This was actually my first thought too! Every time I buy a Rockstar game, I am immediately reminded how big the hype is compared to how bad the core game mechanics are.
I regretted buying RDR2, GTAV, and GTA4 when I first played them. I think I liked Vice City, but I expected it to be more of a visual upgrade than it was.
For RDR2, you get to slowly slog through snow… then play 40+ hours of poorly-designed quests and waves of dozens of enemies to slow you down so you can move the story forward.
The core gameplay mechanics are designed as a way to slow the story down rather than making the game fun. I would rather skip every single stupid gunfight. It’s so pointlessly repetitive.
None of these games really need 40 hours of padded story content, but people think they’re getting a “value” by spending their time playing mediocre things.
For GTAV, it’s honestly hilarious how bad the first driving mission is. People are straight-up delusional about these games.
The exploration part was ok for me, they’re some interesting points to find but that was it. When I’ve tour the map one time every biome start to look blend.
Shooting (which is the most part of the main story) is blend, unimaginative and frankly easy as opposed to hunting a squirrel that you need for a satchel.
Arthur didn’t resonate with me, he’s blind of Dutch who is clearly the bad guy at the start of the game. Playing 10h (iirc) a guy who follow blindly a fucking asshole wasn’t a great gaming experience
Dutch basically raised Arthur, but in a way that made Arthur believe that the world would always be against him. They were outlaws, and outlaws they would always be. They were treated poorly wherever they went, so they have no trouble doing bad things, which made people treat them poorly. So yeah, Arthur blindly followed an asshole.
But when the game starts we meet them at an infection point in society. Outlaws are less tolerated than they've ever been, their way of life is disappearing, and Arthur is forced to examine whether he really is a bad man, or whether circumstances have made him that way. And whether there's a difference anyway.
Cyberpunk 2077 only because it was busted as fuck on PS4.
Now it's a great game that I have over 1000 hours in but when it released holy fucking broken, batman. It's the only game I ever refunded in the PS store.
This is mine except I've not played it since launch. I know it's fixed now but I was vibing for it then. It took me a few hours to give up due to so many bugs. It also bugged me that I paid full and then it was busted, without any real non-corpo apology. I really think launch buyers should have just been handed the expansion. I just don't like that company anymore. Which is hard because I think they own GOG.
I got a $30 PS4 slim with a bad power supply I fixed myself, and I got cyber punk day one and other than one fixer side quest where the apartment resident didn't talk to me and kept walking forward, I had almost no bugs. No T poses, nothing more than some minor graphical glitches like a stretched model and maybe a half dozen crashes for my first play through.
Killzone. Teenage me bought into the "Halo-killer" hype and spent $50 on it (money that had taken me months to gather), only to get a mediocre shooter with a forgettable story, boring characters, and gameplay reminiscent of budget titles from the previous gen. The only good part was the enemy art design, and it turns out that was lifted straight from a famous anime.
Killzone is actually an interesting take on the shooter genre, but it was marketed to be something it isn't.
Here's a great video that breaks down how well the gameplay and story aligned: https://youtu.be/Ko8WgF0XVLc
Elden Ring. I knew I shouldn't have. I already knew from playing DS1 that I did not like these games. But it was different, they said. It's the most accessible yet they said. The lore is great, they said. And that's mostly true except for the last one, it's lore and story is dogshit. Hell, they couldn't even translate correctly what very little was there in regards to Ranni, and she has the best ending. Speaking of endings, holy fuck, what a shit show those short and recycled endings are. Anyways, I paid full price for this... thing, and that's what I really regret. Slap a 50% off sale on it, and, sure, it's totally worth it. But I won't ever be buying the DLC or doing another playthrough.
I'd only ever played the demo for the original Halo and a few multiplayer games on other peoples' consoles, but I've absorbed enough of the Halo lore from various sci-fi YouTube channels, trailers, cinematics, etc., that I found it pretty fascinating.
But the gameplay? Extremely not my cup of tea. I found the weapons very unsatisfying to use, (I grew up around Unreal Tournament's rocket launcher) the enemies too bullet-spongey, and the environments and encounters too samey and uninteresting.
Honestly, I just want a walking simulator that takes me through the story lol
That's what I've read and I've considered getting it again, especially with Alloyed Collective coming here soon. I'm just still a bit hesitant. I guess just afraid of being disappointed by my old favorite game again? I'm not sure honestly. I'll probably wait for reviews of the new DLC before I decide to trust Gearbox again.
RoR2 used to be one of my favorites. I have not touched it since Gearbox took over and it's incredibly disappointing to see that my hunch about them taking over was correct. They completely broke what wasn't broken and soured an incredible indie game and its legacy with one shitty update.
They've fixed the issues since, and there's easy to install mods to revert all the questionable tweaks they made. I'm not a particular fan of giving my money to slime incarnate Randy Pitchford, but to pretend the entire game is ruined is silly.
Honestly, the QoL improvement from auto-sprinting alone is worth the modding scene. I'm still having a blast and can easily lose 3 hours whenever I boot it up.
I was super hopeful RORR would scratch that itch, and while it's fun in it's own way, it's just not the same as ROR2. Chef is an absolute baddie at least!
Not because it's bad. I just get motion sickness badly. Twin bought it for us to play together, I play for 15 minutes go "oh no" and refund time it was!
Just about all mod packs swap out the cart ride for an alternative start, which makes the game a lot more enjoyable. If you're willing to give it another try, get the FUS modpack on Wabbajack (and set it to Ro Dah for more quality of life improvements).
It’s on console, so I can’t do any of those things.
And I honestly have zero plans of getting a more expensive vr system knowing how this has gone.
Thanks for the info though :) it’s not just the start. Visually it looks like the ground is right under your face and it’s just nauseating to have it whiz by.
PSVR I guess? If so, I feel you. Was super stoked to play Skyrim, and had a similar experience.
Managed to pick up a cheap PC vr headset and Skyrim VR on A Steam sale a bit later and gave it another shot. It's now one of my favourite VR worlds to just hang out in and walk around, chop some wood, etc.
The vanilla console experience was just very Bethesda. I swear they forgot how to make a good game right after Skyrim came out. Everything since then is them stumbling on even the most banal things like a UI that doesn't hate you.
Thing about getting a pc setup is that every vr game I’ve tried makes me somewhat nauseated, even ones like Rick and Morty where you stand in place, or half life alyx played on an index (played part of that at a VR arcade) are slightly nauseating. Anything that has more movement than those is downright not great. So I just think vr is not for me.. I could spend the money (that I really don’t have) for a better setup, but I suspect it wouldn’t be a whole lot better in reality.
Which is wildly depressing because I am desperate to like it. The used and very cheap psvr purchase was a trial to see if a nicer one would be worth it. I also have access to a psvr2, but I don’t really have much interest in trying it, honestly..
I played the demo, i thought the demo is very good, had fun with it, so i was so conviced i like it, i bought the deluxe version. Then i played it a couple of hours, but already knew in the first hours i drop it. I really don't know why i liked the demo anymore
Something I don't see people talk about enough is the pacing. I binged through it when my parents were out of town, and as long as I was following the story (not backtracking for stuff like missile upgrades) I swear I hit a save point every 30 minutes. There was never a time where I thought "I haven't saved in a while" where a save point wasn't right around the corner.
And the gameplay was great.
Except for the forced first person locked in place mode for missiles, especially during the final boss where you'd get shredded the moment you stopped moving.
Overwatch. Not a huge fan of fps, but even less of a fan of pvp team games. Someone told me it had a single player story mode, at least I got digital rewards from it for WoW.
first: Star Citizen. Hell I don't think I even bought it just "pledged" to is. so I "bought" the starter pack or whatever it was and...there was nothing to do. fly around, dock, get out, walk around, that's it. I felt like such an idiot because I had read all the crap about, I knew it was a scam, but there was just some perverted curiosity involved.
second: not so much a game but an "accessory": The Sega CD Memory Card. This was from when I was a kid. I was stupid. for my birthday I wanted a Sega CD Memory Card because for some stupid reason I was convinced that it would allow me to save the ENTIRE Sega CD games I rented to the memory card so I could have a bunch of games on the card. I have no idea why I believed this but sure enough for my birthday my parents bought it for me and surprise surprise it did not do what I thought it did. I was instantly disappointed and upset. I think it was because I read in like an EGM that it allowed you to "save your games" and I interpreted that as save the ENTIRE game not just your progress.
I don't know about instant, but despite picking it up at an all time low sale of $7 the closest I'm getting is GRIME. I kind of feel like I've bought a budget Silksong when that game is one I've stayed away from for a reason.
Don't get me wrong: GRIME is not a bad game. If you like Metroidvania Soulslikes you'll probably love it. Especially if you want a challenge. I think I'm just not good enough at video games to play this, especially parrying. The game really seems to force you to really parry 90% of the attacks, including from bosses. After I realised the first major boss was both a 2v1 and had a second health bar and instantly one-shot me after I missed a parry in the second phase I just took a break from it and haven't had a desire to boot it up again.
I might still give it another go, but it's getting more unlikely by the day.
That's too bad, I'm really enjoying it. Yeah as far as metroidvanias go it's kind of difficult which is unfortunate for it's jank-quota. I keep pressing on for the aesthetic but if you're already burnt out on the genre it might not be worth it to you.
Come back and try it again in a few years, it really is doing some cool stuff. I think you just have to be in a particular place to enjoy it
It's clearly a good game, and like you say it's doing some cool stuff. I love the art direction and the world building is really interesting. The graphics are beautiful too. The absorb system with the traits is an interesting take on character building.
I just find - more and more with age - that my enjoyment of struggling with games is decreasing. Maybe it's my skill and reflexes worsening, I don't know. I'm not getting much enjoyment out of super hard games anymore, and increasingly I notice that even if I manage to beat a particularly hard boss I don't feel that jubilant rush of elation afterwards but instead just feel a tired sense of "I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore".
It's funny though because I recently played through the whole Ninja Gaiden 3D franchise and those didn't give me that feeling despite being hard so maybe it really is just Soulslike fatigue.
I feel you there. I think I had a similar experience with Thymesia. I thought I could hang because I had already beat Sekiro and Lies of P but there does seem to be a trend towards ratcheting up the reaction times and amount of moving parts without signposting the mechanics at play.
Part of it feels like jank which is to be expected from smaller studios but part of it is making me think I might just be getting old too
Difficulty inflation is definitely a trend, which is to be expected to an extent as there is clearly a market for it and that market is generally getting more and more skillful with each game they play in the genre. Even within FromSoft for example it's noticeable that they feel the need to one-up themselves with every new release to the point that I felt no desire to try my hand at the Elden Ring DLC. Malenia was already more than enough for me.
I think you're right about smaller studios too, I imagine playtesting and getting the difficulty just right takes a lot of resources and is probably why so many small-studio Soulslikes either end up feeling way too easy or way too hard - both often in an unfun way.
God, yeah. The clearest indicator to me when difficulty is coming at the expense of the game is when I'm seeing most other players fight Malenia with only 1 of 2 builds (those who aren't doing a challenge run anyway). In that particular case maybe reducing the talisman effects to only +3.5% HP was just going to cause every player to give up whatever they were doing before and just play as Glintstone Tragoth Chungus or Rivers of Blood Radahn.
Sleeping Dogs, on PS4 specifically. It has a bug that won't let you complete the missions involving taking photos.
Couldn't fix it and the company went under, so no more bug fixes incoming.
X-Men vs Street Fighter for the PlayStation. I had many hours of fun in the arcade using Zangief and Dhalsim to crush people who played Ryu/Ken/Akuma combos.
The PlayStation version includes a code that allows players to compete in "pseudo-tag team matches", provided that each player uses their opponent's starting character as their partner. For example, if Player 1 is controlling Ryu and Player 2 is controlling Wolverine, then Player 1's partner will be Wolverine and Player 2's partner will be Ryu.
An acquaintance at work got me to try Welcome to the Game. I'm not a time management guy and I don't enjoy streamer-horror games. Was a pretty quick refund but I wish I could have found something else in common with the guy.
Marvel Midnight Suns for me. Bought it because it was from the maker of XCom. I think I only fought a couple of small battles in 3 hours of play because I was mostly running through a forest and googling what the best response was when talking to people. Realized there was so much of this extra crap and I hated it, then realized I was outside the refund window.
Dead Island 1. Unplayable broken garbage we tried to play online. I refused to buy anything the developer made after that. FOV was disgustingly low too.
Cyberpunk 2077 initially. I was trying to be careful and watched a streamer play the intro up to the montage video. They somehow didn't have a ton of bugs so my first impressions were oddly good. When I played, shit was breaking every single in-game cutscene and well you all know what release day was like. Got caught up in launch hype, should've waited.
Don't have a lot of examples. Usually I'm pretty good about playing legal demos first or pirating initially with demo state of mind. When I can tell I'm going to stick with a game I buy it and restart after a few hours. Occasionally I'll watch a streamer I trust and buy games that way too.
I don't value review sites really.
Edit: I did early days Kickstart Star Citzen, Yooka Laylee, and Broken Age. The classic fuckup trifecta.
I had just got through Super Mario World, saw this new game in the Sears Catalogue, saved my money, and after what feels like 3 months of hype for what had to be the amazing sequel... Yeah. No.
I think I played like 15 minutes of it. It was awful, controls were awful, camera was probably the worst from any game I can remember, nothing like its OG counterpart.
Agree on all points, but for a long time that game had the most realistic looking fire effects of any game. Not that it was worth owning it for that, but still, it shows some love went into it.
Desert Storm.
Bought the CD back when I was a kid and hardly knew anything about computers.
Never got to play the game (The Win98 PII thing required a Voodoo card, which probably wasn't even there in the country). No idea where the CD is now.
Not regret as much as disappointment. But I was traveling when elden ring dropped so I was using a Ryzen 5 laptop with an igpu. Everything in the intro was fine, but then limgrave had invisible enemies that could still attack you the model just wasn't rendering. Ended up just staying new games with various classes to try and beat the grafted Scion for a week. I actually ended up buying the game multiple times cause I'm a fromsoft fanboy since like ps1 days.
Edit: the hive mind is strong even here.
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What was a game you instantly regretted buying? | Spyke
Spore
nothing like advertised
Damn, same for me. The game was kind of okay for a few hours I guess, but really nothing like it should have been.
yea i played off and on for a few weeks or months, than completely stopped, it was on the 3ds.
It started off ok but then just quickly became a grindy strategy game
The first stage is the only good one.
Spore Creatures for the DS was awesome because it’s nothing like Spore.
i played that one.
Spore Hero for the Wii wasn't bad either. I wouldn't buy it, but I played it at my cousin's house.
I had the luxury of knowing nothing about the game when I played it and had a blast. 🤷
I wanted to play but never got to
It was way ahead of its time, especially with Galactic Adventures.
MS Pac-Man on Atari 2600
Spent 2 weeks' allowance. Game was crap.
YES I AM STILL SALTY
Holy crap what kind of big baller allowance were you getting Richie rich?
RDR2
This was actually my first thought too! Every time I buy a Rockstar game, I am immediately reminded how big the hype is compared to how bad the core game mechanics are.
I regretted buying RDR2, GTAV, and GTA4 when I first played them. I think I liked Vice City, but I expected it to be more of a visual upgrade than it was.
For RDR2, you get to slowly slog through snow… then play 40+ hours of poorly-designed quests and waves of dozens of enemies to slow you down so you can move the story forward.
The core gameplay mechanics are designed as a way to slow the story down rather than making the game fun. I would rather skip every single stupid gunfight. It’s so pointlessly repetitive.
None of these games really need 40 hours of padded story content, but people think they’re getting a “value” by spending their time playing mediocre things.
For GTAV, it’s honestly hilarious how bad the first driving mission is. People are straight-up delusional about these games.
Me too, which is crazy because RDR is an absolute blast. I know understand how rockstar screw up the pacing so badly
Explain
The exploration part was ok for me, they’re some interesting points to find but that was it. When I’ve tour the map one time every biome start to look blend.
Shooting (which is the most part of the main story) is blend, unimaginative and frankly easy as opposed to hunting a squirrel that you need for a satchel.
Arthur didn’t resonate with me, he’s blind of Dutch who is clearly the bad guy at the start of the game. Playing 10h (iirc) a guy who follow blindly a fucking asshole wasn’t a great gaming experience
Dutch basically raised Arthur, but in a way that made Arthur believe that the world would always be against him. They were outlaws, and outlaws they would always be. They were treated poorly wherever they went, so they have no trouble doing bad things, which made people treat them poorly. So yeah, Arthur blindly followed an asshole.
But when the game starts we meet them at an infection point in society. Outlaws are less tolerated than they've ever been, their way of life is disappearing, and Arthur is forced to examine whether he really is a bad man, or whether circumstances have made him that way. And whether there's a difference anyway.
I watched my son play it, and thought it is on Sony's game pass, i will snag that. Deleted it the same day.
Cyberpunk 2077 only because it was busted as fuck on PS4.
Now it's a great game that I have over 1000 hours in but when it released holy fucking broken, batman. It's the only game I ever refunded in the PS store.
This is mine except I've not played it since launch. I know it's fixed now but I was vibing for it then. It took me a few hours to give up due to so many bugs. It also bugged me that I paid full and then it was busted, without any real non-corpo apology. I really think launch buyers should have just been handed the expansion. I just don't like that company anymore. Which is hard because I think they own GOG.
I got a $30 PS4 slim with a bad power supply I fixed myself, and I got cyber punk day one and other than one fixer side quest where the apartment resident didn't talk to me and kept walking forward, I had almost no bugs. No T poses, nothing more than some minor graphical glitches like a stretched model and maybe a half dozen crashes for my first play through.
I bought it on gog... refunded it because the gameplay was dull af. The bugs was the only entertainment.
A fantastic story campaign, squeezed pointlessly into an incredibly dull open world.
It's the exact polar opposite of Breath of the Wild.
Starbound, it's Terraria but made with unpaid labor.
Payday 3.
I just read about how much of a mess its release was, that's quite something
Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
Loved the graphics in the trailer and intro. Then hated it immediately after the first battle.
Killzone. Teenage me bought into the "Halo-killer" hype and spent $50 on it (money that had taken me months to gather), only to get a mediocre shooter with a forgettable story, boring characters, and gameplay reminiscent of budget titles from the previous gen. The only good part was the enemy art design, and it turns out that was lifted straight from a famous anime.
Killzone is actually an interesting take on the shooter genre, but it was marketed to be something it isn't. Here's a great video that breaks down how well the gameplay and story aligned: https://youtu.be/Ko8WgF0XVLc
Elden Ring. I knew I shouldn't have. I already knew from playing DS1 that I did not like these games. But it was different, they said. It's the most accessible yet they said. The lore is great, they said. And that's mostly true except for the last one, it's lore and story is dogshit. Hell, they couldn't even translate correctly what very little was there in regards to Ranni, and she has the best ending. Speaking of endings, holy fuck, what a shit show those short and recycled endings are. Anyways, I paid full price for this... thing, and that's what I really regret. Slap a 50% off sale on it, and, sure, it's totally worth it. But I won't ever be buying the DLC or doing another playthrough.
I felt exactly the same way. I played DS1 and stopped after a while. But at least Elden Ring has nice graphics lol
Weirdly enough, Halo: Master Chief Edition
I'd only ever played the demo for the original Halo and a few multiplayer games on other peoples' consoles, but I've absorbed enough of the Halo lore from various sci-fi YouTube channels, trailers, cinematics, etc., that I found it pretty fascinating.
But the gameplay? Extremely not my cup of tea. I found the weapons very unsatisfying to use, (I grew up around Unreal Tournament's rocket launcher) the enemies too bullet-spongey, and the environments and encounters too samey and uninteresting.
Honestly, I just want a walking simulator that takes me through the story lol
I remember regretting asking for Black & White as a gift.
I did like it, but they made it seem more complex than it was so I was disappointed.
I think even at the time I had heard about Peter Molyneux’s penchant for overpromising, but that was when he had still made some games people liked.
I remember playing that game for hours, expecting something interesting to show up but it was just more of the same.
Not a game specifically, but Seekers of the Storm DLC for Risk of Rain 2.
They didnt haven't to break Loader like that. :( I still miss that game. Refunded and stopped playing it. Gearbox sucks.
It's been fixed since the disasterously buggy release, and there's a very strong modding scene. I'm sure there's something to "fix" loader for you.
That's what I've read and I've considered getting it again, especially with Alloyed Collective coming here soon. I'm just still a bit hesitant. I guess just afraid of being disappointed by my old favorite game again? I'm not sure honestly. I'll probably wait for reviews of the new DLC before I decide to trust Gearbox again.
RoR2 used to be one of my favorites. I have not touched it since Gearbox took over and it's incredibly disappointing to see that my hunch about them taking over was correct. They completely broke what wasn't broken and soured an incredible indie game and its legacy with one shitty update.
They've fixed the issues since, and there's easy to install mods to revert all the questionable tweaks they made. I'm not a particular fan of giving my money to slime incarnate Randy Pitchford, but to pretend the entire game is ruined is silly.
Honestly, the QoL improvement from auto-sprinting alone is worth the modding scene. I'm still having a blast and can easily lose 3 hours whenever I boot it up.
I was super hopeful RORR would scratch that itch, and while it's fun in it's own way, it's just not the same as ROR2. Chef is an absolute baddie at least!
It was fun while it lasted.
RV There Yet.
Not because it's bad. I just get motion sickness badly. Twin bought it for us to play together, I play for 15 minutes go "oh no" and refund time it was!
Skyrim VR for me for the same reasons. Can’t get through the opening cart scene without getting violently ill.
Just about all mod packs swap out the cart ride for an alternative start, which makes the game a lot more enjoyable. If you're willing to give it another try, get the FUS modpack on Wabbajack (and set it to Ro Dah for more quality of life improvements).
It’s on console, so I can’t do any of those things.
And I honestly have zero plans of getting a more expensive vr system knowing how this has gone.
Thanks for the info though :) it’s not just the start. Visually it looks like the ground is right under your face and it’s just nauseating to have it whiz by.
PSVR I guess? If so, I feel you. Was super stoked to play Skyrim, and had a similar experience.
Managed to pick up a cheap PC vr headset and Skyrim VR on A Steam sale a bit later and gave it another shot. It's now one of my favourite VR worlds to just hang out in and walk around, chop some wood, etc.
The vanilla console experience was just very Bethesda. I swear they forgot how to make a good game right after Skyrim came out. Everything since then is them stumbling on even the most banal things like a UI that doesn't hate you.
Yeah, psvr.
Thing about getting a pc setup is that every vr game I’ve tried makes me somewhat nauseated, even ones like Rick and Morty where you stand in place, or half life alyx played on an index (played part of that at a VR arcade) are slightly nauseating. Anything that has more movement than those is downright not great. So I just think vr is not for me.. I could spend the money (that I really don’t have) for a better setup, but I suspect it wouldn’t be a whole lot better in reality.
Which is wildly depressing because I am desperate to like it. The used and very cheap psvr purchase was a trial to see if a nicer one would be worth it. I also have access to a psvr2, but I don’t really have much interest in trying it, honestly..
Code Vein. My enthusiasm for souls like game fall off a cliff.
I tried this on Game Pass, it was soooooo bad
I played the demo, i thought the demo is very good, had fun with it, so i was so conviced i like it, i bought the deluxe version. Then i played it a couple of hours, but already knew in the first hours i drop it. I really don't know why i liked the demo anymore
Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I loved the original FF7, but the big budget cinematic style is just not for me. I stopped playing about 2 hours in I think.
I just couldn't forgive them turning a turn-based game into that
Metroid: Other M
Other than the shoe horned in melodramatic story,I actually really enjoyed other M. Cool mix of prime and classic gameplay.
Something I don't see people talk about enough is the pacing. I binged through it when my parents were out of town, and as long as I was following the story (not backtracking for stuff like missile upgrades) I swear I hit a save point every 30 minutes. There was never a time where I thought "I haven't saved in a while" where a save point wasn't right around the corner.
And the gameplay was great.
Except for the forced first person locked in place mode for missiles, especially during the final boss where you'd get shredded the moment you stopped moving.
Overwatch. Not a huge fan of fps, but even less of a fan of pvp team games. Someone told me it had a single player story mode, at least I got digital rewards from it for WoW.
couple of things.
first: Star Citizen. Hell I don't think I even bought it just "pledged" to is. so I "bought" the starter pack or whatever it was and...there was nothing to do. fly around, dock, get out, walk around, that's it. I felt like such an idiot because I had read all the crap about, I knew it was a scam, but there was just some perverted curiosity involved.
second: not so much a game but an "accessory": The Sega CD Memory Card. This was from when I was a kid. I was stupid. for my birthday I wanted a Sega CD Memory Card because for some stupid reason I was convinced that it would allow me to save the ENTIRE Sega CD games I rented to the memory card so I could have a bunch of games on the card. I have no idea why I believed this but sure enough for my birthday my parents bought it for me and surprise surprise it did not do what I thought it did. I was instantly disappointed and upset. I think it was because I read in like an EGM that it allowed you to "save your games" and I interpreted that as save the ENTIRE game not just your progress.
I don't know about instant, but despite picking it up at an all time low sale of $7 the closest I'm getting is GRIME. I kind of feel like I've bought a budget Silksong when that game is one I've stayed away from for a reason.
Don't get me wrong: GRIME is not a bad game. If you like Metroidvania Soulslikes you'll probably love it. Especially if you want a challenge. I think I'm just not good enough at video games to play this, especially parrying. The game really seems to force you to really parry 90% of the attacks, including from bosses. After I realised the first major boss was both a 2v1 and had a second health bar and instantly one-shot me after I missed a parry in the second phase I just took a break from it and haven't had a desire to boot it up again.
I might still give it another go, but it's getting more unlikely by the day.
That's too bad, I'm really enjoying it. Yeah as far as metroidvanias go it's kind of difficult which is unfortunate for it's jank-quota. I keep pressing on for the aesthetic but if you're already burnt out on the genre it might not be worth it to you.
Come back and try it again in a few years, it really is doing some cool stuff. I think you just have to be in a particular place to enjoy it
It's clearly a good game, and like you say it's doing some cool stuff. I love the art direction and the world building is really interesting. The graphics are beautiful too. The absorb system with the traits is an interesting take on character building.
I just find - more and more with age - that my enjoyment of struggling with games is decreasing. Maybe it's my skill and reflexes worsening, I don't know. I'm not getting much enjoyment out of super hard games anymore, and increasingly I notice that even if I manage to beat a particularly hard boss I don't feel that jubilant rush of elation afterwards but instead just feel a tired sense of "I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore".
It's funny though because I recently played through the whole Ninja Gaiden 3D franchise and those didn't give me that feeling despite being hard so maybe it really is just Soulslike fatigue.
I feel you there. I think I had a similar experience with Thymesia. I thought I could hang because I had already beat Sekiro and Lies of P but there does seem to be a trend towards ratcheting up the reaction times and amount of moving parts without signposting the mechanics at play.
Part of it feels like jank which is to be expected from smaller studios but part of it is making me think I might just be getting old too
Difficulty inflation is definitely a trend, which is to be expected to an extent as there is clearly a market for it and that market is generally getting more and more skillful with each game they play in the genre. Even within FromSoft for example it's noticeable that they feel the need to one-up themselves with every new release to the point that I felt no desire to try my hand at the Elden Ring DLC. Malenia was already more than enough for me.
I think you're right about smaller studios too, I imagine playtesting and getting the difficulty just right takes a lot of resources and is probably why so many small-studio Soulslikes either end up feeling way too easy or way too hard - both often in an unfun way.
God, yeah. The clearest indicator to me when difficulty is coming at the expense of the game is when I'm seeing most other players fight Malenia with only 1 of 2 builds (those who aren't doing a challenge run anyway). In that particular case maybe reducing the talisman effects to only +3.5% HP was just going to cause every player to give up whatever they were doing before and just play as Glintstone Tragoth Chungus or Rivers of Blood Radahn.
Sleeping Dogs, on PS4 specifically. It has a bug that won't let you complete the missions involving taking photos.
Couldn't fix it and the company went under, so no more bug fixes incoming.
X-Men vs Street Fighter for the PlayStation. I had many hours of fun in the arcade using Zangief and Dhalsim to crush people who played Ryu/Ken/Akuma combos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men_vs._Street_Fighter
Fuck a bunch of that noise.
An acquaintance at work got me to try Welcome to the Game. I'm not a time management guy and I don't enjoy streamer-horror games. Was a pretty quick refund but I wish I could have found something else in common with the guy.
Marvel Midnight Suns for me. Bought it because it was from the maker of XCom. I think I only fought a couple of small battles in 3 hours of play because I was mostly running through a forest and googling what the best response was when talking to people. Realized there was so much of this extra crap and I hated it, then realized I was outside the refund window.
Dead Island 1. Unplayable broken garbage we tried to play online. I refused to buy anything the developer made after that. FOV was disgustingly low too.
Cyberpunk 2077 initially. I was trying to be careful and watched a streamer play the intro up to the montage video. They somehow didn't have a ton of bugs so my first impressions were oddly good. When I played, shit was breaking every single in-game cutscene and well you all know what release day was like. Got caught up in launch hype, should've waited.
Don't have a lot of examples. Usually I'm pretty good about playing legal demos first or pirating initially with demo state of mind. When I can tell I'm going to stick with a game I buy it and restart after a few hours. Occasionally I'll watch a streamer I trust and buy games that way too.
I don't value review sites really.
Edit: I did early days Kickstart Star Citzen, Yooka Laylee, and Broken Age. The classic fuckup trifecta.
WuKong. No difficulty setting and get single shot by minor mobs. The story kinda suck too. They were trying to copy SuckerPunch games and failed.
Mario's Missing.
I had just got through Super Mario World, saw this new game in the Sears Catalogue, saved my money, and after what feels like 3 months of hype for what had to be the amazing sequel... Yeah. No.
Lol too easy. All EA Games.
Battlefield 42trash Battlefront 2 was the last Star wars game I played and I got burned on that title so bad. Fuck EA. Fuck ME Princes.
Alone in the Dark from 2008.
I think I played like 15 minutes of it. It was awful, controls were awful, camera was probably the worst from any game I can remember, nothing like its OG counterpart.
Agree on all points, but for a long time that game had the most realistic looking fire effects of any game. Not that it was worth owning it for that, but still, it shows some love went into it.
It's funny you say that, because the graphics were the one bright spot for it.
Robocop.
It was massively over-hyped to me by a coworker so it's not even the games fault.
Desert Storm.
Bought the CD back when I was a kid and hardly knew anything about computers.
Never got to play the game (The Win98 PII thing required a Voodoo card, which probably wasn't even there in the country). No idea where the CD is now.
Not regret as much as disappointment. But I was traveling when elden ring dropped so I was using a Ryzen 5 laptop with an igpu. Everything in the intro was fine, but then limgrave had invisible enemies that could still attack you the model just wasn't rendering. Ended up just staying new games with various classes to try and beat the grafted Scion for a week. I actually ended up buying the game multiple times cause I'm a fromsoft fanboy since like ps1 days.
Edit: the hive mind is strong even here.