Best Game You Gave a Second Chance

[Kargathia]

Quite likely it'd be Red Orchestra 2, but chances are that is mainly due to it being the latest example, and my memory not functioning that well at 5am.

Anyhow: Red Orchestra. Tried it, thought it an ugly, clunky game with downright horrible AI, and didn't buy it for myself.

Few weeks ago it was on sale, so I gave it another shot.

It's still ugly, it's still clunky; and it's exactly what I'd love Battlefield to be: a large-scale realistic shooter that doesn't hesitate to squash you like a bug. No such nonsense as balancing sniper rifles to only insta-kill on headshots, no sir. Here when a machine gun opens fire you keep your head down, and start praying.

 

[Stryc9]

Best one I can think of is X3

I played Reunion and my PC couldn't handle it, that and thinking "what the actual fuck am I doing". I bought the X pack later, had a blast with X1 then got about 30 or so hours out of X3, great game. Just a bit slow so I play it for about 10 hours ever few months.

Same case here. Plus i had a few control issues as it was the first PC game i played that made such extensive use of the keyboard.

But got a better laptop, grew better fingers, then finished it.

Then i heard about Terran Conflict on Steam and went on to that the day after.

One does not simply finish X3, unless you actually play through the story which I never bothered with.

I had to give X3 third and fourth chances before it finally got it hooks into me and I logged 160+ hours in just a few months. I had a hard time getting past the steep learning curve and I'd get pissed and stop playing for a a few weeks then read some guides and come back until I got to where I was doing pretty well for myself in sandbox mode.

I really wanted to love X3 because it's everything I look for in a space sim and on a machine that can run it at max settings (which mine can't) it's so damn pretty. One of these days I'll get a machine together than can handle the game at max settings and it'll be another 160+ hours gone in Terran Conflict or whatever the name of the new one they're working on now is called, I forget because if I visit their site I end up reading the forums and then I end up playing the game and quit doing anything productive.

 

[Signa]

Deus Ex. People raved about it, but every time I played it, I couldn't beat the statue level. I tried stealthing, but my experience from playing Thief interfered. I tried assaulting, but I didn't have any skills or ammo to succeed with that either. Hell, this game may as well as not count because it probably was my 4th try only 2 years ago that it FINALLY clicked. Still didn't get around to beating it, but HOLY HELL was it a great ride while I was on it.

 

[Gennadios]

Definitely System Shock 2. The game has one hell of an acclimation curve and the overall weakness of the player and the inability to equip weapons without certain stats was a massive rage inducer in the early game. Ended up quitting it in frustration my first time.

A few months later I picked it up again, got a bit further, started saving up my upgrade points so I could pick up the best weapons as they came up... turned out to be a blast.

 

[Lunar Shadow]

New Vegas with some gameplay tweaking mods. Planescape :Torment, Fallout 1, KOTOR2 with restored content mod, and NWN2. I played all of them too young to appreciates (cept NV, but my second run through was more enjoyable and I could focus more on the story without gameplay issues messing with immersion) and am glad I replayed them later on in life.

 

[Zeckt]

Gears of war series. When it first came out I thought it was stupid and dismissed it not giving it a chance after the first half hour. Nowadays I have the limited gears 3 360 and play with my friend every weekend. Love it.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Killzone for the ps2, felt mediocre at first but a couple of weeks later a gave it another run. It's a blast to play even though the framerate can drop at alot of points. To bad the 2 Killzone's on the ps3 are Call Of Duty clones in space.

 

[woodaba]

KOTOR 2's first level is awful . Absolutely terrible. After that, though, it's utterly amazing (Well, to me anyway...)

I've never understood the hate Peragus gets. I thought it was brilliant.

 

[doomspore98]

Fallout 3, it seemed boring to me, but after I got the feel of the game it became so much more fun.

Half life 2 also.

 

[Dr. Mongo]

Morrowind for me. When I saw the game on the PC of a friend I was like "Pff, what a load of crap".
Later I would receive it as a gift from my mother (she's addicted to all things RPG). I installed it - more out of courtesy than anything else - and I got hooked almost instantly.

 

[Chunga the Great]

Fallout 3. It was my first RPG, so I didn't know what I was doing and lost interest within an hour. I came back to it in a few months, started a new character, and promtply proceeded to enjoy the hell out of it.

 

[Harkonnen64]

Metal Gear Solid 3. I couldn't get the feel for the controls for looking around. That and after about 3 1/2 hours into the game, I realized that only about 1 1/2 hours of that was actually gameplay; the rest was cutscenes. A week later I gave it another shot. It turned out to be a pretty good game after I figured out the controls, but I still think the cutscenes drag on for way too long.

 

[TerribleAssassin]

Half-Life 2.

Didn't really get it the first time round, played it again, then it hit me like a shit tonne of bricks.

 

[Dedtoo]

Dragon age: orgins.
I started playing it as a dwarf warrior, and the first place I went to when I could was back to ye olde dwarf hole. Then I couldn't get past the spider queen/brood-mother (cant remember) and just stopped playing it for a while.
One night I was bored though, I tried it again, as a human rouge, and not going to the dwarves first. Then I figured it was a fun game, as I didn't get stuck at the first big boss.

 

[King of Asgaard]

A little RPG called Live A Live, on the SNES.
Now, props to anyone who's heard about it/played it because it was never released in the west.
The only way to play it is to get it on an emulator with an English patch.
Anyway, it essentially is a collection of seven fairly lengthy stories of seven different characters.
Two of these stories I could never finish, because I'd get stuck (sue me, I was young), so I wrote it off as a decent Square RPG.
A year or so ago, I revisited it, and managed to clear it in its entirety, and holy crap was it good.
It's one of those rare, obscure titles that is really good, and while clichéd in it's stories (they seem to be takes on the classic martial arts, western, ninja, future/space and anime settings) the twist was really cool, and the choice of endings (yeah, a choice of endings in the early 90s) was a nice bonus.

 

[Rooster893]

Team Fortress 2. I played it on The Orange Box when I first got the game, I thought it was terrible.

But after I beat all of the other games on The Orange Box, I decided to give TF2 another try.

Next thing you know, I have over 80 hours clocked in to every class!

 

[Elgnirp100]

Metroid Prime 2.
I started it thinking "this is nowhere near as good as MP1" but persevered. Eventually I got past the annoyance that is Torvus Bog and really got into it.

 

[Palademon]

I'd say Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3.
Not because I thought they were bad, but because they both seem to have their own unique steep learning curve, that turn the first 6 hours of either into Super Meat Boy.
I haven't gotten back to playing 3 yet and getting through that curve, but I plan to.

 

[babinro]

Mass Effect 1 - Borrowed it on Xbox and couldn't get into the game. Gave up on it after about 10 hours and 2 class restarts.

Revisited it again on PC a year later and loved it.