Top 10 Trailers That Were Way Better Than the Video Game

Does anyone else feel like they got short-changed? Welcome to WatchMojo and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the top 10 trailers that were way better than the game.

For this list, we’ll be looking at trailers that painted a false picture of the finished product. This doesn’t mean that the games were bad -some of them are downright great- just that we thought we would be getting something else entirely.

Flashy cinematic trailers, while a pleasure to watch, come with a high risk of misleading people. We know it isn’t necessarily representative of the finished product, but it’s hard not to make certain assumptions about the gameplay based on the events of the trailer. This is true even for an MMO as popular as “Star Wars: The Old Republic.” Though people are still playing today and plenty of “Star Wars” fans have a soft spot for it, the game itself didn’t live up to its exciting trailers, which showed us vast Sith vs. Jedi lightsaber battles and dynamic force powers, “The Old Republic” turned out to be pretty similar to other MMOs – albeit with a universally acclaimed story.

“Saints Row IV” had a rather convoluted development – namely it was originally going to be an expansion for “Saints Row the Third”. For all the changes however, it was still definitely “Saints Row.” Sadly, the same can’t be said for Volition’s “Agents of Mayhem”. A single-player hero shooter with a dozen playable characters, the concept sounds cool on paper, but only a few of the “agents of mayhem” were actually interesting and there was very little to do in the world. The gameplay basically boiled down to a handful of boss fights and an abundance of identical dungeon crawls, all tied together by a forgettable story. But if you’d only ever seen the launch trailer, you’d be forgiven for thinking “Saints Row V” was waiting for you.

After the resounding disappointment of “Mass Effect: Andromeda”, all eyes were on BioWare’s next outing. The announcement of “Anthem” in 2017 saw a departure from the studio’s recent RPGs, but was intriguing nonetheless, thanks largely to the javelin traversal. Seamlessly going from running to flying to swimming looked like a blast, to say the least; unfortunately, the traversal turned out to be the only thing “Anthem” had going for it upon release. Pretty as the game was, it was full of bugs at launch – even completely bricking PS4s – and the story and worldbuilding were relatively weak as well. If only the game had turned out to be half as fun as the trailers made it seem.

We wish those country roads would’ve taken us somewhere else entirely. For all the fanfare generated by the surprise announcement of a new mainline “Fallout” game, thanks in no small part to this memorable and incredibly catchy trailer, “Fallout 76” did not live up to the hype. Ever since its launch, it’s been plagued with game-breaking bugs; extortionate microtransactions; a disappointing collector’s edition; the notorious subscription package “Fallout 1st”; and having zero human NPCs for over a year after its release – and that’s just some of its many controversies. But though the game might be a failure, it’s impossible to not sing along to this iconic trailer.

An MMO set in the universe of DC Comics has a lot of potential, and it was easy to get excited when this cinematic trailer debuted in 2010. It showed all your favorite heroes and villains going toe-to-toe, with many iconic characters dying to pave the way for you and your friends to step up. Since its release on PS3, it’s been ported across various platforms – including the Nintendo Switch in 2019. But it was never going to match the high stakes and huge fights seen in the cinematic trailer. Upon release, reviews were mixed, though since going free-to-play the game has certainly found a loyal audience.

The launch trailer for “Mirror’s Edge” gets across the fluidity of being a free runner and the world’s striking visual design; the only problem is that any novice player is unlikely to have such an experience. The game is famously difficult, taking a high level of skill to get anywhere near as good as the free-flowing mastery seen in the trailer. Conquering the controls and mechanics is satisfying, but it’s no surprise that speedrunning the game is practically a spectator sport. It’s almost more fun to watch others play “Mirror’s Edge” with an incredible level of skill than it is to get a handle on it for yourself.

This bold, live-action trailer saw two taxi drivers arguing about the best car combat game, hyping up the audience for the chaos and carnage of the latest “Twisted Metal.” With motorcycles, hot-rods, heavy ordnance, and explosions, you’ll definitely have fun with this off-the-wall title. But is it a stand-out franchise across three generations of consoles, like the self-aggrandizing trailer professes? Probably not. In fact, many critics agreed that, for all its innovations, the PS3 installment wasn’t as good as the “Twisted Metal” games on earlier consoles. Story mode felt lacking, the controls were tricky and many of the series’ fan-favorite characters were missing. Sony made no shortage of demands on developers - and it shows in the end result!

A hugely successful and influential movie franchise, “Alien” is a big name to live up to. And while it has given birth to some awesome video games over the years, “Aliens: Colonial Marines” is not one of them. Thrilling pre-release material got people excited for a blockbuster game, and the final result was anything but. The actual gameplay experience was riddled with glitches, the graphics were subpar, and the story was bland; but worst of all was that many believed the game to be unfinished. The development had certainly been a tumultuous one, with the game passing from studio to studio and various conflicting interests wrestling for creative control. “Colonial Marines” was doomed from the start, despite a trailer suggesting otherwise.

Another title trapped in development hell; “Crackdown 3” was announced five years before it finally came out, and almost three years after its original release date. The general response to the game was a resounding “meh.” If you’re a big fan of “Crackdown”, you probably won’t be too disappointed since it was more of the same gameplay the series has always been known for. But if you were expecting innovation, that wasn’t on the cards; you couldn’t really do anything new in “Crackdown 3”. But you wouldn’t know it from the trailers, starring none other than Terry Crews, which made it look like bombastic chaos the likes of which we’d never seen before in the series.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few Honorable Mentions:

Because It Took Years for Hello Games to Make Good on Their Promises.

Because It Failed to Be the Awesome Sequel They Advertised.

Because, Despite Appearances, It Can’t Hold Its Own Against Other Battle Royales

If you want a game to fill the void of “Left 4 Dead”, teaming up with your friends to fight zombies in the sunny tropical environment of “Dead Island” is a decent option. But its most famous trailer tried to sell it as something completely different: a somber and deeply personal tale of the zombie outbreak. The trailer plays in reverse, showing a zombie child flying up through a window she was thrown from. We see her entire journey, all the way back to when she was first bitten, in harrowing and gruesome footage. Then it turned out the game was the exact opposite; it was crass and crazy, far from a tragic depiction of the undead we were led to believe.