"Dude, only X's play Y"

[AdeptaSororitas]

So this pops up often but it's been picking at me for a while. I frequently see people and, more surprisingly, game critics frequently compare certain genres to certain groups of people and vice versa. They are claiming that the people who enjoy, say, JRPs don't like games like Halo or Call of Duty, or that those who play stealth games primarily hate shooters, or strategic shooting game players disliking arcade run and guns Even Western RPGers disliking Japanese RPGs. I'm interested in seeing if this hold true to the escapist community.

So, hit me with your preferred genre, and then your least preferred genre. Not necessarily one you don't play or that you hate, but the one you play the least. To round things out, explain why you don't play them as much. Now I want you to look back at what you wrote and tell me if you fall into a common generalization.

I personally fall into the "Western RPG fans don't like JRPGs." I do try the occasional JRPG that's different from the rest to see if this still applies however.

 

[sshakespeare]

I generaly play anything, fave genre should be RPGs but I havent really played any that i enjoyed in the last couple of years. I have a about five shooters but they are all pretty samey so not my one of my favourite genres.

As for my most hated its sports and fighting games, yes this is a little bit to do with me not being any good at them, but its moslty because I cant see the point in playing sport on a screen when I could go out and do it (obviously cant go out and play mortal kombat in the real world but you get my point).

My least played genre is JRPGS as I've never even picked one up

 

[Jubbert]

My favorite would probably be first and third person shooters, and action-RPG's like Fallout, Deus Ex, etc. are also big hits with me.

My least favorites would probably be fighting games, or old-school "pure" rpg's like Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age, etc. Fighting games seem much too random and muscle-memory-related to me, and oldschool RPG's seem... I don't want to say boring because they can be really intense, but they aren't my cup of tea.

 

[Nouw]

Favourite is either Shooter or Strategy. Least favourite is probably Sports.

 

[JesterRaiin]

Sandbox cRPG vs Car/Plane simulators.
It really comes down to playing vs winning.

 

[BreakfastMan]

My preferred genre is RPG. Western or Eastern, I don't care, I love them both. Out of my top 5 favorite games of all time, 2 are WRPGs and 2 are JRPGs.

My least preferred genre is Sports. I honestly don't see the point. I can go out and play football/soccer/basketball. Why do I need a video game version of it?

 

[Ruwrak]

Preferred: Tactical Action RPG's. Think of Heroes of might and magic, Mount and blade etc etc
Least preferred: Puzzles. I hate puzzles....

I don't fit into a typical stereotype I think. Generally working out a tactic IS a puzzle, but I dislike the puzzle types like Dante's Inferno, Devil May Cry etc give. You know, the time based, no mess ups, better step on it, claustrophobic time trials.


Urgh >.<

 

[brainslurper]

I play every genre imaginable, except sport games. Sport games have no narrative, they rarely differ from release to release, (Like COD, but at COD has a narrative, and you can't go outside and have a gunfight in an airport.)

 

[trollnystan]

My favourite genre is probably WRPG. I dip my toe in other waters too though; for example I can enjoy a well-made JRPG, and games like AC2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum are fun.

My least favourite are FPSes a la COD and the like. I could probably muddle through the single-player campaigns and enjoy myself, but the those games are supposed to only shine in the co-op/multiplayer and I can't do that.

I hate multiplayer, and - no offence to you mature COD et al players out there - multiplayer seems to be full of annoying little shitheads. I rage REAL easy and so I'd sooner just not go there.

So I guess I belong to the non-FPS group or something.

EDIT: Feck it, I forgot about sports games. Although I might rather play NHL '11 (or whatever it's called) than FPSes anyway...

 

[Griphphin]

I'm really big on:
Fighters,
Shooters, and
Platformers

with my least preferred genre being:
RTS's

I love the way RTS's play, but I'm downright hopeless at them. Of the top three I play, two are almost intrinsically competitive, with platformers being indirectly competitive when you start eyeing the leaderboards for times and scores (and I do!), and I can deal with being bad as something, in fact I love tracking my skill progress in fighters and migrate to different ones once I reach my peak in that game. But with RTS's, my peak is more like a valley >.<

As for falling into different generalizations, you'd think I couldn't stomach a laid-back game where I wasn't competing with someone else for a win, but TES:Oblivion is one of my most played games for just that reason and I'm looking forward to Skyrim more so than MW3 or SFxT (though I am looking forward to them), so I might be the anomaly there.

I'm a bigger fan of a challenge than I am of competition. A good chunk of my gaming time lately has been Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite with a friend, where we overcome the bullhonky of the wyverns to fell the beastie and given the choice, a cooperative experience of equal quality is more fun for me than a comparable competitive one.

 

[Torrasque]

Hmmm... lets see...
Well, I have Starcraft, Ogre Battle 64, Halo, MW2, Catherine, Fire Emblem, Red Dead Redemption, No More Heroes, Pokemon, Oblivion, Star Fox 64 (and 3DS), Ocarina of Time, and Marvel vs. Capcom 3...
And I really love every single one of those games, lol.
So I am pretty well rounded.
I think the only genre of games I don't like, are those really boring point and click kind of games where you don't really do anything, you kind of just follow the game along and play "I Spy". Which is ironic, because I enjoy I Spy in short doses. Games like Myst are boring as hell for me, and I can NEVER get into them.

My least preferred genre?
I am not that good at fighting games because I don't take the time to memorize the button combinations and how exactly I am to execute every move in every circumstance. I am pretty good at Soul Calibur 2 and Super Smash Bros (any), but when it gets to games like Street Fighter or Marvel vs. Capcom, where you really need to know what you're doing, I just button mash =P
Driving games get kind of boring as well. Mario Kart is probably the extent of my driving craze. I just don't racing against computers (or humans) that entertaining. You can lose two ways: your car is not as good as theirs, or you nudge the edge of the course and lose half of your speed, and they stay ahead of you permanently... I played PGR for about 2 hours before I gave up because I could not get through the entire course without bumping 1 tiny obstacle and losing all of my momentum, while watching the computer speed by me and stay ahead of me for the rest of the fucking race.
Edit: Oh! I almost forgot sports games. They CAN be fun, but they usually get boring after a while. The last sports game I played the shit out of, was NHL Hitz (2003?) where you can make a team of anything you want (sharks, aliens, babies) and play a career with them.
Not only was my Shark team (every player was as large in every dimension as possible) unbeatable, but I made the most stacked Boston Bruins team ever, and pounded every team I played against. That game was so much fun

 

[Phlakes]

I absolutely love RPGs, not the more complex ones like Planescape or the original Fallouts, but the 3D FFs and Pokemon and Mass Effect.

And I hate hack n' slash games like God of War (which sucks, because I really wanted to play the new Castlevania) and fighting games other than SSB.

 

[Mechanical Cat Fish]

I'll admit I tend to stick to just a couple of genres, but I don't think there could be much more of a dichotomy. How do WRPGs and Japanese fighting games sound? I honestly think you can't make any assumptions about what people will or won't play.
(For the record, I do play a lot of other games and genres, but the two mentioned above seem to be the majority of my collection.)

 

[Fanta Grape]

I play FPS's mostly and I've never played a driving game other than mario kart for more than 10 minutes.

 

[Tazzy da Devil]

My favourite genres are RPGs (either, but usually JRPGs) and platformers.

My least favourite genres are FPSes, sports and racing games.

I don't really have a reason for liking the things I do, it's just what I find the most fun.

I don't like FPSes, primarily because I hate the limited viewpiont. I don't like sports and racing games mainly because they usually have no story, plus I can drive and play sports in real life, I don't need a game to help me do it.

There are exceptions however. For example, despite it being a racing game, I played Jak X to death.

 

[Erana]

I'd comment, but I'd feel like a hypocrite.

I want to deny it, but for the past several months now, I've been able to predict when I'm going to start my period by when I crave JRPGs.

Of course, I'm also the person who compulsively healed someone with the sandvich when they were teasing me over being in the kitchen all the time... While playing TF2 in the kitchen. >.<

Still, I think many of the "These people play so-and-so" are true to a degree; there are a lot of people who only do JRPG or WRPGs, for example. But the problem is that people try to make something of it, like trying to use the JRPG/WRPG thing to belittle one of the groups.

 

[Eleuthera]

My preferred genres are wRPGs and grand strategy/turn based strategy. I suck at and dislike RTSs and fighting games.

Very rarely one of those games will catch my fancy though, I'll still be bad at them but at least I'll enjoy myself for a little while.