Most games I just didn't like and felt it wasn't fair to call them out, but gambling addiction pushing games like FIFA are high on the list, especially since the annual releases seem to be somewhat identical.
I’m going to get absolutely roasted for this, but Elden Ring. I put about 10 hours in trying to like it, but it just made me angry and miserable. And it was kinda boring.
I really tried, maybe 20-30 hours, but didn't enjoy it much.
Playing as a spellcaster was maybe a mistake.
I recognize it's a quality game though. I might try again with a melee character. Maybe modded?
I can recommend a dual Strength/faith build. I did that my first playthrough and it was a lot of fun. I think the Incantations was much funner to play with than the Sorceries. They have far more variety in them. Plus there is a cure Scarlet Rot Incantation that I got a lot of mileage out of to make certain parts less oppressive.
Maybe. The sorcery/incantation/various melee is less of a distinction than many make of it. A lot of it ends up feeling the same: you dodge, wait for the opening, hit your 'attack.' If the 'learn to be a badass by learning patience and boss attacks' isn't your thing though, you might never find yourself liking it.
The best elden ring experience is elden ring seamless coop. It makes the game 100000000x better. If you want to play with someone, hit me up. I just got elden ring working again on linux (it had a freezing problem until I reinstalled the OS, probably the nvidia drivers borking out), and am loving it.
Souls games in general for me, but especially Bloodborne. My girlfriend at the time loved the game so much she had multiple tattoos. She was so happy to guide me through Bloodborne and tried to explain lore, but there's so very little actual plot that anything I learned just fell out of my head. I couldn't tell you anything about what happened despite finishing the game and DLC. I don't get it.
Souls like. There are literally situations you cannot win on the first try, like when you walk through a door and something stabs you from behind because it was leaned against a wall out of sight.
Also just don’t enjoy fighting gigantic things with ambiguous hitboxes.
I know I'm biting bait but I rarely got jumped by the "guy around the corner" traps because I looked before walking in. Counter intuitively, running in will also often avoid the worst of it.
I remember people complaining about the floor traps in the first game and I was like "you mean the raised tiles that are a different color? Yeah I was careful around those". Player messages also help.
It's okay the game isn't for you - but "literally can't win on the first try" is hyperbole.
The gacha is a really, really big downside, but still:
Genshin Impact received "generally favorable reviews" according to review aggregator Metacritic.[87][88] The open world of Teyvat drew praise; IGN's Travis Northup described Teyvat as "a world that is absolutely bursting at the seams with possibilities", and Hardcore Gamer's Jordan Helm described it as "one big environmental puzzle".[27][92] Liyue in particular was picked out by Kotaku's Sisi Jiang for being "one of the most exciting regions that I've visited in a video game in years", before continuing on to discuss how the region "shows an idealized portrayal of Chinese social relations that exists in localized pockets".[100] Game Informer characterized the game as an incredible experience, noting that "[t]he gameplay loop of collection, upgrading, and customization is captivating and compelling".[91] The execution of gameplay impressed Pocket Gamer, and Destructoid's Chris Carter called the combat system "one of the most interesting things" about the game.[5][95] NPR remarked that the game had an abundance of content despite being free to play.[101] Gene Park of The Washington Post lauded the game as revolutionary for the genre, having players "imagine a mobile gaming world with titles with quality that matches the industry's top-tier experiences".[102] Polygon also praised the game for differentiating itself from its peers, heralding its arrival as mobile games become more mainstream and appealing to "an audience outside the typical mobile gaming demographic" and "new players without the hardware to play more conventional and resource-hogging RPGs".[103]
All of the Monster Hunter games. The gameplay is awful and the story drags on. I thought it was just that I picked the first one, but after trying the others it feels like a $5 game series.
For most anything else, I can simply chalk it up as a difference in tastes when I don't like the gameplay, or art style, or whatever. Even those shitty horror games for babies I despise are perhaps fun if you dive into the lore at the right age, who knows. I certainly have obsessed for less than mediocre games.
But no one likes gacha, or at least should like it. It's gambling marketed to kids, preying on the people without impulse control. No "you can spend 2 hours of your life every day on this and save up 2$ in currency" is changing that, in fact that is even worse.
And yet they give hoyoverse a pass for their series, because everything around it is so high quality. Open your fucking eyes! Games are not supposed to punish you for not playing!
But of course, no accusation without confession, I am quite fond of the yugioh simulator, and used to defend it the same way. I try to resolve this double standard by doing what I feel they should do: Never gush about it, only mention it in shame, and always warn people to not pick it up.
Gacha has gotten out of hand. I played one for a year or two a long time ago and don't regret it, but it was far more generous than anything today. It used to be a fun genre to download a game and play for a day or two with all the free stuff, but even that hasn't been true for a while with all the dark patterns they use in these games now.
I can't even make the most explicit Gacha hating post without you guys saying how yours is the one, the special one that's good.
I hate the concept. They are designed to obfuscate how much money and time you spend on them with different currencies that don't feel like real money. They are dark pattern after dark pattern, trying to get you to look at the shop every time you boot up, and entice you with limited offers every chance they get. And this all is then defended by well meaning people like you and me with "Well, you can play for free if you grind hard".
And when I look up if the different in-game currency thing applies to this game, I find out I have heard of Limbus company as the Korean one that got a "radical feminist" artist fired because a swimsuit didn't reveal enough skin for the fanbase's liking.
You misunderstood my comment. Fuck off with your recommendation.
Apart from the endless EA, Ubisoft and similar AAA copy/paste titles I never understood the hype around MOBA games.
I don't get it. Its not real time strategy, but not an ARPG either, you dont create a character, instead have an insane pool of unique characters with a few abilities each. Its just feels like someone wrote down some random game mechanics and choose 5 at random.
All levels are basically the same with mild variations and the whole gameplay loop boils down to optimised fast clicking on abilities and to get strong asap.
Its super boring for me and couldn't spend more than a couple hours with the games from the genre. Same goes for watching other people play.
Its just a cherry on top to have the biggest tournaments and cash prices, while the top players are celebrated as superstars. Also somehow the biggest MOBA communities are infamous for toxicity.
MOBA started as RTS mods for people who liked micro and didn't like resource management. Add hypermonetization of everything for 20 years and here we are. I don't get it, either, but to each his own.
I liked the old WC3 mods because of RPG-like level progression. Gave a little hit of dopamine to see a build come together and steamroll the other side. This was well before there was a competitive scene.
The genre got hyper-monetized, and I noped out of that shit.
Everything you wrote is true, and I gotta respect that you've at least given mobas a try. It's not your cup of tea and that's alright.
One thing that you didn't mention is the team work. While there are toxic people out there, mobas tend to be games that a group of friends can play together for free. You are correct that the abilities can feel limiting - along that vein finding ways to chain spells together with your team mates was one of the most fun ways to get creative.
This is what makes watching pros play a lot of fun. There are people out there constantly experimenting with mixing items and spells to create hilarious strategies to gain an edge. There are all kinds of spells that can come off as overly subtle and dumb sounding, but you pair it up with something else and all of a sudden you have a wombo combo.
Mobas came out of War Craft 3, so any of the millions of people with a blizzard rts background will have skills that will transfer. The single hero format means you can focus all your attention in one place instead of keeping track of your army and your economy at all times. Starting with an established and automated base means that the game isn't on a knife's edge like RTSs. There's a lot of stability and simplicity here over RTSs.
The games tend to be simple in concept to understand but very difficult to master. I had a lot of fun picking a handful of heroes and learning how to best use them. They all have their own quirks and limitations that may not be obvious at first. Conversely, it was rewarding to learn how to shut down heroes that had stomped me in the past.
It is very difficult to get established in these games. It can feel like one of those tv shows that you have to get to the third season before things get better. And I can completely understand people wanting games that don't start off as rough. The high skill cap can keep people coming back for years though.
MOBAs are shit, but they struck a chord with people who are bad at games but want to feel good.
They survive based off of MMR and obscuring people's true ability. If most people playing MOBAs could see how bad they were, they would lose interest over night.
No Man's Sky: I've tried playing it and just end up getting bored. Every once in a while I'll go back and check it out again, feeling like I somehow didn't give it a fair shake, but remain underwhelmed.
People KEEP saying that they “fixed” that game but every time I try it it’s still a pretty generic survival game in space. I don’t see how it’s even close to what they promised.
Just another 30 more years of development, and we'll finally have a space sim with retro graphics.
By that time we might have... Pffff... I dunno, X5, maybe even 6, that will have surpassed it on every front. Or Elite Dangerous will have all the features Star Citizen promised.
I was going to suggest CoD as well ... the whole series is mostly a carbon copy of the previous version.
Let alone the gameplay is "run for 30 seconds, die, respawn and repeat.
The original call of duty and battlefield games were revolutionary. If memory serves me correctly, they built off the success of Band of Brothers TV Show and gave a gritty representation of WWII in a first person shooter. Battlefield 1942's multiplayer was absolutely top notch too with its vehicles.
They deserved their credit back then, but have been milked beyond belief. They are the new FIFA series where each game brings nothing new, but still costs $80...
While I'd interpret it this way, too, "can't understand the hype of" usually translates to simply "dislike", but with a stronger emphasis on invalidating the opinions of the people who do like it.
Dark Souls type games that are just pure grinding wasting time.
I bought this shadow game that look awesome gameplay was fun at first... Then something felt off.. Things were just ridiculously hard for no reason I kept dying on level one...
I was like... Wtf is this shit? Little googling and the game is made by the dark souls people and apparently this grinding over hard shit IS the appeal...
Na man, I got a job and kids and responsibilities and my one hour of playtime better be fun... And dieing and grinding ain't it.
There's a couple of things the devs could have done to make things way more tolerable, like not putting the fucking shades in the middle of platforming challenges and giving health bars to bosses so you can tell when you should go somewhere else instead of face-tanking them for 3 hours.
But god forbid anyone says anything even remotely disparaging against the game, as they're quickly mobbed by fanboys and told to "git gud" because they treat masochistic games like HK as some perverse dick-measuring contest.
And unfortunately I can't away from hearing about it with everyone sperging out over the upcoming sequel.
Pretty much. They need a different genre name, like "masochist" or "try-hard". A lot of these games are significantly more punishing than the original Dark Souls ever was
It's not even punishing IMHO, like it's just cheap 'hard' walk around corner insto death because you didn't know whatever event was there was there, and only way to learn this was... Walk around the corner and die, now, proceed to waste your time walking back get past that corner, die on next... Repeat.
i spent a couple of dozen hours with hollow knight as a fan of the metroidvania genre, but after a while the barriers to continuing were just too many. after a while, any traversal basically requires combat, and the grindy combat just slows the game to a crawl. add to that the corpse run mechanic, and at that point it's just not worth it.
Since you like Metroidvanias, have you tried Ori and the Blind Forest? Personally I found it to be tuned very well for difficulty. I ended up beating it without realizing there was a triple-jump ability you could find.
Unfortunately the sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, wasn't as good in my opinion. They ended up pulling a few mechanics from Hollow Knight, which detracted from the uniqueness of the first game.
yes, i really liked it. it was a bit difficult in some places (i don't know how many times i had to re-do the tree flooding) but the aesthetic really made it worth it.
one of my more recent stand-outs in the genre was yoku's island express, which is also a real treat.
Yeah, I tried giving it a shot twice, but both times after 5-6 hours I just came to the conclusion that the game wasn't respecting my time, and was punishing me for exploring.
The worst part is that its popularity lead to other games copying it, meaning half of metroidvanias released after it have the same issues. I started to just filter out any game that had corpse runs as it was a good indicator of how much I'd hate it.
Hit the nail on the head. That’s why I stopped too. And I don’t even mind difficult games; Sekiro is an all-time favorite of mine. But Sekiro is compact, dense, no filler. Hollow Knight felt empty and sparse and traversal was a chore.
“Souls-like” games - memorise attack patterns, the game. Not hard, just tedious.
“Tactics” style games, just don’t see the fun in that sort of game.
Sony’s bread and butter for the last 20 years, the ultra-linear handholding cinematic hold-forward-to-win games. Just watch a direct-to-digital movie if you want to watch a terrible D-grade tier movie.
Persona, Ace Attorney etc type games. Just literally do not see the appeal in these at all.
I agree with your critique of souls-likes, but there was something really special about the original Dark Souls that none of its successors really captured. This was before they decided that "ultra-hard" was a good selling point and the attack patterns were far more simple. The atmosphere and difficulty were still there, but they made sense and fit with the rest of the game and its ideas very cohesively.
Not sure if anybody will understand this, but it's like the difference between spicy food that's spicy because it has peppers and spicy food that's spicy because they added a bunch of artificial stuff. Spicier usually means tastier, because it has more of the flavorful peppers. But in the case of, for example, Dark Souls 2 or Elden Ring, it's like they just added a bunch of capsaicin (difficulty) without including any more flavors of the peppers. The difficulty is beyond the degree to which it was artistically meaningful in the original Dark Souls.
I love you for the spice metaphor (which I have to use all the time on friends who gift me hot sauces), but did you really think DS2 was harder than the original? It's my favorite, and it's because of the combat being 'slower' and the open vistas of the world appealed more than the first game. Hell, it introduced bosses that you didn't even need to dodge if you learned which way to move during their windups.
I did find it more difficult than DS1 but, as in my metaphor, in a more artificial way. I'm thinking of the nerfed rolling frames (before you level ADP), more difficult parry timing, far more multi-opponent bosses, and especially the way that dying will reduce your max health. Any of these on their own would be totally unremarkable, but all together it feels like there was much more explicit focus on adding things to make it more difficult (which I believe was also reflected in the marketing of the games).
I also think that the atmosphere and artstyle of DS1 was much more serious and unique, whereas DS2 has comparatively much more ghoulish cartoony vibes, which just made it feel incongruent. Eg: the undead are now green and less scrawny, making them seem more like generic goblins rather than how they were in DS1. I just feel like there was an overall shift in the focus to be less about the unique world and its story and more about a Ghosts 'n Goblins -esque rage game.
I don't think Dark Souls 2 is the most difficult in the series but I think it's the first one where the difficulty started to feel unfair and like it was missing the point.
Basically here's the vibes I get from each game:
DS1: A somber and holy journey
DS2: Ghosts 'n Goblins but 3D
DS3: Killing cool bosses is so cool
ER: All of the above
Ah, I sort of forgot about the slowly reducing max health. I think that and the different parry timing (the best mechanic in all the games, baby baby) made me quit it the first time I played. I don't even remember it bothering me in the second time I tried, maybe because I had played elden ring and dark souls again at that point and didn't try to horde items.
Pre-edit edit: Wait, I remember now. I played the game the way it was 'meant' to be played, with a giant weapon and just beating everything up before they could get me. I remember telling my friend that the openings in the boss attacks felt like they were specifically designed around the giant weapon timings. It just made everything easier.
Yeh I get you. It’s like when turning the difficulty up in a game all they do is make enemies take more damage to kill and do significantly more damage when they hit you. That’s just crap. Difficulty increases should be about more than that, like better AI and more/different enemies.
“Souls-like” games - memorise attack patterns, the game. Not hard, just tedious.
Are people memorizing attack patterns? This one comes up a lot and I don't really get it. The boss does a thing and I react, which is how most real time combat games are, I think?
I guess something like Skyrim you mostly just stand there and trade blows.
Memorizing attack patterns IS how you're reacting though. How many of the bosses can you walk in and just wipe the floor with on the first try? You learn that a pull back to the right means you need to dodge left, now; a dash to the right means waiting two seconds, jumping, then dodging towards them; etc., etc.
I know for certain that when I go replay elden ring the only reason I can clear the tree sentinel as soon as I leave the cave is because I know just how to react to the boss' "thing."
How many of the bosses can you walk in and just wipe the floor with on the first try
A pretty good amount, though that's confounded by playing lots of similar games over the years. But, like, I see the boss lift his weapon way up and I go "I bet he's going to swing. I should get out of the way." Sure, there is an element to "I've seen this before - I know if I run behind him after the big butt stomp I can hit him easily", but that's hardly unique to fromsoft.
What sort of games don't have enemies that you learn their moves? Like, you play Baldur's Gate 3 and you learn "ok, that wizard has Sleep prepared, I should keep my HP up." Or you play Hades and learn "ok, these guys like to charge but then take a second to recover". This complaint is not unique to souls-likes but I don't know if I've heard it brought against any other game.
It's not a complaint to me, personally, but I can see how some folks might not like it. A similar feeling for me would be the way racing games are designed, with npcs having 5-10% extra acceleration, while you have 5-10% greater top speed, meaning that you have to be far better at keeping your speed up, which entails learning each race track very well compared to just being good at racing in general.
As to the bg3 or hades, yeah, completely agree. Using enemy patterns against them is one of those things where having played other games in the past means you can play this game better. Elden ring though, specifically adds in false timings and 'gotcha' mechanics that punish dodging at the wrong time, or in the wrong direction. It's much more blatant than in the dark souls games. Melania and her butterfly dance, margit and his golden hammer swing, pause, swing, the crucible knight and his sword dragging on rocks AND his double tail swing and so on. Those aren't bosses you just walk in and fight well the first time (well, margit is such a git, so maybe him).
It’s not unique to from soft games, but it is literally the entire games “difficulty”. They usually just give them extreme levels of health and make them do tonnes of damage so you have to make few mistakes in recognising and reacting to the patterns.
Its a big reason why I don’t care about single player action games.
Yes, that’s how you’re reacting to the boss or any other enemies in games. You know that they do attack x, y, and z and then are vulnerable for 2 seconds, or which moves are parry-able to stun them, etc. Enemies in games have set move lists, and they have pre-set patterns and weak points etc.
For example when you see a skeleton you know exactly which moves and attacks patterns it has, and when to block/parry/strike to defeat them.
Ace Attorney is more of an interactive visual novel than a game and should be treated as such more than a normal video game. The appeal is the wonderful cast of characters that you get to know throughout the chapters and trials, and solving the cases for yourself.
I feel 2 leant too hard into the "generic cover shooter" trope pretty hard and although I love all of them, I think the gameplay of 3 really got the best mechanically, though it was also the lightest on the RPG mechanics and was weaker in that regard.
Story wise, they all do their respective jobs as a trilogy excellently. 1 introduced the world and the main players well and setups a good "big bad" to defeat. 2 is a good transition to the darker tone and fleshes out a lot of the galaxy and in 3 you have the cataclysmic final showdown.
The worst thing about ME is the continuing EAness of the whole publication.
Yeah, to be clear I felt mixed about ME2's gunplay as well. But ME1's gameplay in particular always felt so off to me, and if that's OP's only experience I can totally sympathize with that.
ME1 is playable if you pick a gun focused class. The caster classes are brutal to play. 2 is a bit better for casters, but ammo and cover mechanics get annoying. 3 is pretty good but has the weakest story and the space exploration is the most annoying.
I'm curious what you thought was terrible about KOTOR's gameplay. It was pretty much D20 star wars (I can't remember if d20 was the ffg or the other company's) with the computer rolling the dice, and D20 games are pretty neat.
The "make the decisions and then spend five minutes watching them play out" thing was the main frustration with that one. Maybe it feels intuitive and natural for someone who grew up with tabletop RPGs, but for someone more used to roguelikes and JRPGS it felt like the feedback loop was too long.
Souls.
I’ve tried em and find them repetitive and cheesy in their lack of little details that make games fun for me.
I tried Elden ring and thought it was the ugliest, most repetitive game I’ve ever played.
I don’t get the hype for the souls series, it’s just making a game repetitive and difficult to justify its lack of substance
Pokemon. I had a blast playing Emerald, but starting leaf green directly after, I lost all interest in the series. It just felt like being punished to have to start from 0 again and maybe Emerald is just a better game. I'd like to give it a try... if you'd let me play it on my phone or pc, Nintendo! old woman yells at cloud
By the 4th gen, things started to get stale. I think most of the love was gone by that point.
Instead of going forward, I recommend looking back. Try playing Pokemon Crystal on an emulator. I started recently and it's eye-opening how enjoyable it is.
You might try the custom made roms. I personally loved the fire red version that someone modded to make it so you couldn't just grind out levels to win. The gym bosses used strategies and had tms that countered the easy type bonuses.
Everyone is going gaga for Peak rn (including my BF) and I don't see the appeal at all other than maybe the social aspect. The game itself looks boring AF.
I also haven't liked many AAA games since graduating high school. All these things that are cultural phenomena like The Last of Us just... Didnt like 'em. I feel like most of the AAA games that blow up in popularity are only applauded for the story and dialogue, because the game itself tends to be generic and mid and does nothing special, unique or interesting at all.
I want to see a shift from focusing on telling a story or trying to be High Art and just make a thing that is fun to play as a game that also isn't loaded with MTX and is only fun to play because it psychologically addicts you.
peak is definitely an interesting entry into the genre that the internet has dubbed "friendslop": games that sell shittons because you need friends to play them, and which are simple enough to have a conversation while playing. peak is very entertaining, but that entertainment value builds heavily on the social aspect. that's why there are so many items to sabotage players and add randomness. playing peak completely seriously is not fun, but fucking around is.
I love the devs previous game, Another Crab’s Treasure, for its tough but fair gameplay, and really well implemented progression. I was a little disappointed to discover that Peak leans more into the multiplayer, emergent gameplay, “eternal beta” feel of many indie games today. The concept seems fun, and it can apparently be played solo, but all of the gameplay footage I have seen from non-devs is people screaming frantically at each other about some new feature while nothing happens.
I might be a hypocrite though, because I am interested in the upcoming game Big Walk from House House.
I had a friend try to get me to get peak, and it broke my heart. There are a ton of those types of games, but because it's multiplayer you have to get others to get into them and I just... couldn't do it. They get popular for a few weeks, then you never play them again. I still haven't gotten my friends to beat chained together with me, and I think that's the bee's knees! I'll stick to the ones I already have and try to push folks to buy those because they're under $5.
The Total War series should theoretically be right up my alley, since I'm a history nerd and I put a LOT of time into Paradox games (EU4, CK2, HOI4, Stellaris, and Surviving Mars are all high on my hours played chart).
But for whatever reason, I've just never clicked with the Total War versions of the same thing. For old school, I played Empire and Medeival. For new school, I dipped into Atilla because it was on a sale. I figured old mechanics/new mechanics, maybe one will work better than the other. But while I did somewhat enjoy Empire, the Total War series in general just has never grabbed me.
I have the same issue with the Assassin's Creed series. History Nerd...should be right up my street. But just have never clicked with me despite trying multiple games. THOSE however are much more clearer to me as to why. It's the cut and paste gameplay loop that Ubisoft has in ALL of their series.
Unlock an area, do random missions based on a number system for difficulty, interspersed with main plot missions. Move to another area, repeat. Some missions encourage you to team up with other people and go online. Others can be bypassed by micro-transactions. They literally haven't changed their core loop in years, whether that's Assassins Creed, Watchdogs, Shadow of War/Mordor, The Division, Far Cry....the list goes on and on.
I tried Warhammer total war thinking I would love it. But the game was just... Not funny to me. I felt like the game was trying to make itself funny too hard. Like I was never able to breathe. Game would be literally spamming armies out of nowhere so I cannot stay a single turn idle, it was always giving me another mission, a new thing to do. Too overwhelming.
I suppose it's specifically engineered with some other public in mind, but certainly it doesn't seems to be me.
For me its Metroid, and really the whole Metroidvania genre. I can never tell when a challenge is supposed to be possible, or if I'm supposed to come back later, and and up wasting hours trying to do something only for it to be trivial later. I don't find this at all rewarding.
That said Tunic was a fantastic game, and I love the concept of the 'Metroid-Brainia', purely because of the concept that every challenge is theoretically possible from the start, you just need to learn how to do it.
The quality is just so low, the issues so glaring, I can't. It's like reading a fine book riddled with so many typos you give up after 2 pages because you're so distracted.
Okay, to be fair, maybe the latest Skyrim iteration is better! I haven't tried. Wouldn't bet on it, though.
Back in the day when people might not have had enough games to keep them occupied, Bethesda games were always there providing massive bang for buck.
It's different being an adult and having access to way more digital entertainment. Now we don't feel as compelled to stretch our enjoyment as much as possible.
I think when I tried it originally I wasn’t into the controls and how they felt. I’m more forgiving these days so I wonder if I’d enjoy the series now? I love a good story.
Ubisoft fired the creator of Assassin's Creed way back after the 2nd (and best) one released. After that, they've just been milking it and only useful idiots haven't caught on yet.
I still recommend replaying the old ones. They were hit-or-miss depending on the person even back when they released, but I was one of they people that got hit hard.
The first one is one of the few games that actually has something to say for those paying attention.
::: spoiler spoiler
"That war your ancestors started, it never ended."
:::
I'm not sure about PS5, but the first 2 are available on PC. They're pretty old now, so you shouldn't need an expensive computer to play them.
You can download them for free at 1337x.to and use the free VPN at https://riseup.net/en/vpn to do it safely. Don't forget that you can use a controller with a computer!
You can watch the story on YouTube if you want. Other games did the formula better now. The "shadow of" games and horizon series are very similar gameplay loops done better.
The first time I played Borderlands 1, I didn’t understand what it was going for and I didn’t like it. I picked it up years later and blasted through the entire series. It was a riot! I’m older, so all of the stupid references are fucking hilarious to me like the ninja turtles, Star Wars, Frankenstein, Godzilla, Lord of the Rings, Moby Dick, etc.
I think I'm past being mystified by there being a market for stupid, terrible games. I used to find it confusing but the answer for so many confusing things in life is just 'idiots exist.'
the act 1 finale twist was painfully telegraphed and i just wasn't feeling the new guy in act 2.
what got me to drop the game though was doing one of those extremely vertical platforming challenges and falling off on the very last jump. twice in a row. i know there's only cosmetics for finishing it but the platforming was so aggressively shitty that the prospect of having to do any more of it was enough to just move on.
I am blessed enough to love those things. A friend of mine who originally recommended the game hated those as well. They are made to be frustrating, made to be hated. After all, "you’re the second human to have ever completed this challenge“ I did everything on the first try while it took my friend 3 hours to do the tower of randomly placed objects.
I felt the same with the new guy, but it got a lot better when his flaws came out.
I really wanted to like Baldur's Gate 3. I didn't play the prior games in the series, but I know a bunch of people who brim with excitement about it.
I've not really been involved in DnD in any form. I played the original Warcraft RTS as a kid, I've read everything from Tolkien, and I love some of the Elder Scrolls games, but that's about it. I'd always got the impression that a lot of it was a bit hammy and amateur on the writing side, but I assumed BG3 would buck the trend.
...I just didn't vibe with it at all. I found the combat exasperating, I didn't mesh with the character motivations, and I failed to really get immersed. Maybe I really needed more backstory than a couple of lore lessons over beers.
It's obviously a great game, but it was such a miss for me, and I wish that weren't the case.
Hero Shooters, specifically Overwatch and R6 Seige. Really any sort of MOBA too. I dont really get the point of having unique characters with loads of lore and an underlying story if you aren't going to get to experience any of it in gameplay. TF2 gets away with it because the classes arent really characters, they are more like an archetype of that class and the story is just supplemental stuff.
The 'permanent' voucher upgrades aren't actually permanent at all, and I lost interest after that. There's no meta advancement beyond unlocks, which is not for me.
I've played a number of Zelda games, including the original and enjoyed pretty much all the ones I've tried.
I've only tried the first of the new God of War games and hated it. I dropped it after 3-4 hours. I was annoyed with how clunky the controls were and it was mainly set arenas for combat with boring hallways with slow running in between
My issue is that I already stated which one I liked and disliked.
Plus the way your comment is worded made it sound like you were going for some big 'gotcha' arguement, like "but you said you like Zelda so it doesn't make sense to not like Darksiders"
3 felt so completely different. 2 was my favorite, and I grew to like 3. I can completely understand someone trying to play the original and not liking it. It feels horribly dated now. I also couldn't really get through the fourth.
Halo. I've been hearing about how cool and just good the games are. How deep and interesting the lore is.
I was visiting old games I heard good things about but never played. I had finished with the Half Life games and enjoyed them.
Then I decided to get the Master Chief Collection.
Started with Reach. Shooting immediately felt bad. The characters started dying off almost immediately after meeting them. Then the game was finished.
That was... Disappointing.
Well alright. Maybe Reach is a black sheep.
Onto Halo CE. Shooting felt even worse. The open areas were pretty cool, but there were a lot of small frustrations with the game. Story wasn't anything special. Certainly none of that "deep lore".
Well... Halo 2 then? Felt a lot like Halo 1. More story, yes, but it was as if the game assumed I was already invested in the story. About two thirds in I realised I was still waiting for Halo to finally become cool or good.
Personally, I think Halo's heyday was decades ago when Halo first came out. It was a huge success back then, and I'd argue that's half the reason it's enjoyed by some today. Halo 2 was also very excellent. Halo 3 came out on the Xbox 360, so it had a different feel to it since it was on a different platform. The other games (Reach, 4, ODST) couldn't even hold a candle to the literal monumental success that the original Halo was.
Could the people telling you that have possibly been talking about the books? There's >20 books telling various storylines from the franchise and they go way deeper than the games.
I will agree that the games are pretty sparse for storytelling. They tend to go more "show, don't tell". The problem with that is that the lore of Halo needs to be told and can't really be shown
Yes, often books and movies are brought up when it comes to Halo, but I don't see the point at all. I have been shown a few "cool" or "epic" clips from the movies by Halo fans but... they looked pretty bad.
When I get interested in getting into the weeds of some lore, it's because the main-line (be it movies, or games) has made me interested to learn more. Halo never made me interested. Stuff just happened in cool alien environments, and it wouldn't be the first time I've played a shooter with little story in cool alien environments (even from the era Halo is from... probably especially in the era Halo is from).
I think I was able to deep dive into the series' lore because I started with Halo 3, and because I was a teenager at the time. I eventually went back to play CE and 2 and they... are certainly products of their time
Halo was good because it was good when it was released. The concept of 'good story with gunplay' has been massively upgraded by now, AND the story told has been repeated by other games/tales with their own twists so it feels like you've seen it before. Completely agree with you on shooting feeling off. The only reason I would play it in the coop modes is for nostalgia.
I think I would have loved Persona if it wasn't a turn-based RPG. I like the artstyle, and I like visual novel games. I just really can't be bothered with turn-based RPGs.
It has some ups and downs for me. It's premised on speed and momentum and crazy loops. The first zone of the first game does a lot to establish that. It then promptly throws it all away in the second zone with a water level that puts in stops everywhere.
Second game figured out the formula.
To reopen the 16-bit playground wars, looking back at the merits of just the games, I'm surprised this was ever considered competition for Super Mario World. Sonic is fine, but Mario World is a masterpiece of design.
I'd watch a story recap for the first game, then play all of them after that up until black flag. Origins/odyssey/valhalla are good if you are into massive open worlds that can get pretty repetitive and have about a billion side quests and stealth doesn't matter nearly as much unless specifically required for some rare quests. I love them, but the Ezio trilogy was peak AC imho.
Horizon series. Retried multiple times on horizon zero dawn, probably got close to 15 hours and just didn't care for the story. Gameplay was what kept me playing but after a while, I didn't feel compelled to continue if I had no interest in anything else that was happening. Heard Forbidden West is better but I couldn't care less
You have to treat Horizon like a mystery and you’re a detective. I had a hard time getting into it and then I started to try and give a shit about why the world is the way it is and really listening to the logs I found. I finally got very invested and beat both games and loved them.
It won’t be for everybody though. I definitely wouldn’t play Forbidden West without knowing the first game’s story.
So much fun driving around and shooting stuff up. Great humor as well.
Even better with nice graphics and lighting effects.
Just wow, GTA but you are actually in a 3D city.
Vice City had a great vibe and colorful world.
S.A. huge world (felt like it at the time) and a great radio soundtrack. So much to see and do.
Depressing, slow and mostly a chore.. Didn't like this one.
Alive, funny and beatiful open world. Really great if you skip multiplayer and the later milking of the franchise.
We'll see...
The Lazlo character was also great on the radio show.. He was kind of the voice of reason until they completely ruined him with an apprarance as sleazebag on GTA V.
Vice city is my personal favorite, maybe just because of the helicopter, but the feeling of its setting was sick. The whole mobster schtick really worked, while the later games all felt sort of forced with their criminality.
SA and its multiplayer mods were so freaking cool, though.
Most games I just didn't like and felt it wasn't fair to call them out, but gambling addiction pushing games like FIFA are high on the list, especially since the annual releases seem to be somewhat identical.
I’m going to get absolutely roasted for this, but Elden Ring. I put about 10 hours in trying to like it, but it just made me angry and miserable. And it was kinda boring.
I also don’t care for Souls games, but I think ‘angry and miserable’ is the intended experience.
I'm a fan of the Soulsborne games but gave up on Elden Ring because I wasn't a fan of the empty open world gameplay.
I really tried, maybe 20-30 hours, but didn't enjoy it much.
Playing as a spellcaster was maybe a mistake.
I recognize it's a quality game though. I might try again with a melee character. Maybe modded?
I can recommend a dual Strength/faith build. I did that my first playthrough and it was a lot of fun. I think the Incantations was much funner to play with than the Sorceries. They have far more variety in them. Plus there is a cure Scarlet Rot Incantation that I got a lot of mileage out of to make certain parts less oppressive.
Thanks, I might try that!
I generally like hybrid builds with more variety. Don't know why I went full mage...
Dex/arcane bleed builds. Beautiful.
Maybe. The sorcery/incantation/various melee is less of a distinction than many make of it. A lot of it ends up feeling the same: you dodge, wait for the opening, hit your 'attack.' If the 'learn to be a badass by learning patience and boss attacks' isn't your thing though, you might never find yourself liking it.
The best elden ring experience is elden ring seamless coop. It makes the game 100000000x better. If you want to play with someone, hit me up. I just got elden ring working again on linux (it had a freezing problem until I reinstalled the OS, probably the nvidia drivers borking out), and am loving it.
Souls games in general for me, but especially Bloodborne. My girlfriend at the time loved the game so much she had multiple tattoos. She was so happy to guide me through Bloodborne and tried to explain lore, but there's so very little actual plot that anything I learned just fell out of my head. I couldn't tell you anything about what happened despite finishing the game and DLC. I don't get it.
Souls like. There are literally situations you cannot win on the first try, like when you walk through a door and something stabs you from behind because it was leaned against a wall out of sight.
Also just don’t enjoy fighting gigantic things with ambiguous hitboxes.
Exactly, when a game on purpose disrespects your time and forces you to repeat things for no reason.
Some call it a difficulty curve, I don't call it anything, just uninstall it.
I know I'm biting bait but I rarely got jumped by the "guy around the corner" traps because I looked before walking in. Counter intuitively, running in will also often avoid the worst of it.
I remember people complaining about the floor traps in the first game and I was like "you mean the raised tiles that are a different color? Yeah I was careful around those". Player messages also help.
It's okay the game isn't for you - but "literally can't win on the first try" is hyperbole.
Definitely avoid monster hunter if ambiguous hit boxes aren't your thing.
Genshin Impact
The characters look like sex dolls with uncanny valley face
"Mom, can we have Zelda BOTW?"
"We have that at home."
Zelda BOTW at home: ...
what is this male traveler slander
and what about the gameplay
That also looks shit
The gacha is a really, really big downside, but still:
All of the Monster Hunter games. The gameplay is awful and the story drags on. I thought it was just that I picked the first one, but after trying the others it feels like a $5 game series.
And trying to play with your friends? Fuck you, do 30 minutes of boring solo stuff before we even think about letting you have fun.
And did you want to just connect and go? Fuck you get online and search up a guide how to do coop missions with your friends
Gacha.
For most anything else, I can simply chalk it up as a difference in tastes when I don't like the gameplay, or art style, or whatever. Even those shitty horror games for babies I despise are perhaps fun if you dive into the lore at the right age, who knows. I certainly have obsessed for less than mediocre games.
But no one likes gacha, or at least should like it. It's gambling marketed to kids, preying on the people without impulse control. No "you can spend 2 hours of your life every day on this and save up 2$ in currency" is changing that, in fact that is even worse.
And yet they give hoyoverse a pass for their series, because everything around it is so high quality. Open your fucking eyes! Games are not supposed to punish you for not playing!
But of course, no accusation without confession, I am quite fond of the yugioh simulator, and used to defend it the same way. I try to resolve this double standard by doing what I feel they should do: Never gush about it, only mention it in shame, and always warn people to not pick it up.
Gacha has gotten out of hand. I played one for a year or two a long time ago and don't regret it, but it was far more generous than anything today. It used to be a fun genre to download a game and play for a day or two with all the free stuff, but even that hasn't been true for a while with all the dark patterns they use in these games now.
I can't even make the most explicit Gacha hating post without you guys saying how yours is the one, the special one that's good.
I hate the concept. They are designed to obfuscate how much money and time you spend on them with different currencies that don't feel like real money. They are dark pattern after dark pattern, trying to get you to look at the shop every time you boot up, and entice you with limited offers every chance they get. And this all is then defended by well meaning people like you and me with "Well, you can play for free if you grind hard".
And when I look up if the different in-game currency thing applies to this game, I find out I have heard of Limbus company as the Korean one that got a "radical feminist" artist fired because a swimsuit didn't reveal enough skin for the fanbase's liking.
You misunderstood my comment. Fuck off with your recommendation.
Apart from the endless EA, Ubisoft and similar AAA copy/paste titles I never understood the hype around MOBA games.
I don't get it. Its not real time strategy, but not an ARPG either, you dont create a character, instead have an insane pool of unique characters with a few abilities each. Its just feels like someone wrote down some random game mechanics and choose 5 at random.
All levels are basically the same with mild variations and the whole gameplay loop boils down to optimised fast clicking on abilities and to get strong asap.
Its super boring for me and couldn't spend more than a couple hours with the games from the genre. Same goes for watching other people play.
Its just a cherry on top to have the biggest tournaments and cash prices, while the top players are celebrated as superstars. Also somehow the biggest MOBA communities are infamous for toxicity.
Definitely not my cup of tea.
MOBA started as RTS mods for people who liked micro and didn't like resource management. Add hypermonetization of everything for 20 years and here we are. I don't get it, either, but to each his own.
I liked the old WC3 mods because of RPG-like level progression. Gave a little hit of dopamine to see a build come together and steamroll the other side. This was well before there was a competitive scene.
The genre got hyper-monetized, and I noped out of that shit.
Everything you wrote is true, and I gotta respect that you've at least given mobas a try. It's not your cup of tea and that's alright.
One thing that you didn't mention is the team work. While there are toxic people out there, mobas tend to be games that a group of friends can play together for free. You are correct that the abilities can feel limiting - along that vein finding ways to chain spells together with your team mates was one of the most fun ways to get creative.
This is what makes watching pros play a lot of fun. There are people out there constantly experimenting with mixing items and spells to create hilarious strategies to gain an edge. There are all kinds of spells that can come off as overly subtle and dumb sounding, but you pair it up with something else and all of a sudden you have a wombo combo.
Mobas came out of War Craft 3, so any of the millions of people with a blizzard rts background will have skills that will transfer. The single hero format means you can focus all your attention in one place instead of keeping track of your army and your economy at all times. Starting with an established and automated base means that the game isn't on a knife's edge like RTSs. There's a lot of stability and simplicity here over RTSs.
The games tend to be simple in concept to understand but very difficult to master. I had a lot of fun picking a handful of heroes and learning how to best use them. They all have their own quirks and limitations that may not be obvious at first. Conversely, it was rewarding to learn how to shut down heroes that had stomped me in the past.
It is very difficult to get established in these games. It can feel like one of those tv shows that you have to get to the third season before things get better. And I can completely understand people wanting games that don't start off as rough. The high skill cap can keep people coming back for years though.
I hope this helps 😊
MOBAs are shit, but they struck a chord with people who are bad at games but want to feel good.
They survive based off of MMR and obscuring people's true ability. If most people playing MOBAs could see how bad they were, they would lose interest over night.
No Man's Sky: I've tried playing it and just end up getting bored. Every once in a while I'll go back and check it out again, feeling like I somehow didn't give it a fair shake, but remain underwhelmed.
Maybe next time...
This was the game that made me realize I prefer story over infinite sandbox games.
Even after it started getting praise due to all the updates, it just felt... empty every time I went back.
I really like sandbox games, but this one just didn't grab me (at least not yet).
Something about the way you fly in that game isn't satisfying.
It was better in the beginning I think… they gave you more control now but honestly it feels less satisfying
You need a feeling of momentum, like spiderman swinging or the space battles in battle star galactica
People KEEP saying that they “fixed” that game but every time I try it it’s still a pretty generic survival game in space. I don’t see how it’s even close to what they promised.
It's really not even a survival game.
You right, you right.
You might like Star Citizen when it comes out.
Just another 30 more years of development, and we'll finally have a space sim with retro graphics.
By that time we might have... Pffff... I dunno, X5, maybe even 6, that will have surpassed it on every front. Or Elite Dangerous will have all the features Star Citizen promised.
Good one.
FIFA and other sport team manager; Farming Simulator; Call of Duty; Fortnite and other battle royals (its just not my game mode.
Yeah, those games are lame as fuck.
Call of Duty was once good, but they chose to milk it to oblivion and now nobody cares.
Any games that have gatcha mechanics.
Final fantasy, FIFA, GTA, CoD, Modern warfare and Persona are the ones that spring to mind for me.
I was going to suggest CoD as well ... the whole series is mostly a carbon copy of the previous version. Let alone the gameplay is "run for 30 seconds, die, respawn and repeat.
COD games are fun but not interesting, and they're pretty interchangeable.
Final Fantasy is about atmosphere and presentation above all else.
Their production values are some of the highest in the industry.
It's a shame so much of it was used on turn-based game, but they've since pivoted to action combat and now we can get a balance.
Not Persona, no! It's basically Pokémon + dating sim, what's not to love (besides the usually slow af start)? 😭
Call of Duty. Yeah I liked the original modern warfare games but not enough to like the hype.
The original call of duty and battlefield games were revolutionary. If memory serves me correctly, they built off the success of Band of Brothers TV Show and gave a gritty representation of WWII in a first person shooter. Battlefield 1942's multiplayer was absolutely top notch too with its vehicles.
They deserved their credit back then, but have been milked beyond belief. They are the new FIFA series where each game brings nothing new, but still costs $80...
I really enjoyed COD: world at war. I don't think I cared for any after that.
It seems like all of the answers are "I personally didn't enjoy this game therefore I can not conceive of anyone else enjoying it."
I find that interesting.
How else would you interpret OP's question?
Something that is popular (or sells well) despite having no apparent appeal to anyone the commenter can think of.
I don't enjoy Bloodborne. I think I can figure out why there is a lot of hype for it.
While I'd interpret it this way, too, "can't understand the hype of" usually translates to simply "dislike", but with a stronger emphasis on invalidating the opinions of the people who do like it.
FIFA and Madden NFL
Dark Souls type games that are just pure grinding wasting time.
I bought this shadow game that look awesome gameplay was fun at first... Then something felt off.. Things were just ridiculously hard for no reason I kept dying on level one...
I was like... Wtf is this shit? Little googling and the game is made by the dark souls people and apparently this grinding over hard shit IS the appeal...
Na man, I got a job and kids and responsibilities and my one hour of playtime better be fun... And dieing and grinding ain't it.
Same, what I hate is how many souls like games they make, it’s just cheap
Hollow Knight.
There's a couple of things the devs could have done to make things way more tolerable, like not putting the fucking shades in the middle of platforming challenges and giving health bars to bosses so you can tell when you should go somewhere else instead of face-tanking them for 3 hours.
But god forbid anyone says anything even remotely disparaging against the game, as they're quickly mobbed by fanboys and told to "git gud" because they treat masochistic games like HK as some perverse dick-measuring contest.
And unfortunately I can't away from hearing about it with everyone sperging out over the upcoming sequel.
Imma just lump all souls like into this category tbh.
Pretty much. They need a different genre name, like "masochist" or "try-hard". A lot of these games are significantly more punishing than the original Dark Souls ever was
It's not even punishing IMHO, like it's just cheap 'hard' walk around corner insto death because you didn't know whatever event was there was there, and only way to learn this was... Walk around the corner and die, now, proceed to waste your time walking back get past that corner, die on next... Repeat.
i spent a couple of dozen hours with hollow knight as a fan of the metroidvania genre, but after a while the barriers to continuing were just too many. after a while, any traversal basically requires combat, and the grindy combat just slows the game to a crawl. add to that the corpse run mechanic, and at that point it's just not worth it.
Since you like Metroidvanias, have you tried Ori and the Blind Forest? Personally I found it to be tuned very well for difficulty. I ended up beating it without realizing there was a triple-jump ability you could find.
Unfortunately the sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, wasn't as good in my opinion. They ended up pulling a few mechanics from Hollow Knight, which detracted from the uniqueness of the first game.
yes, i really liked it. it was a bit difficult in some places (i don't know how many times i had to re-do the tree flooding) but the aesthetic really made it worth it.
one of my more recent stand-outs in the genre was yoku's island express, which is also a real treat.
Hmm. I'll have to check out the demo. The screenshots of the gameplay make me thunk I'll bounce off it, but figuring that out is what a dwmo is for
Yeah, I tried giving it a shot twice, but both times after 5-6 hours I just came to the conclusion that the game wasn't respecting my time, and was punishing me for exploring.
The worst part is that its popularity lead to other games copying it, meaning half of metroidvanias released after it have the same issues. I started to just filter out any game that had corpse runs as it was a good indicator of how much I'd hate it.
Hit the nail on the head. That’s why I stopped too. And I don’t even mind difficult games; Sekiro is an all-time favorite of mine. But Sekiro is compact, dense, no filler. Hollow Knight felt empty and sparse and traversal was a chore.
That's exactly why I quit too. You're smarter than me, since I spent over 30 hours on it before quitting.
Just looks like more indie-crap to me.
I'd wager a lot of the hollow knight fanboys haven't played anything classic like Megaman.
why would you wager that?
What were they wagering, I'm curious now.
the comment still exists
Oh yeah, so it does. My client was showing it as deleted until I refreshed.
“Souls-like” games - memorise attack patterns, the game. Not hard, just tedious.
“Tactics” style games, just don’t see the fun in that sort of game.
Sony’s bread and butter for the last 20 years, the ultra-linear handholding cinematic hold-forward-to-win games. Just watch a direct-to-digital movie if you want to watch a terrible D-grade tier movie.
Persona, Ace Attorney etc type games. Just literally do not see the appeal in these at all.
I agree with your critique of souls-likes, but there was something really special about the original Dark Souls that none of its successors really captured. This was before they decided that "ultra-hard" was a good selling point and the attack patterns were far more simple. The atmosphere and difficulty were still there, but they made sense and fit with the rest of the game and its ideas very cohesively.
Not sure if anybody will understand this, but it's like the difference between spicy food that's spicy because it has peppers and spicy food that's spicy because they added a bunch of artificial stuff. Spicier usually means tastier, because it has more of the flavorful peppers. But in the case of, for example, Dark Souls 2 or Elden Ring, it's like they just added a bunch of capsaicin (difficulty) without including any more flavors of the peppers. The difficulty is beyond the degree to which it was artistically meaningful in the original Dark Souls.
I love you for the spice metaphor (which I have to use all the time on friends who gift me hot sauces), but did you really think DS2 was harder than the original? It's my favorite, and it's because of the combat being 'slower' and the open vistas of the world appealed more than the first game. Hell, it introduced bosses that you didn't even need to dodge if you learned which way to move during their windups.
I did find it more difficult than DS1 but, as in my metaphor, in a more artificial way. I'm thinking of the nerfed rolling frames (before you level ADP), more difficult parry timing, far more multi-opponent bosses, and especially the way that dying will reduce your max health. Any of these on their own would be totally unremarkable, but all together it feels like there was much more explicit focus on adding things to make it more difficult (which I believe was also reflected in the marketing of the games).
I also think that the atmosphere and artstyle of DS1 was much more serious and unique, whereas DS2 has comparatively much more ghoulish cartoony vibes, which just made it feel incongruent. Eg: the undead are now green and less scrawny, making them seem more like generic goblins rather than how they were in DS1. I just feel like there was an overall shift in the focus to be less about the unique world and its story and more about a Ghosts 'n Goblins -esque rage game.
I don't think Dark Souls 2 is the most difficult in the series but I think it's the first one where the difficulty started to feel unfair and like it was missing the point.
Basically here's the vibes I get from each game:
DS1: A somber and holy journey
DS2: Ghosts 'n Goblins but 3D
DS3: Killing cool bosses is so cool
ER: All of the above
Ah, I sort of forgot about the slowly reducing max health. I think that and the different parry timing (the best mechanic in all the games, baby baby) made me quit it the first time I played. I don't even remember it bothering me in the second time I tried, maybe because I had played elden ring and dark souls again at that point and didn't try to horde items.
Pre-edit edit: Wait, I remember now. I played the game the way it was 'meant' to be played, with a giant weapon and just beating everything up before they could get me. I remember telling my friend that the openings in the boss attacks felt like they were specifically designed around the giant weapon timings. It just made everything easier.
I'm not complaining about the Ghosts 'n Goblins series though, Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts is one of the best games ever
Yeh I get you. It’s like when turning the difficulty up in a game all they do is make enemies take more damage to kill and do significantly more damage when they hit you. That’s just crap. Difficulty increases should be about more than that, like better AI and more/different enemies.
Are people memorizing attack patterns? This one comes up a lot and I don't really get it. The boss does a thing and I react, which is how most real time combat games are, I think?
I guess something like Skyrim you mostly just stand there and trade blows.
Memorizing attack patterns IS how you're reacting though. How many of the bosses can you walk in and just wipe the floor with on the first try? You learn that a pull back to the right means you need to dodge left, now; a dash to the right means waiting two seconds, jumping, then dodging towards them; etc., etc.
I know for certain that when I go replay elden ring the only reason I can clear the tree sentinel as soon as I leave the cave is because I know just how to react to the boss' "thing."
A pretty good amount, though that's confounded by playing lots of similar games over the years. But, like, I see the boss lift his weapon way up and I go "I bet he's going to swing. I should get out of the way." Sure, there is an element to "I've seen this before - I know if I run behind him after the big butt stomp I can hit him easily", but that's hardly unique to fromsoft.
What sort of games don't have enemies that you learn their moves? Like, you play Baldur's Gate 3 and you learn "ok, that wizard has Sleep prepared, I should keep my HP up." Or you play Hades and learn "ok, these guys like to charge but then take a second to recover". This complaint is not unique to souls-likes but I don't know if I've heard it brought against any other game.
It's not a complaint to me, personally, but I can see how some folks might not like it. A similar feeling for me would be the way racing games are designed, with npcs having 5-10% extra acceleration, while you have 5-10% greater top speed, meaning that you have to be far better at keeping your speed up, which entails learning each race track very well compared to just being good at racing in general.
As to the bg3 or hades, yeah, completely agree. Using enemy patterns against them is one of those things where having played other games in the past means you can play this game better. Elden ring though, specifically adds in false timings and 'gotcha' mechanics that punish dodging at the wrong time, or in the wrong direction. It's much more blatant than in the dark souls games. Melania and her butterfly dance, margit and his golden hammer swing, pause, swing, the crucible knight and his sword dragging on rocks AND his double tail swing and so on. Those aren't bosses you just walk in and fight well the first time (well, margit is such a git, so maybe him).
It’s not unique to from soft games, but it is literally the entire games “difficulty”. They usually just give them extreme levels of health and make them do tonnes of damage so you have to make few mistakes in recognising and reacting to the patterns.
Its a big reason why I don’t care about single player action games.
Yes, that’s how you’re reacting to the boss or any other enemies in games. You know that they do attack x, y, and z and then are vulnerable for 2 seconds, or which moves are parry-able to stun them, etc. Enemies in games have set move lists, and they have pre-set patterns and weak points etc.
For example when you see a skeleton you know exactly which moves and attacks patterns it has, and when to block/parry/strike to defeat them.
Ace Attorney is more of an interactive visual novel than a game and should be treated as such more than a normal video game. The appeal is the wonderful cast of characters that you get to know throughout the chapters and trials, and solving the cases for yourself.
This.
Sports games.
Mass Effect and KotOR
Both have absolutely terrible gameplay. Fans tell me the story makes it worth it but if I want a good story I can read a book.
Lowkey objectively false.
Not sure you know what that word means my doodle
"expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations"
Mass Effect 1's gameplay is clanky, but 2 is much better.
ME3 is fantastic. Andromeda's campaign is somehow even better feeling, and IMO Me3Coop is absolute peak FPS.
...KOTOR is indeed bad to play, heh. SWTOR is even worse.
I feel 2 leant too hard into the "generic cover shooter" trope pretty hard and although I love all of them, I think the gameplay of 3 really got the best mechanically, though it was also the lightest on the RPG mechanics and was weaker in that regard.
Story wise, they all do their respective jobs as a trilogy excellently. 1 introduced the world and the main players well and setups a good "big bad" to defeat. 2 is a good transition to the darker tone and fleshes out a lot of the galaxy and in 3 you have the cataclysmic final showdown.
The worst thing about ME is the continuing EAness of the whole publication.
Yeah, to be clear I felt mixed about ME2's gunplay as well. But ME1's gameplay in particular always felt so off to me, and if that's OP's only experience I can totally sympathize with that.
ME1 is playable if you pick a gun focused class. The caster classes are brutal to play. 2 is a bit better for casters, but ammo and cover mechanics get annoying. 3 is pretty good but has the weakest story and the space exploration is the most annoying.
Yeah. I'm finding that literally the only Bioware game that I've enjoyed is Dragon Age: Origins.
I really enjoy it, though.
Yeah, the first ME you need to really just get in the right mind-frame that it’s old and the controls are clunky. I loved 2 and haven’t played 3.
The controls are clunky, but that's not the main issue. It's the gameplay loop itself.
I'm curious what you thought was terrible about KOTOR's gameplay. It was pretty much D20 star wars (I can't remember if d20 was the ffg or the other company's) with the computer rolling the dice, and D20 games are pretty neat.
The "make the decisions and then spend five minutes watching them play out" thing was the main frustration with that one. Maybe it feels intuitive and natural for someone who grew up with tabletop RPGs, but for someone more used to roguelikes and JRPGS it felt like the feedback loop was too long.
Ah man I loved ME1. Heard the later ones were more gun-focused and decided to not check them out.
Souls. I’ve tried em and find them repetitive and cheesy in their lack of little details that make games fun for me.
I tried Elden ring and thought it was the ugliest, most repetitive game I’ve ever played. I don’t get the hype for the souls series, it’s just making a game repetitive and difficult to justify its lack of substance
Pretty much any AAA game. It's like going to the cinema to watch a movie, just the commercials beforehand never stop
Pokemon. I had a blast playing Emerald, but starting leaf green directly after, I lost all interest in the series. It just felt like being punished to have to start from 0 again and maybe Emerald is just a better game. I'd like to give it a try... if you'd let me play it on my phone or pc, Nintendo! old woman yells at cloud
Indirectly pokemon go for me lol, played it a bit but meh
By the 4th gen, things started to get stale. I think most of the love was gone by that point.
Instead of going forward, I recommend looking back. Try playing Pokemon Crystal on an emulator. I started recently and it's eye-opening how enjoyable it is.
Stale? Yes. But I would recommend bw/bw2, hgss, pla, and usum before crystal
Those are all for DS systems, which can be cumbersome to emulate due to have 2 screens on one monitor.
You might try the custom made roms. I personally loved the fire red version that someone modded to make it so you couldn't just grind out levels to win. The gym bosses used strategies and had tms that countered the easy type bonuses.
Everyone is going gaga for Peak rn (including my BF) and I don't see the appeal at all other than maybe the social aspect. The game itself looks boring AF.
I also haven't liked many AAA games since graduating high school. All these things that are cultural phenomena like The Last of Us just... Didnt like 'em. I feel like most of the AAA games that blow up in popularity are only applauded for the story and dialogue, because the game itself tends to be generic and mid and does nothing special, unique or interesting at all.
I want to see a shift from focusing on telling a story or trying to be High Art and just make a thing that is fun to play as a game that also isn't loaded with MTX and is only fun to play because it psychologically addicts you.
peak is definitely an interesting entry into the genre that the internet has dubbed "friendslop": games that sell shittons because you need friends to play them, and which are simple enough to have a conversation while playing. peak is very entertaining, but that entertainment value builds heavily on the social aspect. that's why there are so many items to sabotage players and add randomness. playing peak completely seriously is not fun, but fucking around is.
I love the devs previous game, Another Crab’s Treasure, for its tough but fair gameplay, and really well implemented progression. I was a little disappointed to discover that Peak leans more into the multiplayer, emergent gameplay, “eternal beta” feel of many indie games today. The concept seems fun, and it can apparently be played solo, but all of the gameplay footage I have seen from non-devs is people screaming frantically at each other about some new feature while nothing happens.
I might be a hypocrite though, because I am interested in the upcoming game Big Walk from House House.
I had a friend try to get me to get peak, and it broke my heart. There are a ton of those types of games, but because it's multiplayer you have to get others to get into them and I just... couldn't do it. They get popular for a few weeks, then you never play them again. I still haven't gotten my friends to beat chained together with me, and I think that's the bee's knees! I'll stick to the ones I already have and try to push folks to buy those because they're under $5.
Animal Crossing.
The thought of it disgusts me. Don't know exactly why.
Same, but mostly as a joke. To me, i like to joke that it's a perfect "non-game."
I can still recognize why others like it, though.
Fascinating. Do you feel the same way about Stardew Valley, My Time At Portia, Palia etc?
I know nothing about Stardew Valley aside from its name, and I've never heard of the other two. I can't say I have an opinion about them
As someone who put a lot of hours into both, I don't see the comparison between Stardew and Animal Crossing.
Not meant to be an aggro response. I just think the depth of each game is wildly different.
The Total War series should theoretically be right up my alley, since I'm a history nerd and I put a LOT of time into Paradox games (EU4, CK2, HOI4, Stellaris, and Surviving Mars are all high on my hours played chart).
But for whatever reason, I've just never clicked with the Total War versions of the same thing. For old school, I played Empire and Medeival. For new school, I dipped into Atilla because it was on a sale. I figured old mechanics/new mechanics, maybe one will work better than the other. But while I did somewhat enjoy Empire, the Total War series in general just has never grabbed me.
I have the same issue with the Assassin's Creed series. History Nerd...should be right up my street. But just have never clicked with me despite trying multiple games. THOSE however are much more clearer to me as to why. It's the cut and paste gameplay loop that Ubisoft has in ALL of their series.
Unlock an area, do random missions based on a number system for difficulty, interspersed with main plot missions. Move to another area, repeat. Some missions encourage you to team up with other people and go online. Others can be bypassed by micro-transactions. They literally haven't changed their core loop in years, whether that's Assassins Creed, Watchdogs, Shadow of War/Mordor, The Division, Far Cry....the list goes on and on.
I tried Warhammer total war thinking I would love it. But the game was just... Not funny to me. I felt like the game was trying to make itself funny too hard. Like I was never able to breathe. Game would be literally spamming armies out of nowhere so I cannot stay a single turn idle, it was always giving me another mission, a new thing to do. Too overwhelming.
I suppose it's specifically engineered with some other public in mind, but certainly it doesn't seems to be me.
For me its Metroid, and really the whole Metroidvania genre. I can never tell when a challenge is supposed to be possible, or if I'm supposed to come back later, and and up wasting hours trying to do something only for it to be trivial later. I don't find this at all rewarding.
That said Tunic was a fantastic game, and I love the concept of the 'Metroid-Brainia', purely because of the concept that every challenge is theoretically possible from the start, you just need to learn how to do it.
Most Bethesda games.
The quality is just so low, the issues so glaring, I can't. It's like reading a fine book riddled with so many typos you give up after 2 pages because you're so distracted.
Okay, to be fair, maybe the latest Skyrim iteration is better! I haven't tried. Wouldn't bet on it, though.
Mods are really the only thing keeping those games afloat. Modders end up doing half the work just to make the games halfway decent.
They're really quantity > quality.
Back in the day when people might not have had enough games to keep them occupied, Bethesda games were always there providing massive bang for buck.
It's different being an adult and having access to way more digital entertainment. Now we don't feel as compelled to stretch our enjoyment as much as possible.
Lmao. What. There are barely 5 iterations of their 2 franchises. Where is this 'quantity' you claim.
In the games themselves.
I'm sorry but I play games longer than Bethesda even exists and the quality was always shit imo.
It's fine to be a subjective thing though.
Assassin’s Creed
I think when I tried it originally I wasn’t into the controls and how they felt. I’m more forgiving these days so I wonder if I’d enjoy the series now? I love a good story.
Black Flag was the 1st I played and the only one I enjoyed. Tried others and they were just 'meh'.
(Why is a decent pirate/sailing game so hard to make? - almost 15 years later and still nothing seems to come close to what Black Flag offers)
If you're in it for the story, stay far away.
Ubisoft fired the creator of Assassin's Creed way back after the 2nd (and best) one released. After that, they've just been milking it and only useful idiots haven't caught on yet.
I still recommend replaying the old ones. They were hit-or-miss depending on the person even back when they released, but I was one of they people that got hit hard.
The first one is one of the few games that actually has something to say for those paying attention.
::: spoiler spoiler "That war your ancestors started, it never ended." :::
That’s what I was wondering is should I play certain games and then skip others? I have a PS5, is it possible to play first at all?
I'm not sure about PS5, but the first 2 are available on PC. They're pretty old now, so you shouldn't need an expensive computer to play them.
You can download them for free at 1337x.to and use the free VPN at https://riseup.net/en/vpn to do it safely. Don't forget that you can use a controller with a computer!
Thank you for the recommendation!
You can watch the story on YouTube if you want. Other games did the formula better now. The "shadow of" games and horizon series are very similar gameplay loops done better.
Borderlands, I always found the art style a bit off-putting.
its mindless shoot shit get loot fun. if that aint your bag you just wont get much out of it. handsome jack is hilarious though
The first time I played Borderlands 1, I didn’t understand what it was going for and I didn’t like it. I picked it up years later and blasted through the entire series. It was a riot! I’m older, so all of the stupid references are fucking hilarious to me like the ninja turtles, Star Wars, Frankenstein, Godzilla, Lord of the Rings, Moby Dick, etc.
Borderlands is a lot of wasted potential.
I blame the crack-addled, reddit-tier presentation more than anything else.
It's like watching a standup comedian who is secretly begging for their audience to laugh.
Soulslikes. I am so fucking sick of hearing about them. Elden Ring and it's jank ass UI did not deserve GOTY.
I think I'm past being mystified by there being a market for stupid, terrible games. I used to find it confusing but the answer for so many confusing things in life is just 'idiots exist.'
idk about popular series but as an rpg enjoyer i got around 15 hours into clair obscur and bounced off.
Don't hear that take very often. Almost everyone is too busy glazing it. I feel that way about Sea of Stars.
What didn't work for you in Clair Obscur?
the act 1 finale twist was painfully telegraphed and i just wasn't feeling the new guy in act 2.
what got me to drop the game though was doing one of those extremely vertical platforming challenges and falling off on the very last jump. twice in a row. i know there's only cosmetics for finishing it but the platforming was so aggressively shitty that the prospect of having to do any more of it was enough to just move on.
I am blessed enough to love those things. A friend of mine who originally recommended the game hated those as well. They are made to be frustrating, made to be hated. After all, "you’re the second human to have ever completed this challenge“ I did everything on the first try while it took my friend 3 hours to do the tower of randomly placed objects.
I felt the same with the new guy, but it got a lot better when his flaws came out.
I really wanted to like Baldur's Gate 3. I didn't play the prior games in the series, but I know a bunch of people who brim with excitement about it.
I've not really been involved in DnD in any form. I played the original Warcraft RTS as a kid, I've read everything from Tolkien, and I love some of the Elder Scrolls games, but that's about it. I'd always got the impression that a lot of it was a bit hammy and amateur on the writing side, but I assumed BG3 would buck the trend.
...I just didn't vibe with it at all. I found the combat exasperating, I didn't mesh with the character motivations, and I failed to really get immersed. Maybe I really needed more backstory than a couple of lore lessons over beers.
It's obviously a great game, but it was such a miss for me, and I wish that weren't the case.
Everything with round based battle mechanics.
I don't have much against any particular game since I can see something that someone would enjoy.
However there are sone things that I actually don't understand how someone would enjoy;
Always Online: all of your time, money, and love could just vanish underneath you
P2W / P2S: Ah yes, let me make the gameplay loop doing a 9-5
Gacha: Gambling is 80% of the gameplay but somehow they make it unfun
Live Service: By itself not bad. However it enables games to be released completely broken.
Hero Shooters, specifically Overwatch and R6 Seige. Really any sort of MOBA too. I dont really get the point of having unique characters with loads of lore and an underlying story if you aren't going to get to experience any of it in gameplay. TF2 gets away with it because the classes arent really characters, they are more like an archetype of that class and the story is just supplemental stuff.
Balatro. There’s just no motivation to keep playing. It’s just uninteresting. Love me some Slay the Spire, though.
Same. I tried Balatro as something for my tablet.
The 'permanent' voucher upgrades aren't actually permanent at all, and I lost interest after that. There's no meta advancement beyond unlocks, which is not for me.
Darksiders. Shit is ass.
I don't know that it's that bad, but yeah, I couldn't get into it either.
Agreed. I got about halfway through the first one before I quit
Do you like God of War and/or The Legend of Zelda?
I've played a number of Zelda games, including the original and enjoyed pretty much all the ones I've tried.
I've only tried the first of the new God of War games and hated it. I dropped it after 3-4 hours. I was annoyed with how clunky the controls were and it was mainly set arenas for combat with boring hallways with slow running in between
Darksiders is pretty much a mix of Legend of Zelda and God of War.
And your point is?
No need to be rude.
Since Darksiders draws a lot of influence from God of War, it would make sense that you aren't a fan of either.
I would've been surprised if you liked Legend of Zelda, the original God of Wars, but didn't like the first Darksiders.
My issue is that I already stated which one I liked and disliked.
Plus the way your comment is worded made it sound like you were going for some big 'gotcha' arguement, like "but you said you like Zelda so it doesn't make sense to not like Darksiders"
Really? Which one(s) did you play?
The first 2 are actually great games, and we're especially fortunate to even have the 2nd one considering it's insane budget.
I haven't played 3, but it looked like it tried to do things differently and that didn't work.
3 felt so completely different. 2 was my favorite, and I grew to like 3. I can completely understand someone trying to play the original and not liking it. It feels horribly dated now. I also couldn't really get through the fourth.
Halo. I've been hearing about how cool and just good the games are. How deep and interesting the lore is.
I was visiting old games I heard good things about but never played. I had finished with the Half Life games and enjoyed them.
Then I decided to get the Master Chief Collection.
Started with Reach. Shooting immediately felt bad. The characters started dying off almost immediately after meeting them. Then the game was finished.
That was... Disappointing.
Well alright. Maybe Reach is a black sheep.
Onto Halo CE. Shooting felt even worse. The open areas were pretty cool, but there were a lot of small frustrations with the game. Story wasn't anything special. Certainly none of that "deep lore".
Well... Halo 2 then? Felt a lot like Halo 1. More story, yes, but it was as if the game assumed I was already invested in the story. About two thirds in I realised I was still waiting for Halo to finally become cool or good.
I stopped playing.
Decided Halo as a whole is very overrated.
damn, should have started in order of release instead of jumping straight into reach. love halo
I highly doubt that would've changed anything.
Personally, I think Halo's heyday was decades ago when Halo first came out. It was a huge success back then, and I'd argue that's half the reason it's enjoyed by some today. Halo 2 was also very excellent. Halo 3 came out on the Xbox 360, so it had a different feel to it since it was on a different platform. The other games (Reach, 4, ODST) couldn't even hold a candle to the literal monumental success that the original Halo was.
Could the people telling you that have possibly been talking about the books? There's >20 books telling various storylines from the franchise and they go way deeper than the games.
I will agree that the games are pretty sparse for storytelling. They tend to go more "show, don't tell". The problem with that is that the lore of Halo needs to be told and can't really be shown
Yes, often books and movies are brought up when it comes to Halo, but I don't see the point at all. I have been shown a few "cool" or "epic" clips from the movies by Halo fans but... they looked pretty bad.
When I get interested in getting into the weeds of some lore, it's because the main-line (be it movies, or games) has made me interested to learn more. Halo never made me interested. Stuff just happened in cool alien environments, and it wouldn't be the first time I've played a shooter with little story in cool alien environments (even from the era Halo is from... probably especially in the era Halo is from).
Fair.
I think I was able to deep dive into the series' lore because I started with Halo 3, and because I was a teenager at the time. I eventually went back to play CE and 2 and they... are certainly products of their time
I had the same experience.
I kept comparing it with the absolute masterpiece that is Half-Life and it felt boring.
The story doesn't pull you, no characters are memorable, in some areas I felt like I was cleaning the exact same room over and over.
Even compared to something like Doom II, which lacks any real story and is all about playability and fun, it felt lacking.
I guess it's just not for me.
Halo is probably the biggest series that I never got into, because I didn't have an Xbox.
I have the MCC pirated on my PC, just waiting until I can get a full group to do the entire thing co-op.
Co-op is pretty cool, but be careful with playing co-op with friends who know the game well; they will absolutely rush ahead of everything.
Halo was good because it was good when it was released. The concept of 'good story with gunplay' has been massively upgraded by now, AND the story told has been repeated by other games/tales with their own twists so it feels like you've seen it before. Completely agree with you on shooting feeling off. The only reason I would play it in the coop modes is for nostalgia.
Persona
I don't dislike the series, per se, I literally just find the number of games with similar titles confusing. I have no idea what's what.
I think I would have loved Persona if it wasn't a turn-based RPG. I like the artstyle, and I like visual novel games. I just really can't be bothered with turn-based RPGs.
Perhaps I should just watch the anime adaptation.
It would be glorious if the next Persona game had action-combat.
All first person shooters. I grew up with original wolfenstien, doom, rise of the triad, unreal tournament, quake... Modding each was pretty popular.
Now all fps feel like mods of those games.
UT2k4 was awesome.
Sonic.
I've been trying to like them when they were published, but no. It's not really much fun.
It has some ups and downs for me. It's premised on speed and momentum and crazy loops. The first zone of the first game does a lot to establish that. It then promptly throws it all away in the second zone with a water level that puts in stops everywhere.
Second game figured out the formula.
To reopen the 16-bit playground wars, looking back at the merits of just the games, I'm surprised this was ever considered competition for Super Mario World. Sonic is fine, but Mario World is a masterpiece of design.
Most platformers do!
I'd watch a story recap for the first game, then play all of them after that up until black flag. Origins/odyssey/valhalla are good if you are into massive open worlds that can get pretty repetitive and have about a billion side quests and stealth doesn't matter nearly as much unless specifically required for some rare quests. I love them, but the Ezio trilogy was peak AC imho.
How so? I havent played yet but have been considering it
Horizon series. Retried multiple times on horizon zero dawn, probably got close to 15 hours and just didn't care for the story. Gameplay was what kept me playing but after a while, I didn't feel compelled to continue if I had no interest in anything else that was happening. Heard Forbidden West is better but I couldn't care less
You have to treat Horizon like a mystery and you’re a detective. I had a hard time getting into it and then I started to try and give a shit about why the world is the way it is and really listening to the logs I found. I finally got very invested and beat both games and loved them.
It won’t be for everybody though. I definitely wouldn’t play Forbidden West without knowing the first game’s story.
It looks good, but I honestly don't care for it because of the protagonist.
I'm old school.
All of them! GTA.... I know 1 game series
Hmm, I really liked most of the GTA series.
The Lazlo character was also great on the radio show.. He was kind of the voice of reason until they completely ruined him with an apprarance as sleazebag on GTA V.
Vice city is my personal favorite, maybe just because of the helicopter, but the feeling of its setting was sick. The whole mobster schtick really worked, while the later games all felt sort of forced with their criminality.
SA and its multiplayer mods were so freaking cool, though.
I liked GTA 2. 3D ruined everything.
Fromsoftware games
Also some bethesda games, the soulless ones like skyrim and fallout 4
Have you played the Souls games together?
They're some of the best co-op experiences around.
Skyrim and Fallout 4 are also anything but soulless. I'd like to know what kind of games you think have soul.
FS sadly doesn't include masochist friends with their game /s
Zelda and Pokémon. They bore me. I love the Pokémon tv show tho