Everyone loves them but you.

[MattyDienhoff]

I like many single player first-person shooters, because you can set your own pace and play it how you want (bunny hop all over the place or act like you're really there, it's up to you), but I despise pretty much every multiplayer first person shooter on the market. Counter-Strike, Halo, Call of Duty, Day of Defeat: Source... Team Fortress 2 is one rare exception, but even that gets tiresome for me after an hour or so unless I'm playing with some good people. Multiplayer shooters fall into two main categories:

* Ridiculous gamey twitch-fests full of mouthy pre-teen pricks and/or cheaters. (Counter-Strike and Halo)

* Games that are somewhat realistic and try to encourage teamwork but fall down in a heap anyway because most people are idiots, dooming anything resembling tactical play to make it's only appearances in the game's trailer and the occasional realism squad match. (Day of Defeat: Source and Call of Duty are good examples)

The funny thing is, I'm always competent and usually above average when I play such games, but I can't stand them anyway.

I've seen Grand Theft Auto mentioned a few times. I love the series, but to those who don't enjoy it - I can see where you're coming from. Personally, a lot of it's appeal is the way I play it. GTA quite obviously appeals to the short-attention-span crowd (which isn't me because I'm uncommonly patient and value pacing, skill and finesse over ultra fast paced action) and doesn't seem to have much in the way of depth to it, but I still enjoy it because I play it differently to most people. I spend a lot of time exploring, doing sub-missions and the various mini-games, collecting stuff, calmly cruising around getting lost in the atmosphere, etc. in between actually doing the missions. Even though the gameplay isn't particularly engrossing the games' environments themselves are very atmospheric.

 

[some random guy]

But just because a game is flawed doesn't necessarily make it bad if it compensates for its flaws in other areas.

But silent hill doesn't compensate in other areas.

Let's look at the things that it does well and the things that it does badly.

Well:
Graphics
Sound/music
Atmosphere
Story
characters/character development

Badly:
Camera
Level design
Immersion
Fun factor
Puzzles
And the worst one of all:
Gameplay.

Same amount of points for each but all the most important elements have been ignored. You're characters moves around like a tank and the combat is painful. I don't care how good the other parts of the game are if it takes if it takes me 20 seconds to walk out of the toilet cubicle because James doesn't want to walk in the direction I point the analog stick in.
I but puzzles in the "bad" section because of the first one. I had worked out that the marks on the wall referred to the angle of the clock hands and I had found the key to the clock face. But it still...

 

[some random guy]

wasn't working. After checking out some walkthroughs, I finally learned that I needed to try and grab an easily missed key behind some bars (which was kicked away by a little girl) which somehow triggered a bunch of events including the clock actually moving when I changed it to the right time. It just made no sense.

The game never builds up to anything. You just go around collecting items and keys until your mind goes numb. Everything looks the same and the indoor levels are maze like, making the environments confusing to navigate. The default camera position is almost always in front of James (not very convenient, really) And changing it becomes tedious when your constantly going to different rooms.

Overall, the flaws are so great that the good things just don't compensate for them.

 

[The Irrelevant Gamer]

I don't see the appeal of WoW. Feels like work to me, but something like ten million people disagree with me on that.

Metal Gear Solid. I only played the first one, but it strikes me as tragically (or hilariously) ironic that a game with an obvious stiffy for its own story is terribly written. I also thought the cut scenes could use some trimming in the first one so probably shouldn't get within ten feet of the newest installment.

Halo. I enjoy the multiplayer, but haven't touched Halo 3 since CoD4 came out, and I really don't understand the reverence for this game. It is like some kind of reality distorting hype black hole surrounds it.

 

[Squarewave]

Zelda:OOT Horrible controls, bad camera, unlikeable npcs, lame story, lack of cross hair with range weapons (wtf?), the annoying fairy, the uncontrollable horse that you have to use the unresponsive controls while firing the bow that doesn't have a cross hair . I've tried several times to like the game, but each time left me with a 'why the hell do people like this ?" feeling

As far as odd-ball stuff, I hate FPS on PCs and love them on consoles. Mostly because I hate using hotkeys with my left hand, and how you have to take your hands off movement to use the hotkeys

 

[friedmetroid]

Halo 3 for one. Don't get me wrong, I loved the original Halo. But both the sequels were overhyped and mediocre.

 

[BallPtPenTheif]

Halo 3 for one. Don't get me wrong, I loved the original Halo. But both the sequels were overhyped and mediocre.

i just can't get over the awful art design.

yes when forced to play, with friends, with many beers on hand, Halo is incredibly fun.

 

[revolverwolf]

I seem to like some of the games you hate so much but I see what your point is...You dislike these games because they've got aggresively over-protective fanboys/fangirls.

 

[shatnershaman]

Windows XP- boring

 

[thatkid82]

1. I thought Portal was hugely overrated(as are most games from Valve), I got bored very quickly, the annoying computer voice was not only not funny it's monotone blabbering just helped add to the tedium. Portal also has no replay value at all, I'm sure there is other ways to go about clearing some of the levels, but I could have done without playing Portal the first time. The little black monster from the SSBB review should have beaten all the Portal fanboys to death by now.

2. Gears of war multiplayer is crap. Someone on this thread said that they were not looking forward to gears 2(I'm not either) but we had better get used to many gears squeals being the the standard rifle, pistol doesn't kill anything, the war between the cogs and locusts will be going on for quite some time. I guess the question is if the Cogs can have the hammer of dawn that kills everything in it path why can't they make a gun that can kill locusts in less than 2 clips. Or if not why can't you all just start off with torque bow or the sniper rifle. It doesn't seem to make any difference what you chose for game style it always stays basically the same four on four last man standing format.

3. Kane and Lynch I don't think anybody does love it so this might be on the wrong thread, but I thought it was awful in just about every way possible.

4. Resistance Fall of Man the story in this game is destroyed the game for me, maybe I have no imagination but, I hate it when games have realistic setting with completely unrealistic weapons. When you can look in a history book and find out that we didn't free England form aliens in 1951 kind of takes me out of the game. Why give the game a date or specific place. Star War starts out "long time ago in a galaxy far away" so you know it is fantasy. I don't think it would have been a big of hit if they would have used "In 1951 in the UK" for Star Wars. It doesn't make it fantasy it just makes it fake.

5. EA made sports games, I Could see making a new game every year for a long time but(even new for lower generation systems), after 2006-2007 gamers had upgraded to a seventh gen system so we had hard drives and could simply download updates instead of buying a whole new game. I will admit that I can't play them for shit but, the AI and physics are so frustrating I can't play them long enough to get good like in Madden sometimes a perfect pass seems to just miss while another that your sure will be intercepted is miraculously pulled in by your receiver in what would be the greatest catch in NFL history. Plus it seems that using the options either makes the game way to easy or way to hard there doesn't seem to be any middle ground. It always happens when your about to win the big game that your running backs start fumbling form being tickled and the AI defense is able jump high enough to intercept a field goal. The NASCAR games are always shit. I Haven't played the soccer game (Can't remember what its called) for a longggg time so they might be OK and the MLB games if you don't mind playing mixed up players and such one form the original playstaion (graphics aside) would probably be very close to the same (Madden as well).

6. Need For Speed here is another fun game that EA has flushed down the toilet. The original was to be the first realistic driving game and for the time it did it. But being not satisfied with just a good fun driving game EA has shamelessly piled mountains of the runny shit all over it. Witch has included unrealistic modding, the time slow down magic bullshit thing, and some of the worst track design ever(cop chases on closed track lap races? I think even the stupidest cop would have figured that one out by hot pursuit 2)!!!

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Mundane sports games. Instead of getting Madden '0X buy a football and get together with your friends.

Now if you throw mutants, ninja and zombies into the mix, THEN you have my attention.

You would love Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball

Woah I heard that got cancelled! Please prove me wrong

 

[weirdaljedifan2]

I rented Twilight Princess and the biggest mistake EVER in video game history was to start a game that was supposed to be epic with absolutely NO weapons and a boring town in which it takes forever to tell what the hell you're supposed to do. That game bored me to tears and I didn't even get the fucking lost cat to take my damn fish so continue the fucking game. Thumbs down.

 

[Takatchi]

What didn't I like that everyone else seemed to love?

1) Portal. It was fun, yes. It was quirky, yes. It had some brilliant writing. The game itself? I never beat it. I mean, I can get the mp3 of "Still Alive" without having to invest the hours to figure out those damn human-particle-accelerator moves. >_<

2) Final Fantasy Tactics/XII. OK, yeah, I get it. Job classes and all that. Marks. Voice acting. PRETTY! ...they weren't great. Final Fantasy XII was paced like a bad documentary.

3) Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. This was marketed entirely to people who were totally foaming at the mouth over Wolf Link. That's it, that the extent of it. The Wii gimmicks weren't so unbearable, but they did little to give me the feeling that I wasn't playing another Zelda game trying to make up for Windwaker by making something prettier and darker than Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Windows XP- boring

Themes?

www.stardock.com

EDIT: Oh yeah, Linux's Ubunutu is free and it's open source so there's all sorts of things you can do to spice that up if spicing up XP isn't enough. Calling an OS "boring" is a bit much, I mean, an OS is just an OS, they are all pretty damn boring.

 

[Chrausis]

Halo.

 

[ECHO 062]

For some reason I can't stand Grand Tourismo. Probably because crashing into a wall at 180MPH does nothing to your car.

 

[T360]

ok heres my list

Halo- not so much for the game but the story has more borrowed elements then a puffy daddy ablum

the orange box- just borring and dated graphics and games that been out for awhile yawn

MGS series - just ugh more movies then games

 

[shatnershaman]

Windows XP- boring

Themes?

www.stardock.com

EDIT: Oh yeah, Linux's Ubunutu is free and it's open source so there's all sorts of things you can do to spice that up if spicing up XP isn't enough. Calling an OS "boring" is a bit much, I mean, an OS is just an OS, they are all pretty damn boring.

Yea I I'm paying for a theme but no I mean boring as in its feel, I don't know all I know is I have problems using it now (Used to the good search buttons and easier menus)

 

[Metalix Knightmare]

Not a game, but still fits the situation. Napoleon Dynamite. When it was released, you had people quoting every catchphrase they could. Going on and ON about how funny it was. I rented it just to see what all the fuss was about, and turned it off by the chicken farm bit. That was the most BORING movie I ever saw! Nothing happened! It was just some stupid kid, his stupider brother, going about his day in the most boring state in the union!

 

[a big stupid idiot]

Guitar Hero, I can play a song or two at a party, but it just gets so boring. Theres only so long I can watch a bunch of colored dots scroll down a screen.