Games you thought you would like, but didn't

farley3k wrote:
RnRClown wrote:

The Witcher 3 qualifies for me too. It's not a bad game. I would class it as an amazing accomplishment. Just not my cup of tea. How so? I also found the moment to moment gameplay to be lacking. Everything else was great. Getting around the world wasn't enjoyable. The traversal felt off. The world was so good, though. I wanted to see more. Fighting enemies wasn't engaging. It felt rote. ...

This so perfectly sums up my feelings about Assassin's Creed: Origins. I picked it up and tried it but all the things above make me not care.

The only one I took out was the quests lines because that was not even a little true about AC:O. Unlike the Witcher 3 the quests in AC:O were the most dull kinds of "go to point A and kill X enemies" I don't even remember the names of the quest givers or their stories because they don't matter. They have no bigger story, just some vague reason I need to kill a bunch of people.

So Ubisoft made a video game?

It is really eerie sometimes how Youtube recommends stuff after I post things here....

Today I had this one recommended. - Assassin's Creed Origins VS The Witcher 3 | Which Is The Better Open World Game?

The latest Wolfenstein.

Elite: Dangerous.

I love space fighters. I love online games. But for some reason I bounced off of this one. I think part of it was a friend gave me a leg-up and got me set off on a trading path when what I really want to do is "jump in an X-Wing and blow something up." Now that I've figured that out I may give it another attempt, once I have time.

Hearthstone

Keep coming back every 6 months to play it for 2 days. Somehow I am always lured into the Arena and somehow I always loose 90% of EVERY GAME I PLAY in Arena-mode. Can't be bothered by the dungeons or tavern-brawl.

Tried tutorials, tried deck builders, I guess I just stink at the game.

Peoj Snamreh wrote:

Hearthstone

Keep coming back every 6 months to play it for 2 days. Somehow I am always lured into the Arena and somehow I always loose 90% of EVERY GAME I PLAY in Arena-mode. Can't be bothered by the dungeons or tavern-brawl.

Tried tutorials, tried deck builders, I guess I just stink at the game.

Try elder scrolls: legends online. The grind actually isn’t that terrible for building a deck or two to be fairly competitive on ladder play and you can enter the vs or solo arenas for extra goodies as well.

BlackSheep wrote:
Peoj Snamreh wrote:

Hearthstone

Keep coming back every 6 months to play it for 2 days. Somehow I am always lured into the Arena and somehow I always loose 90% of EVERY GAME I PLAY in Arena-mode. Can't be bothered by the dungeons or tavern-brawl.

Tried tutorials, tried deck builders, I guess I just stink at the game.

Try elder scrolls: legends online. The grind actually isn’t that terrible for building a deck or two to be fairly competitive on ladder play and you can enter the vs or solo arenas for extra goodies as well.

Eternal is another good CCG option. Fairly generous with packs, and the ladder is pretty well gradated.

Fallout 4, and I didn't realize I hated it until I had over a hundred hours in. Which, of course, sounds ridiculous. How could you possibly complain about getting a hundred hours out of a game?

It took that long for the illusion to fade. It wasn't until I'd finally explored the last bits of the radioactive wasteland down south that I realized: this game is empty. I'd just gone through this enormous hidden complex that had nothing in it, just a bunch of scenery and the same twenty or so trash items that exist in every other place in the game.

And then I realized that the entire game was just Borderlands in Fallout clothing. You're not exploring to find amazing hidden secrets, you're just constantly rolling dice to see if something interesting drops off the bad guys. You can find anything, anywhere, and can duplicate any premade item if you get the right random drop and have the right skills. And because all the places you visit reset after about a week, you just need five or six locations near your base that you can explore on an endless loop, and voila, you can get anything that Fallout 4 has to offer. By the time you've cleared the last location, the first is fresh again, so you can just start over.

For such an enormous game, it's so terribly empty. Everything is procedural. There's no real reason to explore. In a Fallout game!

I think it might be the only game I've invested more than a hundred hours into, and loathe. Bethesda has moved to the top of my buy-never list, even ahead of EA and Ubisoft. I want nothing more to do with their BS procedural generation.

I want Fallout, dammit, not Borderlands.

Malor wrote:

Fallout 4, and I didn't realize I hated it until I had over a hundred hours in. Which, of course, sounds ridiculous. How could you possibly complain about getting a hundred hours out of a game?

It took that long for the illusion to fade. It wasn't until I'd finally explored the last bits of the radioactive wasteland down south that I realized: this game is empty. I'd just gone through this enormous hidden complex that had nothing in it, just a bunch of scenery and the same twenty or so trash items that exist in every other place in the game.

And then I realized that the entire game was just Borderlands in Fallout clothing. You're not exploring to find amazing hidden secrets, you're just constantly rolling dice to see if something interesting drops off the bad guys. You can find anything, anywhere, and can duplicate any premade item if you get the right random drop and have the right skills. And because all the places you visit reset after about a week, you just need five or six locations near your base that you can explore on an endless loop, and voila, you can get anything that Fallout 4 has to offer. By the time you've cleared the last location, the first is fresh again, so you can just start over.

For such an enormous game, it's so terribly empty. Everything is procedural. There's no real reason to explore. In a Fallout game!

I think it might be the only game I've invested more than a hundred hours into, and loathe. Bethesda has moved to the top of my buy-never list, even ahead of EA and Ubisoft. I want nothing more to do with their BS procedural generation.

I want Fallout, dammit, not Borderlands.

I hadn't thought of it that way before, but that might be part of why I bounced off of Fallout 4 as well. Exploring the capital wastes in 3 felt exciting. Exploring eastern Massachusetts (as a resident of eastern Massachusetts, no less) in Fallout 4 felt boring.

I didn't like how much of Massachusetts they included in the map. I understand the need to compress the map so walking from Fanieul Hall to MIT doesn't take twenty minutes, but putting in Lexington and Salem (especially considering how disappointing the Salem Witch Museum quest was) just felt like too much ambition without any followthrough.

Comments like these are why I've put off starting Fallout 4 despite receiving it as a gift a year ago. The base building holds no appeal for me, so I've just been holding out for when the mood to be immersed in Fallout's general vibe strikes me again.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

I didn't like how much of Massachusetts they included in the map. I understand the need to compress the map so walking from Fanieul Hall to MIT doesn't take twenty minutes, but putting in Lexington and Salem (especially considering how disappointing the Salem Witch Museum quest was) just felt like too much ambition without any followthrough.

That quest had so much potential, it could have been awesome. Such a waste, the way it ended really disappointed me too.

I agree with all this Fallout 4 hate, even though I don't think I hate it. I do plan on finishing it sometime this year anyway. I especially agree with the Salem Witch Museum quest, I was so excited about it, and then so let down.

The biggest problem with Fallout 4 is the game's name. Really, just the "4" part.

If it had been released as a Fallout side-title, like Fallout Tactics, and set the expectations of what the game was along with that, then it would have been fine.

The problem is that it trades on the Fallout name, and declares itself part of the main series, but it reduced or outright removed too many of the core elements that that name represents.

It's a quest-based shooter, but it wasn't sold as one. It was sold to a fanbase that had spent countless hours playing games with that name. And for some people, it was still just fine, but for many others, it was an instant disappointment.

At some point, I will go back and play it, having appropriate expectations for what the game actually is. But don't sell me a football ticket and then take me to a basketball game.

I don't get it. All games are an illusion - you aren't really doing anything meaningful or important. If it took 100 hours to realise that, then the game has done its job and you've got your money's worth. I've had that feeling after as little as a couple of hours (hello, Burnout Paradise) but I'd call 100 hours a very good run.

Redherring wrote:

I don't get it. All games are an illusion - you aren't really doing anything meaningful or important. If it took 100 hours to realise that, then the game has done its job and you've got your money's worth. I've had that feeling after as little as a couple of hours (hello, Burnout Paradise) but I'd call 100 hours a very good run.

I understand it a bit, because something similar is what soured me on Telltale adventure games.

I loved The Walking Dead... right until I got to the end, and it became obvious that what I thought were meaningful story choices, in fact, weren't, but instead that all roads led to basically the exact same place. It's the reason I haven't played a single Telltale game since.

That's not the only game where I've become retroactively dissatisfied after it became apparent that what I thought were functioning game mechanics were in fact just fakery (insert image of the fake Rock Ridge from Blazing Saddles here), but it's one of the ones that comes to mind the most.

Lately I've noticed the biggest offenders for me are sequels to series that don't rely heavily on advancing a narrative, like Civ games or sports games. There's so many games floating around out there right now that I feel like if I want to play something over again, I'll just play the game I have rather than the next iteration.

Shadow of the Colossus! I love games with evocative settings. I love spectacles. I love games that are more about puzzling out the solution than reflexes. I love melancholy stuff. This all seems to be in the game!

And it is. Except it's also accompanied by a massive amount of jank, and a bunch of spots where failure to make a jump correctly is a long, boring, challenge-free return to wherever you were. It's really awful when you make a slow climb to a position, then have to do it again because the controls are wonky. The camera is also an active antagonist a lot of time.

I liked at least half of this game. The other half I disliked enough that it totally overshadowed the good parts.

Chaz wrote:

Shadow of the Colossus! I love games with evocative settings. I love spectacles. I love games that are more about puzzling out the solution than reflexes. I love melancholy stuff. This all seems to be in the game!

And it is. Except it's also accompanied by a massive amount of jank, and a bunch of spots where failure to make a jump correctly is a long, boring, challenge-free return to wherever you were. It's really awful when you make a slow climb to a position, then have to do it again because the controls are wonky. The camera is also an active antagonist a lot of time.

I liked at least half of this game. The other half I disliked enough that it totally overshadowed the good parts.

Yeah, I liked 15/16ths of that game and then I had to YouTube the ending.

IMAGE(http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/263/356/80e.jpeg)

That last 1/16 was probably the most frustrating for me too. Probably took an extra 40 minutes just because of jank and weird stuff making me re-do stuff.

The 12th one was a close second, with others also being pretty annoying.

Heh.

Fallout 4 is my fave in the franchise, my GOTY 2015, and favorite Bethesda game to date.

Diff'rent strokes, I guess.

Vargen wrote:

Elite: Dangerous.

I love space fighters. I love online games. But for some reason I bounced off of this one. I think part of it was a friend gave me a leg-up and got me set off on a trading path when what I really want to do is "jump in an X-Wing and blow something up." Now that I've figured that out I may give it another attempt, once I have time.

I've found that Elite:Dangerous is FAR more enjoyable when you wing-up with someone. As a solo experience, I've never found the enjoyment I wanted, but those few sessions where I was able to join up with another player and go nuts in a Combat or RES zone, it was amazing. I suck at trading so far, so I've never gotten the gazillion credits I've seen on the ED Subreddit, but if you ever want to give it a go, add me on Steam. I'd love to have someone to play with on a regular basis.

As for my answer to this thread, its a toss up between Fallout 4 and Dawn of War III. I loved New Vegas, and I really wanted to get into FO4, but the whole Minecraft-lite building mechanic drove me up the wall. I've still got it installed and I'm going to, eventually, give it another chance. DoW3 just sucked. I adored the first game and associated expansions, never played 2, but I grabbed the Humble Monthly that included it because it was only $12...for ruin and sadness.

Edited for spelling and grammar

Loved all the far cry games, but gave up on primal a few weeks ago after about an hour of play.

Just found the hand to hand combat very tiring

Vargen wrote:

Elite: Dangerous.

I love space fighters. I love online games. But for some reason I bounced off of this one. I think part of it was a friend gave me a leg-up and got me set off on a trading path when what I really want to do is "jump in an X-Wing and blow something up." Now that I've figured that out I may give it another attempt, once I have time.

Elite isn't a game, it's an occupation.

Jonman wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:
Peoj Snamreh wrote:

Hearthstone

Keep coming back every 6 months to play it for 2 days. Somehow I am always lured into the Arena and somehow I always loose 90% of EVERY GAME I PLAY in Arena-mode. Can't be bothered by the dungeons or tavern-brawl.

Tried tutorials, tried deck builders, I guess I just stink at the game.

Try elder scrolls: legends online. The grind actually isn’t that terrible for building a deck or two to be fairly competitive on ladder play and you can enter the vs or solo arenas for extra goodies as well.

Eternal is another good CCG option. Fairly generous with packs, and the ladder is pretty well gradated.

Is it just a Hearthstone clone, or does it do anything interesting with the concept?

The time-to-bounce-off (TTBO for you stat nerds) is so short these days... a game or movie really has to suck you in quickly or the infinite distractions in this world will distract you away.

Compare the first 30 minutes of A New Hope (or any 70s movie) to The Last Jedi, it's like comparing a flashlight to a supernova. It's designed to keep you sucked in the entire time.

That being said, there are games where I've tried to give it time to suck me in and it just hasn't:

Dragon Age 2: The big daddy of them all. I've played that first part in Kirkwall up until that first mine so many times I think I could speak it verbatim. It always perplexed me since up until Bioware jumped the shark I was a huge fan of their work (The Infinity Engine, KOTOR, Mass Effect, even 100+ hours in DA:O), but the characters, story, something-I-can't-put-my-finger-on just bores me to death. It also means that I can't get into DA:I, because in my mind it's like "I need to play DA2 first", but I can't.

Star Trek: Bridge Commander: Picard is like 1 polygon. It's like talking to a triangle. More importantly, warp-blow up-warp-blow up... I like my Star Trek to be a bit more... Trek-y, and it wasn't as tactical as Starfleet Commande or those games.

Any MMO: Kill 10 rats to get a sword + 1 so I can kill 10 dire rats to get a sword + 2 so I can kill 10 giant rats. There is almost no immersion to me since I do the quest and I see a bunch of people near the quest-giver and the world doesn't change at all. Oh! I got the super-magical crystal and saved blah blah. Then I can run it again. No disrespect meant to the people who like it; I just can't see past the gameplay mechanics.

Redherring wrote:

I don't get it. All games are an illusion - you aren't really doing anything meaningful or important. If it took 100 hours to realise that, then the game has done its job and you've got your money's worth. I've had that feeling after as little as a couple of hours (hello, Burnout Paradise) but I'd call 100 hours a very good run.

Well, it doesn't help that Fallout 4 calls itself a part of a series, excluding Fallout 3 (which has all the same issues) that doesn't have these issues. Fallout 1 and 2 had worlds where there was meaning and consequences to the things you did, to the places you went, and to the people you encountered. It wasn't a cookie-cutter theme park experience where you go from ride to ride for a cheap thrill.

For me, it's Mass Effect 2. I know that for most people, ME2 is their favorite game of the trilogy, but I just can't get through it. The original Mass Effect was my favorite game of all time until I played The Witcher 3 last year. I've finished the first game something like 12 times at this point, the latest being last year when I decided I wanted to do a run through the entire trilogy since I've only played ME3 once and never touched the DLC. As usual, I blew through the first game and then stalled out on the second. It's been a year now, and I'd say I'm 75% of the way through it.

I like the moment-to-moment gameplay. I love the characters and their individual story beats. I enjoy the fact that the game is a series of 1/2 hour to 1 hour missions. I just hate the overarching framing story. As someone who has beaten ME1 a dozen times, I've had Cerberus kill Admiral Kohoku and his men a dozen times (plus all the other stuff they are tied to in the side missions), and I can't imagine any of my Shepard characters being willing to work for them.

I just started Skyrim. Too soon to tell, but I’m not getting a good feeling from it so far. If this feeling holds up, I need to put Bethesda on my list of designers to avoid. I don’t even think it has to do with me having played Witcher 3 last year either. Fallout 3 already compared poorly to New Vegas and Oblivion didn’t hold a candle to Morrowind for me. This trend just isn’t too promising.

Quite a few. Happened all the time when I had more free time to take in preview coverage and would get hyped.

Bastion, Front Mission 3, Grandia are the first three that come to mind. SaGa Frontier, Link to the Past, Dragon Quest VII.

Not much from recent history is coming to mind. There are a lot of games I think are overrated, but usually I can call that before I play them. I knew I wouldn't like Uncharted, to the point that I avoided it until 4. I was right (thankfully only got it from the Redbox) and dropped it within half an hour. I enjoyed the first three Mass Effect games but didn't feel like any were GOTY contenders.

I'm with you, gewy, on Skyrim. I probably put more than 30 hours in to it, but I never really enjoyed it.
It was a combination of the combat, which didn't have any real weight to it (particularly because I came to it straight after Dark Souls) and the dungeons, which got larger and larger as the game progressed without becoming any more interesting (the endless Mzinchaleft springs to mind).

I also hated the Skyrim economy. I quickly found myself awash with money and items, but with no one I could sell them to (again, particularly after stirpping Mzinchaleft bare).

However, the game I currently hate-playing is Crysis 2... which I thought I'd like so much that I bought Crysis 3 at the same time. I've already spieled about it here, so I'll say only that it feels like a real throwback FPS. I doubt that I'll be opening the packaging on Crysis 3 unless a GWJer can recommend it.