I always liked how Empire Earth II felt more strategic than Empire Earth, yet felt sipler due to streamlining in the base building and resource management. The settlements, battle planning (simple as it was), and even the end battle unit statistics all let the game feel really, really good. Imagine my disappointment in Empire Earth III's demo. First, the game didn't look very good, but whatever, EE wasn't really a powerhouse in graphics anyway. But then the units weren't very cool, the buildings didn't make sense to me, and for the life of me I couldn't make the game fun. Empire Earth convinced me off of the demo that I should buy the game (the way the demo was handled, you pretty much had to, but the game was still great) (man, that was in 2006, when my connection sucked even more and when downloading from company sites wasn't very common. I don't think I miss that about that time) and it was disappointing that a franchise I liked a lot couldn't deliver after a pretty cool cinematic trailer.
I eventually had to get over this one as every game uses it now. I relish it when a game uses creative ways of regaining health, though, but there is something special to me about something that can be summed up as a "health pack."

Awesome looking game that you know based on videos and reviews that you know you will absolutely love... but it needs online activation/login to play single player...
The problem would naturally be exponentially worse if you are required accounts to two separate "services" ( -"servitude").

i.e. multiple DRMs that can actively prevent you from playing!

You know what really grinds my gears?

1)Unskippable Intros. Yes, I know who made the game, for 25th time god dammit. I knew it even before the game came out!
2)When the game is total bullsh*t (or just really hard) and I try to load up ArtMoney.... and it just flat out doesn't work.
3)Lack of graphic options. I would love if all graphic options were kilometers long tables.
4)When you launch the game and you have a controller pluged-in, the game just starts to use the controller, not giving you an option to switch between the inpiut methods.
5)A**hole developers. And....even more so, a**hole journalists.

I wish that RPG games had an "old fart/disabled" mode.

What I am saying is at 67 years my reflexes are not all that sharp and many games are unplayable as the developers thought that the only users are twenty year old. The unplayable monsters could be beaten by changing from "easy" to the "old fart" mode, so that older and disabled players have a chance to progress. It would appear that most developers do not think that their games will be played by these groups, This is rather short sighted, as it limits the groups to which a game can be sold.

Games that are unplayable by me: Drakensang II, Sanctuary, Rise of the Argonauts,, Dungeon Siege III, Jade Empire, etc.

Games that have an overly difficult boss: Torchlight (although most monsters are fine), Dragon Age II (final dragon).