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?
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.
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.
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.
- CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077:
the trailer showed V riding a crowded monorail train. I bought the game in promotion with Google Stadia. There was no monorail in the game. Or rather, you could look at it, and you could find some stations, but they were teleport points; - Obsidian Entertainment’s The Outer Worlds:
it was marketed as a role-play game, but your possible choices were either bad or good, with no in-between, and they did not influence your story at all. It’s just a shooter game, the SciFi setting is secondary and forgettable; - Blackbird Interactive’s Homeworld 3:
too far from what I loved in Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm. For some reason the developers believed they had to introduce physical people with mental issues in a game about faceless ships blowing up each other. Nevertheless, the story is bland. I would like to pretend that this game did not ever exist.
A game that I’ve been waiting years to play for years is Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds.
I have only heard praise about it. I can’t find the courage to finally play it and end up disappointed.Outer Wilds (not Worlds) is incredible, I doubt you’ll regret playing it.
Well, you might. Some people do bounce off; usually due to not knowing where to go next, or what to do next. But if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want your hand holding and are okay to persevere a little, you’ll probably have a good time.
No other game for me has ever matched the feeling of exploration and discovery, and that is only possible because the game gives you a long leash.
Funny! Outer Wilds was exactly the OP question for me.
Utterly frustrating realistic space controls, unguided exploration that leads to reentering the same planet for the 8th time and still not finding anything new, annoyingly specific timing-based puzzles…
Tap for spoiler
And a nihilistic “friends we made along the way” ending that doesn’t solve the initial problem. Fuck that.
I’ve had games in my wishlist now that I see “It’s like Outer Wilds!” and I start to think twice about them.
I too came in here thinking about outer wilds.
The controls are less realistic than you think, because they attempted to have the ship correct itself but it constantly fought me. I program spacecraft for a living, I know how the orbital mechanics and movement in 3D space works, and they made it super frustrating it made me rage quit the game for years. I only finished it because a close friend wanted me to experience the story.
For me, the story >!was the games weakest point. Putting together the history and the question of “what happened” was cool, but the dialogue was insufferable, I hated reading the story walls and having to string together the order things were said. Then to finally put everything together, get a half baked story about being marooned on effectively a desert island and it ends with a shrug and “yup, everyone died, you too”… Man fuck that.!<
Different experience for everyone I suppose :)
I found the space controls and conservation of momentum to be such a fun aspect. I loved getting consistently good at it, and feeling like a competent rocket pilot when I nailed fancy manoeuvres.
Silksong on the other hand, I had to give up because it was way too hard for me!
Just pull the trigger and do it so you can know. Don’t rush it. Take your time enjoying the puzzle and piecing together the mystery. There is no rush, a couple moments require good timing but you’ll know what to do when they come up. It’s not everyone’s thing, but if it is your thing, you’ll wish to forget everything so you can play it anew.🙂
Uptick for the awesome nickname.
Thanks mate, it’s my wish to live up to that name.
Now, though, read my comment too!Haven’t played any of the RDR series. I have RDR2 but it won’t work in my Linux box.
A game I had high hopes for was Witcher 3, simply based on internet hype. Somehow it doesn’t work for me. Maybe I was expecting a better Skyrim. The main character is too opinionated. The immersion is not there for me.
- CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077:
Hogwarts. And all the horizon games.
anyone who played Hogwarts Legacy after the huge outcry about boycotting it for trans solidarity deserves to be disappointed
Is Rowling a piece of trash, yes. Does the game include a trans character, also yes. Were people still pissed off at the characters name, also yes.
it was literally SIRona RYAN
this is like naming your only asian character something dangerously close to “ching chong” or having your one black character be named some shit like “Kingsley Shacklebolt” or…
actually, i don’t know why anybody expected anything better from this franchise lmfao
ryan is a gender neutral name though
what country do you live in?
w-what?
compared to all other harry potter games, hogwarts legacy is a masterpiece
that’s really not a high bar to clear, like oh this dogshit is tastier than this cat shit. it’s like… you know it’s all shit right
yeah harry potter games before legacy were absolutely miserable. i watched every angryjoe review he did for harry potter cause he hated them all 😂
I didn’t expect anything from Hogwarts Lefacy so I was positively surprised. I enjoyed my run but would not do another.
Horizon Zero Dawn on the other hand never clicked, I have had it for a while, never finished it.
Arkham Knight was pretty disappointing. The batmobile was forced into several sections. The announced Linux build never materialized.
Yeah I think I got Arkham Knight for free and I played it until the first batmobile puzzle then never played it again. It just was not enjoyable
Elden Ring… I’m sorry I just didn’t enjoy It even after beating a few bosses
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.
Any after gen 5 for me. Gen 5 is actually my favourite
I feel this one deep.
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
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.
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
I modded it quite a bit to make it more enjoyable. Eventually just stopped playing without finishing everything though.
Same I’ve tried 3 times to get into it, but after a couple of hours I quit.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
