Personally there are a few games which left me very dissappointed, after hyping myself up for years in certain cases.
Divinity Original Sin: turns out I prefer more streamlined, less packed games (love Pillars of Eternity) and that coop play in a CRPG stresses me out.
Wasteland 2: I actually managed to finish this one but secretly I admit I was hoping for a better Fallout which I didn’t really get. New Vegas did the cowboy theme much better.
INSIDE: while the design was cool, it was just a ton of boring, easy puzzles in comparison to LIMBO, its predecessor.
Ow2
Assassin’s Creed III. I know it’s considered one of the weakest entries in the series, but I absolutely love the time period it’s set in. That alone had me excited. Decided to finally give it a try recently and quickly found out that all the criticisms are valid. It’s not very fun, the story is extremely bland, there are multiple glitches throughout, and the modern day sections are just the absolute worst. I don’t ever expect much when it comes to the AC series (especially the titles from that time) and can usually find something enjoyable in them. Not the case with III.
Resident Evil 3 Remake.
I knew the new Nemesis was crap but I wasn’t ready for how dull the rest of the game is as well.
Resident Evil 2 Remake as well.
Doing away with the fixed camera really kills the vibe of the game. Just being able to hear by not see an enemy has so much suspence.
Gaining lore from the background objects. Another product of the time but walking up to something and interacting to get an indebth text read out on what you are looking at was great in the original but was absent in the remake.
It was great that the Tyrant was able to move around more than the original but it’s extreamly limited and once you figure out the mechanics you realize that he is just teleworking around close to you, it becomes more of a chore than a threat.
I was really hoping for a good remake Ala the first Resident Evil Remake.
I disagree, I thought RE2R was fantastic although I still prefer RE7.
Those games were the entire reason I went into RE3 with high expectations.
I’ve never played the original though, that might be why I liked it so much.
I’m not disappointed at the game but on myself.
I patiently waited for Elden Ring to go on sale, excited to play it. But the reality is i don’t have enought time to play.
So what happens is I die a few times, restart my progress, die a few more, then my IRL game time has ran out. And I’m still where I started, no progress made,.
If i consistently evade enemies just to get far on the map, then what I’ve done is stunt my character progression and just horse around the map. I mean that’s not playing, it’s being a tourist inside the game.
I can agree wholeheartedly. I found Elden Ring to be a very boring game.
That’s not at all what they said lol
Eh…that’s what I heard. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
A lot of them you are meant to run past, you don’t get meaningful xp from mobs until you get to late game secret areas, early game just Google where dungeons are, ride torrent to them and kill bosses for levels
You mean, grinding on mobs won’t give me meaningful xp? So it’s the bosses that I need to kill.
Each enemy gives you a set amount of runes (souls) that you can use to level up, harder enemies give more.
Nah. There’s a middleground of things worth your time, that you can discover fairly easily.
When you’re getting 50 runes per enemy and you need 5,000 to level, run past em because you’ll soon find enemies that net you 2000 runes per kill. If you find an enemy that gives good runes, then consider grinding killing it.
Bosses give decent runes, but I don’t think they’ll float ya (and I hate that git gud shit. I suck bad and only barely squeaked by a win by getting absurdly overleveled with an OP weapon).
thanks for the tip! at least now I have a goal that’s not story dependent. I can get by that, setting a small goal for my limited time. and I believe achieving that personal goal will give me more satisfaction than finishing a part of a story in one run. because I expect to drag this game out as long as I can.
I’m not young anymore where finishing as many games as possible is the goal, I’m an old gamer where enjoyment of even a few intervals of play is sufficient.
More unsolicited advice. Consider an easy mode mod (if you have it for PC). There’s a few good ones that rebalance it to be a “normal” dodge-and-hit action game instead of a full on soulsborne. I also like a “keep runes on death” mod to take away that terror of actually leaving your little stomping grounds and exploring the beautiful world.
The game is so much more fun when it isn’t forcing “play it this way” down your throat.
Thank you for the advice, but my 9 year old son has now marked the computer as his territory and I’m now exiled to the Playstation.
Fair enough. There’s always Persona 5. It’s a lot less headache inducing.
Yes! , jrpg one of my “go to” genre 👍
May I offer some unsolicited advice.
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Your damage output is as important if not more important than “getting gud”. The more damage you do, the fewer attacks you have to dodge. That’s kind of the secret to all these Souls games.
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Damage output and damage mitigation come from stacking many small, incremental bonuses. The most important upgrade for damage output is upgrading your weapon with ores. Pick one weapon (eg. Longsword) and invest all ores into it. Any weapon is viable for the whole game as long as you upgrade it. Don’t be afraid to commit ores into your chosen weapon as you will eventually have an unlimited supply.
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It’s possible to suicide-run into dangerous areas for powerful items since you don’t lose items upon death. You can collect mid and high-tier ores this way even at low level.
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It’s perfectly okay to farm exp from higher level, non-bosses. It’s low risk since you’ll be near a rest site. A good example is killing Vulgar Militiamen from the Farum Greatbridge site in the most northeast area of Caelid. You can horse yourself there ignoring everything. There are plenty of ideal spots that people have found, just look them up.
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If you’re still having trouble, do each step in the following video as you see fit. Notice that most of these improvements are obtained by acquiring items, and not obtained by leveling up. https://youtu.be/GYI5Z3jhKB4
Thank you so much! I’ll try this on my next play through.
Definitely! I truly believe Elden Ring is accessible, it’s just not immediately clear how.
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Planet Zoo.
As a kid who grew up playing Zoo Tycoon, I was STOKED for a new Zoo management game. I even built a whole new computer to run it.
Turns out it’s more of a 3-D modeling program than a management/simulation game. And I don’t have the time or patience to figure it out.
This is the one for me as well. I spent hundreds of hours as a kid playing zoo tycoon and was very hyped for Planet Zoo. I still can’t quite place what makes it so unfun but it was pretty heart breaking.
Every. single. action. is. so. tedious. The second I tried to place my first path and build an enclosure, I knew I was in over my head.
I understand the finicky controls are what allow people to build incredible, elaborate structures. But I don’t want to spend 12 hours designing a crystal monkey enclosure.
Elden Ring
It’s just Dark Souls 3.5. Which is not necessarily bad if you really liked DS3 and just want more of the same thing, but I considered DS3 by far the weakest in the series to begin with, and playing the Nioh series after it has opened my eyes to just how much room for improvement there is in the DS series as a whole. From Soft has basically followed the same path as Bethesda - they used to make varied games until one of them randomly became wildly successful, and from that point onward they haven’t had the balls to deviate from the winning formula and have just been remaking that same game over and over with a slightly different coat of paint each time. Which makes sense from a business point of view, I guess, but after this many repetitions, it’s become clear to me From Soft is totally creatively bankrupt. Hell, it’s been more than a decade since Demon’s Souls, and they still can’t even figure out a better counter to the “roll behind them and stab them in the butt” strategy than making enemy tracking ever more effective and their movements ever more spasmodic and unreadable in each subsequent game. The end result of this complete lack of willingness and/or ability to innovate is that despite being expertly crafted, Elden Ring feels very by-the-numbers and utterly soulless (if you’ll pardon the pun).
I often describe Elden Ring with the following sentence: “If you gave me this game with no title and told me it’s Dark Souls 4, I would have no reason to doubt you”.
It’s great for everyone that wanted more Dark Souls, and ER is arguably a good starting point for anyone that hasn’t played any of the Dark Souls, but it’s still Dark Souls. If someone had tried Dark Souls in the past and realized that they don’t like the game, I really wouldn’t expect Elden Ring changing that.
For me personally: Elden Ring is pretty much my favourite game of all time. I feel like it’s the “culmination of Dark Souls design”, and just happens to be exactly what I was personally looking for in DS games - but even with this in mind, I don’t feel the need of getting more of the same.
But hey, as for Fromsoft just doing the same thing over and over - Armored Core VI coming out next week, and that’s quite different. :D
Elden Ring is pretty much my favourite game of all time. I feel like it’s the “culmination of Dark Souls design”, and just happens to be exactly what I was personally looking for in DS games
I’d probably feel the same way if I hadn’t played a few other similar games while waiting for ER. Nioh and especially Nioh 2 showed me how much more Dark Souls could do. Their combat system is much richer and deeper, and I find it baffling that From Soft hasn’t tried copying even a few of their ideas. I hadn’t realized anything was missing from the Souls formula until I played them, but now I can’t unsee it. Maybe my expectations are excessive. From Soft seems incapable of copying even its own good ideas. Dark Souls 2 made quite a few good (if relatively minor) changes to the formula, all of which were erased the moment Miyazaki took back control of the series.
I also recently replayed Blade of Darkness, which I consider the forgotten true originator of the souls-like genre. Being more than twenty years old, it’s much simpler than its spiritual successors, but it showed me that Dark Souls also does a bunch of things it really doesn’t need to do, such as bullshit artificial difficulty. I used to think BoD was really hard back when I played it for the first time more than two decades ago, but after several thousand hours in Souls and Nioh, it feels easy. And you know what? That makes it great fun. Enemy attack patterns are quite basic and easily readable and predictable, there are no surprise ganks and no spoiler enemies (which is what I like to call annoying enemies specifically added in order to spoil what would otherwise be a fun combat encounter). Hell, there’s even friendly fire among enemies, so it’s much harder for them to gang up on you, and you get none of that toxic and abusive encounter design based around ranged enemies shooting you through melee ones that From Soft seems so very fond of. Nioh showed me what the Souls series is missing, and BoD reminded me that sometimes less really is more.
Seeing that ER is just more of the same has really sapped my motivation to play, and I haven’t gotten very far in it as a result. I’ll probably finish it someday, but I’m definitely not going into the NG+ cycle and PvP for hundreds of hours like I used to do with previous Souls games.
as for Fromsoft just doing the same thing over and over - Armored Core VI coming out next week, and that’s quite different. :D
Ah yes, the sixth game in a series. More than halfway to double digits. Such innovation. ;D
I do like Nioh, it’s always on my list of suggestions for people interested in that type of games. But I feel like it’s also quite a different game from Dark Souls - there’s room for both in the market, and I enjoy both for different reasons. While similar, Nioh’s combat feels more like a fast-paced arcade-y brawler, while DS feels slower and more methodical. Personally I can’t really say one is better than the other, since I just enjoy both of them - but they’re different enough that it’s clear that some players will prefer one over the other.
Outside of combat, I again feel like DS is a bit “slower”, I spend more time just exploring and wondering where to go next, etc. Nioh areas and levels are (usually) a bit more straightforward and faster to progress due to its mission structure. Storytelling format is also really different. But again, I just enjoy both of them for different reasons.
Especially during New Game+ rounds 2 to 5, Nioh also gets much deeper in the gear minmaxing department compared to DS - I’ve 100%d all DLCs in both Niohs. The gearing system in Nioh is also made in such a way that sometimes it’s useful to just go farm the same bosses over and over - this is something that doesn’t really exist in DS. Then there’s even the infinite boss arena mode. I personally often think about Nioh as “a game with DS-style combat design, Diablo-style progression”. I love the end result.
As far as I know, they’re planning to do similar DLC content in Wo Long too (new round of NG+ per DLC), and I’m waiting until they release all DLCs so I can go complete those too.
Blade of Darkness has been on my to-do list for quite a long time now, I really should get into it some day. :D
I was originally about to mention Fromsoft also creating Sekiro and Bloodborne in between Dark Souls sequels, but I guess it can be argued they’re all just the same with different skin. AC is at least completely different. Personally I have no issues with game devs finding what they do best and just keep doing it with only minor improvements - as a player, I can just choose to play games from different devs anyway.
I think the combat speed is probably the most noticeable difference between DS and Nioh, and I’d probably prefer some middle ground between the two, but IMO it’s far from the most interesting or impactful one. For example, I love the sheer variety of attacks in Nioh and the emphasis on special moves. In Dark Souls, you mostly just spam the same basic attack over and over. Nioh gives you three stances to switch between (a system copied from the old Jedi Knight games, btw.) and a bevy of special attacks that you can learn. And I love that those special moves aren’t tied to specific weapons but rather to your character and those three stances, so your moveset is not only much larger than in DS but also customizable. And I do think this is straight-up better than DS, because it’s not just a difference, it’s an addition. All that complexity and depth is there for you to explore if you want to, but you don’t have to. If you wanted to, you could play Nioh like Souls and just use the basic medium attack. The reverse is not true, you can’t play Souls like Nioh.
Another interesting difference is that Nioh lets you put pressure on enemies in ways that DS disallows. In DS, when an enemy’s stamina is depleted and their guard broken, you’re given the opportunity to do a finisher. But regardless of whether or not you take it, they regain their stamina and the fight basically resets, forcing you to dodge the enemy’s attacks and chip away at them again. That can also happen in Nioh, but you can also choose to forego the finisher and keep the pressure up instead with a zero-ki combo. Attacking an exhausted enemy again will knock them on the ground, opening them up to a different type of finisher, but you can also still attack them normally (probably requiring a stance switch) in order to force them to stand back up without giving them the opportunity to regain their ki/stamina. At the same time, you can use well-timed ki pulses to replenish your own stamina, so if you have the timing down, you can keep an enemy stunlocked pretty much indefinitely. And you can even do this to bosses. Dark Souls doesn’t allow you to keep the upper hand in a fight, it goes so far as to give the enemy several seconds of invincibility after a finisher in order to reset the fight. Nioh isn’t like that, it does let you keep the upper hand and really exploit it if you know what you’re doing. And once again it’s not a difference, it’s an addition. That basic DS cycle of “dodge enemy attack, break their guard, do a finisher, rinse and repeat” is present in Nioh too, but whereas in DS it’s the end point and the pinnacle of player skill (because they game doesn’t allow you to do anything else), in Nioh it’s the start. It’s what newbies do. Over time you learn to dominate enemies in far more effective ways, and it feels oh so much more satisfying than anything Souls can offer.
In short, I think Nioh is just a straight upgrade to Souls in terms of gameplay. Souls starts you off as a weak little hollow, and you fight like one. That’s all well and good, but you never move beyond that, you’re always the one under pressure even after you’ve absorbed the souls of lords and acquired legendary weapons. That slow, methodical combat is also present in Nioh, but it’s an early-game element, it’s something for you to grow out of as you upgrade your character and improve your own skills as a player. That late-game fast-paced brawling action is no less skill-based, mind you, I’d even argue it requires way more skill than Souls. But it also rewards you for your skill way more than Souls ever does.
I could list Wo Long right alongside Elden Ring as a game I found disappointing. It doesn’t seem to have been very well received in general, and I stopped playing at the first boss. I could write a whole other diatribe about how the tutorial bosses in From Soft games become more and more unfair bullshit over time, and to my dismay the first boss of Wo Long is basically Iudex Gundyr, whom I absolutely despise. In other words, he’s a fairly easy humanoid boss with clearly telegraphed attacks in his first phase, but in his second phase he turns into a mutated shapeless blob that spazzes the fuck out all over the place in ways specifically designed to kill you because you can’t tell WTF he’s even doing. You know the saying “when people show you who they are, believe them”? When Team Ninja showed me they were doing a Dark Souls 3, I believed them and lost all interest in playing further.
Sekiro and Bloodborne are interesting, since they’re variations on the formula that show that From Soft is actually capable of trying new things. It’s just a shame that, as with DS2, basically none of the improvements they pioneered were carried forward to Elden Ring (such as showing you the enemy stamina bar, which is also something Nioh does). Pretty much their only legacy is the replacement of poise with hyperarmor, which I consider a detriment. In Nioh, stunlocking an enemy is possible but requires a lot of game knowledge and practice to get the timing right. In From Soft games since Bloodborne, stunlocking an enemy requires nothing more than hitting them before they hit you, at which point you’re free to keep swinging for as long as your stamina lasts. That’s just dumb and boring.
As for farming a specific spot over and over, that is absolutely something that exists in Souls. It’s usually not a boss, since most of the games don’t let you easily respawn bosses (DS2 being the exception, with the Giant Lord specifically designed to be farmed), but farming for souls and/or upgrade materials has been a staple of the series since its inception.
If you do play Blade of Darkness, temper your expectations. I love it because of massive nostalgia, but it was clunky as hell even by the standards of its day. There are good reasons it wasn’t a commercial success.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake. My god, what a disaster over the original.
I can’t bring myself to continue it even though (I think?) I’m half way through the game, because while the Sector 5 reactor in the original is, by good game design standards, just a replica of the Sector 7 reactor with less going on - since you’ve already done the same thing earlier on, in Remake they decided to make it an enormous labyrinth that you can’t find your way out of, just because. I guess they needed to extend the playtime.
That’s just one of many, many things wrong with the game despite an amazing original, but it’s the spot that completely prevents me from loading it up again to continue on. I went and started a new game in the original instead, just to be sure it wasn’t the nostalgia glasses talking. It wasn’t.
But I guess it looks really pretty.
The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion is probably my best answer. Remains the only modern Elder Scrolls that I’ve only played through once with no desire to return to. Feels clunky and sluggish, the world is washed out and bland, the enemy scaling is a slog, itemization is not interesting or impactful, the UI is uncomfortable, etc. While it does a lot of things better than Skyrim, I just can’t bring myself to enjoy the experience like I did Morrowind, and I admit I’ve sunk far more hours into Skyrim as well.
This one is wild to me. Oblivion very well be my favorite game of all time. I love the world it is set in so much. Skyrim is actually my answer for this question because I was expecting the game to to be as good as Oblivion.
Yeah it’s shocking because even the jankiness of oblivion notwithstanding, the atmosphere and ambience is just chefs kiss
Yeah, I realize it’s an insanely unpopular opinion. Oblivion, on paper, is an objectively better RPG that is truer to the Elder Scrolls formula than Skyrim, but I just don’t know, man. I’ve always had great difficulty liking it and tend to come up with nothing but gripes. I will give it another honest shot if this remake I’ve heard wind of ever comes to fruition. I owe it that much.
Oblivion, on paper, is an objectively better RPG that is truer to the Elder Scrolls formula than Skyrim
Hard disagree on that one. It’s truer to the Morrowind formula, but Morrowind itself was a radical departure from the previous TES games’ design philosophy. And I despise Oblivion precisely because of that, because it slavishly apes Morrowind’s formula without really understanding what made it tick. I’ll spare you the diatribe. Morrowind was a great triumph but also a turning point for Bethesda. Up until that point, they used to make varied games. Ever since they found success with Morrowind, they’ve stopped trying to innovate and improve and have just been remaking the same game over and over with a slightly different coat of paint each time.
To each their own, obviously. Some games just don’t click for some people.
I was going to say the same thing. I’ve still only played Skyrim once, but I’ve played through oblivion at least a few times. I played through Morrowind even more, but oblivion surpasses Skyrim without question for me.
I can’t go back to older ES games. The levelling system is just too much boring work for me. I have been a tES fan since the early 90’s when I got Arena, but Skyrim is the only one I’ll pick up anymore. I’d love to do another Morrowind playthrough with Skyrim’s systems (and I hear there’s a mod out for that, but I’ve never dug into it)
There’s a mod for it, but i never add it to the manager when I replay Morrowind. Maybe because I only played it once, I can’t even remember the difference in the leveling. What did they change in Skyrim?
Levelling and skills are dramatically simpler in Skyrim than in previous titles. The Elder Scrolls games and Fallout games generally have a middlegame where mislevelling can lead to you being dramatically underpowered. It’s still hypothetically possible in Skyrim, but a lot less so because it’s easier to just not screw up a build.
Others here call it “watered down”. I guess it technically is.
I’m sorry for asking, and I’ll look it up if you don’t want to explain it here, but can you give me just an example of the gameplay experience of what you’re talking about? Just elder scrolls to elder scrolls player.
I’m sure it is there, I’m just curious because I didn’t notice it when I was playing Skyrim, but like I said, I only played it once.
And I think that was about the time they stopped providing user manuals which i always read before games so I don’t even know if I got to read the skill tree.
Dude I remember when Morrowind came out, I read that pamphlet like a tome multiple times.
With Skyrim I don’t remember anything except running from dragon to dragon, then killing the main dragon and then I couldn’t believe the game was over so quickly, and I thought it was like a false ending, but it wasn’t.
And there was a really cool laboratory on a mountain near the wizard school that was very versatile but didn’t actually matter but I felt like it should have played some part in the main storyline.
Yeah as you can tell, sorry, my memories aren’t super strong of that game.
Sure.
Oblivion is a great example. In Oblivion, skills level similarly to Skryim (with use). Unlike Oblivion, a lot of skills do not provide survival value as feedback. Simply “living your best life” often leads you to have a master of Acrobatics and Atheletics. You run and jump too much, you end up finding enemies are outpacing you because they scale from you running and jumping too much.
This exists to a lesser extent in Skyrim. The difference? Feats. Your feats improve your build focus in two ways. They’re virtually ALL good even if you only dabble in your skill of choice. And they create a pressure to focus on a skill to reach the feat. Yeah, you could blow 10 levels in heavy armor and then run around naked, but dead builds are a bit more contrived.
But then, there’s part 2. In Oblivion, the skills drive your attribute gains. When you level, you pick an attribute to gain, but how much you gain is based on how many skill points you spent. If you overblow a level, you will find you have to choose between 2 or 2 maxed +5 (I think +5 was max), and then in future levels you will have fewer increased +x options. It’s a great little spreadsheet game to be “better”, but if you screw it up, you feel it.
Actually, check out “the Leveling Problem”
Ditto in a way with Morrowind. I had to google to remind myself. Morrowind is similar to Oblivion, but still had more “firm” classes. How you level and train will still affect whether your attributes are good or shit, even if you end up levelling basically the same skills with basically the same overall attribute goals.
In both, you are heavily disincentivized from organic leveling because “some of this, some of that” gives you a net lower attribute gain. And level after level, you start to feel it.
You ain’t the only one. To this day, it’s the only proper Elder Scrolls game I have not completed. I’ve even beaten Arena.
When I finally played Red Dead Redemption 2. I usually don’t play this type of big budget game, but my friends loved it and kept talking it up. I waited for years for a steam sale until it was finally about $20. Also, I loved outlaws (1997) and was pretty keen for another cowboy game.
An hour of listening to guys walk through the snow and I was out.
People complain about slow games?? I love that in not just rushing from A to B and to do stuff in the open world
It’s just needlessly overly realistic in how tedious everything is lol
I finished the prologue because I was told the prologue is slow. But the whole game is slow. I think people just get used to it. But I couldn’t. It’s too slow. I was chasing a bear and I was so bored that I put it down and never touched it again.
This resonated with me. The prolog is so long I didn’t finish either. I also tried Red Dead Online which was quicker to getting to the action, but just didn’t take with me.
(don’t hurt me)
So far it’s been Baldurs Gate 3. I’ve found it clunky to play and it doesn’t run well on my machine despite far surpassing the recommended hardware.
I’m definitely going to do some trouble shooting and give it a much more in depth try, but it’s way easier to just play another game than figure out why this one is broken lol.
There’s so many but the I think the biggest disappointment award has to go to Death Stranding.
A brand new by the creator of Metal Gear without the shackles of a publisher looking over his shoulder, it had the makings of an epic game.
What did we get? Amazon Prime simulator with such a convoluted and nonsensical story it barely makes sense.
Completely opposite reaction for me. One of the best games I’ve ever played.
All of his games have this convoluted story that is supposed to be wacky af. Could it be better, yes? But you can’t really say it wasn’t expected.
Also saying that Death Stranding is Prime simulator is reductive af. I’m not even in the camp that the game is amazing. Heck I don’t even know if it’s good. However I do know that it’s interesting af and I’ll definitely recommend it to people. It’s such a different “game” that more people should experience at least to see if it resonates with them.
I’m very happy that I played it.
Plus that sound track alone is worth it for some moments in the game. Literal chills.
I gave it around 8 hours before I decided I was done being bored.
It really is a Marmite game isn’t it?
I loved being a post apocalyptic mailman, looking forward to ds2!
Implying that metal gears story makes sense lol
I had them same thing at the start however 2nd time was a complete change.
Played bit different though. Played on PC with a Trainer and made it entirely easy for myself. Strictly played for the story and the gorgeousness of the mountains, snow and the whole chaotic mess that unleashes eventually.
Really glad I did because it was a great experience and can’t wait for the sequel. Will do the same thing.
After all gaming should be for enjoyment!
Same experience! Dropped it the first time. Too slow paced. And I was trying to min-max, play on medium, read a bunch of walkthroughs and then gave up.
Decided to go all in during the Directors Cut. Turned it on easy so I was one hitting everythhing, ignored all the walkthroughs and just absorb myself into the world.
And it’s great! Who would have thought that in a game where you fight ghost babies, and bring supplies to random famous-y people, my favorite thing would be to build a interstate highway?
Easily 100+ hours and it’s a “I totally understand if you don’t like it” game.
Horizon Zero Dawn
I thought this would be right up my alley but I really did not like the protagonist and the fighting and exploring seemed kind of boring.
The Last of Us
This game gets praised all the time but it felt too limited and ‘on rails’ whilst the gunplay and stealth was not for me.
HZD is unplayable unless you go to the lowest difficulty because essentially the combat is brainless rolling around
I’m so glad I didn’t read about HZD. I got it on sale and saw that it was similar to Assassin’s Creed. Being thrown into it without any expectations definitely helped.
I like the combat (as a person who constantly plays archers). The bows, traps, looting and fighting robot dinos was pretty cool. Figuring out how to take them out and aim at specific weak spots is fun.
The world is still pretty weird and honestly I would have dropped the game after a few hours too if I didn’t like the archery so much. The story as a whole is pretty good after beating it. But the delivery of it all kinda sucks.
You seem like a mountain dew game fuel and CoD kind of guy.
Mountain Dew sounds good, but I prefer my multiplayer to be local. Online games are a chore.
I did enjoy the original CoD back in 2003 though.
Horizon is my answer too. I was expecting an open world that felt alive, but instead it was a jam-packed theme park. You don’t hunt, you go to the right exhibit and kill everything within it. The entire herd is within a 50 meter radius, go nuts. Go away and come back later and it’ll be full again, exactly where it says so on the map, jammed between other points of interest with extensive, contrived looking plarforming challenges connecting it all. It’s like a zoo and a vending machine had a baby but we’re supposed believe it’s a big open natural world. Great concept, garbage execution. I felt like Bobby Hill hunting at La Grunta.
Lol, I enjoyed the game overall but that really is a perfect description of it’s biggest problem. It could have been so much more if they had been willing to take a risk and make it a little less game-y.
The Last of Us is definitely about the story. If you’re not invested in that, you’re probably not going to enjoy it. There’s nothing much in the gameplay that sets it apart from similar games.
HZD has genuinely some of the best storytelling and worldbuilding in gaming, but the kicker is that you have to play about half the game to get to it and it’s all told in flashback because the actual interesting stuff is what happened to get to this point rather than what’s happening now.
If blasting bits off knockoff Zoids isn’t doing it for you, then you’re going to run out of steam before getting to it.
100% this. I almost dropped it because it took half of the main quest line to do anything interesting. But once I got there I was enamored. My friend and I just played through the game for the first time and we both had the same opinion: the story of what is currently happening is boring. The story of what happened in the past to get to this point is amazing. They did a bad job of making me care about the present day characters.
Yes, but also no.
I didn’t play the Halo franchise until late 2015-early 2016, but I thought 3 and ODST were disappointing, and I stopped one mission into Reach. These days, Reach and 3 are my two favorite Halo games and ODST gets an honorable mention for its campaign. So what changed? In retrospect, it’s because they were running on a 360 with an ass framerate, ass resolution, and ass FOV with a weird crosshair that made me subconsciously raise my head and controller-based controls that I was bad at. They were uncomfortable for me to play on the hardware I had to run them on, and as soon as I had them with all that QOL improved, the experience was completely different.
This experience, along with plenty others, has shown me that it’s often not the game itself and could be several other factors, from the port and the platform to my expectations and my attitude. So while I’ve had a bunch of “disappointing” patient experiences, a good amount of them stopped being disappointing when I gave them another shot
Torment: Tides of Numenera
But I think I’m mostly disappointed in myself for not sticking with it. I joined the kickstarter, followed all the updates and was genuinely excited to explore the world being described.
When it finally came out I only played it for a few hours before losing all interest in it. Too much text and everyone seemed to have their life story to tell. Which is odd, because usually I love text heavy games with tons of lore.
Every so often I tell myself to give it a second chance, but never seem to be able to muster the energy to follow through.Carmageddon Resurrection.
- Performance sucked on release. It still might
- They promised a native Linux version in their crowd funding campaign …
- … and then back-pedalled on that. In stead they made a trailer in which several penguins were killed.
- Also: not that fun, as far as I remember.
