military crap? I swear this movie had exactly the same score as every bay film since The Rock (that's right, that's not a grammatical error. I'm not even giving him the respect of capital letters any more).

I've seen LeBouf in A Guide to Recognizing your Saints, Bobby, Surfs Up and Disturbia and he's great in all of those roles. I couldn't disagree more. I do however agree that Transformers was somewhat a disappointment.

[darksydeavenger]

That jackass LeBouf was the best thing about the movie. If only you could take the "Michael Bay" out of Michael Bay movies I might be able love them. The effects kicked ass, but I just hate all that slow motion, forced emotion bullshit that Bay sticks in his movies. What was with all that military crap? I swear this movie had exactly the same score as every bay film since The Rock (that's right, that's not a grammatical error. I'm not even giving him the respect of capital letters any more).

I've seen LeBouf in A Guide to Recognizing your Saints, Bobby, Surfs Up and Disturbia and he's great in all of those roles. I couldn't disagree more. I do however agree that Transformers was somewhat a disappointment.

I might be the only one who gets this mild bout of irritation when he appears onscreen. Probably remnants from that movie he was in...where he dug holes and pwned Sigourney Weaver. :p