Microsoft's Xbox One Decisions
Where was it ever stated that this list was only going to be for the worst games of 2013? No sir, this list is all inclusive and there is just no way that this list was going to exclude the biggest industry clusterfuck since the Red Ring of Death or the PlayStation Network outage of 2011.

I've lost count at this point on how many issues Microsoft did a complete reversal on when it came to the Xbox One. The biggest factor was the sharing system and the rather extreme form of "DRM" that was originally slated to be released on the console. A forced online check-in every 24 hours? Harsh. You could sell your used games "for a fee?" Ouch. Kinect would be always-on and forced upon everyone? Ugh.

In the months following these announcements, Microsoft was slammed by gamers all around the world. To their credit, they did listen to the relentless assaults and caved on many of the initial issues that people had with the system. Unfortunately for them, the damage in trust was done and the reversals still came off as a negative to others. "How can we trust them now? If they can so quickly change their mind like this, how do we know they won't change it back later?" It also really didn't help Microsoft's case that they left the door wide open for Sony to swoop in and promise to deliver on the things Microsoft initially dropped the ball on.



Aliens: Colonial Marines
Do you like shooting and killing Aliens? Too bad you won't be doing that in much of Aliens: Colonial Marines! Hey, at least the visuals have been somewhat improved since its initial release.

Ten months later, I'm still disappointed with Gearbox Software and the thousand other developers that worked on this game. And no, I'm still not going to review it.



Cube World
The idea held such great promise. It looked like a more stylized Minecraft but with a huge emphasis on combat, questing, and dungeon crawling. It sounded great on paper, so I succumbed to the peer pressure and plunked down my $20 for Cube World. For the first couple of weeks, I had some great times with the game. My buddies and I went around and leveled up. We crafted items, cooked foods for health regeneration, and explored vast biomes.

And then the developer went silent. In what felt like a case of the independent developer simply "taking the money and running," nothing was heard for months about updates to the game. No updates came out. Their blog was silent. Twitter was silent. It was a largely unfinished game with only the core mechanics having been completed to any sort of playable state.

It wasn't until fairly recently that news updates started to be posted once again for Cube World. Apparently, development is still going on, which is nice to hear. There still haven't been any significant updates released in all this time, but at least something is being done.

The problem here lies with the fact that the developer could have easily handled the situation better than simply going silent. It did not, and still does not, leave a consumer with much faith in the future of a product. I still have hope for the game's future but that once high hope has been cooled by the lack of information. It has also put me off of investing in other similarly styled games that promise many of the same things that Cube World did, which is a shame. I could be missing out on some great titles all due to my buyer's remorse from Cube World.



Battlefield 4
The term "hot mess" was made with Battlefield 4 in mind. On one hand, it's a new Battlefield game that incorporates some of the best features of previous titles. That's awesome! On the other hand, the game is unquestionably a crash-filled and buggy piece of trash on every platform. How bad is it? DICE has apparently halted development of current and future content packs until the game is fixed enough where it doesn't crash or lock up for people that paid good money for it.

It seems as though every patch that has been released has included fixes for fairly major crash bugs. The game shipped with sound issues that nearly everyone encountered on very specific maps. Hit detection was (and still is) terrible in many cases. It's especially revealing that these issues aren't really limited to just one platform but for every platform this game was released on.

It was rushed, pure and simple. Another few months in development may have completely avoided most of these issues and I'm sure consumers would not have been anywhere near as upset as they are right now. But hey, they had to beat Call of Duty to release, right? Even though the gameplay is stale, at least Call of Duty: Ghosts worked just fine at launch...



THQ Bankruptcy
The beginning of the end for THQ came in 2012, however the final hours and distribution of assets happened earlier in 2013. It's always a sad time when a studio closes and it's especially rough when it involves a company that had been making games for over two decades. THQ released games starting with the NES and ending with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. In the gaming industry, that's damn impressive.

So, it was unfortunate to see the once great company dissolve into nothing. In some respects, THQ continues to live on thanks to other development studios and publishers that picked up old THQ assets. Volition is still cranking out Saints Row games with Deep Silver, THQ Studio Montreal was sold to Ubisoft, Relic Entertainment went to Sega, and many others are now with other studios.



It's Forever Tuesday
Sometimes in this industry, it isn't necessarily news about a game or a company that hits the hardest emotionally. Sometimes the news that brings to the table the strongest showing of emotions, solidarity amongst communities, and kinship comes from those that bring you the news about those other stories. For me, the worst piece of news this year came when it was revealed that Giant Bomb's Ryan Davis had passed away.

See, I never knew the guy. I never met him at least. I never spoke to him. But learning of his passing hit me really hard and for a while I really couldn't understand why. Why did I feel so strongly about the passing of someone I never even met? The reason why slowly came to me.

I love Giant Bomb. I think they are easily the most honest and enjoyable gaming website in the world. So, every week I would download the latest Giant Bombcast and listen to it when I could. It always opened the same way, with Ryan saying to those listening at home, "hey everybody, it's Tuesday" as only he could. Here was someone who, through videos, podcasts, and written word shared more about his life than many others. In some cases, I knew more about him than I know about people I have actually met.

He had such a great passion for gaming, movies, and life and it showed in every piece of content he had a hand in. You might be asking yourself, "why does this make a list of 'biggest disappointments of 2013'?" Well, it's disappointing that he is no longer with us. It's disappointing that we will never get to hear his opinions on the new generation of hardware and games. It's disappointing that he was taken from us too soon. It's easy to feel sad over someone you never personally met when you realize just how much that person was actually a part of your life.

Ryan Davis was a friend you've never met.

At the very least, it's nice to know that he and his legacy will forever live on in the hearts and minds of gamers and those in the industry. His work has and continues to serve as an inspiration to me. I only wish that I could have thanked him for everything he's done.



And with that, this list of TGN's Biggest Disappointments of 2013 comes to an end. Stay tuned for TGN's 2013 Games of the Year.