Dealing with a disappointing game can be difficult, especially when it has significant hype. It's even more disheartening when the title is a new entry in a favorite franchise or even an eagerly awaited sequel years in the making.

Nevertheless, some releases can and do underwhelm for several different reasons. Not enough development time, new features, crunch, lack of a proper vision, inexperience with the genre in question, removing features prevalent in the previous title, bugs, lack of polish - the list goes on. Some of these are beyond the developer's control; others are easily preventable but allowed to fester for whatever reason.

Here are our picks for the top 30 most disappointing games throughout the history of games. Some of them launched in a pretty dismal state but turned out well after several updates, while others just couldn't be salvaged no matter what.