When a big a movie debuts with high hopes and higher expectations, but ends up flopping or being panned, we in entertainment media call it a “Turkey.” Why? No one is really sure. Some rumor it stems from an old Broadway play called “Cage Me a Turkey” that was notoriously bad that every bad play or movie since has been assigned its namesake. Of course, there is not official record of this play.
Another option is that it refers to a time period around the holidays where 1920s Burlesque shows were particularly awful and that “Turkey” was also a comparison to those Burlesque troupes themselves.
Origin aside, the gaming world has Turkeys, too. Oh boy, does it. Here are 2016’s biggest Turkeys in video gaming.
Gaming's Five Biggest 'Turkeys' Of 2016
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Dead Island: Definitive Edition
Man, have we all forgotten about this game? The original Dead Island was a promising start to a flower that never budded (unless you count Dying Light, which was made by the same developer). After booting out Techland, publisher Deep Silver decided burned through two other development teams as well to create Dead Island 2.
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rnThe only problem is that Dead Island 2 hasn’t come out yet, and there aren’t even any hints of its existence. Even after the poor souls who pre-purchased the god-awful Escape Dead Island were promised Beta Keys for Dead Island 2, they got nothing.
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rnInstead, Deep Silver thought they could tide us over with a remaster of Techland’s original Zombie melee game and expansion, but, after you string us along for two years all the while Dying Light is becoming more and more successful, Dead Island: Definitive Edition just didn’t grab many people’s attention and disappointed those it was able to entice. -
Ghostbusters
Oh man, move tie-ins. They’re usually bad, unless they’re more general like Alien: Isolation or Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, but Ghostbusters is a particular brand of despicable.
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rnLooking like a mix of a web-based Flash-game and an Xbox Live Arcade Game, Ghostbusters was as generic and unpolished as they come, with mostly cel-shaded graphics and cookie-cutter, uninspired top-down shooter gameplay.
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rnThe most offensive part of the game was its price: 50 freaking dollars. $50 bucks? Are you kidding me? Fortunately, you’d be hard-pressed to find 50 people who own this game and its reviews called it out for what it was: a shameless, over-priced, underdeveloped cash grab. -
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
Man, what more can be said about Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare? It’s UK sales were down more than 50 percent from Black Ops III, which by the way has been consistently more popular on Steam than Infinite Warfare. So even among the small conglomerate of PC CoD players, Infinite Warfare isn’t anything to write home about. Gamestop also officially confirmed that Infinite Warfare missed its sales target. rn rnThen we have the DLC nonsense, which is making Activision billions of dollars across previous games, and the questionable decision to bundle in Modern Warfare Remaster. rn rnAnd, to top it all off, it’s also the worst-reviewed game in the series since Call of Duty: Ghosts, according to Metacritic, and Ghosts actually ties Infinite Warfare if you only look at next-gen reviews. I don’t know what else Call of Duty has to do to make a serious change, but they’re about to get beat by every other shooter in town at the moment. -
Mirror\'s Edge: Catalyst
I remember when Mirror’s Edge was a sensation, a revolutionary must-have that dazzled audiences and critics alike. Of course, that was almost 10 years ago. This all raises the question: why not release a second game when people still give a shit?
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rnWhile Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst reportedly “met” sales expectations, I haven’t heard anything about this game since its early-Summer release. No one telling me “you gotta play this,” or “this was one of the best games of the year.” By all accounts, this game is a fart in the wind, if I’ve ever seen one, and a far cry from the phenomenon the first game became.
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rnBut hey, I know the game isn’t very popular, but at least it got a 74 on Metacritic. -
No Man\'s Sky
How could this not be No. 1? Infinite Warfare was bad, yes, Mirror’s Edge and Dead Island: Definitive Edition were ghosts, and Ghostbusters was offensive to all standards of decency, but not one of those games had as lofty a set of expectations nor as spectacular a flameout. rn rnNo Man’s Sky literally aimed for the stars but ended up burning out in the atmosphere on its way to a swift dive back to Earth. rn rnAnd on Earth, we have some bad news for you, Hello Games: No Man’s Sky is under investigation for false advertising, people actually believed, at least for a second, that your game’s Twitter account would actually write “No Man’s Sky was a mistake,” and of the admittedly impressive 800,000 or so people who own the game on Steam, less than 500 people are playing it at the time of writing this. That figure is not even enough to crack the top 100 games on Steam in terms of player-count. -
Gaming\'s Biggest \'Turkeys\' Of 2016
