15) L.A. Noire
Who doesn’t want to be the star of their own hard-boiled detective novel, circa 1947? Billed as the definitive detective simulator, L.A. Noire let you catch criminals in a period-perfect Los Angeles, set to the tune of a world coming to grips with the end of World War II.
It was marketed on the back of its state-of-the-art motion capture technology, which rendered startlingly realistic human faces in-game. The upshot? You could interrogate a suspect and actually read their expressions to tell whether they were lying or not.
This impressive tech guaranteed its market appeal, but while truly revolutionary, rather less attention was paid to the rest of the package (which was full of tedious busywork – and worse yet, an unlikable main character).
[zergpaid]14) Bioshock Infinite
A critical darling with a 94 Metacritic score, Bioshock Infinite will be a divisive entry on this list. But, having revisited the game recently, I’m convinced that its remembered more for the forks in its tale than the energy of the experience itself.
Cast your mind back to the E3 reveal and you’ll remember a game in which sky-hooks were teased as the pathway to diverse, dynamic battlegrounds. But, what did we ultimately get? A fairly rote first-person shooter with spectacular window-dressing.
Infinite’s world-building is peerless, but as a game, it’s a bit of a letdown.