Gaming Respawn’s Most Disappointing Games Ever

The warning signs of how disappointing Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts would be were there. Perfect Dark Zero case and point. How could a second Perfect Dark game ever go wrong? Well speak to Rare as they sure knew just how to do it. The final endeavour of Banjo and Kazooie was similar to Joanna Dark’s, dull and forgettable.

To be fair the gamble they took with this style of game was just let down by the final product. Had the game mixed the vehicles and platforming together better, we would be praising it as a fresh take on the genre. It’s just we’re not. The worlds were empty, which makes sense for safe driving, but safety isn’t a normal consideration of video game characters. The world had nothing to do in and boring scenery meant there were no sightseeing trips, nor the desire to go for a Sunday drive. The quests lost all quirkiness and became the most mundane tasks ever, with only the odd one or two being remotely enjoyable.

The concept of building cars appealed to me, and it still does. You were able to make any kind of car you could imagine – only problem is I had no creativity. Most of my creations failed, and the majority I made ended up being too impractical. A box with wheels would have probably been better than some of my designs. I’ve actually put Nuts & Bolts back on my list of games I need to go back to, hoping that being older would have made me a little more imaginative.

The game still echoed some of the comedy that made the series so great and many of the old cast made their way back for the game. Maybe had I not built it up too much for myself I would have loved it. It’s not the game I wanted to play, but out of dedication to them I continued, but when I got to the Banjo Land the memories of their golden days flooded back and I never made it too far past there.

Michael Fitzgerald – Mario Is Missing

For me, this is an easy call. The most disappointing game I ever played was Mario Is Missing for the Super Nintendo.

I loved the Mario games as a youngster and by far my favourite character in those games was Luigi. I’m not sure why this was the case. Maybe it was because I preferred the colour green to the colour red? Maybe it was because Luigi was always positioned as being secondary to his brother and my inbuilt reflex to root for the underdog was triggered? Or maybe it was because I was contrarian little toe-rag who wanted to be different?

Either way I was a self-confessed Luigi mark, so when I heard that Nintendo were releasing a game where Luigi was going to be the main hero tasked with rescuing his portly brethren, I instantly wanted it. I remember seeing the cover for the game in my local Video Game Store and getting immediately excited. It shows a picture of Mario getting dragged through a door by Bowser while Luigi explores a dungeon by candle light. It’s probably one of the best covers Nintendo did during this period, and made me picture Luigi scrapping with amassed Goomba’s and Koopa Trooper’s before facing a climactic battle with Bowser for Mario’s freedom. The back of the box even shows Luigi on the back of Yoshi charging at Koopa’s on a street.

“Wow” I thought “Not only is Yoshi also in this, but you can fight Koopa’s in the real world as well? This game is going to be awesome! Take my (parents) money!”

Alas though, the amazing game I imagined was not to be, for you see, Mario Is Missing is one of those dreaded “educational” games. Yes, rather than being a pulsating platforming experience such as Super Mario World was, Mario is Missing was instead a dreary and stagnant fetch and find game, where you found famous artefacts in cities across the world and handed them in. Koopa’s are in the game, but they can’t kill you and go up in a cartoonish poof of smoke if you jump on them. This is not only thoroughly unsatisfying but also incredibly frustrating, as it teases you with things that are actually in good Mario games but never delivers.

For example, the devious Koopalings make an appearance and you can do battle with them once you have completed enough levels. Ludwig Koopa, will be taunting you behind a dungeon gate while you complete level after tedious level. Eventually, the gate will open and he’ll run in to do battle with you. Again, he can’t actually kill you, so the battle is a frivolous exercise in catching him, as opposed to a satisfying boss fight to pay off all the penance you’ve been doing in the “educational” levels. Even the final battle with Bowser comes down to nothing more than a poorly animated cut-scene. Yes, you don’t even get to fight Bowser! You see Luigi walk into a room, flick a switch and Bowser gets fired out of a cannon. It’s the most apt ending to a thoroughly depressing experience.

Mario Is Missing is a game that could have been excellent if they’d just allowed it to be an actual Mario game with Luigi as the lead. Instead we get a churlish attempt to educate, which the game doesn’t even do a good job at either. When you find an artefact, you have to take it to a tourist information centre to return it. However, rather than gratefully accept your act of charity, the lady behind the desk instead quizzes you to make sure the artefact is legit. This is where you’re supposed to find information within the game to answer the trivia questions, and thus “educate” yourself I assume, but all I did as a nipper was just keep randomly choosing answers until the game let me move onto the next section.

The idea that this game exists to “educate” is fatuous at best. It’s a cynical cash-in on the Mario license, which I fell for hook, line and sinker. I can’t explain to you how excited I was about playing this, especially when the guy at the Store said it was essentially your standard Mario game but with Luigi as the main character. I built this up in my mind so much that, when I eventually played it, my hopes for it were crushed within an instant.

These days, with YouTube and the internet, I would have been able to see a Let’s Play before buying it and realised it was tosh, but back when this game came out there weren’t such things to aid consumers. Back then, you took a punt and hoped for the best. Sometimes you’d come up trumps. This wasn’t one of those times.