Just listened to the Thanksgiving episode of Sound Opinions, where they tore apart their biggest “music turkeys” of the year. They called out Weezer, which I guess I’m not cool for liking anymore (but I like them anyway), but otherwise the show was good. Here’s the top five games that disappointed me most this year. So far, I guess — it’s not over yet, is it?

5. Fallout 3

Ok yes, I’m putting it on the list. I thought the game was good and it is — there has never been a more real or complete apocalypse simulator. But other than that, it’s boring — there are long stretches of nothing to do, the NPCs are wooden and have the same problems that the 10 voices in Oblivion did, combat isn’t interesting (most of my fights devolve into me running back into cover shooting the enemies when they run up close, and then rinse and repeat), and I can’t even bring myself to finish it. I will — I’ll flip it down to easy and just do the main quest until I can see the end of the story. But what a disappointment — I didn’t like Oblivion because I thought it was too boring, and I thought Fallout 3’s setting and weapons would be different… but I was pretty much wrong. Disagree with me as you like. Mass Effect was a much, much better combat RPG.

4. Metroid Prime 3

This may have come out last year, but I picked it up this year, and boy was I disappointed. It was built up so much to me — the graphics were supposed to be the best Metroid yet, and the controls were supposed to be great (“best first-person shooter controls ever”, I was told). But I didn’t like it at all — the graphics were muddy and old and the controls felt like a novelty. I may not have given this one a fair look — I still plan to play it in the future — but very big disappointment.

3. Sonic Unleashed

Why did I ever believe things might be different. The next Sonic will come out next year, and again, they’ll say “we did it this time, guys! We returned to the formula! Things are better now! Welcome back to the sparkling blue Dreamcast days!” And we’ll probably all be suckered in to their promises again, only to find that they’ve still ignored what makes Sonic fun: going really fast.

2. Golden Axe: Beast Rider

I should have known better on this one, too. But it looked fun at E3. Tell me this doesn’t look like a game you’d want to play. And yet — it’s horrible. And I didn’t even plan to have Sega twice on this list.

1. Castle Crashers

This game was actually great — I played it, beat it, and enjoyed it. But man, they could not have screwed the pooch more on bugs and online breakdowns. Games were unplayable online — when they didn’t crash. And when they did crash, you lost all of the fun little collectibles which were the reason you were playing the game in the first place. And though all of that could have been fixed in a week with a solid patch, we’re still waiting on Behemoth or Microsoft, or whoever’s responsibility it is to fix this thing. I said that Castle Crashers might eventually be the best game on Xbox Live arcade, and I still think it might have been — if they didn’t colossally screw up the technical side. What a bummer.

I guess now I’ll have to do a top 5 games of the year list. I’ll get back to you soon.