It was a solid crush, it was like true love at first sight, you gave them everything, your time, your soul, your sleep, your money. But... awkwardly, on the long run, you realise that something is missing. Something that you supposed was your fault (maybe you still assume it is), something you hoped would get resolved with time. But with time, you only became more lucid. And you realise that it was a misundertanding, one of life's little fake promises. These games looked gorgeous, they looked brilliant, they looked fun and... maybe they are, in their own way, they are lovely, or maybe you want to convince yourself so. Still, what's between you and them isn't what you hoped.

There is still tenderness, after disapointed love, and I feel I betray my own self. But let's face it.

1. Ghost Master is a fantastic concept. An adorable game, a sweet toy. But, it's still unsatisfying, even on the second walkthrough. You either rish to scare all characters out, and it becomes some tasteless automated speedrun. Or you take your time, psychologically and dramatically building up the terror, enjoying it, beholding the little détails, but then you're toying "against" the gameplay, and get so little plasma points that you can hardly unlock and explore your ghosts' new abilities. Ghost Master is a great software, they didn't actually manage to turn it into a proper game. Replaying the levels to maximise the results is frustrating and unrewarding, the game is less fun and the few bonus points gained for it are worthless. But I'll never admit it honestly enough to advise against this game. It's still a "great game", in my dreams.

2. Evil Genius has a wonderful atmosphere, full of brilliant details and possibilities, and it captures perfectly the tone of my favorite stories. And these traps, so many traps that you can build and combine. It's like a james bond "dungeon keeper" except that the dungeon keepers traps served a purpose and you ended up building them. In Evil Genius, actually, traps are a drain of ressources, with no benefit. Minions and some twisting corridors achieve better results. And no matter how much I tried, I always ended up playing without the traps - that is, without the game. I can't connect. It's a real good game, I suppose, but I always end up skipping its core.

3. Stronghold is a magnificent castle building game. Heck, a RTS where you can map out your own castle and defenses, like all these citadel designs you used to draw as a kid, and actually see invaders trying to breach through them. It's great, except that you build it magically, the building gameplay temporality merging with the asssaults. You have gold ? Just build, unbuild, rebuild your walls and towers on the go, while the enemy army destroys it and circles through it. And you want your archers to be safe ? Destroy the stairs, they will stay on the walls, out of reach of the enemy and of the food they don't need. Two gameplays merged looks like a miracle that didn't happen : they don't merge. And yet, no other game provides this experience, or tries.

4. Gangsters, yes, a prohibition-era management game, where you see the streets, order goons to follow the enemy in the ground, set up rackets, plan sneaky assaults and order assassinations, it's exactly what I always wanted to play, and ends up unplayable, dull, cumbersome, unmanageable. I would love to Watch it play by itself, with a narrative. But I can't do it myself.

5. Creatures. I always wanted games with autonomous AI universes, and this piushes to to the extreme : little learning AI's developing their own way with your didactic prods. This should be a magnificent experience to half-play and half-behold. It ends up obscure beyond my grasp. Some people manage it, but this game doesn't deliver what it had promised to me - or worse, it delivers it in a different language.

There are other games that are my "favorite games in theory", and that I play for tat reason, but... that keep, despite of my effort, not being what I still insist to see them as. So, what are yours ?

Any game that you cannot admit that you don't love as much as you want to ? That you secretely love a bit less than you keep telling yourself ?

Dark Reign
I'm way too tired to write an essay about it like our friend here. :P

I cannot say there are any games I really feel betrayed me. There are games that are good and those that are bad, but so long as I enjoy the time I put in then I am happy with the game.

The only game off the top of my head right now that I was initially disappointed in is Hitman Absolution. A fantastic game in its own right and well worth playing. Yet it really does not feel like a true Hitman game, it feels like an imatation of Blood Money that just gets something wrong. Not so wrong as to be unplayable, but wrong to be a Hitman game, as I play I always feel "Blood Money would do this better". It should be another Kay and Lynch game rather then a Hitman game in my eyes.

Simcity 4. Coming off the awesome Simcity 3000 Unlimited, I had great hopes for 4.. but it feels like something's different.. something's changed for the worst. Maybe it's the new road system and rather occupied roads get accidents every so often unless you repave them to be bigger roads.. Perhaps it's the sector based building system for zones.. who knows.. and don't get me started on the disaster that's simcity "5"

There's some others like Half Life 2, and Grand Theft Auto 4, as well..

I never really experienced that, except for the brand new Total War Rome 2.

Nice graphics and a few worthy additions (like the province system or the armies traditions), but so much things missing, oversimplified or just stupid compared to the previous games.

It just painfully felt like a Total Watered Down and unpolished game .

Duke Nukem Forever. Duke Nukem 3d is one of my all time favorites, and the early stuff 3d realms showed running on the unreal engine looked amazing. In the end the game was a 12 year wait to get kicked in the balls.

My purchase of Ringrunner here on gog.com :/
It could be so much better, but for a very small team it is a decent game.
I tried to play multiplayer, never get a response from it, so I had to play single player only :(

Morrowind. The first time I played it, I was in love. I was younger then and didn't quite grasp the game to its fullest extent, but I was having fun. I had played few RPGs at that point, and I certainly had never played one like Morrowind. But that didn't matter, because it was great. Or so I thought. About two weeks in, I realized I wasn't having that much fun. The combat sucked, the graphics were aesthetically pleasing but couldn't cover up the awkward movement animations, the leveling system was horrible, and you move at a crawl. Everything about the game was just tedious. And yet I still go back to it every once in a while. Something about it just draws me. I've now realized that I can get short periods of bliss out of it, but once I start to inwardly grumble at the game's (many) annoyances, I stop playing. I'll still probably go back to it, too.

Oblivion. I'm going to start this one by saying that my overall reaction to Oblivion was quite different from my reaction to Morrowind. I genuinely liked Oblivion through and through. I got hundreds of hours of fun out of it. I spent a month completely obsessed with it, going so far as to set half of a story I wrote in its world (I don't want to explain the "half" part, but I will say that the story was also the longest piece of fiction I've ever written). To this day I think it is better than Morrowind. So how did it betray my love? I discovered a forum on this web site. You might've heard of it. It's called GOG. I have read many posts talking about Oblivion's problems, problems I had never noticed in all the time I was obsessed with the game. I told myself they were wrong. But now, every time I play the game, those issues are in the back of my mind. I still don't quite agree with the complaints about the game, but having been exposed to them, I can't help but think of them when I play. And I just can't enjoy the game like I used to.

too many to put here, most games due to drm or stupid stupid quick times

I'm probably going to get some hate for this. But I think my big one was Fallout: New Vegas. I gave the game the chance and at the start, things were looking good but then the problems showed and despite what everyone says, the game just felt worse and worse. I don't care about the poorly written factions that were made idiots so that you for the mere fact that you had the Mcguffin that you have the power to choose the winner, All because the NCR can't feed their soldiers, Caesar's Legion is only capably of charging blindly into death and hope they have the numbers and the only thing to keep soldiers in fighting condition is herbal antiseptic and a magical mechanical doctor that can fix anything without medications (including Anesthesia). The game promises a grand exploration and if you try it'll slap you down, and if you persist, your prize is nothing! This game just pisses me off now and I gave it several tries and each time I hate the game more.

Honestly? I feel the exact same way. 80 hours in, I feel like it's the worst $20 I ever spent.

Spore; so much wasted potential, with the added bonus of the rancid aftertaste of DRM.

Evil Genius for me for the very reasons the OP mentioned. I really, really want to love the game but the mechanics are broken. Traps useless, stupid AI, and the glitches ruin it for me. They have the atmosphere down, appealing visuals, and a great sense of humor, but all that needs to be backed by the mechanics.

Temple of Elemental Evil. A broken, mess. I played the vanilla version and how the hell this game got through QA is beyond me. It was obviously rushed to market. I'm not a player who regularily goes out of my way to glitch a game, but I came across so many game play breaking glitches. (On another note, I didn't find a straight answer from the ToEE forum but does the Circle of 8 patch work on the gog version?).

Arx Fatalis. A small, convincing world set in a dungeon. Curiosities around every corner, and a setting I fell into happily. Then the studio ran out of funds or time or love or whatever. The final levels are an unfinished, unplayable, bug-laden mess. It still wrenches at me a bit, years and years later.