We have all seen it. Video game press releases and advertisements touting all kinds of bold claims in an attempt to get our hard earned gaming dollars. Here are 5 of the worst video game marketing mistakes.

#5 Fake CG, no real gameplay

Most recently, we talked about fake pre-rendered animation being used to promote video games. The first-person MMOFPS shooter Crossfire showed a pre-rendered video promotion for what we felt was a lackluster experience. In all fairness to Crossfire, they are far from being alone in this horrible way of thinking. However, the most notorious animated trailer was for the recently released Kill Zone 2. At E3 2005 the infamous Kill Zone 2 trailer dazzled the world with high resolution graphics, smooth animations and all kinds of other proposed PS3 goodness. Unfortunately this worked against the game when later gameplay footage showed a much more realistic on-the-bar presentation. This is a very bad practice that works that promotes unfair expectations of the game. Even though recent reviews of Kill Zone 2 praise it highly, to this day fans have yet to have closure on whether the Kill Zone 2 footage was real in-engine footage.

#4 A Ton of Features

Microsoft, Too Human anyone? I have to mention Too Human because it is the current model for bad gaming press and promotion. I mean, they blew it big. One way, was the infinite black hole of features. The only thing they did not promise was a final boss named Ractapus who was half raccoon and had 8 male genitalia that fired 8 different types of ammunition. Here is the general idea – You buy the game, create a character from a million customizations, you kill many different types of monsters, you are offered a gazillion options for upgrading and improving your character, and you show off you character to the online world. Now, at no point did I say that any of this would actually be any fun. Its not. The greatest games of all time only do one or two things very well. God of War, for instance, is a very simple game with a simple premise.