The most disappointing videogames of 2008

(Part of our series counting down the top ten videogames of 2008 -- with interruptions for the most disappointing and most overrated -- according to Variety critics Leigh Alexander, Tom Chick, Chris Dahlen and Ben Fritz. Full details are here. To check out the rest of the list, click here. Most importantly, vote for your favorite games of 2008 in the Cut Scene reader awards here.)

"Most disappointing" does not necessarily mean the worst (after all, we don't want to shower Brash with too many prizes). Rather, these are the games that Variety's critics believe fell the furthest short of our expectations and their potential.

Ben Fritz

Wii Music (Nintendo / Nintendo)

Finally, an accessible social videogame that uses peripherals to let anyone play music. Oh wait, I’m thinking of “Guitar Hero. And “Rock Band.” And even “Ultimate Band.” "Wii Music" is an unnecessary, cacophonous mess of a game (if it even is one, not that it matters) in which most attempts at making music sound worse than an elementary school orchestra. Though I can’t say I’ll ever forget the David Lynch-esque experience of watching a cheerleader, a sitar player, and a man in a dog suit performing “Daydream Believer.”

Wall-E (THQ / Heavy Iron)

To a certain extent, this choice is a stand-in for the many lame licensed titles (“Lost: Via Domus,” “Iron Man,” everything from Brash, and on and on) that show Hollywood and game publishers still don’t really have their act together. But “Wall-E” was the most disappointing of them all because it took source material overflowing with romantic spirit and devolved it into a product so unimaginative and formulaic (Wall-E shooting a gun? Really?) it could have come straight from the film’s corporate overlords at Buy n Large.

Spore (EA / Maxis)

Perhaps I didn’t read the marketing materials right, but wasn’t "Spore" supposed to be about evolution? Nothing in this awkward mash-up of “flow,” “Civilization,” and a space rpg resembles real physical or cultural evolution, in which inherited traits and competition inescapably define a species’ fate. The irony is that the “creature creator,” which EA released for free a few months early to whet gamers’ appetite, is far and away the best part of this disappointing package.

Leigh Alexander

Far Cry 2 (Ubisoft / Ubisoft Montreal)

So gorgeous, so technically excellent, so intriguing at first -- which makes it especially crushing that under all that richly-realized Africa is yet another first-person shooter, and endless litanies of the same ambush mission over and over.

Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar / Rockstar North)

In many ways, it's the wildest and most poignant video game ever made -- but in most ways, it's over-weighted, illogical and emotionally manipulative, so that its ploddingly earnest storyline, its precious character tropes and its over-pretension nearly suffocate its fun and sharp cleverness

Tom Chick

Too Human (Microsoft / Silicon Knights)

Although it's an action RPG that misses the point of action RPGs, it's one of the year's only games about cyber-Vikings.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (LucasArts / LucasArts)

Great story. Shame about the game. 

Haze (Ubisoft / Free Radical)

The guys who made "Goldeneye" and "Timesplitters" have come to this?

Chris Dahlen

Spore (EA / Maxis)

Like everybody, I read all the advance hype for the game. And I don’t think my disappointment in the final release stems from backlash, so much as confusion: playing through one full campaign and a couple restarts, I never felt like I saw the point, never had an intuitive understanding of any of the decisions I was making, never felt the urge to go back and try a different path, and never believed that the three key parts of the game - play, create, and share - worked together in any but the most simplistic ways. Instead of revolutionizing user generated content, it trivialized it: Yes, your hermaphrodite alligator man has very spiky eyebrows, but if they don’t impact gameplay, who cares?

Mirror's Edge (EA / Dice)

" Mirror’s Edge" frustrated and annoyed a lot of players. Its soothing aesthetic didn’t match its difficulty: imagine trying to play a game of "Rock Band," except the song stops cold every time you miss a note. Combat should’ve been truly optional, and the cheapest deaths should’ve been caught in playtesting. And yet in spite of it all, I keep coming back to it – for the almost sensual pleasures of sliding down a sheer glass wall or riding the top of a subway train, or feeling the “oomph” as Faith slings herself over yet another ledge. 

Fracture (LucasArts / Day 1 Studios)

...and a dozen other shooters with high production values, elaborate cinematics, ample headshots, and nothing else to offer. I slogged through a lot of these this year, but "Fracture" saw the biggest boost from LucasArts and the most hype for its supposedly innovative “make a pile of dirt almost anywhere you want” mechanic. So I’ll honor it as one of the year’s highest-profile duds.

Coming Monday morning: The fifth best videogame(s) of 2008