This is a followup to @[email protected] ‘s recent thread for completeness’ sake.
I’ll state an old classic that is seen as a genre defining game because it is: Myst. Yes, it redefined the genre… in ways I fucking hated and that the adventure game genre took decades to fully recover from. It was a pompous mess in its presentation and was the worst kind of “doing action does vague thing or nothing at all, where is your hint book” puzzle gameplay wrapped in graphical hype which ages pretty poorly as far as appeal qualities go.
So many adventure games tried to be Myst afterward that the sheer budgetary costs and redundancy of the also-rans crashed the adventure game genre for years.
Horizon Zero Dawn. Might be a good game series but It didnt catch me. Im also sure I enjoyed the Last of Us more as a show then as a game. Then again I have to admit these arent the kinds of games I really enjoy anyways.
I got reasonably far in Horizon and then couldn’t do it when I realized it was just Far Cry with robot dinosaurs.
What killed HZD for me was the god-awful writing. Every character is a cardboard cut-out and the plot was painfully predictable. Add the shallow gameplay on top of that and I regret every one of those ten dollars I spent on it.
I absolutely love that game and the sound effects coming off the controller tickle me pink. But honestly, it’s just not a good enough game to justify the time commitment with what little time I actually have.
I loved the first last of us, haven’t played the second yet. But I agree with you on horizon zero dawn. Couldn’t get into it no matter how much I tried.
Interestingly, The Last Of Us was one that never hooked me. Tried it on two occasions and it just felt weird to me. Ended up watching someone else play it on Twitch/YouTube. I can get why the story is so good, but the gameplay just didn’t suit me.
Good story, but it’s a story that was meant to be a tv-show. It doesn’t at all make use of being a game
TLOU is most fun when you play combat psychotically hyper-aggressive, but that does clash a bit with the narrative. Joel going out of his way to set six people on fire affects the mood a bit.
Red Dead Redemption 2 Online
Yeah I know there were a lot of complaints but there weren’t enough. The Player vs Player part of that game could have been fun, but it’s literally the worst competitive multiplayer I have ever played in my entire life. Holy God how could it be so bad?? Nothing happens, you just get instantly headshot and thrown back to instantly respawn 100 yards back, forever, and ever. I call it Headshot Sisyphus 2
HZD. Got it as people were raving about how great it was and I thought the dinos seemed neat. Then got to the point where the game open up and how much of an arrow sponge the bigger ones are, tried to see if I was doing something wrong and then realised that it was actually intended. The combat is way too clunky for that to work for me.
The rest of the game also didn’t make up for it, so I just dropped it after I went to the big city to see if there was anything there which would hook me.
Also played FF7 on the PC back in the day and it bores the shit out of me.
Deadcells. Loved the art style, combat looked fun. I was so excited to play a new metroidvania only to discover it’s a rougelike and that killed all interest in playing it. I just really dislike that kind of game.
I thought Breath of the Wild was mid
Also, the grizzled white dude with gun games aren’t really my thing. So anything from Rockstar, the Uncharted series, The Last of Us, etc
No shade to anyone that likes them, they just aren’t for me. I tend to like over-the-top hammy stuff or baby games.
The last of us is a lot more than a grizzled dude with a gun, especially the second game . That’s just what braindead Chuds who’ve never played the games stereotype it as. Even the first game has LGBT characters and some form of a complex story.
I was so burnt out on zombie games and the Last of Us part 1 was just the final straw. It’s especially galling having people preach that it’s some magnificent new horizon for story-telling and being profoundly disappointed finding out that it’s just more of the same.
Neat
Also, the grizzled white dude with gun games aren’t really my thing.
I include the Witcherino with that, even without guns. It’s basically the same grimdark shit with extra le sexy sex where your power fantasy ego insert is cursed with never having to worry about paying child support while fuccboying around the land of grimdark.
Tribes 2. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great game, amazing even. But Tribes was a more focused experience.
I remember when Tribes had the full title Starsiege Tribes and was vaguely related to the now forgotten “MetalTech” franchise that started with EarthSiege and BattleDrome.
I owned all of the above.
Man, starsiege was such a fun game. I think there’s actually still a community of players, but it was something special in its heyday.
Remember when they did Tribes Vengence and it had an awesome Earthsiege canon singleplayer and a meh multiplayer?
Also remember Cyberstorm? Amazing Hex based mech game.
Also remember Cyberstorm? Amazing Hex based mech game.
That one was bleak.
Prometheus was the bad guy supposedly but you’re corpo officers leading subjugated “bioderm” genetically engineered clone soldiers around. One of the “hero” ones with better stats is based off of an unsuccessful John Brown type who got his genes “biodermed” as well.
All of them were pretty bleak with no real good people and no way out of a mutually genocidal war of violence that…well…humans started.
I don’t disagree but CyberStorm really drove it in just how fucked everything was.
The Witcherino 3
I know most people don’t agree, but I never could get into Skyrim. I’m not much of a gamer, so I don’t play a ton of games. I ended up playing Skyrim for the first time in 2021.
The story seemed generic to me, the combat was clunky, and the missions were all repetitive. I stopped playing after about 50 hours.
I should add that I love Fallout though. I’m not sure why I like it and not Skyrim.
I’m not sure why i enjoy either of them but i do.
I could never figure out how people could get into bethesda melee combat, it’s so fucking bad
Does anyone get into bethesda melee combat? Ive enjoyed the games despite it
Exactly. And I usually prefer melee combat.
I was really into Mount & Blade when Skyrim came out and it still baffles me how one is by an indie dev and it follows the same very much video-game hitpoint / slash-through logic of melee combat but it pulls off the same thing so much better
Hard to feel how bad the combat is in Oblivion when you leave the sewers, dupe glitch some scrolls or potions to sell for enough money to bribe that glitched guy in Imperial City and then use the Lovers daily greater power to paralyze him and take infinite money out of his pocket and then save scum an Oblivion tower to get a Sigil stone that grants Chameleon and then using your infinite money to enchant 4 pieces of equipment with permanent 25% Chameleon and be completely undetectable no matter what forever
and then use the Lovers daily greater power to paralyze him and take infinite money out of his pocket
IIRC the UOP fixes this
I remember really liking base Skyrim, but that’s also a game that came out in 2011 over ten years ago. These days when I have a mind to boot up skse.exe the game I’m playing definitely isn’t Skyrim, it’s something else entirely.
I remember playing a little bit of Skyrim and then going back to oblivion. Oblivion is probably also shit, but the world felt much more alive. I was always curious to see what I would find when I left the paths, it was as if each area had a rich story going on. The gameplay wasn’t very good, but it was made up for by some really cool quests.
Radiant quests ruined Bethesda games I guess.
Elden Ring. I really tried, but the complete absence of any serious scenario, world building, story or dialogue just made the game completely uninteresting to me. Mind you I never could get into Dark Souls either.
Also here is a link to the thread from Soros you mentioned
I can relate. Belden Bing was just Dark Souls but more unpleasant as far as I was concerned.
i just hate all videogames, despite playing them all the time. they pale in comparison to the shit i imagine while i play them. even my favorite games just piss me off with all the ways they could be hypothetically improved upon. this game needs bigger maps, that game could use a prone mechanic, this other game needs leaning around corners… i just can’t stop myself. and thats without getting into microtransaction games-as-a-service shit that i can’t afford but still want because i am a needy little treat goblin who has to farm any tiny scrap of dopamine out of the world that i can.
every game that requires realtime input. turn based or, at a stretch, variable speed realtime with pausing is all that can capture me
Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s just not a fun game: D&D is mechanically bad and doesn’t work at all for a video game that doesn’t have a GM on hand to paper over all the serious problems with it, the controls and interface are janky as hell and the camera aggressively fights you, and however much detail they put into it I just couldn’t care at all because it’s all just bland forgotten realms slop.
I was hoping the DAE LE ILLITHIDS thing was just an opener and a closer, but nope, it was like that comic meme where the rat has a wrapped present and it says “IT’S MORE ILLITHIDS” through pretty much every major plot beat to the end. I was hoping for a plot twist that was NOT “IT’S MORE ILLITHIDS” but nope. I guess Wizards of the Coast wants to keep ringing that bell because they own that bell.
What do you have against mind flayers?
Is it all the mind flaying? It’s the mind flaying, isn’t it.
I have the same issue with them that I had with prophecy-laden cults that hung out in sewers in 90s games.
Too. Much.
I know you’re speaking of clichés in games, but the way it’s phrases makes it sound like a real-world issue to you, which is funny to me.
Like as you arrive at your home you hear ominous chanting coming from the storm drain. You go to look and spot someone in the middle of summoning a demon, all you can think is “for fucks sake, we just had pest control stop by. I can’t afford another drain-cleaning”I know you’re speaking of clichés in games, but the way it’s phrases makes it sound like a real-world issue to you, which is funny to me.
It kind of was with the millennium cults busting out regularly, like Heaven’s Gate. But sewers were more for kids looking for ninja turtles.
What about “no it’s bhaal”
I expected that at some point and the reveal to me was basically:
spoiler
Oh hay, it’s Sarevok, again, and a handful of the scrubs from Throne of Bhaal
honestly I don’t really know why I adore it - thing crashes every half hour on my rig, on top of what you’ve said. guess I do enjoy fantasy slop somewhat and also the dragonborns are soooo pretty
The fights can be pretty good, when they’re not janked to fuck
I’m having a lot of fun playing a shadow monk with a 3 level dip into rogue for that sweet extra bonus action from thief. Just cleared a duel with an important plot boss in, like, two turns because I’m whirlwind of fists.
Having the same fun at the high levels with a gloomstalker ranger/thief rogue.
I’m clearing out rooms dualwielding some kickass handcrossbows. There’s apparently a tavernbrawler monk build that regularly gives 200 dmgI had the same level layout with my first playthrough and I can’t get over how well it sold the ninja character fantasy so well.
spoiler
Stealing all of Raphael’s shit and then punching him a million times in 30 seconds
i’ve mentioned it before on here, but Final Fantasy 15. no idea how it got 9’s and 10’s on release. i’m assuming it was just vibes and how much you liked hanging out with the boys. you had to watch a movie and anime series to even understand the plot and characters. combat was egregiously shallow and easy. game just pissed me off. not sure what the royal version changed and if they fixed any of these problems.
FF15 is one of the most frustrating games I’ve ever played because it’s the most mediocre game I’ve ever played that’s so close to being great.
how much you liked hanging out with the boys
can confirm
i liked going on a road trip with the gay j-pop band
also the fishing was funI feel that way about XVI. It’s been a colorful series with horse-birds and over the top summoned demigods and party members with wacky names for a very long time and the attempt to grimdark it up just fell flat for me. It doesn’t help that the main inspiration for XVI according to Yoshi-P was Game of Thrones, which I’ve never liked.
Fallout 4. Found the game super uninteresting and it had even more roleplaying mechanics gutted from it like Skyrim before it (didn’t like Skyrim either, put about an hour into the game and never picked it up again).
I think Skyrim without mods is generally unenjoyable and modded it’s possibly the best game I’ve ever played.
I have no idea how to assess Skyrim because of these two things.
I almost view Skyrim like an incomplete engine that a good game can be built upon but I genuinely dislike the unmodded vanilla game.
A mug that says “don’t play me until I’ve installed my 400+ modlist”
f u Todd
There’s a mod for that somewhere.
You probably can if you pay enough DLC money.
RDR 2 is like 3 or 4 great games rolled into one and all negating each other. The story is enjoyable enough with some depth and it’s ruined by half of it being told through interactive cutscenes where you have to press W but if you don’t magically follow the perfect path it fucks up the pacing.
It has a beautilly crafted open world with mechanics and side-activities, none of which do anything useful for the rest of it or have enough depth to stand on their own and a mission design that straight up fails you if you don’t take the 1 path the developers want you to take.
It is a survival game, except set in the big rock candy mountains considering how much loot and money is just laying around.
It’s basically The Homer, as a videogame
It is so easy stumbling into money in RDR 2 that I had fully upgraded the camp before we moved to the second one, and I wasn’t even grinding or anything, just hunting, fishing, looting, etc. like normal.
It was also frustrating to me just how cheap the guns are. It’s trivial to get a fully upgraded set of weapons long before the end of the game, and the differences between them are minimal. You’re given all of these options on how to deal with threats. You can sneak, you have throwing knives, a bow, you can lasso guys, you can make a sniper rifle. You have a wide toolbox. But honestly, you’re given the most effective means of dealing with enemies very early in the game. Hide behind something, go into slow motion, and use a revolver. All the other stuff is just there to play around with and none of it ever seemed more effective than the basic revolvers. This is largely because of the lack of enemy variety. You have guys with pistols and guys with rifles who are further away, and that’s really it. You’re fighting the same exact enemies at the start of the game as by the end. I understand they were going for something grounded and realistic, but it made everything stale. The only time I remember being surprised by an enemy were the ones in the Epilogue who hide up in the branches of trees.
The differences between the horses seemed minimal as well.
At a certain point the only thing left to do was buying all the hats. With all that said, RDR 2 is a massive accomplishment. It’s one of the very rare examples of good writing in a video game and it’s surprisingly class conscious. The soundtrack is gorgeous too.
I’ve just don’t care for Rockstar combat. Tried RDR and GTAV but like you said, boring combat.
It’s basically The Homer, as a videogame
Amazing concluding sentence.
It has a beautilly crafted open world with mechanics
it does this astoundingly well though, and i like the shiny fancy graphics. you’re not wrong though
any part of RDR 2 is impressive on all fronts but it absolutely does not come together, it is so much less than the sum of it parts
The PvP part is the only part that is literally the worst gameplay ever created
