To me right now is the first Red Dead Redemption. Finally I’m able to play it, I’ve wait for over a decade. No spoilers, zero youtube gameplay videos, zero questions about the game to my friends. It gotta be me, and the game, it happened, and I think it sucks.
Maybe you thinking in “well, you shouldn’t play the second first”. I did not. My first Red Dead game was Red Dead Revolver, I was able to play it a few years ago when I could buy a PS2, but I couldn’t get a PS3 nor a Xbox 360 to play RDR1. It grinded my gears because we got the prequel in PC. When RDR1 came to PC it was so freaking expensive, yet today, I think it is expensive. I was able to buy the game some weeks ago while there was a Steam Sale, and well, I regreat it now.
I don’t like its exploration, its missions, its characters, its world, its secondary missions. its wanted system, and nothing but less important: has a lot of bugs.
That’s my experience in a few words.
What’s the game that you wanted to play but it was a total mess?
adventures in the magic kingdom and yo noid
Most recently, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Invalice Chronicles. I remember loving Tactics Advance back in the day, but I tried several times to get into the Invalice Chronicles and I just can’t do it.
Curious. What puts you off in Ivalice Chronicles?
It’s just way too grindy, and not even the fun kind of grindy. Which is a lot coming from me since I can sit there and hunt the same Monster in Monster Hunter 50 times in a row to get what I need and not feel bored or frustrated. In the Invalice Chronicles, everything feels like it drags on-and-on to an exhausting level.
It’s likely my own fault, though. I haven’t played a tactics style game since one of the Fire Emblem games on Wii or 3DS and I’m probably not remembering how they truely played. Maybe down the line I’ll go back to it and give it another try.
I wanted to play Cuphead because I really liked the concept and the aesthetic. I got it not knowing its reputation for being hard as absolute fuck. Played it for several days with increasing frustration, started watching walkthroughs, those didn’t help, still tried to stubbornly stick with it, and eventually got to the point where my heart just wasn’t in it anymore.
Yeah, I loved the concept, hated the gameplay. There’s a TV show that’s way better than playing the game.
If it helps, ive felt this way about a few games throughout my life and after beating my head against them for a while i would gice up and take a break. However, when returning later, i found things weren’t quite as hard for me, and i was able to make progress.
Don’t [permanently] give up!
…Or do. Gaming doesn’t have to be that deep. There are plenty of other experiences to enjoy, anyway!
Any pokemon game after gen 2.
I started in 1999 with red. It was a childhood-defining experience. I spent all summer with my nose in that game boy. Keep in mind I had to use a loupe mounted in a glasses frame and had to hold the screen an inch from my eye, so the ergonomics weren’t ideal, but the experience was compelling enough for me to bear through it. Then I got gold in the summer of 2001, I think, and was blown away. It was an upgrade in every way. I personally think the series peaked with gen 2. To be absolutely clear I am not a “gen-wunner” or whatever the word is. I just think the combination of the game itself and the zeitgeist it created for those first few years came together to make something unrepeatable.
Gold and Silver came out while Pokemon was still everywhere, but by the time gen 3 released, the craze had ebbed. Yes it was still popular but it was no longer in everyone’s mouth. I was also in the latter half of high school, and most of my friends were no longer into it. I bought the game, so it’s not like I thought I was too old, but it just didn’t feel the same. They removed the day-night cycle and the calendar functionality. It felt like a downgrade.
I’ve tried several times since to rekindle that feeling I got in 1999. The closest was with Pokemon Go in 2016. For a few weeks it felt like the late 90s again, with everyone and their dog talking about Pokemon. I actually beat Pokemon Let’s Go, but I think the nostalgia is what kept me going. Tried with the first Legends game and just couldn’t stay interested. Ditto with Brilliant Diamond.
There has to be a word for not wanting something but wanting to want it. That’s how I feel. (Of course the nice thing about being a conlanger is I can make the word myself 😁)
spoiler
sdC CBa serial verb construction consisting of the verbs
sdC(to pine for/yearn for/be nostalgic for) andCB(to want). Perhaps “to miss wanting” is a close translation.sdC CB qGr qGrbfrp 0 sdC-0 CB-0 qGr-0 qGrbfr-p [1sg] yearn-A want-A play-A video_game-3D I miss wanting to play that video game. 1sg = 1st person singular (0 means it's dropped) -A = authoritative verbal mood (-0 means a null morpheme that isn't pronounced) -3D = 3rd person distal noun suffix ('that video game')I too felt like Gold and Silver was the pinnacle peak of Pokemon popularity. The games were fantastic. The closest I got to playing Pokemon similarly to how I did back then was the remakes of Gold and Silver for the DS.
Generation III, Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, really dulled the franchise as they were trying a lot of new things. Which really felt like a throw-anything-at-the-wall-see-what-sticks way to go about it, only Pokemon.
And granted that Generation IV, Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, did fire up that spark again but it only felt like things tapered off once we moved on from that generation.
I had some fun playing slightly newer titles with an action replay to cut down on the grind and it really helped.
I feel this one deep.
Any after gen 5 for me. Gen 5 is actually my favourite
The word you are looking for isn’t “wish”? Like “I wish that happen again”. My first experience with a Pokémon game was with Pokémon Red Fire in a GBA, back in 2006 or 2007. That game itself obfuscate the third gen games. Ruby and Saphire aren’t bad games, but something definitively felts off.
I think you just grew up. People seem to forget that these are games for children. Nostalgia can only take you so far.
Pokemon is games for babies
Funny for me it was RDR2. I still think I probably would have liked it if I stuck with it, but 20 minutes in I was told that I would have to regularly clean my gun and hunt to feed my camp etc. and it just felt like doing a bunch of chores and I noped straight out.
Gun cleaning, hunting, feeding camp, doing chores, etc are all optional in that game. You can just do missions to get to the end of the game with no problem.
Thats where I stopped. I played the prologue and was having a blast, then you get to the first camp and it shows you all the stuff youre expected to do and it just looked like hassle.
I couldn’t agree more. RDR2 has this aura of “you can do so many things, in any order, all the exploration, etc” and to me it feels like no one stopped to ask “are any of the things fun?”
Witcher 3. Absolutely hated the sluggish movement, only made it a few hours
Same I’ve tried 3 times to get into it, but after a couple of hours I quit.
Oh, I gave it about an hour before giving up. I expected more.
Would you recommend the other games in the series?
Oh no, they get worse the older they get.
I haven’t played any of the others but was assured it was no problem. My real controversial opinion is that I didn’t think the voice acting was that great either
It’s just an incredibly soulless game, towns are filled with cardboard cutout npcs, there’s generic guard, wandering peasant, blah blah blah
Fighting, even on Blood level, is trivial
“Searching” around with witcher senses is an absolutely pathetic mechanic
I’m not into “dark” games so I’ll just accept that this one isn’t for me
I modded it quite a bit to make it more enjoyable. Eventually just stopped playing without finishing everything though.
Baldurs Gate 3 for me. I like the game mechanics and everything like that, but the story and characters put me off. The characters in general because of how unlikeable they all are, and the story I think my main problem is mostly that I know nothing about D&D and the game doesn’t try to introduce anything. So I can’t even follow the conversations properly because half the time I have no idea what they are talking about.
Just fyi, if you hate the main characters you can kill then if you want and just have generic NPCs as your companions.
Or you can ignore them full on it you don’t want to kill them - you don’t need them to join you.
I’m surprised you dislike Karlach though, the most normal/relatable one.
I think it took me getting to act 2 before I started liking anyone besides Gale and Wyll.
In the end I mostly stuck around Shadowheart but at first she was REAAAALLY annoying. I hated her guts lol.
I really enjoyed the game with 0 knowledge about the lore
That’s promising. I want to try it but don’t want to play the two precursors
You don’t have to, they are very old games and quite hard to play if you are not used to the genre. I believe that practically the only connections are two reoccurring characters whom you don’t need to know anything about beforehand.
Baldur’s Gate 3 for me as well. BG2 is on my top five all time favorite games. BG3 was just a tedious bore.
My experience was the opposite (hated the gameplay, loved the lore). I couldn’t finish it because every fight was a lopsided slog and nonstop environmental hazards made exploring annoying as fuck.
Really sorry to hear. Imho, it’s a strong candidate for best game of all time. I actually love the characters and I think you don’t need that much knowledge on lore to follow the story… I do know some lore, having previously played NWN 1 and 2 only…
My least favorite thing about BG3 is every enemy seems to be able to do so many actions and will nail your team from a mile away, yet you have a slim to none chance to hit, and when you hit you do a whopping 2 damage or something.
I finally started having an OK time with the game by messing with the custom settings to make combat more fun. But I have never finished it. Much more fun games keep popping up.
I’ve played D&D and can’t follow half the BG3 conversations either. Names of places and characters have no intrinsic meaning. I find it to be a major pain in the ass to manage my own character’s abilities, let alone ~8 in total. Yes, there’s auto/suggested builds so you don’t have to choose everything, but it’s still difficult to remember how to utilize everyone. Plus, all that freedom of choice means freedom to pigeon hole yourself into some situation - unintended consequences, missed opportunities, that sort of thing. Yes, that’s great for roleplay, depth of game, replayability, and all that, but I just don’t have the time to get into that anymore.
Still playing tho. Took me like 20 hours to get into the swing of things. That’s also about how long it took me to get comfortable with Elite Dangerous, actually. But the 1200hrs in THAT game certainly paints a different picture about enjoyment
Silksong it’s a great game but way too hard for me. :(
I don’t know where you stopped, but I can assure you it got way harder after that.
I am up to LJ, and honestly it was not like I rq the boss. It was reasonably slow and I felt like I could learn it. I just put it down at the end of a session, never picked it back up, and never wanted to pick it back up.
Biggest reason I can’t generally recommend my favorite game of the last decade. Shit’s tuffer than elden ring
To be fair, Elden Ring is pretty damn easy. Sure, it requires you to pay attention some, but all of the main bosses don’t put up that much of a fight, and traversing the world is trivial compared to earlier games.
all of the main bosses don’t put up that much of a fight
Try fighting Malaketh with strength/faith. I’ve hit a solid wall. It takes forever to get through the first phase, to the point that it’s become boring - and then I last about six seconds in the second phase because I can’t actually learn it when I have to slog through the first phase for so long.
He’s one of the harder non-optional bosses, but it shouldn’t be too bad. One thing about FS games is you should almost never feel like you’re hitting a wall. It’s antithetical to the design of the game. When you feel stuck you’re supposed to go somewhere else, find more equipment, level up, upgrade your gear, etc.
People play other games where they are forced to slam their head against a boss until they win, then they hear that FS games are hard, and then they expect that FS expects you to do the same thing. Yeah, the games are hard if you play them wrong. They’re pretty easy if you don’t (not including some optional content). You’re supposed to go explore and come back stronger. You’re also supposed to pay attention to the weaknesses of the boss and adapt. For example, Maliketh can be stunned by using the Blasphemous Claw, which is found nearby.
One additional option is summoning help. This is in the game for a reason. Sure, some players say you didn’t actually defeat the boss if you summoned, but that’s dumb. Why would they include a feature in the game if they didn’t want you to use it? They’ve been including this since Demon’s Souls, and they don’t think it ruins the game. Why should you?
I’ve exhausted other avenues of exploration. I’ve long ago hit the point of diminishing returns on my important stats. Upgrading my primary loadout is prohibitively expensive at this point, and switching weapons isn’t helping my damage output.
I have the Claw, but it only lets me parry specific attacks - if I can remember to use it at the right time, and time it just right. Which I need to learn, which is difficult when phase 1 is such a slog.
Usually I can power through and rely on gradually gaining muscle memory against the bosses, but for whatever reason Malaketh is the exception. He’s my kryptonite, and I really, really, REALLY hate that first phase (and the fact that it doesn’t teach me anything about how to fight phase 2).
I wanted to beat him myself. I’m starting to think that summoning may be my only solution.
I just finished it today and it truly is a grind. I’m a middling gamer at best, but that series has held my attention in a way few have in over 15 years. Persevere and it’s worth it, but you’ll absolutely throw down your controller in frustration more than once. Reminds me of the old Mario games for difficulty at times. Happy struggles!
i literally gave up on the last boss after 100%ing the rest of the game. just a brutal experience and there’s no carrot left to make me grind it out for a couple hours.
Skulls and bones. Sailing in black flag is probably my favorite gaming experience ever. Ubisoft announced a sailing game right after. All they had to do was add some upgrade paths so people could set up their ships for different playstyles. Like 10 years later, the game finally came out. It’s the only game I’ve ever refunded. Everything about it was terrible.
I have a friend who defines his gaming existence by black flag. He’s bought it, multiple times on multiple consoles out of sheer love for the game.
Skull and bones came out, I expected that to define the next 6 months of my life. Not a peep. Mentioned it and he just shrugs and goes: they had something good, and ubisofted it (this is after they’ve lost all consumer goodwill). I can’t help but agree
Control. stuck in an office with dull attack options. I played about half way through then looked up my progress and walked away. Way too dull for me. Friends were raving about it.
I think the ray tracing drew a lot of people in. It certainly did me. I think it also rides on its reputation as a big-budget spiritual adaptation of the SCP Foundation.
Like my experience with most remedy games by this point. Cool concept, interesting world, so many things I SHOULD love…but the combat got so damn repetitive and unfun. Same enemy types over and over again. Killed all enjoyment for me. At least I finished it.
God, that game was so damn boring.
Usually I get hooked immediately but Control lost me I think in around 2 hours.
The story didn’t do it any service either. I kept finding notes but never understood a damn thing in them even though I read them carefully.
Starfield. I tried it on a more recent update and it was just boring. There was no point to exploring because outposts were useless and space combat was trivial. Just an overall boring game
I am so glad for game pass (at least before the price hike).
I tried Starfield and found it just so contrived and boring. To being made to touch and gather the weird space magic stuff in the asteroid to just suddenly being given a space ship to the inane combat and awful environments.
And this is someone coming from over 5,000 hours in F04 (and 2000 across Fallout titles, and God knows how much across Morrowwind, Skyrim, Oblivion etc). I am very much used to Bethesda jank.
But jeebus, Starfield is as compelling as wet toast. I read the synopsis of the game and was utterly relieved to have missed wasting countless hours in what has to be one of the worst written and developed games of the past 10 years.
That said it is clear Starfield was a huge pump and dump scheme by Zenimax to sell Bethesda to MS under the idea Starfield was gonna be the next Elder Scroll/fallout block buster. (not to mention populating stories about giving Sony an exclusive on Starfield to make MS jealous)
Little did they know they were buying pure Todd co
kepium that had been cut with a shit tone of sweet’n lowI played it out of morbid curiosity after everyone started talking how bad it was. I went in like “It can’t be THAT bad, can it?” - and indeed, it can. I’m still amazed that menus are fucking .swf files (Adobe Flash for those too young to recognize it)
It’s one of the least credible scifi settings I’ve ever seen. Also, despite the whole “multiverse” the main story tries to paint, it’s much closer to a time loop, given how nothing changes and effectively none of your actions are acknowledged by anyone. City NPCs won’t even react to your
dragon shoutsForce usetotally unique space magic, unless it hits them, then it’s just like being shot. Even Oblivion guards would tell you to holster your weapons, Starfield guards won’t even grunt if you shoot around like a maniac (but hit nobody)Starfield only reinforced my aversion to pre-ordering.
I had about $100 set aside to pre-order the deluxe edition of Starfield when orders went available, but around that same time, a similarly priced, new limited-time premium cosmetic pack was announced for Warframe, and they did one of those things where “and it’s out RIGHT NOW!” (we typically know at least a couple months in advance before something drops), so I, without hesitation, redirected those funds to the Warframe item and did not order Starfield.
Still one of the best decisions I’ve made. Starfield, even had it delivered on all its promises, was just not the game I was looking for. I pledged for a Star Citizen ship two months later.
spoiler
Those last couple sentences are like a short horror story.
An old one: SPORE.
Cool creature editor. Lacked all the depth that was promised in the presentations. Instead of being a cohesive game through the ages, it’s like 5 bare-bones shallow games glued together.
The only good part of spore is the first part of the game, going from single cell to multi cellular.
I found the rest of the game convoluted, and this despite playing it to the end. And replaying it many times over
That said my brain can’t believe it only came out in 2008. I could have sworn it was a 90s game.
I loved spore as a kid, but I do agree that when I tried it again and an adult I was disappointed by the shallowness that I just hadn’t noticed as a kid
surprised you feel that way, I was 13 and played it 3 years after it came out with no expectations and really enjoyed it. I wasn’t part of the hype around it before release so I assumed a lot of other people in my position would feel the same way. I think the different “minigames” led me on a path to discover games later on like civilization, cities skylines, no man’s sky, etc
Yeah… See… I already played games like Sim City 2000, Age of Empires 2 and 3, Homeworld 1 and 2, Dungeon Siege, and space sims like Vega Strike and Freelancer.
So I understood what deep systems looked like, and also detailed character stat development. What they promised was something that sounded like a system heavy game, and my expectation (even as a young teenager back then) was that evolution was a creative spin on RPG stat development.
What we instead got was the most barebones element from each of the games I mentioned. There basically weren’t any systems, and the few that existed were entirely self-contained and could easily be completely ignored without any major loss.
Agreed.
Spore was horrendously disappointing after what I’d read about it.
I bought into the hype and pre-ordered it, and then regretted it.
I’d been given the impression by previews you’d get to play it as a singular session or experience, which I guess they never could have pulled off, but finding it to be segmented as it was was disappointing.
And then the way it portrayed “evolution” seemed deeply flawed to me. Choices you made had almost no consequences - rather than gradually going down different paths and committing to things playing out in different ways, you could just completely change your mind or go back on things, your choices didn’t really matter.
Ho boy! Don’t buy RDR2 in that case. Worst (and last) full price game I’ve bought. Goddamn disappointing
Right know for me is Baldur’s Gates, it really don’t scratch my hitch. I have to play it in baby difficulty because I’m no tactician and I’m not a min maxer playing DnD so this game is really not for me
Don’t worry about the difficulty level and just play for the story.
If that isn’t for you, then definitely throw in the towel. I am truly biased though as I have played D&D for a good deal of my life.
F5 and F8 for quicksave and quickload. As my son tells me: “Don’t tell me how to play my $60 game.”
Mods and cheats all day long.
I genuinely miss doing hardcore challenges in Halo back in the day. But these days I’m simply unwilling to put that kind of time into a game.
So, I often play on easier difficulties. Still fun. :)
World of Warcraft.
I didnt get to play it when it came out because I was still in school and couldnt afford the subscription. I was a huge Warcraft fan when I was younger. Eventually I forgot about it, until about 10 years later when I found a post online talking about WoW and I learned that they had a 14 day free trial. I immediately downloaded the game and made an account.
I uninstalled the game two days later. It wasn’t even remotely close to the Warcraft that I grew up with. And sure part of that is on me. I had made the expectations that it was going to be like Runeacape but in the Warcraft universe. A top down, point and click, open world version of Warcraft 3.
The fetch quests was what really killed it for me though.
I started it way too late. Spent the first few hours having to solo while getting spammed with duel requests, like seriously every second a flag came down. I accepted a couple and got wrecked immediately while they spammed lolololoolol noooooooobbbbbbbbbb stomped rek lol doing the dance emote.
By the time I got to the “real game” and its time to party up to do dungeon runs, nobody would let me join their group because I didnt have full epic perfect-spec’d gear. Which i cant get without doing the dungeon. Which i cant do because I dont have the gear.
Just uninstalled it. Didnt even make it past the free trial. I’m still baffled, because a game like that lives or dies based on its player count, and the players make it as hostile and inaccessible as possible for new players.
WoW
Whaaaaat??? How could yo-
Warcraft fan
Oh. Yeah.
MMO is a one and done genre. You never match the original high.
Gonna disagree with you on that one my friend. FPS and BR on the other hand. You played one you’ve played them all.
I couldn’t afford subscriptions either, which is why 99% of my WoW playtime is in private servers, most of which are now long dead. I think my account in Firestorm might still exist, I first played there when it had Warlords of Draenor, then gave it another go during BfA. I should check it again someday.
- Duplicate comment. Ignore. -
Dragon Quest Builders 2 kind of fits the bill for me here. I wanted to play it from the moment I learned about it. I had zero experience with 1, or any other dragon quest games. My biggest issue, and im still quite angry about it, is that the game I wanted to play, and the game the trailers promised actually does exist. Its all functional. The only way to play it though is the campaign, and its so frustratingly hand-holding and text-heavy it actually hurt to play.
“we need to build the BRONZE ROOM. So we’ll need some BRONZE. Theres some BRONZE in the cave nearby.” [Camera pans over to where the bronze is.] “Okay! We’ll go and get the BRONZE!” “I think 3 pieces OF BRONZE should do it.”
Head over towards the cave.
Hey! We’re near the BRONZE cave! Isn’t this where they said we could get the BRONZE that we need to complete the BRONZE ROOM? Let’s get the BRONZE!
Head towards the bronze.
Hey! It’s the BRONZE that we need to make the BRONZE ROOM! Lets mine some quick so we can make the BRONZE ROOM! You can do this! Let’s go!
Mine the bronze
[BRONZE acquired!]
Hey! Thats it! We just mined the first piece of BRONZE that we need! Didn’t the quest-giver say we needed 3 pieces? What are we waiting for? Lets mine 2 MORE!
Mine 2 more
Thats it! Weve got all the BRONZE that we need to make the BRONZE ROOM! lets Head back to the base as quickly as we can to make the BRONZE ROOM.
Head back to the base, get talked to by the quest giver for a solid minute about the importance of the bronze room. Then the concept of the silver room comes up. You think 'that was a really really really long-winded tutorial, but they’ll leave me alone to do the silver and gold now that I know what to do. No. Go back to the top of that list but replace BRONZE with SILVER. Then gold. Then do it again and again and again until the credits roll and you realise the game never actually happens and you just wasted a bunch of your life and you’ll never ever get it back and they could have made an excellent game, and they actually did, they just wouldn’t let you play it.
Im still pretty bitter about that whole experience.
Never played this game but I’m aware the same devs are involved with Pokopia in some way. Makes me worried.
It’s like they saw Minecraft’s complete and utter lack of direction and decided to overcorrect.
Yeah this game is definitely better if you’re totally burned out/ depressed, cause then the handholding is kind of nice. Plus the main island is kind of sandboxy to create your real home/ base since you basically have very little autonomy in the main quests, and you don’t get that in the first one. I feel like my whole life is so many decisions and I’m too tired to actually do hobbies or game, but I can do a cute game like builders with no brain, just mindless fun.
I feel the same way that it’s like if Minecraft came with a Lego manual and all you’re doing is following it.
Do you like Lego? Do you like following a kit, or do you want to build how you want without instructions?
