4 Games That Flopped Super Hard in 2015

2015 was a great year for games with all of the platforms offering stellar exclusive titles and perfect reasons for us to justify picking up one of the new consoles. However, while some fans were overjoyed with the quality of the game that they received from their favorite series, other games in 2015 were victims of a pretty awful flop.

Before we go into our list, we think it’s important for us to outline exactly what we’re qualifying as a flop here. The following games are ones which definitely did not meet their sales targets, were reviewed poorly, or just really didn’t meet expectations of fans. Others perhaps started strongly but failed to stay in the limelight for long enough, becoming more of an afterthought of “did that really release this year?”

None of these games are downright abominations that don’t deserve to be played (except maybe for one), but instead just didn’t quite hit the mark that was set for them by fans, critics, and developer ambitions. So without further ado, let’s take a moment to commiserate the flops of 2015.

Need for Speed

When we first saw Need for Speed, we rejoiced. It seemed like EA had heard our cries to bring the series back to its roots of customization and street racing, and was going to bring it to next-gen consoles in all of its glory. Unfortunately, while EA brought the element of street racing and customization back, it failed to nail them completely.

We may have been back drifting through cities and speeding along highways, but we were driving in an almost complete ghost town. Everyone seemed to have evacuated from the city because you and your cheesy fellow street racers had returned from the track.

This isn’t helped by the fact that even though you’re always online, Need for Speed’s servers don’t seem to allow for large sessions of players. And that customization we were talking about, the visual ones were definitely limited on the more exotic cars in the game. The modifications made under the hood didn’t feel like they mattered all that much, either, particularly when the AI rubber-banded past you in the later stages of the game. 

Though the game wasn’t complete shambles, it failed to truly deliver on the customization front. Combining this with the fact that the streets don’t feel all that populated made Need for Speed a disappointing and less entertaining adventure from what we had all been expecting.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5

If you speak to a large proportion of people who were playing games in the late nineties, most people will have fond memories of Tony Hawk’s: Pro Skater 2. So you can imagine how excited people were when Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 was announced earlier this year. Oh, how we should have known better. What we got was quite possibly the most disappointing game of the year and one of the worst games released this year, too.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 was a complete glitch fest and featured uninspiring, jarring gameplay. Not to mention the visuals seemed to have been taken straight from the PlayStation 2 era. I guess Activision should be given some credit for acknowledging it had published a pretty terrible game. The almost 8gb patch on PlayStation 4 that was released in November that attempted to address the a lot of the game’s issues may have been an attempt at damage limitation but, unfortunately for Mr. Hawk and Activision, the damage had already been done.

Players aren’t likely to be so easily burned by the series again, and there we were just a few months back with so much promise for the return of one of gaming’s most treasured franchises. Pro Skater 5 flopped so hard that it crushed our dreams and most definitely did not live up to the expectations of the fans who were most looking forward to it.

Evolve

When Evolve was first announced back in 2014 and we saw gameplay and heard details of how the game would work, we were pretty excited. The prospect of hunting down a giant monster or being the hunted sounded like a tactical adrenaline ride that the new consoles needed in the early months of 2015. Unfortunately, while Evolve certainly delivered on some of our expectations, it failed to keep players coming back for more and this is where the crux of its failure lies. Despite the fact that Evolve reviewed so well upon its launch in February, speak to those same players and fans of the game back then and many will say they’ve changed their stance somewhat now.

Because we weren’t compelled to play “just one more game” of Evolve due to its battles feeling somewhat lacking, the player-base died off too quickly for a game focused predominantly on multiplayer to survive. As the months passed, Evolve’s player base dwindled to the point where now, only the most hardcore of players are still active on the servers and are comparatively speaking, pretty quiet.

Had Turtle Rock Studios perhaps focused on incentives for returning or veteran players, then maybe the servers would be a bit more populated than they are at their current state. Despite a couple of small issues, Evolve isn’t a bad game. In fact, during its release window Evolve was a great multiplayer option, however, as the months passed, its player numbers dwindled and it became a bit of an afterthought this year. Evolve flopped not because it was a bad game or because it had some gaping flaw, but more the fact that it struggled with the one most important thing a multiplayer game needs to do well: keep players coming back.

The Order 1886

The Order 1886 did one thing right; it looked absolutely stunning and blew many people away. Unfortunately, that’s where a majority of the positive comments over The Order stopped. What remained was a whole load of confusion about why the game was so short, why it was worryingly linear, and why it seemed to contain so many quick-time events.

The Order 1886 was ultimately a glorified AAA tech demo, demonstrating what the PlayStation 4 could do when pushed hard in the early years of its life cycle. Its short length and lack of a solid story meant that other than the graphics, there was little else truly exciting in The Order. It failed to meet the expectations that fans had for one of Sony’s most anticipated AAA offerings of 2015, and unfortunately for Ready At Dawn, Santa Monica Studios, and excited fans, it missed the bar.

It’s disappointing that The Order 1886 ended up in the form it did, the story was interesting enough and was left on a cliff-hanger that would, and most likely is, setting up a sequel. However, it is yet to be seen whether its disappointing performance in reviews will affect Sony’s decision to turn The Order into a fully fledged franchise.

What games did not live up to your expectations this year? Do you agree with our list? Let us know in the comments below.