What's a really popular game franchise you just can't get into?
I'll start. pokemon. doesn't matter if the game's old or new I just can't get into how it plays. idk the gameplay just gets old to me pretty quickly, palworld is an upgrade in every way tbh
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Souls games.
I really want to like them too, but they seemingly aren't compatible with how I play games. I need to be able to put a game down for a couple of weeks and not feel like I'm back at square one because the specific muscle memory for that game has gone.
Just kinda kills the fun when the game is effectively telling me to get good, when I don't actually have the amount of free time IRL necessary to do that.
for me it feels like they don't respect me as an adult. i need to be able to pause and save games. sometimes i get phone calls. sometimes the power goes out. sometimes i spill my drink. but no, it's all just "get gud".
also i just can't handle the aesthetics .
Could you talk a little more about the aesthetics thing? I have no intention to pick a fight with you or tell you that your opinion is wrong, I'm just curious because I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that about them before
Also yes the no pausing thing is very frustrating
everything is dark and gray and meaty and slimy and gory and bloody and disgusting and sad and lonely and unpersonal and depressing and hopeless and evil and hateful and murderous and dead and off and...
even screenshots fucking wreck my mental health.
There are some stunningly beautiful scenes too though. I get what you mean regardless, its a grimdark setting for sure.
yeah let me just wade through this ocean of death so i can see a dying sun set over a dead world.
things may be beautiful in isolation but the context is what gives them meaning, and the meaning in most fromsoft worlds (and things inspired by them) is "look at how awful everything is here; it's your fault if it doesn't get better".
"haunting" is a better word than "stunning" there.
Omg I feel seen. Yeah I might not be fully unappreciative of the aesthetic, but shit can be dark and grim in real life as it is and it feels edgy and emo to go all gore gothic all the time. Every videogame trailer that starts with "shit's horrible around here" is an instant "next". Also I've always had a problem with eternal unliveable dungeons that make no architectural sense. Even though it is fantasy, it makes it far more childish, which matters if they're trying to take themselves seriously.
...yes? i don't know how much more clearly i can spell out that what's on the cover is preventing me from playing the games.
until this sentence i was completely certain that you were agreeing with me
I disagree with you completely on this but I really enjoy your point of view here
i'm glad.
It's okay if grimdark doesn't appeal to you. I like stories about people doing the right thing in a hostile setting,
that was my point yes
Is it particularly more your fault that things don't better in Souls games than in any other game in which you are meant to save the world? I think the only difference is that in the Souls ones and others like them, the world is already horrible and needs repaired in some way rather than on the verge of becoming horrible
Interestingly Elden Ring went for quite a different direction. The world is, unquestionably, still an enormous mess that would be horrendous to live in, but they've left in far more of the beauty. I particularly like how every so often you hear hostile NPCs playing music or singing if they haven't spotted you yet, and how there's a little puzzle side quest about a painter; people are still making art in this ongoing apocalypse. One important allied NPC even actually openly makes an argument that the world is worth preserving if it looks like you're going for the "destroy everything" ending
Of course the atmosphere and gameplay are still heavy going, both in the Souls trilogy and Elden Ring. I get why that wouldn't be for everyone. It's like playable Cormac McCarthy stories, except you can punch your way out of most of the misery if you get it right
idk i can barely look at the games without feeling awful, im just going off of the opinion of others
Try "Death Door". It is as hard but fun to play.
bro the difficulty is yet another reason why i don't want to get into it. you really think i'm in a mental state to be beaten to a bloody pulp after a rant like that? i gave up on tunic because the combat was too hard.
it is my firm belief that soulslikes have ruined metroidvanias because they now apparently all need to beat you to death for attempting to enjoy them.
Death's Door isn't nearly as difficult as the Souls games; it just felt like a solid metroidvania. I don't enjoy beating my head against high difficulty curves these days and it felt very approachable and fun to me. I even went back after my first playthrough and did the achievement where you only use the weaker umbrella weapon.
Souls games autosave constantly, you can quit out at any time and reload to where you were. The only exception being that if you quit out during a boss fight you'll have to restart.
Yeah. Heard so much about Elden Ring, and watched the kids play it, so I thought I'd give it a shot.
After about 45 minutes of wandering aimlessly and nearly as many deaths, I decided I wasn't having a good time.
I finally had the Get Good moment where everything clicks recently, its very real. Now im on Nightreign like its crack.
Level your Vigor, people. Farm that little village with the soldiers and get a few levels into your health bar. And boom! Now you don't die bc you missed a dodge. There's good starting gear there too.
Once you "get it", suddenly Elden Ring becomes like the coolest DnD game ever from an old-school perspective. Honestly, its not much different from Zelda - if you can play that, you can play Elden Ring i think.
That has been my experience with it too. It's probably more fun with good gear, but i just see hours on the couch in my future that I don't want to spend.
The gear would not have saved you. The game gets substantially more difficult as you progress, even accounting for your character getting stronger, and if you don't do a decent job of levelling up appropriate skills that will compound the issue. The starter gear for most of the classes is actually perfectly viable all the way to the end of the game for most players too, it's not notably weak at all
I love Elden Ring, but I can absolutely respect why it wouldn't be for everyone. No sense in playing it if you're not enjoying it, the point is still to have a good and/or interesting time
The beauty of Elden ring is that you can explore without actually killing much. Eventually you'll find some cool weapons or smithing stones to upgrade your current weapon and some runes to get a couple of levels (putting points on vigor helps a lot early on)
And then the game starts feeling less rough.
But I can definitely understand why it's not for everyone.
I feel similar. After having tons of people tell me for years I need to get into them, I finally played Bloodborne, which multiple people have told me is their favorite.
I pushed through it on my own first. I actually didn't die quite as much as I expected, though I definitely had to spend time watching YouTube videos and reading 3 different fan-made wiki's to figure everything out. I managed to finish it, but I didn't think it was worth it and would not have finished it if not for wanting to be able to talk about it with my friends.
Then I did another playthrough with a friend doing co-op. When it worked (ugh) it was a way better experience. Partly because of my previous experience - I had a better feel for how to build my character, I remembered most of the environments and enemy placement, and still had that muscle memory from my first run. Partly because it's better as a cooperative experience. Having an ally makes the world feel less desolate. Having another player to take aggro so you can heal is huge- some bosses almost feel like they were designed for multiplayer. And it's fun just cracking jokes and hanging out, making fun of how ridiculous some of the stuff is.
I still don't have the love for it that other people do though. I agree 100% on the aesthetic: everything in Bloodborne is just dark and wet and looks the same. FromSoft makes a LOT of game design decisions that are different from most other developers in terms of what they prioritize. Which is fine, but there are aspects of design where they clearly cut corners and the fanbae seems to laud it as a desirable artistic choice. I shouldn't need to spend hours watching YouTube and researching fan sites to learn how to play the game, and I would argue I shouldn't have to do that to appreciate the story. They simply do not respect my time.
The multiplayer barely works. It's restricted to bosses and the areas leading up to them, and costs Insight (a valuable and kind-of finite resource) to use. Simply connecting is a tedious pain. You can only play either completely online or offline, so if you want to play with a friend you have to accept your whole world cluttered with annoying and distracting messages from random players and the specters where other players died. And that also opens you up to having hostile players gank you. Like... Why can't my friend and I just pair up and play through the whole game together without inviting the rest of the internet too? Why does it cost Insight? Why are the caps for stats never communicated to the player? Why does the Hunter's Axe do primarily Blunt damage while the KirkHAMMER does almost no Blunt damage, and for that matter why aren't the damage types explained anywhere? I'm still not sure why some gems increase Attack, others increase Physical Attack, and others increase Blunt or Thrust, plus there are hidden damage types.
The game feels like it was designed to really get good on your second playthrough and beyond. Especially NG+, although even starting a fresh file again is much better than the first playthrough. Kinda reminds me of how some MMO fans like to say "it gets good after the first 100 hours". For most developers, the player onboarding experience is one of the most important parts to be developed, but FromSoft basically skills over that and outsources it to their community of hardcore fans.
The only real way to play full co op is using the Seemless Co-op Mod. Also disables other players jumping in to kill you. You would have to play on PC though.
Soulslikes are fucking boring. I did that beat my head against the too-hard boss fight 289348923x when I was a kid because that was the only option and I had all the time in the world. Neither of those is still true.
Try Jedi Fallen Order. It's got a lot of the ingredients, but a lot shallower learning curve.
Same for me!
The Witcher. I really want to like it. It seems like the kind of game I would love and I recognize that it’s an objectively well made game. However, I’ve bounced off it at least 4 times after getting 1-4 hours in.
If you're talking about bouncing of the first one, that's completely understandable. It is absolutely not an objectively well made game, and I will die on that hill. Witcher 2 does hold up well enough though, in my opinion, and is a much better place to start. Just watch a summary video of the first one and avoid a bunch of antiquated jank.
Same actually, I got Witcher 3 as part of a console bundle and played it for a short period, not sure exactly how long but I got to the first of I'm sure many fights with a dragon. Found it really unintuitive, by the time I got frustrated enough to bother doing a web search I'd lost interest. Tried a couple of times after and just got the cbf's every time.
Same. I tried 3 times to get into Witcher 3. No success.
Doesn't matter, there's tons of other fun stuff out there.
Thank God, I am not alone. I thought something was wrong with me for having exactly your experience.
There's are dozens of us
I had to push very hard to get through the clunky controls but I do admit it was worth it eventually.
Me too. The control scheme is just awful.
My personal theory is that a lot of the love for The Witcher 3 in particular stems from the fact that very early on it has a sex scene with full nudity, with a female character who is supernaturally hot according to the lore. There's several women Geralt can seduce, and I suspect a lot of people who mostly play hentai games were in shock to play something with more exciting gameplay than match-3 grids or a jigsaw puzzle.
The Witcher 3 doesn't seem like a bad game, but I'm similar to you in that I've bounced off it a couple times after a few hours. There's nothing particularly bad about it, but nothing that really grabbed me and made me want to keep playing more either. I still plan on giving it another shot eventually.
Name any sports title ( NHL, NFL, NBA, MBA, etcetera )that isn't a zany, over the top SuperTuxKart or Cartoon Network Racing style kart racer and I'm out.
Same goes for any PVP shooter games such as Call of Duty, TF2 Counter Strike, etcetera. Anymore I really find no interest in them because I don't feel like breaking things over some 6 month old who can squad wipe me, all while getting their diaper changed and slinging slurs my way.
Pokemon - having to watch animations and not being able to speed anything up killed my interest
Skyrim - tried a melee run recently and the combat feels like you’re whacking air
The legend of Zelda - played Tears and the story and puzzles were a bit too kid friendly
Doom - I really tried to like it but I felt like I didn’t get anything out of it. It doesn’t scratch that itch I get out of FromSoft’s Souls games where I want to learn a boss’s patterns and die to it a million times.
In general I don’t think I can do story games anymore
It's actually a kid friendly franchise, all of it. The only surprisingly mature themed zelda game is Majora's Mask, it deal with death and loses and hopelessness way more than BOTW is comfortably touch, and it's made in a year.
Twilight Princess is worth mentioning too. It was rated Teen, and had this scene (no gore or sex or anything, just weird surreal horror).
Zelda is such a diverse franchise it really depends on the game. I love Twilight Princess and Majora's Mask, but didn't like BotW or Windwaker at all. It's almost like 2 or 3 different franchises crammed into one.
Up until Breath of the Wild, maybe Skyward Sword, the Zelda series didn't shy away from being a bit fucked up. There's an entire torture-themed dungeon in Ocarina of Time. Majora's Mask is an exploration of impending doom, Twilight Princess features a botched execution. These games used to have characters in actual danger, scary enemies, confronting themes...Breath of the Wild is post apocalyptic and everyone is just happy clappy.
Couldn't agree more with Skyrim, Oblivion was the same when I tried that too I just can't stand it. Easily some of the most over rated games IMO.
Also agree with Zelda but I think the same about all of the Nintendo IPs, they are just boring and the fan base makes me dislike them even more!
Same for me, but starting with Morrowind. The leveling system was too weird, compared to other RPGs of that time. I remember I missclicked, fallen out of the window of some tower, got an Acrobatics skill improved and a level up.
well falling out of a tower window is quite the experience, and if you survived you learnt a lot about how to cope with deep falls, so the level ups are well earned
I still need to finish Dark Age but the level design was quite good. Felt way more like the original Jaquays type maps, lots of loops and alternate paths you naturally explore.
Project Warlock is still better tho
That's why I play on emulator most of the time, especially for games I've already beaten
Yeah that’s the way to go, sadly. Funny enough I was eventually able to enjoy Pokémon through the fan game Pokerogue then a RuneScape rom hack called pokescape
i think you can disable the animations in the console games for pokemon, unless they changed it for the new games.
They removed the options to skip battle animations for the newer games. There’s an option that removes cutscenes, but that doesn’t affect anything in battles like the ten minute long terastallizations.
i see, they did that for the online card game too. in the older ones i removed the animations so i can progess through the battle tower faster. good thing i never gotten into the post- burnt out masuda games.
Wow, that's the complete wrong take if you ask me! It sounds like your problems with these games are mostly in the gameplay, not the story? Have you ever played Outer Wilds or The Talos Principle? Unique puzzle games with a great story.
I’ve played both of those, and I really enjoyed Talos 2 since it mostly just fed you lore while you were trying to do a puzzle, but don’t ask me what the story was because I couldn’t tell ya.
I didn’t mean I couldn’t connect with the story in just those games, but in games in general. So when I talk about a game, I don’t really put much weight into my thoughts on the story, just the mechanics.
the combat in Skyrim always felt so stiff so i get you, just didn't feel enjoyable to me
Monster Hunter. Probably tried like 4 of those games since Tri and people keep recommending them to me, saying the newest one will surely be the one to convince me. But I found them all to be a boring grind.
Yeah, I have a friend who develops video games and has given some good recommendations who kept trying to convince me to play the series. I've dipped in a couple times and just walked away unimpressed.
They are. I tried them too and was surprised they aren’t free. Boring mechanics, scripts that are too long.
I did enjoy World though it involved a lot of interacting with bad UI and walking to a monster. Can't really complain about grind, as you don't have to fight the same monster too much. The story cutscenes and missions were painfully bad.
What I did like was fighting one big enemy rather that hordes of small ones, having to be close and it being risky, exotic weapon movesets. It is great that you can and do use the environment to your advantage all the time.
I would like to see a game that does the fighting big enemies in terrain but with more physics based attacks. The hitbox-based combat where you can put your hammer inside the beast and then swing feels silly.
I didn't like the equipment upgrades much as they only get interesting late in the game and all weapons of the same base type are essentially the same.
Fortnite.
Just. No.
Can't stand the building. I'll build in Minecraft and shoot in cs. No need to mashup!
Just about any multiplayer game. I generally don't like playing with randos (why would I want to listen to a 12 yo squeal in my ear that they fucked my mother in a pitch only dogs can hear?), and most of my friends don't play games I'm interested in.
Assassin's Creed.
Love the historical gameplay. But I cannot stand being interrupted by the modern day parts. Even if they are small. They feel so disrespectful with my time that I've always been unable to play those games. I forced my way through AC2 but I have never replayed it, despite loving the actual gameplay, just for the modern day boredom.
There's gotta be a mod for that, right?
Up until whatever came after Black Flag I was a die hard AC fan. Midnight releases and everything. And I'll admit, the modern day sections are bad and jarring and completely unnecessary. At some point you're a game developer wandering around an office and it's obvious they had no idea what to do with those sections, because at that point the modern day story had been told. There was a brief cameo from some of the people you would remember from earlier games but it never got to the level of intrigue from 1-3.
Though an assassin's creed game set in like modern day Manhattan could be fun. Watchdogs got kinda close to that before going completely off the rails.
Honestly, Black Flag is the only AC game I ever come back to. I enjoyed 1 and 2, and 3 was ok, but BF was the pinnacle of the series (only partially because of the ship combat).
I'd love a game that's just the pirate ship parts, that was easily the best part. Setting up supply lines, capturing ships and sinking hunters. Good times.
I think Ubi tried to capitalize on that with Skull and Bones, because you're definitely not alone. They failed miserably, but they tied.
Capitalism: I refuse to develop my sociopathy to the level required to participate.
Come on,the second game was decent!
Victoria 2 scratches the itch pretty well for me.
I can think of lots of series that I don't like, just because I'm not into the genre. I think that everyone has genres that they don't like.
I think a more-interesting question is about popular series that I don't like within a genre that I do like.
I didn't like Frostpunk, despite liking city-builders. Felt like the decisions were largely mechanical, didn't involve a lot of analysis and tweaking levers.
I didn't like Sudden Strike 4, despite liking lots of real time tactics games, like Close Combat. It felt really simplified.
I didn't like Pacific Drive, despite liking survival games. It has time limits, and I often dislike time limits in games.
I didn't like Outer Wilds, despite liking a lot of space games. Didn't like the cartoony style, the low-tech vibe, felt like it wasn't respectful of player time.
I didn't like Elden Ring, though I like a number of swords and sorcery games. Just felt simple, repetitive and uninteresting.
EDIT: A couple of honorable mentions that I don't hate, but which were disappointing:
Borderlands. The gunplay can be all right, and the flow of new guns and having to adapt to them is interesting. But every Borderlands game I play, the always-respawning enemies are a turnoff. Feels like the world is immutable. Also don't like the mindless farming of every container with glowing green dots. And for a combat-oriented game, it doesn't make me mix up my tactics much based on whatever I'm facing. While I finish the game, I always wind up feeling like I'm not having nearly as much fun as I should be having.
Choice of Games. I like text-based games, but a lot of games published by this company, even otherwise well-written ones, have adopted a convention of making one win by playing consistently to certain characteristics of a character, so one tries to just figure out at every choice what option will maximize that characteristic. That's extremely uninteresting gameplay, even if the story is nice and the text well-written. I feel like the same authors would have done better just writing choose-your-own-adventure type games if they weren't focused on the stats. I also really dislike the lack of an undo, to the point that I've put some work into a Choicescript-to-Sugarcube converter.
I'm not sure I'd count Outer Wilds as a space game (assuming you mean something in the vein of Elite Dangerous), despite it objectively including a lot of space travel. It's a detective game, the point is to unravel a mystery
maybe they're confusing it with Outer Worlds?
I'd be very surprised if "cartoony style" and "low-tech vibe" is not describing Wilds. I assume the bit about respecting of time is something to do with the various timed events in each loop like Ash Twin. I don't agree with them in the slightest, but I assume that's what it is
I get it. I like city builders too and the idea of a game that's constantly threatening your city with crisis seemed interesting, but every run seems to be the same.
Alright, you and I are gonna fight now.
Some of those can be explained by bad expectations.
Frostpunk is not a city builder, more like a puzzle game.
Outer wilds is not a space game, it's a time loop mystery.
Fantasy sword and sorcery is hardly the most important side of souls games. They're technical performance games.
They all technically include those elements you like, but were more about something else.
Dark Souls and any of its copycats. Grinding a boss for hours on end just to learn it's patterns is not how I like to spend my free time. Aside from that: why is that whole genre so bleak? Apart from maybe "Another Crab's Treasure" they're all dark and gray/brown and unrelentingly depressing. Does the gameplay lend itself to that particular aesthetic? Or is everyone just copying Dark Souls that hard?
I can understand, but heartily disagree! For me, the firey hope in the face of a dark bleak world inspires me, and the way the games tend to have you earn your victories makes victory so, so much sweeter.
For me, soulslikes are pretty weird. I've loved the art direction and gameplay of Dark Souls and especially Elden Ring, and I get why people like them and I appreciate what they're trying to do, but something in them doesn't click the addiction button. It's not even the core gameplay that is the problem - I get flattened by some enemy and I'm like "oh I'll get you one day". But I booted up Elden Ring last time months ago. I'll be done with the game in 10 years I guess. It'll happen though!
Plenty of Soulslikes that don't have that bleak look to them. I think many of them do because the genre takes place in apocalyptic settings.
The Bethesda (and related) RPGs. The core gameplay loop just feels so shallow in both, meaning most of your time is spent wandering with nothing meaningful to do, or in spammy, often janky combat. The parts that are interesting, the character builds and the lore, aren't super involved in most of the game. You spend so little time building characters, and most of the lore is in written logs and books.
While I like Bethesda games quite a bit, I do agree on the in-game lorebook stuff. I can't see the appeal of the stuff. It's a collection of extremely short, in my opinion not-very-impressive stories. I just can't see someone sitting there and reading them and enjoying the things --- if I'm going to read fantasy, I'd far rather spend the time on an actual novel. Yet I've seen people obsess online about how much they like the in-game lorebooks.
I've wondered before whether maybe people who are talking about how much they like them haven't gone out and read full-length fantasy books, and so they're getting a tiny taste of reading fantasy fiction and they like that, but it's the only fantasy that they've read.
I wouldn't say the problem is with their length or simplicity. I'm sure I could enjoy a short anthology in one of these universes. The bigger problem is the fact that its embedded into a game, effectively breaking the pacing and flow of both the written text and the game. Ideally, this would at least allow you to use environmental and visual storytelling alongside the text, but this is rarely done well enough to justify all the downsides, so you end up with the worst of both worlds.
I found both Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect completely unplayable.
Curious to know why.
Mass effect for me feels like it's generic scifi, so I can't get into it and appreciate the writing but KOTR has a star wars flair at least.
Personal opinion here obviously: Mass effect, or at least the first one, was actually surprisingly well written and internally consistent. Kind of like a star trek lite. There was interspecies tension, people expressing feelings on the state of the universe, but also enough moustache twirling to keep it interesting as well. It struck a good balance between that and a decent looter shooter/RPG combo, at least for my tastes.
The later games lost a lot of that and overly relied on what the first game setup up without expanding much on it, but that first game was just chefs kiss.
Not saying you're wrong or anything, more just this is what I personally get out of it.
Interesting.
Let me rephrase: I always believed it had good writing, but lacked interesting enough scifi concepts for me. In my opinion good writing trumps all, but having a interesting hook always makes writing more accessible.
I had already seen the same save the world and interspecies stuff by the time I was concious enough to play mass effect. (I am not that young, but I think mass effect came out in 2007.)
That's entirely fair. I think it suffers a lot from most of the interesting stuff getting hidden in the codex. I totally get your experience though, I've had a few games that have been good, but I've seen the concept done enough for it but to hook me in.
It's the gameplay, the mechanics.
ME is a relatively bland shooter IMO.
On KotOR you may be missing the point. It barely has any gameplay. Combat is pretty easy and over quickly. The point of anything in that game is storytelling and fun quests, the mechanics are just good enough to not get in your way too much.
One thing to note is that many people agree that Taris sucks because it is mostly linear and the fun quests only start when the game opens up. Taris may be necessary to set up the plot, though.
I found the gameplay in KotoR actively bad, to the point I wasn't willing to suffer through it anymore after the first handful of missions and no sign of improvement.
The first ME is really awkward to play if you choose the caster focused classes. Especially so if you played on console or with a controller. If you played the more fun focused classes it was a decent shooter.
Final fantasy or any jrpg really
Soooooooo long and boring
D&D
I've been playing RPG for decades, but play D&D less than once a decade, and my impression goes form awful to not worth my money/time. When I was young and broke, having to buy a player manual + a GM guide + a monster manual when tons of RPG would fit in a single book (Yes I know, clan-books for let's say Vampire are also a money-pit), was out of my budget, then every-time I played D&D, feel like the story were not interesting as concept like alignment and some spells like detect lies would kill many interesting plot. Too which you had a lot of character optimisation often over the long-term (If you didn't take that feat a low level you cannot have the killer feat at high level), let alone the people mixing RPG and miniature games
Sure you can have some funs game with D&D and play it differently but there is so many other game out-there (and so few time) , that why would I even bother joining a D&D game rather than another,
I was lucky that we just had friends that loved making them. So we wouldn't have books or such, and we just made our player cards on paper with knowledge of what can grow and when. Then the world's would grow crazy if we wanted them to, or not. Hell we had one game we played specifically when we were drunk. We would close the bar down, pick up a 12 pack a piece and cigarettes. Then we would sit out on the porch from 2am and play till sunrise every weekend, sometimes both Friday and Saturday night. In that game we'd note our cards on our phones so we'd remember and the DM would have us send them to him at the beginning and end of the night so he could reference/ make sure they weren't all fucked up before the next play session. It gave us crazy things to talk about at the bar; what we wish we did differently, what we would want do aim to do, where we might want to go, and that just all fed content to the DM and they would draw up ways to integrate possibilities for the next week or so. Even had a couple side characters so if someone else happened to be in town or wanted to join us we could auto scale the character by doing a quick percentage off of some of main characters current stats. 1 or 2 people spend 5 mins to bring the person up to speed with what their character story is and where/what is going on or maybe overall goals while another one of us just writes down their updated stats for them and sends it to them.
So we'd spend nothing on the game itself. We had a blast
the trick is that you can live this great moment with other RPG too, and most of them are IMO way better than the good old D&D, which is why I prefer different games
I love Into the Odd so much for a single-book game. It just hits me right.
But yeah 100% there are so many better games to play than modern D&D.
Min maxing is so irritating to me. DnD is bad about it but I find that seasoned players will find a way with just about any but the most basic systems.
unstoppable forces of nature aren't necessary, and are especially unnecessary when the GM refuses to build a force of nature to counter them.
Idk. I like the people I play with, but the gameplay isn't why I come back to the table every week.
I really enjoy D&D-based video games, but actual pen and paper is just frustratingly slow. I think if I could change my mindset to consider it a social activity first and a game second, I might find it more enjoyable. But that is also really dependent on the group dynamic and seems more likely attainable for playing in-person rather than with an online group.
GTA. It just seems really boring to me, I dunno. A lot of shoot em up and not so much substance. To be honest I feel like that for a lot of open world games. It may be wide as an ocean but it's deep as a puddle. That's not ALWAYS bad but I generally would prefer a more linearly running game that's a lot deeper.
I cannot do balders gate 3, or any rpg of that style. I suspect it's to do with trying to roleplay a character while simultaneously viewing them in that top-down third person perspective. I can do X-COM, strategy, I can do roleplay in third person, but that particular combination just kills it for me. It's bizarre.
Anything Bethesda sadly. I want to like them, something about the control and movement is just so janky it’s not fun.
I thought Fallout 4 was okay but I agree Bethesda clunk is hard to get used to
I find the games very appealing. I would love to love New Vegas but every time I try it just feels… off.
I always thought it was because they tried for an "anatomical" perspective and it never worked. Like I think the goal was supposed to be you could look down at your own character model but it was never really inplimented, leaving a janky forward and back motion to the vertical tilt. It's just enough to make some people a little motion sick.
It’s like the controller is reacting to your inputs after they are pressed, rather than your inputs reacting as you press them. It’s a very very small difference, but it just feels clunky.
Fallout 4 is a surprisingly good colony builder though. Shame that's literally the only thing it has going for it haha
Weirdly, I love them. They're absolutely shallow main story wise but they do exploring and looting right which is the point of open world (for me!). The Witcher 3 or Red Dead Redemption 2 for example are great games, but I didn't enjoy them nearly as much as the arguably bad Fallout 3.
The games are appealing, I just despise something about the controls.
Interestingly I love the controls. They feel very direct to me.
I've failed at getting into any Battle Royale, Survival, or Extraction type game so far.
RE and Silent Hill and Fatal Frame and Alien Isolation. I just can't get over the horror aspect.
God of War. I played 1,2, and 3 and they were all pretty much the same. I think a lot of the hype was from marketing and edge lords who were thrilled to have so much blood and some low-poly tits on the PS2. Once you get past the spectacle, the combat is a slog of mashing the Square button until the game decides to stop spawning HP sponges for you to hit. The puzzles are tedious and annoying. The platforming they try to force in just doesn't work with the physics and controls. The music is bland and generic "epic symphony" stuff that may as well just be from a stock music library, with no Greek influence at all. The story is a generic and modern story with a thin vineer of Greek mythology. Kratos is less of a character and more of a reason to move the game along to the various locations. I know it's not a completely fair comparison, but Hades used Greek instruments to create greek-influenced and interesting music that I still find myself humming and drumming to years later. Hades also did a way better job of using actual Greek mythology to create a narrative that would actually fit in that cannon.
I remember playing Knack 1&2 and thinking "wow, this is like if the old God of War games were fun". Knack is far from perfect of course, but is largely a similar series that cares more about being fun than being mature.
I'm playing through the 2018 God of War now. Completely different, and honestly a few hours in I'm still not sure why they chose to make this a God of War game staring Kratos instead of just making it a fresh IP. Maybe more lore reasons will be revealed, but so far it seems it was just to capitalize on the brand for marketing reasons. The music is still not a strength, but it's better. The environments are better. The combat is still pretty boring with way too many boring enemies with way too much health, but it's better. This is the first game where I'm starting to get tired of the same UI and over-the-shoulder perspective that other Sony games have used lately (Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Horizon, Spiderman). GoW, like most of those games, has an unnecessarily complicated itemization and leveling system that just bogs the game down, and feels almost inspired by MMO's or gacha mobile games.
It does a great job of characterization, with plenty of small, subtle, beautifully written moments that grant insight into personalities. The boy is annoying, but I can see that's the point so I mostly don't mind. It's really annoying how the game won't shut up- there's always someone saying something, and if you even just stop moving for a second someone pipes up to remind you of what you should be doing. It doesn't have space to breath. The puzzles are better than the prior games- they are an acceptable tool for pacing but aren't great by themselves. The story seems a lot better, with much more attention given to original Norse mythology.
With Uncharted I could push last the mediocre puzzles and bullet sponge enemies because the cutscenes were really good and the stories were fun. For Ratchet and Clank I can ignore how the humor has gotten worse and more juvenile over time because it's still fun to platform, dodge, cycle through weapons, and kill tons of enemies. For Horizon Zero Dawn... Actually I don't have many complaints, that was a solid title. For GoW (2018) there's just nothing pulling me back to it.
I'm not going to spoil anything but them making the 2018 god of war a god of war game absolutely does have story reasons. And I didn't even play the earlier games till after so it's not so much "tied" to the story of the earlier games, but it uses them as a back drop.
That's where I'll end it, but both of the new God of War games are some of my favorite games of all time. Continue playing them, they just continually get better.
Yeah, stick with GoW. It's one of my favourite games of last gen just for the story telling.
Post game there's some vicious challenges that took all my ability just to beat them on normal.
RDR2. Played, but didn’t beat the first one. Some other game pulled me away from it. Tried the sequel and was disappointed by the gunplay.
I wanted so bad to enjoy this game, but I felt like it did not return the sentiment. The biggest challenge was trying to get Arthur to do what I actually wanted him to do.
Same, didn't enjoy playing someone I didn't like in a world I wasn't interested in. Good game, not my preferred setting
I did finish it but man do the missions get stale after the halfway point. It's just shooting and that is it.
It's a cool world and all but it feels more like a movie that's too long than a video game. Not a lot of meaningful interaction with the world apart from shooting things.
Yeah I really liked the story tbh but just the mission repetitiveness killed it.
I mean I finished the game but the replayability for me is nonexistent.
Tried Minecraft multiple times. Can't stand the game. Weird part is that I absolutely love both Terraria and Vintage Story.
I found a huge surface vein of olivine in a peridotite cliff face earlier while searching for bauxite, only to realize that I was about 50 blocks to the east of the Resonance Archives entrance, which my world put in a damn near inaccessible valley between K2 and Everest.
If I can find some bauxite I have a ton of iron to make some steel and between that and my huge harvest of flax and honey, I will have honey sulfur poltices, and the eidolon should be a cakewalk.
Baldur's Gate, Elder Scrolls and Divinity series all spring to mind. I really want to like those games, but the story just progress way too slow.
I loved Planescape: Torment though.
Same, but for me it’s the turn-based combat. So tedious.
Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 are real time with pause if that helps!
My problem with those series is that there is probably a decent story, but you simply get side tracked by exploration, multiple side quests and a main story that does not develop fast enough to stay interesting.
PS:T was a positive exception to that though. The substories of the party members were actually developed to help along the main story. If you were done explloring, you could just talk to one of your party members, and gradually unlock part of the main protagonist's history. Very clever.
Final Fantasy, it's too grindy for me.
Terraria
Are you into minecraft? I'm working on the theory that people are into one or the other of those but not both
Yes, I am into Minecraft
Gotcha. I'm the opposite: hundreds of hours in terraria but can't get into MC
I think I/we were too old to get into pokemon. I tried 3 games, and got bored about 4 fights in. I'm sure back when that was the peak of gaming, it was amazing. But now after modern games, turn based gameplay is just not for me too
Except Baldurs Gate 3, that's an awesome way of doing turn-based combat
I tried factorio a while ago but couldn't get into it.
I got completely addicted for about a week and a half and then dropped it and never thought about it again. The core gameplay loop is crack, but it's also very shallow and I can never think of a good reason to come back to it.
You take that back!
In all seriousness, if you're talking about something like the fact that all machines are functionally doing the same thing, that's kinda fair, but there's a lot of complexity in all the options available, made even greater with DLC and mods. Just the logistics of getting items to the right places have many different approaches with various upsides and downsides, and I love all the emergent mechanics that come from belts having two sides and splitters handling two belts.
It's not a game for everyone, but calling Factorio shallow seems really odd. If anything, I feel like it allows you to explore its mechanics deeply, instead of having a breadth of shallow mechanics that don't leave anything to be discovered.
Ok yeah that was poorly phrased. It's shallower than it appears on first impressions, or at least was for me.
The belt management is the best part IMO and kept me playing for a lot longer than I would have otherwise. I loved ripping up the floorboards and doing it newer and better and bigger and ... Oh god I've made a mess again, time to start over!
It is undeniably a very fun game.. but for me it was a bit like binging a netflix debut, and it didn't stick enough to make me want to come back for "season 2".
I'll say that I'm also not a huge roguelike fan and while it isn't a roguelike, I got that same feeling I get after spending a few hours in Enter the Gungeon.
Haven't tried DLCs so can't comment, but the gameplay is built for extension so I can imagine they're pretty damn good.
Are you a Satisfactory fan? I have that in the library and it looked more like my kind of thing (except that I much prefer the look and feel of Factorio)
I haven't properly tried satisfactory, I tried the demo back when that first came out, was asked to run around collecting leaves to put into a power generator for half an hour, and bricked my game trying to put it into borderless or something... And then I switched to Linux, the game was epic exclusive despite promises otherwise, and I passed.
I got the impression it's got a tedious early game, having a prebuilt map might make replaying less fun, and it sadly seems to have a very point-to-point, purpose-specific-device approach to logistics. I also like the performance of Factorio, it's really lightweight on the GPU, and well optimized for CPU (though with the entire map and tons of individual entities loaded at all times there's only so much you can do), which I imagine isn't as great for the modern 3D game Satisfactory is.
I don't want to rant too much about it, but I think the splitter taking in and outputting two belts in Factorio is brilliant. There's only a few types of logistics, but they are versatile and nuanced. Being able to belt items onto the side of an underground belt lets you filter out belts by side, the mechanics of belt sides and how they interact with inserters let you create compact designs or maximize throughput if you spend time on it. There's no dedicated buffer machine, no separate splitters and mergers, all the neat things you can build come together out of component parts in an organic way.
I will also mention that I like to try to plan ahead specifically to avoid starting over, but when rebuilding is necessary (and when laying a rail network) robots are a must-have.
On the topic of the DLC... If you're not drawn into the base game, might be best to pass on it, but they did a good job giving each planet some interesting unique challenges, including organic items that spoil after a certain amount of time. There's plenty of straight content expansion mods, big and popular ones, but they mixed up the gameplay quite a bit in Space Age.
All in all... Yeah, different people, different tastes. I'm currently doing a second playthrough of Space Age with friends, but one of them might've been felled by Gleba. If you want some more unsolicited gaming takes, I can recommend Mindustry and Outer Wilds ;D
Interesting take and thank you for being detailed. Part of my problem is various commitments mean I only get short and sporadic spells to play these games, so forward planning feels like a chore when you want to get stuck in for 3 to 4 hours, but might not return for a week or two.
It sounds like the way you play here is the way I played the various Tycoon games (particularly Transport) when I was younger. Paper and pen optimisation was part of the grind and made it very fun.
Now I just want to get things going and bask in my barely working mess of a solution. (This probably makes it feel way more roguelike than it actually is!)
In that sense I guess Satisfactory might be structured enough to fit my schedule, but I'll definitely be looking out for the things you mentioned.
Outer Wilds might not work well if you play sporadically, I think a big part of the joy is piecing together everything you've seen and grasping the connections and bigger picture... But who knows.
Mindustry might work well though, it's much simpler on the factory mechanics, but ties them into tower defense and RTS, needing to supply towers with ammo, and later supply factories with the right materials to create units. It's FOSS, available for free from some official sources. And importantly, sectors are mostly isolated, meaning you can take it one mission at a time, bringing a few resources to kickstart things and building a new setup every time.
Also, hard read on the tycoon games, I love playing OpenTTD with friends, though I lament the lack of something better than cargo distribution to require us to provide supply to the actual demand (as opposed to being paid to shunt passengers/cargo to the most convenient location). That said, I never really did any calculations in that, especially since supply and demand can change rather dynamically.
All of them.
About 10 years ago, I was playing BioShock. It was fun, but I kept losing interest. Which was weird, because it was pretty much a game that was made for me - a pretty deep plot, a cool adventurous aesthetic, exploring and discovering different places on the map. I realized I was getting distracted thinking about all the other things I wanted to do - hanging out with my friends, figuring out how to talk to girls, studying so I could get good grades and a good job, learning all about things that interested me, going backpacking and rock climbing - and so I finished the game out of habit, and then set down the controller and didn't pick it back up for a while.
My last game was Red Dead Redemption, which I blasted through in a marathon play-through while spending a month crashing my sister's couch between semesters. My sleep schedule got all fucked, I ate like shit, and I felt like shit. Once I got to the end of the game, I packed up my XBox and put it in a box box. The next semester I sold it to get money to buy climbing gear.
Now I just do the Wordle.
At least you chose a fantastic game to go out on. RDR2 is like one of the most amazing games ever produced! I still go back to it when I run out of stuff to play despite beating the ever living hell out of it.
Thanks for sharing your story. It's interesting to hear about the feelings you had and the choices you made. Hope the climbing has been a blast!
Fallout. I like the premise and I'll watch other people play it, but I just cannot get into the mechanics of that franchise. Something about VATS is just not enjoyable to me.
Try the first one. Before Bethesda got a hold of it.
Walking simulator...no fun for me
I made it fairly far through 4 without vats and playing in third person. It just feels so much more tedious than Skyrim without anything more to show for it.
Final Fantasy. JRPGs just aren't my thing
Outer Worlds. The premise was so great. A criticism of restrictive hyper capitalism in space? With an art Nouveau flair? Made by people who made Fallout? Sounded right up my alley!
But it just sucks! The intro is trying to be like Rick and Morty, you don't personally have to deal with any restriction from the capitalistic society (hell at least BioShock threw in pay toilets once in a while) and the story just didn't get me at all. You're just kind of there. You don't feel like you're rebelling against the system or indulging it, you just are an observer. You don't feel like an oppressed worker you feel more like a documentary crew. But even then it doesn't really feel like the situation is really bad. And there isn't really any tutorial to speak of. Sure, if you have played games a lot you know pretty much how everything works, but the mechanics are just dumped in your lap.
I'm just some schmuck on the Internet and I could've written a way better start to this game that lets you actually feel something.
When a fan made rap video makes you feel more of the alleged theme than the actual game does, then you've kinda screwed up.
Persona
Same with me. Can't get into Pokémon. Love the show though. Same with zelda...super boring.
Pokemon, TCGs in general, Fallout, Darksouls and the related things
tgc pokemon and magic, has so problems with scalpings its pratically not worth it. also the online version of pokemon are pretty bad LIVE is not a good game but people are still addicted to playing it, when the previous version ptgco was a better UI. MTG has something called UB, which means they use other IP as part of the card sets they release: so far they released FINAL FANTASY , spiderman, some racing game? LOTR. people also hate this because its not orignal IP, its money grabbing ventures.
Witcher. I tried. The series was great though.
I've tried 2 and 3 and just can't really get into it. Story wise I see what people like, but everything seems a bit more clunky than it should be and it's just more frustrating than enjoyable.
Basically any SRPG but if I had to choose one I would say Fire Emblem; this gente always leaves me bored with how long combat takes.
Though I am powering through, on easy, in Hundred Line Last Defense Academy because the story is that good.
Grand Theft Auto
The whole concept is profoundly uninteresting to me
And I feel there is a fundamental tension between the enjoyable part of the games (Over-the-top city chaos with lots of explosions, often aided by cheats) and what the games WANT to be (serious crime dramas I think?)
Felt the same way about GTA. I don't think the story is supposed to be serious though, but it certainly is disjointed and not very compelling.
Have you ever play the Mafia games? Those games felt like a much better story with the right mix of city destroying chaos. Not quite as open as GTA, but I don't really think that's a bad thing. I really enjoyed 3 despite the missions being fairly repetitive. There's just something about running around killing the Klan that just doesn't get old to me.
The story of GTA is pretty good most of the time.
It is not dead serious, but a satire of the time and place the respective title is set in.
And I am glad it works for all of you
My eyes just glaze over really fast.
Walking simulators
Something like outer wilds should be fine but i get easily annoyed from just running around
Even that i know that in some cases its very fast running around or something
that's not really a franchise. and outer wilds is most definitely not one.
have you tried What Remains of Edith Finch? pinnacle of the genre.
Mega Man, no matter how much time I put into trying to grasp the controls and mechanics, it just never clicks.
Bioshock. I tried the first game and liked the story and atmosphere, but got bored of the gameplay every time I've tried it
I love the first BioShock but couldn't get into the other two because it didn't feel like they took the gameplay anywhere new.
Almost all of them. The only real thing that I played with pure joy was Minecraft, Cities Skylines, Planet Coaster and Sims series. I think its pretty clear what games do I like.
Anything with story/ending I find them unbearably boring and tedious. I'll play Cities Skylines for hours though.
Those games are awesome, if you enjoy strategy games, I think you'd love the full catalog by Paradox Interactive
Warcraft
Xenoblade Chronicles
The turn based but also realtime combat makes me so uncomfortable.
A friend tried to get me into Half-Life multiple times and I just cannot get into it.
It's a fast-paced FPS game, which means I'm likely to get dizzy after some time but something about the ambience makes it worse than usual. I can play Skyrim for up to 1.5 hours at a time, Minecraft or Fortnite for 45-60 minutes, but I'd be lucky to play 20 minutes of Half-Life without my head pounding.
Plus, it's a linear, story-based game, and I'm more into games based more on mechanics and progression (like Pokémon, Factorio, Cities Skylines, Civ, Balatro, and incremental games) than story. And at least for as long as I've tried to play it, there isn't even much of a story.
Have you tried Portal? I ask because it's half life but worse, for you, it sounds like.
You might like Dyson Sphere Program, and Vintage Story, given the list you named. They're both early access and cheap.
I've never tried Portal but I know what it is. I'd imagine this would f*ck with my head even more than Half-Life.
Funny enough, DSP is on my "purchased backlog", games I decided to buy on sale on a whim but never got around to actually playing.
Never heard of Vintage Story before.
https://youtu.be/iOMuD5thI6I
They don't have an official trailer, but here's a quick overview.
Any of the big popular RPG series. I got through Mass Effect 2 (it was on offer for a quid) but have no desire to go back, and I know that’s one of the more action-based games. I also played Witcher 3 up to Skellig but just can’t bring myself to finish it.
Metroid*
Animal crossing.
And back when this was a thing, Candy Crush.
Same with Pokémon. I'm not a big fan of most turn based games, but that franchise especially never spoke to me.
I have a friend who buys every new Pokémon game they bring out. Same him playing one a while back, and I was like, that's it? They can get super big now? That's the new thing? To me it's like FIFA, same game different characters.
Sonic
God Of War
Dark Souls
Call Of Duty
Final Fantasy
Grand thef auto. Simply I don't get it
Pokemon. I was in highschool when it came out and had no time for it followed by being too poor and busy trying to survive directly after it. With no nostalgia for it, there seems to be no reason to try it. I gave pokemon go like 20 minutes and I was over it (though I did play dragonquest walk for around a year)
Yea the gameplay is just far too repetative for my liking lol but i get some people are into that
One piece
Pokemon. Never played one, never will. Hot take is it's a gateway into IRL hunting which is honestly just very cruel. Do not approve.
You weren't kidding
that is a swealtering take if I've ever seen one
I’m enjoying the idea of someone going IRL hunting and their only training is the Pokémon games.
Just out in the woods, gently tossing pokeballs at very confused deer.
Kinda like how GTA produces violent killers right?
Fair point. Tbh, the mirroring between the point behind Pokemon and IRL hunting are just too similar. Don't agree with it.
Is Satisfactory a franchise? I just don't get it; it's a worse Factorio. It's poorly paced and it doesn't have the tools you need to build big, like priority splitters.
It does actually have priority splitters and mergers
Oh, cool, they added that a few months ago; it only took them over 5 years to add it. I still don't get why everybody likes it, it punishes you for building big and it has the slowest opening of all factory games I've ever played. I'd like to say I'd give it another try, but it runs like dog ass now, so I can't play it anymore.
The game only officially released last year, everything before was Early Access, so yes it did release with the game.
I don't think you're wrong for disliking it, but you're oddly hostile to it. Just say it's not for you. Everyone else in this thread is mostly just saying how they disliked game A or game B. You don't have to like every game. You don't need to understand why others don't enjoy it, you just don't, and that's okay.
I personally like it's pacing, how it adds functionality, and how it takes over over time. I personally dislike Factorio - I find it tedious and repetitive. Tried it a few times, just can't get into it. But hey, that's okay, and so is not liking Satisfactory. We don't need to shit on each other because we have different opinions.
I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, that was not my intention, but I can't interpret your message any other way, as all I did was say "I don't like this popular thing".
Also, no, look at the wiki. The priority splitters came out after 1.0.
Priority mergers came out at 1.1, splitters were around Update 5 or early access