TDG: Cody's Top Ten Game Disappointments (October 2026)

0:04 Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the discriminating gamer. First of all, to everyone out there who is suffering from paranoia, just remember you're not alone. Ladies and gentlemen, today we're going to go ahead and take a look at my top 10 game disappointments of all time.

0:30 All right, ladies and gentlemen, my top 10 game disappointments of all time. These were games that I was really looking forward to for one reason or another, and they just fell flat or they are just bad games. Um, I've only done this kind of a list once, like I don't know, I was in Texas, so that was probably six or seven years ago at least. And uh, I was just thinking about it. I played a lot of games in those years that are pretty bad that uh again did not live up to the hype or my expectations. And um these are not one of my these are not my favorite kinds of lists to do. I like to talk about fun games, but uh I think it's important sometimes to recognize there are some games out there that are not that great or again just disappointing. Some of these are okay games, but again they just disappointed me. Uh so they're not all bad games, but there are some legitimately bad games here. So, we're going to go ahead and jump into the list. My number 10. This is a game that I actually saw for the first time at a game store and then I was able to reach out uh to the good people at Asmo Day who sent me a copy. Um it looked good because it looked like it was kind of a spiritual sequel or spiritual successor to a game I love and yet it was not that. I am talking about um a game here, Penny Dreadfuls of Victorian London. And the publisher is uh oh golly it's an Italian publisher and the name escapes me but Penny Dreadfuls of Victorian London that looks like the aesthetic of it looks a lot like Letters from White

2:01 Chapel which is the great Jack the Ripper game and I love letters from White Chapel and this looked like it was kind of playing off that because it that the the box just looked like it. But the problem was with this game it was kind of a storytelling game. you you know you'd read through the game and you'd kind of uh find different uh stories and and and mechanisms and you'd use these kind of tokens with like weird Greek letters on there and and it just man it wasn't fun. It was like you're scratching your heads thinking now what am I trying to do here cuz you're reading through the story and you're thinking okay there's going to be some fun and interesting setup here and stuff and investigation and it just man it fell flat. I actually played this game a couple of times and both times I played it was just like this is just not good and it was again it's too bad because I was thinking man this looks like it's going to be kind of a follow-up in some ways um to Letters from White Chapel and it just wasn't.

3:00 This is definitely not a good game. That is uh my number 10, Penny Dreadfuls from Victorian London. Again, it's Italian publisher. Can't remember the name off the top of my head. My number nine is a game. This was on my list last time. In fact, I think I think it was my number one last time. Um, and this is a game that that, you know, I first played when I first got into gaming. And it was a game that everybody just went on and on about, raved about. And to this day, this is still some people's favorite game and one of them and I was really excited to play it because I'd heard so many good things about it. Then I actually played it and I'm like really Small Wonder from Days of Wonder. I just never got days I never got Small Wonder. It never did anything for me. I played it maybe five or six times and every time I played I'm thinking, well, okay, maybe this time it'll click and it just doesn't. I don't like the deterministic combat in this game. I really don't like that. I don't like the I'm you I do the one thing I do like is I do like how you you take the different traits and the races and put them together and you create something original. I like that.

4:06 I like when games do that, but that's like the only thing in this game I liked. I just I don't know what it is. This game fell flat with me every time I play it. So again, I realize there's a lot of people out there that love this game, but not me. Not me. So that is Small Wonder. That is number nine. That is from Days of Wonder. My number eight was a game that again I heard nothing but good things about. I heard nothing but oh how much fun this game was. It's a negotiation game. People said now I love negotiation. I love kind of diplomatic stuff in games. So I'm thinking oh I'm going to love this game. And Tom Basil for a long time this was his number one game of all time. So I'm thinking well maybe there's something to it. I bought this game and before I played it fully expecting to really enjoy it, I actually bought a couple of expansions to it and then I played the game and I played this game a few times and again it fell flat. This is of course Cosmic Encounter. Cosmic Encounter is a game where you are aliens and you're got to negotiate, but you also have to attack and you've got different um kind of spaceships that you're attacking with. And I just I don't know what it was. It just just wasn't fun. They say, "Well, it's a negotiation." It's like, "Well, I guess it's a kind of negotiation, but you're not negotiating with everybody and there's just one guy that you got to make some deals with." And it just, ah, it fell flat. Now, this game has a lot of different races and they have some asymmetric abilities. And a lot of people say, "That's where the fun comes from is is is more that than the mechanics and seeing how these different races interact." And it's like, well, yeah, but then it's not really about the

5:38 game, is it? It's more just about kind of the approach to it and and the setup of it and and just watching the interactions. So, I I I didn't care for it. Now, a few a few years later, they came out with a Game of Thrones version called The Iron Throne. And I played that and I actually enjoyed that one better. I still didn't love it, but I enjoyed that one better. I kind of felt like it was updated. It was a little more streamlined. Um, and I had fun with that one. I ended up, I think, giving that one to some friends, but but I enjoyed that one in a way. The Cosmic Encounter, I just it didn't enjoy. Fell flat with me. Again, really expecting to love it and it just really disappointed me, and I got rid of it not long after. So that is my number eight, Cosmic Cosmic Encounter. That edition was from Fantasy Flight Games. My number seven is a game that uh was also the the version I had was from Fantasy Flight Games. And this was a game that on paper looks like the kind of game I love. You've got dudes on a map. You've got cards and dice and adventure. And I'm thinking this game is going to rock. And I played it and I was just like scratching my head. I don't I don't I don't really get it. It's got the components there. It's got the the the ideas to make it epic, but just the gameplay itself absolutely left me flat. This is one I bought.

6:49 Super excited to play. I finally got it at the table and it just nope. This is Age of Conan. You know, I really like the theme here. And like I say, it had dice combat. It had it had this system where you would like go through um different terrain on different adventures and and go through that. And I thought that was cool. I thought that aspect of it was cool. But just overall, again, I didn't get it. I just was playing it. I'm like, it seemed like it was a whole lot of Chrome for really a fairly simple game and not very engaging. Now, I've taken a lot of hate over the years when I've said I'm not a big fan of this game because there are a lot of people out there that love it and I appreciate that and if you love this game, more power to you, but man, it's not for me. Really disappointed in Age of Conan. Not not one I enjoyed. Uh, that was my number seven. That also was printed by Fantasy Flight Games. My number six was also a Fantasy Flight Games game and I was really excited about this because people said it was the fantasy version of Twilight Imperium and Twilight Imperium for a long time was my favorite game of all time and I'm like, "Oh yes, this is going to be great." So I bought Rune Wars and I played it and this was the this was the edition that was in the smaller box because there was the bigger coffin box and then they came out with kind of the smaller box edition. I was super excited because I never got a chance to play the earlier edition and I played this game and the same thing. I'm like, I don't get it. What's fun here?

8:11 You've got these different tiles. There's some exploration and you had you had like like like dungeon adventures you could go on and that was that was fun. You had characters that could do that, but I was just not happy about it. And I remember thinking, you know, Conquest of Narat kind of has this war game aspect that has dungeon crawls and I like that so much better. As I recall that the the combat in this game, there was no dice combat and I just, you know, that the combat was with cards and that kind of left me flat. I didn't think the combat was that fun or interesting. And um just overall it's a game again that I thought there was a lot of chrome, a lot of things that on paper I liked, but just when it all came together, it left me cold and it left my friends cold. None of us really thought it was all that great. It was a lot a lot of work to play a game that I felt just wasn't really that much fun. So again, I wanted to like this game. I was expecting to like this game. I was expecting to love this game and then I played it and I'm just like, I don't think it's a horrible game. It's just not one for me. So that is my number six. That is Rune Wars. It was from Fantasy Flight Games. Now my number five was a game that was a reprint of a game that had been out years earlier. So this and and they didn't really update the rules or anything. I want to say it was a game that came out like in the '60s, but they came out with this game um oh 2015 or 16 or thereabouts and it was so it was a reappear print of that earlier game and it looked great. This is from Osprey Games. This is escape from Kulitz. Now Kulitz, of course, was a German castle in World War II where prisoners of war were sent. And this is a game of trying

9:41 to escape the castle. It was an all-in-one game. You're the you the various prisoners. One person is the guard and you're trying to collect various items and have plots to get out and escape from the from the prison. And the guards are trying to find ways to stop you. But I remember just thinking this game was just too luck heavy. There was too much luck in this game. It was a game where you you you collect all these items, you're just about to do it, and then a guard could just, you know, rock walk by you randomly and just do something and you suddenly you lose everything and you got to start from scratch. And in any game where there's a goal, you want to feel like you're making progress toward that goal. And if you spend like a long time making progress and then it's all gone like that, that's not fun to me. You know, if you lost maybe something that would help you, that would have been it. But where you just got to start from zero, man, I didn't like it. Um, of course, the aesthetic is kind of looks very 1960s. You got pawns and stuff. And, you know, I I I I guess I can see the appeal here for some people, but the luck factor here was just too much for me. I mean, I like luck in games. I love die rolls. I love card draws, but you got to find ways to mitigate luck. And I always prefer choice over chance. And where there is chance, again, like I say, you need ways to mitigate that chance. And I just felt like there wasn't anything like that here. I was very disappointed in this game. And this is another game I've had a lot of people tell me that they love.

11:08 And I think there's maybe a lot of people who remember from their childhood. And so there's kind of some nostalgia there. But in any event, it is a game that just did nothing for me. That is my number five, Escape from Cold. That version was from Osprey Games. My number four is again from Fantasy Flight Games and this was a game I was really looking forward to because generally I like fantasy flight games's games. I like fantasy flight games apostrophe um other games in this world in this thematic. This is one of their kind of Cthulhu mythos games and this is Arkham Horror third edition. Now I'll be blunt. I had played Arkham Horror second edition once or twice and I liked it. I didn't love it, but I played Eldrich horror and I fell in love with Eldrich horror. I played Mansions of Madness. I loved Mansions of Madness. And so when they came out with third edition, I'm thinking, "Oh, this is great. This is going to fix a lot of things about the second edition that I didn't love." And so I got it and I played through it solo a few times and it just fell flat. I liked the story. It had the the the story cards that come out. I thought that was a fun aspect of the game, but I just remember thinking, this is one of those cooperative/solitary games that is just too difficult. There's too many strikes against you. And one of the things, one rule in this game that really I hated was the fact that you can take all of these actions, but you couldn't take two of the same actions in a turn. So, if you're on one side of the board, you want to get to the other side of the board, you can only move once.

12:40 And I remember thinking, that's so stupid. And consequently, when I played this game, it just wasn't fun. And again, a lot of people told me they really like this game. They're excited about this game, but for me, I felt like it could have been really fun, but it just was more frustrating than fun. Again, I can see the appeal here. I don't think this is a horrible game, but it just didn't do much for me. Now, of course, Fantasy Flight, they're going to do this this new system, or I think they're going to do I I guess it's uh I don't know if it's print on demand or pre-orders or what they're doing, but they're bringing back through a through a uh crowdfunding campaign, uh the second edition, but I guess I think it's going to be like a little bit updated. I don't know, maybe I'll have to try that out because there's a lot of potential here. And I do love these other Cthulhu Methos games, but Arkham Horror Third Edition just didn't do it for me. So, that is number four, Arkham Horror Third Edition. That was from Fantasy Flight Games. All right, my number three is a game I played just a few years ago, and it's a Warhammer boxed board game. And I really enjoy the the Warhammer box board games. I've had a lot of fun with them.

13:48 This one, not so much. Uh, this is Space Marine, the board game. Now, on paper, this game sounds epic. a soul space marine has to fight wave after wave after wave of uh tyrannids, enemies that are coming after him. Thinking this is awesome. This is going to be great. So Ray and I played this game. We set it up and there's a few like things you can do here and there and tweak it before you get started. And so we're playing with that stuff. We play the game and what happened was the space marine comes out on out of the board, moves once, maybe twice, and then the tyrannids surround him and start fighting him. and he just has to fight the tyrannids around him. There's no real maneuver. There's no real exciting and eventually the tyrannids kill him because of the greater numbers.

14:35 And we played it, I think, three times and it played out exactly the same every time we played it. We read the rules and we're looking at things. What do we do wrong? Nope. Nope. That's how you play the game. And it sucked. This is a genuinely bad game. This is a genuinely bad game. And then some people online were defending it. They're saying, "Well, you got to remember it's not just a game. It's a way to get, you know, these figures, all these tyrannids and stuff for your for your regular game, Warhammer." It's like, well, yeah, but I'm not playing I'm not playing the miniatures game. And it says right on the box, Space Hammer, the board game. Space, sorry, uh, Space Marine the board game. It just failed. As a game, it failed. Now, if you want to buy it to get more stuff to add to your collection, fine. That's awesome. But as a board game, it fell completely flat. I don't know what they were thinking here releasing this because like I say, I've really enjoyed some of these other box board games from Warhammer. This one, not so much. So, that is from Warhammer. That is Space Marine, the board game. That is my number three. All right. My number two game disappointment of all time. This was a game from GMT Games. It was a game that they had announced and I was waiting for I want to say better part of a year. I'm thinking this looks great.

15:49 Hitler's Reich. Um, Hitler's Reich was a game that purported to be kind of World War II, playing the entire European campaign in World War II in about 2 hours using this card system. So, uh, with my friend Chris, I took that over to his house and we tried to play it. We set it up. We could not figure out how the relationship between these cards and because there's different things you would do the cards in different ways like exhaust cards or tap cards or whatever. And there was different things you would do with the cards and we we just couldn't figure it out. It was a jumble. The rule book is one of the worst rule books I'd ever read because as I'm reading through the rule book, it is saying, "Okay, you need to figure this out. Go to this location." So, we go to that location and it would tell us something completely different than what we needed. And I don't think I've spent a game or I spent as much time in the rule book while playing a game. So, I played it with Chris that time, didn't work.

16:46 Went home, reread the rules, think maybe I get it. We play it again. Same result. So I left, reread the rules, think I got it, we came back, same thing. So I'm like, I'm, you know, Chris was a sport. He played it three times or tried to play it three times. I'm like, I'm not going to subject that subject him to that again. So then, um, my friend Brian Alex, he wanted to play it. He's a big GMT fan and he really studied it and read up on it. And so we sit down and we played it. And we finally got to the point where it made some sense. Although there were still a lot of things that were unclear. And we played through the game and it just wasn't that great. It wasn't that interesting. It was very weak.

17:31 And to have a game that was that difficult to learn and a rule book that poor for a game that just isn't that great. Oh my gosh. So, I was really disappointed. Now, I have heard they came up with a sub another rule set that really improved the game. And maybe that's the case. I no longer have it, but but maybe now it is a much better game. But at the time, the game I played was not a good game. It was not. It was not fun and it was so confusing. And I got to tell you, if I got to work that hard to learn how to play a game already, you've lost me. And then when I played the game, like I say, for the amount of work we put into it, it just wasn't wasn't that much there. very disappointed in that because that was one I was really looking forward to. So that is my number two from GMT Games, Hitler's Reich. Okay, I just briefly want to mention some honorable mentions that didn't quite make the list, but again, uh a game I played a few years ago called Proliferation. This was a game from a small publisher about kind of different nations on the brink of nuclear war. And I was really excited. I remember thinking, you know, when I was a kid and I saw Robocop and there was that Nukem game. I always wanted a board game like that. I always wanted a board game like that and I was thinking, well, maybe this kind of approaches that and yet I played the game and it just felt very unpolished, unfinished. It hadn't been play tested enough. There were things in the rule book that said, "Oh, you can and you can just make up your own rules." And I feel like, you know, when whenever rule book says something like that, I feel like the designers don't have enough faith in their own rules or they just don't care to play test it more. And that's just

19:03 kind of an an easy out for them. Oh, you can just make up your own rules. Well, then why am why am I buying this game from you? So, I was very disappointed with with with that one. Um, another one uh was Crosshairs Testing Ground. This was a game was like from A1 Games back in the day and this is a game that the the the artist was also the designer and the art on this is fantastic. You've got these rabbits and they're souped up for war and it looks great. The game looks amazing and I was like super excited to play it and then I actually played it and it's pretty much just a roll and move game. It's pretty much just roll and move. And there's some mitigation here and there, but pretty much it's just roll and move. And I'm like, "Wow, I like this better when it was like shoots and ladders, you know." Um, so I was very disappointed in crosshairs. Again, good-looking game, but the gameplay left a lot to be desired. And then finally, a game I played here recently from Warthingington Publishing.

19:51 I'm a big fan of the solitary war games that Warthingington does, but I recently played um Blood of Lions. Blood of Lions is a World War I game where you're these British armies attempting to advance across no man land no man's land into the uh German sector. But there [clears throat] were a lot of typos and a lot of uh kind of things with timing that the rule book didn't really answer. So there's a lot of mess there. And then fundamentally the game was just kind of attack. Do I get my die rolls? No, I don't. Okay, let me attack. I get my die rolls. No, I don't. and you're trying to push and the further you push you would gain more points, but it was just there's just not that much of a game there. I felt like the game could have been good if there was a little bit more meat to it, but it just didn't feel like there was all that much there. So, Blood of Lions, that was a very disappointing game from Warthingington, which usually puts out great stuff. I usually love their solitary war games, but not that one. Okay, now it is time for my number one disappointing game of all time. This is a game I played about Oh, sorry. It's a game I tried to play about um a year ago, I think. But it's a game I I actually had this scheduled to get to the table two or three times. I'd read the rules each time. We actually got it out one one time and we realized, well, first of all, we didn't have enough table space at my place. But also too, we were really confused getting started. So, we said, "Well, screw it.

21:13 Let's play something else." We played Battle for the Deep that night, and that was a great game. GI Joe, uh, not GI Joe, Access and Allies kind of game. A lot of fun. But when we finally got this game to the table, we went to raise and again I'd read the rule book three or four times. Things didn't make a lot of sense, but I'm thinking once we get to the table, it will. Nothing about this game made sense. And I was really looking forward to it because this game is based on a video game that I played the heck out of when I was younger. I loved this video game. I mean, I love this video game and I was so excited when I found out they were making it into a board game. This is Rome total war. Rome total war just did not make any sense at all to me and my friends. We read the rule book and you know in theory there's this like agent phase where you do this like political stuff around the board which sounded really cool and then you have kind of a dudes on the map and and and and you're making uh military weapons, you're building buildings and all this stuff sounded really really cool.

22:20 But it didn't make any sense. We have these die with all these symbols on it and we didn't know how they work. There's there's there's player aids that say what the symbols are, but they don't explain how they worked in combat. We looked at the various rule books and manuals and they didn't explain how these various systems came together and worked. And I was so disappointed because this game just looks amazing. The artwork was cool, the board was cool, minis were cool, I met Metal Coins, everything about this game just looked freaking awesome. But the game is unplayable. It's unplayable. And I published my review and I said as much and I had a few people here and there said, "Well, there's some updated rules on BG to help it out." It's like, well, if a game has to have updated rules on BG already there's something wrong. And I read through the the updated rules and things still didn't make sense to me.

23:09 I think this is not only is this a disappointing game, this is probably for for for the kind of game it is, easily the worst game I've ever played. This is a bad game because it doesn't make sense. Now, I've heard some stuff about the production of this game that the designer had some some some issues and, you know, I get that, but this was just not a good game. It was not a good game. and uh incredibly disappointing because I love the video game and I thought this was going to be great. Um this is a very popular rate of the unboxing for this was a very popular unboxing video. In fact, I think that's Ray's most viewed unboxing video on the channel. And you know, my review actually did quite well where I said, "Hey, the game is unplayable." Man, I'm thinking about it right now. It's like I wanted to love this game. I wanted to love this game and it was just so incredibly bad, unplayable bad. So anyway, that is uh Rome Total War. I can't remember the company. C CCC, I think. Um it was my number one most disappointing game of all time. All right, ladies and gentlemen, what do you think? Did you like these games? Would you put them higher on the list, lower on the list? Um what do you think? Um, I realize there's some on here that people do enjoy, but they weren't for me. And then, as I say, I think there are some that are legitimately bad games. Um, but please let me know, what do you think? Where would you rank these? Or, as I say, what games would you put on most

24:39 disappointing games of all time list? I'm sure this is going to be a very fun comment section. So, please, please, please leave a comment here on YouTube, on Board Gamegeeek, on Facebook, on X. We'd love to hear back from you. And, uh, please like and subscribe to this video if you haven't done so already. subscribe to the channel. And if you do really like what we do here on TDG, I would humbly ask you to click on my other channel that is Cody Carlson PhD where we talk about military history, books on history, and I post some of my uh lectures on that channel as well. It would mean the world to me if you'd subscribe to that channel as well. And again, if you do really like what we do here on TVG, I would humbly ask you to click on the super thanks button and leave a tip. You know, I thought about starting an Only Fans where for $9 a month, I'll dress up like your dad and finally tell you that I'm proud of you.

25:30 On my feet again. And I DON'T KNOW WHERE I'M GOING. And I don't know where I've been. It's a LONG TIME AND I'LL BE DYING. Once a year I wind up in the I love to fight, but I don't ever win. It's my life.

26:04 Oh, wait, wait, wait. Hold on a second. Hold on a second. Oh my gosh. Whoa. Hey, look at that.