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00:00Sir, what happened in there?
00:01We shit the bed.
00:03Welcome to MojoPlays, and today we are looking at games that took too long to be released
00:08and left a lot of players disappointed when they eventually did.
00:12To be clear, we're not saying all of these games are bad,
00:15but with how long their development periods were, it's only natural that we were all expecting higher quality.
00:21And what good are your foolhardy ways if they have left us stranded upon these shallows?
00:26Now, before we dive in, we publish new content all week long, so be sure to subscribe and ring the
00:31bell to get notified about our latest videos.
00:35The Last Guardian
00:46Coming from the same team behind Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, there was a significant amount of hype behind
00:52The Last Guardian.
00:52Development began in 2007, with its official reveal coming at E3 2009.
00:58Unfortunately, work was slow.
01:00The team had a clear vision, but the technology of the PS3 couldn't match it.
01:05And so, development eventually switched over to the PS4.
01:08Sony stayed quiet about the game for several years, leading many to believe it had become vaporware.
01:13But it reappeared at E3 2015, before finally releasing the following year, nearly a decade after development began.
01:31Most agreed that it was visually beautiful, but the thing that it's most remembered for now is the horrendous AI
01:38of your giant animal companion, Trico.
01:40We get that forming a new bond between boy and beast should take time and effort, but when your game's
01:46legacy is defined by players actively fighting against its most fundamental design concept, well, you might have messed up.
02:00Metroid Prime 4 Beyond
02:10In 2017, Metroid wasn't in a great place.
02:13The reviled Federation Force released the previous year, and before that, the series had been dormant following 2010's Other M.
02:20So, when Nintendo announced a new Metroid Prime game that year, fans were understandably ecstatic.
02:26But in early 2019, Nintendo revealed that development had restarted, and that Bandai Namco had been replaced by the developer
02:32of the original Prime trilogy, Retro Studios.
02:35After that came a few long, silent years, with scarcely any updates.
02:40Although Metroid did get some love with the release of Dread and a remastered version of the first Prime, nothing
02:45compared to the level of excitement for Beyond.
02:58Then, the game was released, and it was...
03:00Okay.
03:02There were elements of greatness in its mechanics, visuals, and level design, but there were also glaring flaws, like the
03:08dull, empty Soul Valley desert, or some of the chattier NPCs.
03:13For as long as the wait was, a lot of players weren't content with simply, okay.
03:28Too Human
03:31Come on, Hulk! Pour it on!
03:33Pull it up, Hulk!
03:34I always do this for hundreds of hours!
03:36Really, pup?
03:37Developer Silicon Knights began working on Too Human in 1999 for the PlayStation, and announced it at that year's E3.
03:44But the game wouldn't actually see release until nearly a decade later.
03:48This was because the studio entered an exclusive partnership with Nintendo, and so it was reimagined for the GameCube.
03:54But, with more time and resources spent on other games for the platform, Too Human would switch consoles and publishers
04:01again when Silicon Knights entered a partnership with Microsoft in 2005.
04:05It still didn't make its planned 2006 release window.
04:09It came out in 2008 to some truly lukewarm reviews.
04:19Muddy visuals and a clunky control scheme made it hard to enjoy the world it was trying to set up,
04:24a blend of sci-fi and Norse mythology.
04:26It's mostly forgotten now, if not for the factoid, that it was used in a lawsuit that eventually led to
04:32the studio's bankruptcy.
04:33As it was found, they had stolen code from Epic's Unreal Engine 3.
04:43Daikatana
04:52John Romero is responsible for some of the most important games of all time, having been a key figure behind
04:57the creation of id Software's Doom and Quake.
05:00In 1996, he left to co-form his own studio, Ion Storm, and announced its first game, Daikatana.
05:07If you're a shooter fan, and have played the games Romero worked on, you can understand how excited people were
05:13to get something new from him.
05:14While the game's development period is shorter than others on the list, as it was released in 2000,
05:19Four Years was an awfully long time back then.
05:22A lot of issues stemmed from high employee changeover, not just of general staff members, but of several of the
05:28studio's co-founders.
05:36Other technical issues caused delays, and an overly macho marketing campaign about Romero making us his bitch overshadowed the actual
05:44game.
05:44When it did release, it was heavily criticized for dated visuals, poor AI, and repetitive gameplay.
05:50And it was a financial bomb to boot, a far cry from Romero's past titles.
06:10The RPG genre owes a lot to the Ultima series, which was extremely popular with PC players throughout the 80s
06:17and early 90s.
06:18But after the release of Ultima 8 in 1994, fans had to wait five whole years for another.
06:24The team planned to address criticisms of the previous game while going back to basics.
06:29Coupled with the release of Ultima Online and multiple staff exits over the years, work was slow and arduous.
06:36By the time it was released, the game had reportedly gone through four separate versions.
06:40And even then, developer Origin Systems objected to its release date as the game wasn't finished, but EA rushed it
06:47out the door.
06:52Needless to say, it didn't perform well due to the many bugs and a lack of narrative clarity, even ignoring
06:57the history of the other games.
06:59The series essentially died here.
07:01EA canceled future projects and forced Origin to only continue work on Ultima Online, until they closed the studio in
07:082004.
07:18Spore.
07:26Will Wright, creator of SimCity, has built his career and reputation on designing incredible God Sims.
07:33Not each one has landed though, and 2008's Spore is one that fell flat.
07:37Wright began working on the game in 2000, when it was known as SimEverything.
07:42Over the years, it grew into the more creature creation title that players are familiar with.
07:46Although work on the game wasn't secret, the public didn't get their first look at Spore until GDC 2005.
07:52While there wasn't much drama behind its development, just a team taking their time, die-hard Sim fans still had
07:58to wait eight years to play it.
07:59What they got was much more simplistic, at least in terms of gameplay and mechanics, than what they were expecting.
08:12Spore was criticized for being shallow and dull.
08:16More importantly, players took issue with EA's egregious DRM practices.
08:20Most felt it wasn't worth the long wait, especially given Wright's caliber.
08:33Crackdown 3
08:40Crackdown was never incredible, but the first two games still offered a lot of enjoyment.
08:45The second game came out in 2010, and a third entry was announced at E3 2014.
08:50Unfortunately, Crackdown 3 would suffer numerous setbacks that would be hard for any game to bounce back from.
09:02When it was revealed, Microsoft hyped it up, boasting about how it would feature destructible environments the likes of which
09:08players had never seen before,
09:09thanks to the Xbox One's cloud software.
09:12It was originally meant to release in 2016, but was hit by numerous delays.
09:16This was from a mixture of the new tech, as well as a lot of staff changeovers, including the exit
09:22of CloudGen, the company behind said new tech, in 2018.
09:26When anyone who still got to play it in 2019, they found it to be fairly generic, with that hyped
09:32-up level of destructibility not even helping that much.
09:44Colonial Marines
09:56Even today, a video game sequel to Aliens focusing on the Marines sounds pretty damn cool.
10:02Unfortunately, we know for a fact that it wasn't.
10:05Sega enlisted Gearbox to develop the game in 2007, but as we know, it didn't release until 2013, and is
10:12still considered one of the most disappointing games of the last 15 years.
10:16Gearbox is mostly to blame.
10:18The studio worked on other projects instead, reportedly using resources meant for Colonial Marines, and finding success with 2009's Borderlands.
10:26Development was outsourced in 2010 to another studio, TimeGate, which only caused more issues as Gearbox wasn't thrilled about the
10:34studio's work when it came back in 2012.
10:41With no option to ask for another extension, since they had been quote-unquote developing it since 2007, Gearbox opted
10:48to create a flattering trailer to generate hype and try to fix as many issues as possible in the nine
10:54months before its release.
10:55Of course, that meant a ton of bugs, laughably bad enemy AI, and dated visuals that retroactively caused a lawsuit
11:04due to the misleading trailer.
11:12Duke Nukem Forever
11:19You can, and probably do, consider Duke Nukem Forever to be the poster child of development hell, and it is
11:26arguably the worst case scenario for a game making it out alive.
11:30It was announced in 1997, a year after Duke Nukem 3D became a huge hit, but just about everything that
11:37could go wrong did.
11:38Duke Nukem Forever
11:46Developer 3D Realms ran into every issue, from a lack of direction, to understaffing and mistreatment of employees, to struggles
11:53with new engines and changing fads in the gaming industry.
11:56By 2009, the studio had run out of money, and publisher 2K went through a few other developers, the final
12:02being Gearbox, before the game was released in 2011.
12:06Between the multitude of dated jokes, the stiff controls and mechanics, and repetitive missions, the general consensus was that it
12:12was far too little, far too late.
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12:49Skull and Bones
12:57It's hard to say if anyone was actually anticipating the release of Ubisoft's Skull and Bones, but the facts remain
13:03that it did take forever to come out, and it certainly wasn't worth the wait.
13:07It was originally envisioned as an expansion to Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, and entered development in 2013.
13:13However, it then became a standalone project and was officially revealed at E3 2017.
13:26It would still be years until anyone got their hands on it, though.
13:30It went through multiple other changes and caused Ubisoft nothing but headaches.
13:34Not only did the game's development lack direction, it also could not be cancelled, as Ubisoft's Singapore studio had received
13:41government funding.
13:42It reportedly cost the company $200 million.
13:45And, from critics to players, not many seemed to care when it finally launched in 2024.
14:03What game left you disappointed after a long wait?
14:06Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments, and we will see you next time.
14:09,
14:10,
14:11,
14:11.
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