Man, oh man, let me tell you something—being a gamer in 2026 means I’ve seen some things. I’ve ridden the hype trains, cheered at the trailers, and pre-ordered with the best of them. But sometimes, just sometimes, that train doesn’t just derail; it plummets straight off a cliff into a pit of broken promises and unfinished code. And the latest passenger on this tragic journey? None other than MindsEye from Build a Rocket Boy. They kept waving that "from the lead devs of Grand Theft Auto" flag like it was a magic wand, and we all fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. I was so ready for a bang, but what did we get? A whimper so quiet you could hear a pin drop in the void of disappointment. Honestly, even with my expectations scraping the bottom of the barrel, MindsEye somehow managed to dig even deeper. What a way to kick off 2025… and the echoes of that letdown still haunt my library today.

But hey, MindsEye doesn’t get to hog the misery spotlight all by itself. It’s just the newest member of a very, very sad club. Let me take you on a tour of my personal gallery of gaming grief, where hype met reality and reality won every single time. Buckle up, friends—it’s a bumpy ride.

😭 The Hall of Shame: My Top Gaming Heartbreaks

Here’s a quick table of the games that made me question my life choices. I still get flashbacks.

Game Title	Release Year	The Promise vs. The Reality	My Emotional State
Cyberpunk 2077	2020	The future of open-world RPGs	A buggy, broken mess that crashed more than my dreams
Battlefield 2042	2021	The ultimate next-gen warfare	A hollow shell with AI bots and an identity crisis
Saints Row Reboot	2022	A fresh, witty take on chaos	A stale, dated snoozefest that killed a studio
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum	2023	A unique Tolkien adventure	A bug-riddled catastrophe that made me want to hide in a cave
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League	2024	A live-service superhero epic	A misguided flop that dragged down other projects
MindsEye	2025	A groundbreaking new IP from GTA legends	A silent dud that defined the year’s biggest fizzle

🚀 Cyberpunk 2077 (2020): The Night City Nightmare

Oh, Cyberpunk. Where do I even begin? Coming off the masterpiece that was The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red had us all believing they could do no wrong. They promised us the moon—a sprawling, living, breathing futuristic metropolis unlike anything we'd ever seen. My hype meter was pegged in the red zone! I cleared my schedule, told my friends I’d be offline for a week… and then I booted it up. Yikes. What I got was… well, let’s just say Night City was less 'alive' and more 'glitching into the void.' Characters T-posing through conversations, cars falling from the sky, missions breaking left and right. It was a beautiful, broken mess. My once-pristine faith in CDPR? Shattered. Gone. Poof.

Now, in 2026, after a million updates and them finally cutting loose the old-gen consoles, the game is actually… good? Great, even! But the scar remains. That launch experience taught me a hard lesson about hype. It was a redemption arc for the ages, sure, but man, did it make me skeptical of every "coming soon" trailer after that. My trust? It’s still in rehab.

💥 Battlefield 2042 (2021): When 128 Players Feels Empty

DICE, baby, what were you thinking? You gave us the iconic Battlefield moments—the chaos, the sandbox, the "only in Battlefield" magic. For 2042, you promised the next evolution: 128 players! Specialists! A new era of all-out warfare! I was ready for chaos on an unprecedented scale. Instead… I got chaos of a different kind. Buggy spawns, maps so big they felt deserted, and these new Specialist characters that made everyone look and sound the same. The soul of Battlefield—that gritty, class-based teamwork—felt stripped away and replaced with a generic hero shooter skin. The matches filled with AI bots just to pad the numbers? Don’t even get me started. It was like showing up to a legendary rock concert and finding a tribute band playing to a half-empty room. The vibe was just… off.

They fixed a lot of it later, I’ll give them that. But by then, my squad had already moved on to other games. The damage was done. It’s the classic tale of trying so hard to be different that you forget what made people love you in the first place. A real shame.

😴 Saints Row Reboot (2022): The Sleepy Sandbox

After years of waiting, a new Saints Row! A chance to rebuild the Third Street Saints from the ground up with modern tech and Embracer's cash behind it! This was gonna be a triumphant return! …Right? Wrong. So wrong. What launched felt like a game that had been stuck in a time capsule since 2012. The city of Santo Ileso was about as lively as a cardboard cutout. The missions were repetitive, the humor felt forced, and the bugs? Oh, the bugs were like uninvited guests at a party that never left. I remember one mission where my car just phased through the world. I sat there for a solid minute, just staring at the screen. The review I read back then nailed it: it felt like a relic, a placeholder for a better game that never came.

And the saddest part? This failed reboot didn’t just disappoint fans; it literally ended the studio. Thirty years of history, gone. Poof. Just like that. That’s not just a bad game; that’s a tragedy.

🤢 The Lord of the Rings: Gollum (2023): My Precious? More Like My Regret.

A game where I get to be Gollum? Sneaking around, wrestling with my split personality, hunting for the One Ring? Sign me up! The premise was genuinely interesting! How could they mess this up? Oh, how naive I was. What we got was… a masterpiece of failure. The bugs weren’t just present; they were the main characters. Animations broke, textures failed to load, the camera had a mind of its own. My precious Gollum looked less like a tortured creature and more like a glitchy puppet. I think I spent more time clipping through walls than actually playing the intended story. The developer apologized and promised fixes, but after one half-hearted patch, they abandoned it completely. They left the game to rot, just like that fish Gollum loves so much. It was so bad it was almost impressive—a case study in how to utterly waste a beloved license.

🃏 Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024): The Live-Service Slip-Up

Rocksteady. The name meant quality. The Batman Arkham games are legendary. So when they announced a Suicide Squad game, I was intrigued. A multiplayer, live-service take on the DC universe? Bold! Risky, but bold! …It was mostly just risky. The game landed with a thud so loud it probably disturbed the bats in the Batcave. The always-online live-service grind felt tacked on, the story didn’t resonate, and it just… didn’t feel like a Rocksteady game. The fallout was brutal—layoffs, another game in the universe canceled. It’s a harsh reminder that what works for one genre (tight, narrative single-player) doesn’t always translate to another (grindy live-service). They’ve patched it to be playable offline now, which is a nice gesture for the few still interested. I guess that’s a silver lining? A tiny, tarnished one.

🧠 MindsEye (2025): The Whisper That Was Supposed to Be a Roar

And here we are, back at the start. MindsEye. The game that proves pedigree alone doesn’t make a masterpiece. In 2026, looking back, it stands as a stark monument to mismanaged expectations. It had all the ingredients for success on paper, but the final dish was utterly flavorless. No memorable characters, no gripping mechanics, just a void where a game should be. It didn’t just fail to meet high expectations; it failed to register at all. It’s the quietest bomb I’ve ever experienced.

---

So, after all this, what’s the lesson for us gamers in 2026? Hype is a dangerous drug. It clouds judgment and sets us up for a fall. Some games, like Cyberpunk, can claw their way back from the brink with years of work. Others, like Gollum, are just destined to be cautionary tales. As for MindsEye? Time will tell if it becomes a forgotten footnote or gets a miraculous second life. But me? I’ve learned my lesson. I’m waiting for the reviews, watching the gameplay, and keeping my wallet firmly in my pocket until I’m sure. My heart can only take so many breaks, you know? Here’s to hoping the next big thing actually is… big.