Critically acclaimed games you didn't like.

[King of Asgaard]

Dragon Age: Origins
I played it on PS3 (I don't know if that changes much)and I found the game to be lackluster.
The gameplay was mundane, the graphics were outdated and the story was cliched.
The only things it had going for it was the dialog, music, voice acting and most characters (I couldn't stand Sten).

Mass Effect 2
It was hyped up to be some epic space adventure, but all it was, was a third person shooter with minor RPG elements. Also, considering that an entire year passed before a PS3 port was released, the game should have been converted with a degree of hard work, not some slap dash attempt to wring more cash out of the masses with a poorly optimized, buggy port.

 

[PorkChopXpress]

Final Fantasy VII - You can credit it for being the first of it's kind, but it was a boring game with lame characters and a mediocre story, IMO not worth the praise. There are much better FF games released AFTER VII (X and X-2 not included, lol).

Fallout 3 - Buggy mess that I didn't find very engaging, save for the opening.

Deus Ex: HR - I was especially disappointed at this one. It had a lot of promise. Dare I say I actually enjoyed it until I realized the interaction within the cities were extremely limited. And that lack of depth as far as environments and NPC's go killed it for me. I expected a large interactive world with DE:HR and I didn't get it. You can only lift so many cardboard boxes.

And any GTA game - They, to me, never had a good story, and story is a great deal of why I buy the games I do.

 

[Zetona]

I got about a third of the way through L.A. Noire before just getting bored with it. The concept is very intriguing at first, but for a Rockstar open-world game, there's shockingly little to do outside the main story (a couple dozen really short side missions and some collectibles), the overarching story hadn't gotten interesting by the time I gave up, interrogating suspects was frustrating, and I swear Rockstar made a better-looking Los Angeles in Midnight Club: LA two and a half years earlier.

Bioshock wasn't bad, but its excellent atmosphere did little to disguise the uninspiring gunplay and awful pacing born from having dark, confusing-to-navigate levels and no real penalty for dying. Plus, most of the "story" was to establish the atmosphere and backstory of the game. What you were doing at the moment wasn't terribly engaging from a narrative perspective. Maybe it's because I had the big twist spoiled for me.

I really did not like Rez HD. I bought it based on its excellent reception, but I was underwhelmed by the art style and absolutely could not get the hang of the gameplay or story, which are both awfully obtuse. The whole "gameplay & music" thing all the games-as-art proponents extolled was kinda undermined by the fact that the music was hardly memorable.

 

[Ansem-The-Wise]

Oblivion. I played it for a few hours, but it didn't sit right with me. I don't even remember what the main plot was, I just ran around doing side quests, and trying to kill things. It was a decent RPG, but it didn't hold my interest. Probably why I won't be picking up Skyrim anytime soon.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

Any GTA game, I've tried a couple of them just to see if they can change my opinion of them, but they all bored me to death.

Resistance 2, now I love this series but R2 wasn't that great and it felt like CoD with aliens. This is mainly because of the fact that you can only hold two weapons at a time, which sucked considering who the developers are. There were a few cool bits in the game, and the ending was great (despite the fact the game was practically tell you what was going to happen after a few hours in), but it was painful to play through.

This is a shame since the first one was amazing, and the third one was just as amazing, too bad the second one did nothing for me.

 

[La Barata]

Bloody hate gears of war, and all its sequels.

 

[RaNDM G]

Fallout 3 is SO BORING. No matter how many quests I do or places I explore, it's ssdd.

 

[Black Arrow Officer]

Fallout: New Vegas. A shitty plot, shitty graphics, shitty animations, shitty gunplay, shitty dialogue... is there anything good about this game? It's practically a chore to play.

Counter Strike. I love every single other FPS made by Valve, but this one? It's just a complete mess. Broken hit detection, unbalanced weapons, endless cheap deaths, ridiculous flashbangs and no respawning. Add to that the terrible community and you've got one of the worst multiplayer FPS games of all time, in steady competition with Call of Duty.

Call of Duty. After playing Battlefield 3 for one round, I sold MW3 to my friend. There's nothing to do but run around in the boxed in, dull environments, spraying around until someone gets hit with a stray bullet. It's like we're lab rats, with Activision testing how long we'll continue buying their games even though every single one is the same dull mess.

 

[daftalchemist]

GTA4. I bought it for 5 bucks on Steam during a Christmas sale, played about 8 hours of it and decided I had wasted 5 bucks. I don't even understand how people thought it was so amazing. The game practically resets your progress after those 8 hours, and I wasn't starting over from scratch in a new section of city.

And I guess L.A. Noire too. It's sad, because I was so excited for it. I LOVE detective/crime solving stuff. And while the motion capture was really good, everything else was just bad. I got through taffic and vice, and just gave up. The whole time I was playing, I was seriously wishing that I was playing Phoenix Wright instead because it's MUCH MORE engaging than L.A. Noire was. Plus the sudden outbursts actual fit in Phoenix Wright.

 

[Project Nemesis]

Batman: Arkham Asylum - mediocre from any point of view, boss battles sucked.
Portal 1&2 - the very essence of the game is stupid
Half-Life (series) - really not my glass of vodka

 

[CommanderKirov]

Zelda franchise.

I actually played through THREE of the games, and I did it just because I was dumb and kept thinking "Well It may seem shit to me now, but a lot of people love it to death, so maybe I should play some more and it will become playable."

I learned upon that mistake one of very important things of life. No matter how many people may hold the same opinion, they can still be wrong.

 

[GeekFury]

The Modern Warfare, Call of Duty, Battlefieled, Gears of War and Halo series', all horrid games.

 

[Thespian]

Portal 2. Honestly I was so disappointed with it after how much I loved the first.

 

[major_chaos]

Dragon Age Origins(unlikable cast, way to slow combat, and I personally never found the story interesting), uncharted (all three for bad combat horrible platforming, and a lead that I never stop wanting to murder), and final fantasy after seven(to many reasons to list) but the one most likely to get me killed on this site is that I could not find a single redeeming trait in the Shadow of the colossus/ICO bundle, OR half-life 2, two games that seem to be symbols of perfection to people on the internet.

 

[Zarkov]

any game by bethesda.
should i flee the country now? seriously i dont understand how you can like these games. morrowind was pretty good actually but was that made by bethesda? i dont even know. but oblivion, fallout 3 and new vegas were so bad, so very bad.

Wait wait; let me get this right...

You didn't like Oblivion, but liked Morrowind...? I love me some Morrowind, don't get me wrong, but that game was nearly unplayable without massive modding done towards it. Combat, immersion, quests - you name it - were all pretty shit. And however Oblivion didn't improve by the bucket loads, it did allow me to really get into my character. But seriously, if you didn't like Oblivion I can't think of a reason how you would start to like Morrowind. Morrowind is really an acquired taste aggregated through the tolerance of pure shit.

Oh, and Morrowind has got to be the worst aged game EVER.
But eh, as an Elder Scrolls fan I have no shame saying that Oblivion, even though streamlined, was better than Morrowind. It was just more... I don't know... playable.

 

[Geo88]

Hrm... Probably Halo: Reach.

I thought the multiplayer was pretty solid (though I place much more importance on most games' stories, especially ones with expansive extended universes like Halo), but I thought the campaign was a travesty to storytelling. God, I hated that campaign. As much as I like the Halo universe, I think Reach put me off the series. I'll have to find a way to rent the next Halo game because there's no way I'm dropping $60 without knowing what I'm getting into.

The Half-Life series is probably up there, but that's just because I don't enjoy those types of games. Survival/suspense/horror games have never done much for me, and while I understand why people like it, it's just not my thing.

Dragon Age: Origins, too. The whole "origins" gimmick was actually pretty shallow, I thought. You played through the opening intro sequence, then just played the game once you got to Ostagar. I did like BioWare's take on the fantasy genre, but what really prevents me from replaying it is the combat control. I hated having to micromanage my allies (the macros didn't always work, so I just did it myself), and combat was really clunky for me.

 

[flying_whimsy]

gears of war.

I had just finished playing through the first and second mass effect games on the pc before I picked it up cheap for my 360; very disappointed. All of the things I disliked in mass effect 2 were a direct result of that clunky, bland, brown little shooter.

Using a machine gun with a chain saw on the end should never be that boring!

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Halo.

Just felt generic and lacking in any noticeable difference.

From what? Other shooters?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FollowTheLeader

That's why.

And the worse bit is, all my friends are convinced it's one of the most varied FPS ever. Not realizing that half the games at Game all have the same mechanics.

The original Halo wasn't generic or bad at all, but it got copied so much that it now seems generic. That's what the link was for

At the time the 2 gun system along with regenerating health and decent AI were all fairly new mechanics, and it was the first game to combine them all and not be shit. I see what you mean about it seeming boring now but that's kinda an unfair way to judge it.

 

[FastDude]

AC: Brotherhood
Heavy Rain

 

[albinokid66]

mediocre OST, a battle system...

Woah woah woah woah woah...

I don't think I have ever heard someone knock FF7 OST I thought everyone was in agreement that it was possibly the strongest point of the game? There are many flaws to FF7 but the OST is NOT one of them IMO. I would like to know why you don't like the soundtrack? I am genuinely curious.