Don’t Believe the Hype: The disappointment of over-anticipation

As games like Assassin’s Creed and Grand Theft Auto IV have shown us, video game hype can get well out of hand. Not to say that these games are bad, because they are not, but too often, gamers set their standards and expectations too high only to be incredibly let down by the game’s mediocre gameplay. As a result, the backlash at some of these games has proven detrimental to the franchise’s reputation.

Although some franchises have had some hits and misses, hype around game releases can take away from the actual game. For example, Halo 3 was hailed as the third coming of a franchise powerhouse. As the Xbox 360 came out, gamers were still staying up into the early hours of the morning enjoying Halo 2. But the hype around Halo 3 reached such ridiculous levels that people spent more money on the extra editions and the Mountain Dew Game Fuel, and the game itself was a total letdown. It wasn’t that the game was bad; but similar to Bioshock, it just wasn’t as good as people were hoping, considering its heavy anticipation.

Another example is Madden 2006. After the innovative Madden 2005 introduced the hit stick and the new way of Madden gaming, there were high, high hopes for Madden 2006. Video game stores and retail shops had people waiting in line over night for a chance to continue their NFL seasons and fine tune their Madden skills. When they got to their consoles, though, gamers were given too many pre-game tweaks and not enough in-game style. The highly anticipated QB Vision was a dud and the Superstar Mode was too similar to NCAA’s Race for the Heisman mode. At the time, the game was innovative and enjoyable. But after a few weeks, or mere days for the Madden faithful, the game lost its flare, forcing people to regret those six hours they waited when sleep was a much better option.

While highly rated games like Okami got little to no hype at all, Niko Bellic is the cover-boy for Game Informer and Playstation Magazine and reviewers just won’t stop writing about the second installment of Gears of War.

Hype can easily break a game’s like-ability if it fails to meet expectations, but hype can also keep franchises alive. The Call of Duty franchise is on a great run with its first person perspective and multiplayer capabilities. And since we can pretty much expect the same gameplay and features, except for a few tweaks, I think there’s more hype around the franchise than singular games, which can only help sales.

Other than the fourth installment, overall, Grand Theft Auto fans have been happy with the franchise play where other games, like True Crime, failed to impress. Although GTA IV was not so well reviewed in gameplay in comparison to its hype, the game still met its potential in offering more details of the Liberty City landscape and a better storyline than its predecessors.

Hype can give games great reviews before they even come out, which causes the high levels of disappointment when the game finally does launch. While many gamers ignore the hype meter and stick with reviews and forums, some simply cannot resist premature praise for games like Grand Theft Auto V and Madden 2010; that is, if these games ever reach the public.

But we also need to remember that hype is exactly that, HYPE. So for all of the gamers who hoped for stealth killing and innovative features in Assassin’s Creed, but ended up using it to level their kitchen tables, next time, as Flavor Flav so eloquently put it, “Don’t believe the hype!”