SuperPhillip Central Best of 2019 Awards - Top Five Most Disappointing Games

As SPC has stated so many times when bringing up subjects like this, you gotta take the good with the bad, and while we've all enjoyed a lot of great games so far during the SuperPhillip Central Best of 2019 Awards, now we take a slight detour from our highway of positiveness to a negative back road. It's time for the Top Five Most Disappointing Games of 2019. These were games that didn't meet expectations, were plagued with plenty of problems, or were just outright baaaad. Let's get to the list of "winners" with the countdown.

5) Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD (PS4, XB1, NSW, PC)

We kick off this list of disappointing games with Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD. The original Banana Blitz was a Wii launch title that incorporated some wacky and imprecise motion controls, bad, sometimes infuriating boss battles, and a jump button. All but the first returned with Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD, instead having players use a traditional analog stick for movement as opposed to motion controls. This meant that many of the level layouts were altered and remixed somewhat to make for a more challenging game. Sadly, beyond the relatively short adventure mode, there is a dearth of content available here. It's a shame that more substantial and quality content weren't put into this game, as the failure of the game might put off SEGA from returning to the Super Monkey Ball series for a while.

4) Contra: Rogue Corps (PS4, XB1, NSW, PC)

Speaking of games that might have spoiled the chance at a franchise's future, we have Contra: Rogue Corps. Apart from the grotesque art style that takes Contra and tries to give it an overly edgy makeover (what is this, 2005?), Contra: Rogue Corps played horribly with its massive performance problems and sub-par gameplay that worked about as well as a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest, pardon the cliche analogy. Make no mistake, though--Contra: Rogue Corps kicked no butt whatsoever. The game was an utter bastardization of the Contra franchise, and one that might have put the franchise to rest for good.

3) Mario Kart Tour (iOS, AND)

Nintendo's mobile offerings have been less than stellar, and that trend continued with the scummy business practices offered in Mario Kart Tour. The actual racing was fair enough, but all of the trappings on top of that were not. For one, the rates for acquiring characters is ridiculously low, meaning that you can blow through plenty of the in-game currency and have little to show for it. Given that these Rubies are difficult to come by in the first place, and you have a game that's sensationally stingy. Throw in a subscription pass that's more expensive per year than a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, and you have a great reason to stick with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe over this shameless cash-grab.

2) Crackdown 3 (XB1, PC)

Gears 5 was a fantastic success story for the Xbox One, as it was a high quality first-party effort, which as we all know and have been beaten over the head with multiple times is something that the Xbox brand is currently short on. While Crackdown 3 is hardly a bad game, the extended wait time from multiple delays really made it so the final product wasn't really worth the aforementioned wait. There was potential here, but at the same time, that just makes the final result of the final product that much worse. In the end, Crackdown 3 still feels like it's stuck in the past with regards to its gameplay. Really, in the almost decade span between Crackdown 2 and Crackdown 3, it seemed like the latter was a product of a lost time in gaming, one in which the industry had long since moved on from.

1) Anthem (PS4, XB1, PC)

The "winner" of this awards category is a game from a prestigious studio which has provided a plethora of quality games. Unfortunately, Anthem was not one of them. After the disappointment that was Mass Effect Andromeda, developer BioWare had a lot to prove with its next project. The unfortunate thing of this was that with Anthem, nothing positive was proven--at least from the outset. Instead, the Destiny-like Anthem failed in most regards, whether it was the immense amount of grinding one had to do to make progress, the story--one which was unusually lackluster for a BioWare game, and an exhaustive amount of technical glitches and issues. While the game has gotten considerably better, most of the gaming world seems to have moved on from Anthem. To further twist the knife, Anthem did not meet EA's sales expectations, despite the game's success right from the starting gate. BioWare has essentially had two stinkers in quality in a row now, and perhaps that is the most disappointing aspect of them all.