Abandoned Any Games Lately?

Goonch wrote:

Inscryption finished the first act and that is good enough for me...for now...who knows what the future holds.

I also gave up on Inscryption because I couldn't get past the last boss of the first act and after repeatedly doing the same thing in the first act I lost interest.

Searching for a palette cleanser, I decide to finally try Gris on the Switch. Gorgeous game, probably would have looked much better on the tv, but it would not have kept me playing. I just… got bored with the mechanics after an hour or two, and if I’m not mistaken, it it’s only around 4 hours.

I hate to say it but Lost Ark is steadily heading towards this category. It's interesting but just not clicking with me.

mrwynd wrote:
Goonch wrote:

Inscryption finished the first act and that is good enough for me...for now...who knows what the future holds.

I also gave up on Inscryption because I couldn't get past the last boss of the first act and after repeatedly doing the same thing in the first act I lost interest.

Gesh, now you have me worried this will be another game I really enjoy only for it to be ruined by ridiculous boss fights...

Forager. It burned brightly for me for a few days and then the processing timers in the higher tiers and RNG aspect made me drop it for other shinies.

Evil Genius 2. Installed it via GamePass, booted it up, couldn't stay awake through the tutorial. As much as I adored the original I'm just not in that kind of gaming headspace anymore. Maybe once the kids are older...

Rezzy wrote:

Evil Genius 2. Installed it via GamePass, booted it up, couldn't stay awake through the tutorial. As much as I adored the original I'm just not in that kind of gaming headspace anymore. Maybe once the kids are older...

I had a similar experience downloading the recent Planet Coaster game on PS5, and before that I struggled to make much headway in Cities: Skylines.

This used to be my favourite genre (what I call RTS without the combat) and I sometimes wonder what happened. I think there are 2 things:

- I have way less free time than ever before, especially when it comes to gaming, so to be fair the fault is with me. I get impatient if my "enjoyment time" feels wasted, so when I usually just fit in about 1.5 hours of gaming a day in the best case scenario and have periods where I'm too busy, it's hard to get in-depth on a type of game I previously had full weekends to completely devote myself to.

- When I was really into civ builders, my job was mind-numbing customer service or data entry combined with university studying. Now my job involves planning and managing systems and then changing course based on what a bunch of spreadsheets and graphs tell me so these games probably feel more like work to me instead of the escape that they used to.

I. Love. This. Thread.

Thank you, kuddles, for giving us the opportunity to unburden ourselves. My bailouts seem to share certain characteristics.

1 - Games Where I Never Really Understood a Key Mechanic

Deux Ex: Human Revolution. Again, I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. The World felt very sparse and static, so I didn't enjoy being in it. Also, I hated and never properly understood the hacking mini-game.

Alpha Protocol. A game that felt clunkier than GTA IV, which preceded it by two years. Also, I hated and never properly understood the hacking mini-game. Part of my mission to experience the PS3's 'greatest misses'.

South Park: Stick of Truth. About 3 turn-based battles in... I realised that I didn't really understand the turn-based battle system.

Remember Me. I never understood how the combat system worked... despite starting the game at least three time.

2 - Games Where I Got Stuck

Frozen Synapse. I was loving it until the enemies started becoming invisible part-way through their patrols, which meant that they could be literally anyway in a level after a few rounds. Eff that! The game is hard enough already.

Mirror's Edge. I got stuck on a sequence about an hour in, and could be bothered to 'git gud'. If there had been an auto-complete function for these sections, then I'd probably have finished it.

Spec Ops: The Line. IIRC, I couldn't complete a shootout in an underground carpark (or something) and stopped wanting to try. Part of my mission to experience the PS3's 'greatest misses'.

Heavenly Sword. I got stuck at a boss fight that I found just too frustrating to push through. Part of my mission to experience the PS3's 'greatest misses'.

Killzone 2. I got stuck at a boss fight.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. I got stuck on an early boss. After I subdued the boss, but misread the in-game instructions and didn't do something to its CPU in time. It got up and started fighting me again, and I was out of ammo...

3 - Games Where I Got Bored

Atelia Sophie: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Book. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't something so slow and so dull.

Last of Us 2. I found the first half very slow, and the prospect of - it appeared - mirroring this in the second half, only with a different character, didn't appeal. Also, I learned that there was a potential frustrating boss-battle halfway through the 2nd half, which sounded pretty out of place in a 'Last of Us' game. Number 2 was just "another one of those", as Brad Shoemaker said. I traded it for Ghost of Tsushima instead.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. I just wasn't in to it. Part of my mission to experience the PS3's 'greatest misses'.

Borderlands. About two hours in, I'd seen and experienced everything I wanted to see and experience. Also, the driving controls annoyed me.

Metro: Last Light - I bought this is part of some kind of collection. It hadn't aged well, and I put it down after the first couple of missions.

Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena I just didn't care for it.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. I started this straight after Assassins Creed II. That was a bad idea.

3 - Other

Dead Space. Just too scary for me... (a grown-ass man of - probably 45 at the time).

Reviewing my list... I'm reasonably proud that there are so few actual quits on there. I thought there'd be a lot more (in truth, there are probably a handful more that I've forgotten, but no more than that).

I think what stands out to me are:

- Mini-games aren't really my thing.
- I tend to finish games that I buy at launch. If I let a few years pass, then it's probably 50/50 whether I'll see the end credits on a game.
- I'd welcome a discreet 'auto-win' feature on boss battles.

detroit20 wrote:

- I'd welcome a discreet 'auto-win' feature on boss battles.

This. Give me an option that says "If I die 3 times on the same thing, let me bail out"

polypusher wrote:
detroit20 wrote:

- I'd welcome a discreet 'auto-win' feature on boss battles.

This. Give me an option that says "If I die 3 times on the same thing, let me bail out"

I saw the ending of Horizon Zero Dawn on YouTube because taking down a mech with bow and arrow as too much of a *(@# pain.

Nioh. I was getting pretty good at reading enemies and responding but life intruded and I don't feel like trying to get that timing back. Also, there's a sequel already and I finally have a machine that can play X4 so I'm jumping into that.

I bounced off X4 last year but it's a game that really seems like it should be my jam. Will give it another fair shot sometime.

It's a game that I might enjoy more if I watch 6 hours of tutorials, but who has that kind of time?

...

Me. My job is easy and it sucks.

Rezzy wrote:

Evil Genius 2. Installed it via GamePass, booted it up, couldn't stay awake through the tutorial. As much as I adored the original I'm just not in that kind of gaming headspace anymore. Maybe once the kids are older...

Same. Evil Genius 2 is just sitting there, and gets updated repeatedly on Steam. And it just sits there still while I say I don't have the time.

...and then I start another 20 hour Stellaris campaign.

Yakuza 0 is sadly just sitting there. Kiryu is on chapter 13, ready to rumble. Still he waits, rumbling not.

benign1 wrote:

Hades for me too. Not for lack of affection, but because I put the nail in the coffin of my own enjoyment by opting not to turn on God mode from early on. I'd love to see how everything plays out, but the roguelite grind is just too time consuming, especially when I consistently get 30-45 minutes into a run before flaming out and making very little actual progress. Maybe I'll eventually dive back in...but I doubt it.

Just turn God mode on now, take Guan Yu's spear to nerf your health and take like 2 dozen deaths. You should be able to get protection up to like 60% pretty quickly.

Agreed, God mode isn't a cheat in this game. You're the son of a God for....God's sake. It's not cheating, it's your...God given right!

Sorry.

Ironically, it was the emergence of streamers and YouTubers that got me over my pride over using "easy mode" on some games. It revealed to me that a lot of people aren't really that much better than me, they are just more accepting of replaying the same section numerous times than I am.

Budo wrote:

Agreed, God mode isn't a cheat in this game. You're the son of a God for....God's sake. It's not cheating, it's your...God given right!

Sorry.

There's no way I would have seen the first ending of that game if I haven't turned on God Mode

kuddles wrote:

Ironically, it was the emergence of streamers and YouTubers that got me over my pride over using "easy mode" on some games. It revealed to me that a lot of people aren't really that much better than me, they are just more accepting of replaying the same section numerous times than I am.

YouTubers lets me see games I wouldn't play at all.
I watched most of Alan Wake, which I bounced off of Hard. Using a gun and flashlight that constantly need ammo/batteries drove me crazy, I just wanted to see the story.

I tried replaying Alan Wake recently and just couldn't get into it. The combat is dull and the voice over was way too cheesy for my tastes. I was meh on it when it first came out, but now I just actively dislike it.

I also uninstalled Lost Ark. It was fine, but there's plenty more I'd rather spend time in. Also trying to play with friends was awkward and fiddly, so that was just one more hurdle I didn't feel like dealing with.

polypusher wrote:
detroit20 wrote:

- I'd welcome a discreet 'auto-win' feature on boss battles.

This. Give me an option that says "If I die 3 times on the same thing, let me bail out"

Sayonara Wild Hearts does this, and when I first encountered the option I was delightfully taken aback. And then I said no out of stubborness.

Amoebic wrote:
polypusher wrote:
detroit20 wrote:

- I'd welcome a discreet 'auto-win' feature on boss battles.

This. Give me an option that says "If I die 3 times on the same thing, let me bail out"

Sayonara Wild Hearts does this, and when I first encountered the option I was delightfully taken aback. And then I said no out of stubborness.

Chicory also has this feature, and it’s quite good. You can also just set it to “invincible during boss fights” if you are worried about missing story beats.

I need to be better about doing this with games. I always say I'll come back to games but 80% of the time I never do.

I did decide to uninstall Iron Harvest the other day after approx. 5 hours play time. I don't know if it holds up better in multiplayer, but I mostly play these games solo vs. AI, and I just couldn't find the fun there. More and more I'm starting to realise that most RTS games irritate me as much as they bring joy, at least in part because they evolve so infrequently. I wish there were more Northgards out there.

Temp abandoned? Uninstalled Days Gone. Just felt tedious after awhile and returning to the same map over and over just bored me after awhile. I was really into the story so I would like to get back into it but other shiny things took my eye off it for now.

I think I'm dropping Final Fantasy VII Remake. I played over 10 hours of it which is quite impressive, but I think the game both reminded me why I used to like JRPG's as a kid and why I stopped playing them at the same time. It's nice to have a straightforward story to move through, but the dialogue is really mundane and contains all the weird anime quirks I can't stand like everyone constantly making vocal utterances and groans. I also wasn't into video games from about 1997 to 2005 so the original holds zero nostalgia for me which may be part of the problem.

The fact that I have the "remastered" Cyberpunk 2077 downloaded is helping me move on as well.

I'm dropping Remnant: From the Ashes. It's been over 6 months since I last played it, and while I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected, at this point it's been so long that I'd have to relearn the whole game again. That doesn't really appeal to me, and I don't want to restart either.

beanman101283 wrote:

at this point it's been so long that I'd have to relearn the whole game again. That doesn't really appeal to me, and I don't want to restart either.

I'm trying to get better at this, and it kinda was the inspiration for the thread. I need to get rid of my FOMO feelings to save myself wasted time. When I drop off of a game for months and come back and can't remember a thing, I would previously think that I didn't give it a fair try and start from the beginning again. I would say once in a while I would end up finishing it and feel glad that I did. But the vast majority of the time, I find myself losing steam not much further than where I dropped it the last time. Need to trust my gut more.

My most recent was Hollow Knight. Right off the bat, the art-style didn't click with me. Once I really started playing for a bit I realized I wasn't liking the traversal and over-all feel of the gameplay. It felt very slow and deliberate instead of fast and smooth like a lot of Metroidvanias. Exploring the map wasn't fun for me and I didn't like having to backtrack. (I think one of the problems was that I played this immediately after finishing Ori and the Blind Forest - which I adored.) It was also on the harder side of difficulty. I was muddling through for now, but thought I'd hit a difficulty wall very soon so I figured I'd duck out before I got frustrated.

I then fired up Ori and Will of the Whisps which turned out be just as good as the first. These became two of my faves.

Yeah Ori is amazing. I need to start the second one soon.

beanman101283 wrote:

I'm dropping Remnant: From the Ashes. It's been over 6 months since I last played it, and while I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected, at this point it's been so long that I'd have to relearn the whole game again. That doesn't really appeal to me, and I don't want to restart either.

This is the only game I've refunded in Steam. I didn't get the appeal, it felt hard for no good reason and clunky. Maybe I just didn't give it enough time but I bounced off it so hard I actually went through a refund.