8 min read
The year is almost over, and the gaming industry is licking its wounds. We started 2025 with promises of a renaissance, but got some of the biggest gaming disappointments to date. Industry analysts told us that the drought was over. They said the delayed “quadruple-A” blockbusters were finally ready. We were promised a harvest year of high-fidelity, groundbreaking experiences that would justify the new standard $70 price tag.
Instead, we got a year of broken promises and the biggest gaming disappointments. While gems like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and ARC Raiders delivered the goods, a shocking number of marquee titles collapsed under the weight of their own marketing. We saw legends fall, beloved franchises lose their soul, and new IPs implode on launch day.
So, what went wrong? Why did games with massive budgets and legendary directors fail so spectacularly? We dug into the data, the reviews, and the development stories to bring you the definitive list of 2025’s biggest letdowns.
Here are the 5 most overhyped games of 2025 that broke our hearts.
1. MindsEye
The “GTA Killer” That Committed Suicide
No game had a pedigree like MindsEye. The pitch was irresistible. Leslie Benzies, the former president of Rockstar North and the architect of the 3D Grand Theft Auto era, was back. His new studio, Build A Rocket Boy (BARB), secured over £230 million in funding. They promised a revolutionary open-world experience set in a near-future America. Fans expected a “GTA Killer”… A game with Rockstar’s freedom but without corporate shackles.
MindsEye launched on June 10, and the illusion shattered instantly. The game tops our list of the biggest gaming disappointments for a reason. Players discovered that this “open world” was a lie. The game was a strictly linear, on-rails shooter that felt decades old. The gameplay was generic, the story was confusing, and the technical state was catastrophic. PlayStation even issued mass refunds due to constant crashing, a move usually reserved for broken disasters like Cyberpunk 2077.
But the real failure was internal. Reports surfaced of a toxic studio culture paralysed by micromanagement. Every decision required a “Leslie Ticket”, direct approval from Benzies, which bottled up development for months. Instead of fixing the game, studio leadership blamed a conspiracy. They claimed “internal and external saboteurs” and bots were responsible for the negative reviews. This refusal to accept reality turned a flop into a PR nightmare.
The Disaster by the Numbers
| Metric | Result | Context |
| Metascore | 28 | The lowest-rated game of 2025. |
| User Score | 2.4 | “Overwhelmingly Negative” reception. |
| Sales | ~160k | Only ~30% of the Month 1 target. |
| Peak Players | < 40 | Steam player count is virtually zero. |
2. Avowed
The “Skyrim Killer” That Forgot to Be Fun
Obsidian Entertainment is RPG royalty. With Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity on their resume, their next project carried immense weight. Avowed was positioned as Microsoft’s answer to The Elder Scrolls. We expected a sprawling, reactive fantasy sandbox set in the rich world of Eora.
Avowed isn’t broken… It is just painfully mediocre. The development team pivoted mid-production from a massive open world to segmented “zones”, and the scars show. The world feels static and lifeless. Unlike the radiant AI schedules of Oblivion (a 2006 game), NPCs in Avowed stand rooted to their spots like animatronics.
Combat feels “floaty” and lacks impact. You swing a sword, and it feels like hitting the air. The role-playing elements, Obsidian’s speciality, were stripped down to “Marvel-style” quips and binary choices that lack moral greyness. Microsoft touted 5 million players, but this is a vanity metric. Most played for an hour on Game Pass and then uninstalled. It became the ultimate “filler” content… Consumed and immediately forgotten.
Why It Failed
- Identity Crisis: A AA game priced and marketed as a AAA blockbuster.
- Dead World: No stealing consequences, no NPC routines, static environments.
- Weak Combat: Lacks the visceral feedback of modern peers.
3. FBC: Firebreak
Remedy’s Misguided Live-Service Pivot
Remedy Entertainment doesn’t miss. From Alan Wake to Control, they are masters of single-player atmosphere. FBC: Firebreak was supposed to be their fun, co-op spin-off. Set in the Control universe, it promised to let us fight the Hiss with friends using wacky weaponry and telekinetic powers.
Firebreak is a textbook example of chasing a trend five years too late. It launched as a generic horde shooter in a market dominated by Helldivers 2 and Deep Rock Galactic. To make matters worse, it launched in a “hot mess” state. Matchmaking was fundamentally broken on day one. In a multiplayer-only game, that is a death sentence.
Gamers rejected the tone shift. The eerie, Brutalist horror of the Oldest House was replaced with bright, arcadey visuals and “dark humour” that fell flat. The player base evaporated instantly. On Xbox, the game lost over 93% of its players within weeks. On Steam, concurrent player counts dropped below 30. Remedy had to issue a profit warning, proving once again that a strong single-player IP does not guarantee live-service success.
4. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2
The Sequel In Name Only
The original Bloodlines (2004) is a cult classic. It was buggy, sure, but it offered unparalleled role-playing depth. Fans waited two decades for a sequel. After years of development hell and a studio switch to The Chinese Room, 2025 was supposed to be the year we finally returned to the World of Darkness.
We got a game, but we didn’t get Bloodlines. The Chinese Room, known for narrative exploration games, turned this RPG into a glorified walking simulator. They removed the custom character and forced players to play as Phyre, a voiced protagonist with a fixed personality. This destroyed the role-playing agency that defined the series.
Seattle looks pretty in Unreal Engine 5, but it is a hollow set. You cannot interact with the world. Combat is famously terrible, described by reviewers as punching a “wet paper bag”. The “Humanity” system? Gone. The complex Masquerade mechanics? Simplified to irrelevance. It alienated old fans by being too simple and bored new fans by being too janky.
5. Lost Soul Aside
The Vaporware That Should Have Stayed a Myth
This story began in 2016. A single developer created a viral trailer that looked better than Final Fantasy. Sony stepped in to fund it. For nearly a decade, Lost Soul Aside was the internet’s favourite underdog story. It was supposed to be the ultimate stylish action game.
Time was not kind to Lost Soul Aside. When it finally launched in August 2025, it felt like a relic from 2016. The game somehow managed to make it to our list of the biggest gaming disappointments of 2025. The visuals, once groundbreaking, now looked merely “okay” compared to Stellar Blade or Final Fantasy XVI.
Critically, it was all style and no substance. The story was a collection of generic anime tropes with a boring script. The gameplay loop was archaic… Walk down a hallway, fight a spongey mob, fight a boss, repeat. It became a slog. The novelty of the “one-man project” wore off when people had to pay $70 for it. It stands as a lesson that games cannot survive on hype alone for ten years.
Honourable Mentions: Other Gaming Disappointments of 2025
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7: This was the year the community finally snapped. While critics gave it a passing grade (Metacritic 82), players revolted (User Score 1.7). On launch, the “always online” single-player campaign kicked you out if you paused the game, and the content felt like an $80 DLC reskin of Black Ops 6. Sales dropped by double digits, forcing Microsoft to announce they will never release Black Ops and Modern Warfare titles back-to-back again.
- Monster Hunter Wilds (PC Version): A fantastic game on console, but the PC port was a disaster. It launched with severe stuttering and broken textures. It took Capcom eight months to fix it with “Title Update 4”. PC gamers were treated like second-class citizens.
- Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour: The hardware is great, but charging $10 for a tech demo? Fans were furious. Unlike the free Astro’s Playroom on PS5, Nintendo put a price tag on their tutorial. It was a PR stumble that labelled them as greedy.
- Metal Gear Solid Delta: A remake that was too faithful. It looked like 2025, but played like 2004. The archaic level design clashed with the photorealistic graphics, landing it in the uncanny valley of game design.
2025 taught the industry a brutal lesson. You cannot hide behind a famous name, a massive marketing budget, or a beloved IP. Gamers in 2025 are smarter and more selective. If you ship a broken, hollow, or generic product, the market will punish you instantly. Let’s hope 2026 brings fewer gaming disappointments and better games.
TechJuice has also curated an article covering the 10 most anticipated games that are set to launch in 2026. Viewers can read this article by clicking here.
