Usually, to make a strong first impression on gamers, developers invest heavily in creating impressive, epic trailers. But gaming history has shown many games with dull, uninspiring trailers that don’t spark any interest at all. Yet when you actually play them, they turn out to be gems with incredibly engaging gameplay, completely opposite to what the trailer suggested.
These are the kind of games you should try at least once. Now, let’s continue with the top 10 games that looked boring from their trailers but ended up being surprisingly great!
No Man’s Sky
Even now, some gamers refuse to play this game because they can’t get past Hello Games’ misleading marketing campaign. When it first launched, it was basically a disaster.
But credit where it’s due, the developers admitted their mistakes and have since released many exciting updates that made the game much better over time. This effort can be seen as an apology to the players. With its current quality, No Man’s Sky is definitely worth diving into and exploring strange new worlds.
What’s important here is how to promote a game still in development. In Hello Games’ case, the founder tried to showcase features and made a trailer that misrepresented the actual gameplay, hoping to add those features before launch. Unfortunately, reality didn’t match the dream, and players were very upset when the game released.
Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons
Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons offers a unique co-op experience where you and a partner control two brothers using one controller, each using one analog stick, to solve puzzles and overcome challenges. But none of this is shown in the trailer.
The control mechanics are incredibly innovative, and the story is deeply emotional. These are the reasons to play it. Yet, all the trailers, even the console launch ones, fail to highlight these standout features. So to viewers, it just looks like a typical co-op platformer with nothing special.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
This game has one of the most disliked trailers ever. For 3 minutes and 24 seconds, every move by the characters was heavily criticized and even hated by viewers.
First, Activision suddenly shifted from realistic shooters to sci-fi, which was a huge departure from what fans expected from Call of Duty. Spaceships, robots, laser weapons, all seemed unrelated to the series’ core story. After the backlash from Advanced Warfare, Activision angered fans again with Black Ops 3’s futuristic setting.
Because of the strong negative reaction, Activision hasn’t dared to take Call of Duty off Earth again since.
Earthbound
When the marketing team released the trailer for this game, it was either “tragically funny” or “funny in a tragic way.” Nintendo focused on the quirky, childish humor of the 90s, burping, farting, and joking about bodily functions, and built the campaign around that.
While the game itself tells the story of a group of young superheroes protecting Earth from dark intergalactic forces with fantastic RPG elements, the marketing was full of nonsense about bad smells, moldy food, and other gross stuff. This caused Earthbound’s reputation to tank, as millions thought it was a messy, childish game.
The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
This is often considered the best Zelda game ever. But surprisingly, it had one of the worst trailers in the West, showing a lack of care in managing and controlling advertising content by Nintendo’s partners.
Honestly, given how poor the trailer was, it’s surprising Ocarina still succeeded as much as it did. Besides the weird soundtrack, the trailer clearly showed gender stereotypes, basically saying you could either save the girl you love or fight as a girl.
Regardless, despite the terrible trailer, Ocarina Of Time is an outstanding game and sold extremely well.
Source: What Culture
