Game Genres you've lost interest in?

[SmallHatLogan]

Another vote for JRPGs here. I was never a huge fan of the genre and it's not something I grew up with. But in my late teens I went through a bit of a JRPG phase (well, it was mostly a Final Fantasy phase). I played most of the FF games up to 13 as well as a handful of other JRPGs. Eventually it reached a point where the gameplay would get really monotonous and the stories weren't good enough to be a decent payoff for that boredom.

It kid of solidified with Final Fantasy IX (yes I know it's blasphemy to badmouth that sacred cow, but whatever) which was the last FF I got around to playing (I didn't play the in order) where I was just wandering from place to place without really caring about what was happening in the story and wondering why I was putting up with the boring battle system and obnoxious random encounters. I turned the game off and never went back.

Since then I've tried a couple of JRPGs but I haven't been able to get into them.

Although paradoxically I really like Persona 3 and 4, despite not being into JRPGs or anime. So go figure.

 

[aozgolo]

I disagree with your jrpg point, however i do see where you are coming from. I quite enjoy jrpgs because i like true fantasy worlds.

I raise you Wrpgs. I'm tired of elves, wizards and dwarves. I'm tired of gray stone buildings. Im tired of empty wastelands and middle/dark age themed games and media.

It's mostly the presentation of the characters that throws me, back in the day the characters were represented mostly by message boxes and sprites, I had to imagine the voices in my head, I had to visualize their facial expressions and mannerisms, but nowadays with fluid animation and voice acting, all that is gone, and it's very much anime-style. I won't say that in itself is a bad thing, but given that I am so incredibly picky about what anime I do like and annoying characters can quickly drive me off an otherwise interesting show, I just haven't found a good JRPG to sink my teeth into lately, though I haven't tried a whole lot either, partly because I've mostly moved from Console to PC Gaming and the selection is a lot smaller.

Hack and slashers. They're monotonous and sterile, always fast, fast, fast, fast, room after room, with nothing to complement the style over substance combat. Some of them hurt my hands. And they're becoming worse now that Platinum is the number one developer making them and they're automating the movement and implementing QTEs. You press the attack button in MGR and Raiden turns around and hits the enemy behind him, doing a bunch of flashy moves as you then repeatedly tap the button, and before you realize your opponent is dead, Raiden will again turn for you and attack the next enemy.

The overly simplified controls of these games really turn me off. Too much handholding. There's no jump button, only a "press x here to jump" context. I recall trying to play Castlevania Lords of Shadow and immediately getting dismayed when I was walking along this cliff area and realized the game wouldn't even let you screw up and fall off the cliff and die... the cliff-face is a wall. It just set a bad tone for the rest of the game.

First of all, RTS, because somehow as I've gotten older my ability to micromanage and really 'knuckle down' has vanished. What never helped is that even as a teen I didn't like sending in my guys to die (other genre, but you should've seen the effort I went through to keep my Marine buddies alive in Halo) so I always turtled and made huge armies behind humongous fortifications before I swarmed over the map. But these days all that seems so...pointless. Especially skirmish mode, which I always played as a teenager.

I've always been a turtle player myself, and this is why I very rarely ever play RTS games because most aren't designed with this playstyle in mind. I start up a scenario, and within 2 minutes I have enemies walking towards my base, this just kills it for me. The RTS I enjoyed in the past were Dungeon Keeper and Stronghold that let me wall off my important resources, and just build up and build up until I was ready to attack. I've realized though that "real time" and "go your own pace" don't mesh well in most games so I tend to avoid RTS.

Point & Click Adventure Games: This saddens me quite a bit, I grew up playing King's Quest, Discworld, and Myst, and there's tons more Adventure games I desperately want to play and enjoy the story but... I think my brain has reached it's limit with absurdist puzzles. I want to enjoy the story, the world, the characters, and really check out some of these fantastic worlds but if I have to throw one more pie at a yeti I might pull my hair out.

And don't forget, have no indication that that's what you need the pie for, that you get said pie way earlier in the game and that it's completely possible to miss it and breaking your game as a result.

Luckily, the modern revival of point&clicks manages to avoid that trope of 'Developer Logic' quite nicely. Instead, they focus on other strengths of the medium. The new Kings Quest for instance is apparently an absolute treat, and I can't wait to play it.

As for the old ones, at least these days you can just walkthrough through the bullshit. I did that with The Curse of Monkey Island simply to enjoy the art, story and humour. Totally worth it.

It's the modern ease by which I can look up solutions that kind of drives me off, I don't feel I've earned it but I know if I have to go a couple of hours stuck on one puzzle I'll end up looking it up. A lot of the Adventure games I want to play are both old and new, there's tons of Daedalic games that look fun I want to try, and also several older ones like the Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and Leisure Suit Larry games I want to try.

Puzzle Platformers, it's not that I hate or even dislike the genre, it's just there's so damn many of them now it's hard to get interested in any of them

My favorite "puzzle platformers" were Flashback and Oddworld, mostly because they were built around story and atmosphere and while the puzzles were fun and challenging, they weren't all the game was about. It didn't feel like "solve these 99 rooms for your trophy", you really felt like you were progressing along a story.

 

[Hawki]

Platformers. There was a time I ravanously consumed every Sonic the Hedgehog game, with doses of Mario, Crash Bandicoot, and Banjo-Kazooie to boot, just to name the major ones. However, that changed. The last Sonic game I purchased was Unleashed, the last one I completed was Rush Adventure (by console, it would be Shadow), Rare went the way of the dodo, and...yeah. To be honest, a lot of the games I play now usually require some level of story to keep me invested, and platformers aren't really the go-to place for that.

Racing games. Again, once a big fan of Mario Kart, F-Zero, etc. But went by the wayside for the same reasons.

WRPGs: This is sort of cheating - RPGs and I have a strange history. First one I ever played was Secret of Mana (had no idea what to do), tried Diablo II when it came out (didn't like it), then played Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on the GBA (liked it), which introduced me via a game swap with a friend for Golden Sun (loved it). In all that time I was never aware of any RPG divide. That said, looking back, I've probably sent WRPGs to the wayside, simply due to the time investment. JRPGs have that too, but there's the sense that "I'll beat the game, I'll be done" whereas WRPGs tend to be more open-ended. There was a time when I would have craved the likes of Dragon Age and the Elder Scrolls, but apart from Mass Effect, I've sort of drifted away from the idea due to the time investment. Looking at my personal top 10 RPGs list, 4 are WRPGs, and of that four, 3 are ARPGs.

 

[Zen Bard]

First Person Shooters. When I was a tyke, I loved all the big id Software titles; Wolfenstein, The Dooms, Hexxen, Heretic. Nothing made me happier than zooming down cut 'n' paste corridors and shooting at shit.

Then Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy Academy happened. What?! I have a First Person Shooter with role playing elements, lightsabers AND Force powers?!

No FPS was ever the same for me after that.

Also...Open World RPGs. For the exact reasons below.

I'm also pretty sick of the Open World RPG genre. This is especially painful for me, as this has always been my favorite genre, but they've been dumbed down sooo much (Skyrim) since the early days of the genre, they just don't interest me at all.

The thrill of playing the role of a character exploring a strange and terrifying world is gone. The games are now so stripped down they're more action adventure games with superficial role playing elements.

Although they can be fun in their own right, it's just not the same.

And for the first time in my life...I passed on a Fallout game.

 

[Kingjackl]

I'm not as into FPS or platformers as I used to be. Most games in those genres these days feel a bit samey. I've realised my preferred jam is either turn-based combat (be it JRPGs or turn-based tactics, I'm not picky) or third person action.

I think the last FPS I played was Wolfenstein: New Order, which was fun, but also felt very linear and constrained. The last one before that was probably Bioshock Infinite, which was more open still somehow constrained. I chalk it up to both those games being heavy on collection, which is not fun in general, but infuriating in first person when you're constantly surveying the ground for crap to pick up.

As for platformers, I loved the Rayman games, but there's not much else. Indies tend to rely on Metroid-vania style, which i'm not as fond of, and Mario hasn't been good since Galaxy.

 

[Bombiz]

I've heard the Witcher 3 was alright, but I wouldn't know, because I don't want to play a game that forces me to be an old man. What happened to creating a custom character and letting me tell my own story?

One point about the Witcher 3. They based the games off the books and you're suppose to be playing as Geralt so no way would they let you customize your character.

Games like Skyrim, Fallout 4, etc. hold your hand so much, you literally CAN NOT FAIL. You start out good at everything, you can't kill certain "important" NPCs, they tell you exactly where to go/what to do, they even tell you where your enemies are so you don't accidently get hurt! Booooring.

Funny thing about this is that I tried to make Fallout 4 harder so that it would feel challenging. Instead I get a difficulty mode that gimps mt damage and makes the enemies tanky as all hell.

 

[Evonisia]

I remember playing platformer games a lot more as a kid than I do now. I mean, sure, Rayman Origins and Legends are among my favourite games (I still play Legends near-enough every day) and I have respect for Super Mario 3D World, but I just don't play them. The closest I get to them is platforming elements in games focused on something else.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

RTS games, nobody is really putting very much money into them nowadays and Blizzard decided to make base management in Starcraft 2 an exercise in tedium, "Spawn Larvae" I'm looking at you, you killed any speck of fun I could possibly have in multiplayer.

Also Smups, I used to play the shit outta Tyrian 2000 and some other ones on the Turbografix 16 but lately it seems like they're either bullet hell lazy development shitfests that think they can overcome a lack of creativity by forcing a layer of tedium on the player. Or the game controls like ass and I feel like its more down to memorizing the level do dodge projectiles rather than actually dodging projectiles.

Square Enix RPGs, I actually didn't mind ff12 all that much but ff13, ff13-2, ff13-3 just had really really shitty characters who either were cliches, unlikable, had voices that made me wish I was deaf, or some mixture between the three. Somewhere along the line Square thought that it was a good idea to hire somebody who created a character like Lightning and thought that character was good enough for their own sequel. I can't say I've fallen out with JRPG's because I've actually enjoyed the Xenoblade and Tales series in recent years.

Mario games, I've played and I hate pretty much all of the "New" super mario games past the very very first one when it was a novel concept. Now they feel like lazy, low effort games that don't bother to try and understand what an overworld added in the NES/SNES days. For example in Super Mario World you actually had to find secrets yourself to unlock more levels, in New Super Mario games you just unlock them automatically. In Super Mario World the star world warps were interactive, it was a mini world with levels in and of itself, not just a canon that shot you three worlds ahead.

And the overworld in mario 3 was dynamic, there were enemies on it, bridges could move up in down, the hands in world 8, the airship moving around whenever you lost on it, it wasn't just "here you go you can go left or right if you're good "

 

[JimB]

RPGs in general. I feel the genre has moved away from interactivity and toward more of a linear, almost movie-like format; which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I dunno, the writing in them just doesn't impress me any more. I miss the days when players could make discoveries through gameplay rather than solely through expository cut scenes.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

I think the big one would be RTSs, or more specifically RTSs like Starcraft where micromanaging everything is key. I'm terrible at micromanaging so much, so fast, and I tend to play games at a more deliberate pace, so naturally I'm hot fried dog-shit in a bap. For whatever reason, they also tend to stress me out quite a bit more than they really should. I don't know. Maybe I'm just too slow to play them or something.

 

[The Wykydtron]

For me it was FPS games. I spent pretty much my entire teen years playing Halo, Call of Duty, some Borderlands etc but I burned out on it after all the years.

I know the exact moment I stopped, it was when I started playing Halo 4 and stopped like 2 hours in and never touched another FPS aside from the new Wolfensteins years later because those two games were freaking good.

I have sort of gotten into stuff I never liked though, such as JRPGs and i've just started to play Blade and Soul when i've not been particularly into MMOs, and you know how Yahtzee said how Guild Wars 2 was a world where every single inhabitant was a wandering adventurer? BnS is a world where every single inhabitant is a fuckin' anime character. It's fuckin' great.

 

[Fallow]

When you were younger, were there certain kinds of games you used to LOVE to play but for various reasons you no longer seem to enjoy them or have time for them? Share some of your Game Genres you have lost interest in and why!


Tactical RPG: I used to love games like Ogre Battle, Final Fantasy Tactics, Bahamut Lagoon, and Disciples, but it seems all the newer ones I get like Agarest, King's Bounty, Disgaea, or The Banner Saga I simply can't get into. Maybe they don't have the level of depth I want (Agarest very flat maps), are a little too number crazy (Disgaea) or just don't pull me in but unless I feel like replaying Final Fantasy Tactics, I just don't really get into them anymore.

Point & Click Adventure Games: This saddens me quite a bit, I grew up playing King's Quest, Discworld, and Myst, and there's tons more Adventure games I desperately want to play and enjoy the story but... I think my brain has reached it's limit with absurdist puzzles. I want to enjoy the story, the world, the characters, and really check out some of these fantastic worlds but if I have to throw one more pie at a yeti I might pull my hair out.

JRPGs: I grew up in the heyday of the Super Nintendo and Playstation, and JRPGs were my biggest love, though in my day we just called them RPGs. I remember getting sucked into the worlds and stories of Earthbound, Illusion of Gaia, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and so on. Nowadays though every JRPG seems a shallow vehicle for cel-shaded 3D Anime Characters to attempt emotional drama via the most obnoxious means possible and the heavy-handed ineffectual attempts at making me care about the story just seems to drive home shallow gameplay. I am sure there's still diamonds in the rough, like my still much beloved Dragon Quest series but I've become weary slogging through the rest of it to find the JRPGs that I will actually care about.


What genres have you lost interest in?

I have almost the exact same list.

Also, if you liked the clickies and pointies, you must check out Quest for Glory 1-4 (VGA version for 1, Tierra/AGW remake for QfG2). It's way better than KQ.

There's also a fairly new game out called Quest for Infamy that tries to recreate the feel of the QfG series, available on GoG I think.

 

[happyninja42]

JRPG's, though to be honest, I was never a huge fan of them. But the stuff that has happened with the FF franchise has made me just ignore the entire genre.

And I guess competitive FPS games, though again I was never a huge fan of them. If I do play an FPS, it's usually a coop one like Payday 2 or something. I have a very low tolerance for assholes that are vocally abusive in chat.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

This is going over a decade back and, there wasn't really many different franchises in the genre to begin with... but: I haven't touched a car combat game since Twisted Metal: Black. As a kid, I used to always play any of the Twisted Metals, Vigilante 8, or even Rogue Trip. (That last one is fun just for its "seemingly written by a 10 year old" premise.) After TM: Black, which was a fine game, I just never paid attention to the few that have come out in recent years. Maybe I dismiss it because of a combination of the genre's fall and all my friends going with shooters for the local competitive genre of choice.

I guess another genre I don't play at all anymore would be billiards sims. I played a lot with a few versions over a decade ago, too. I just never bothered to look for a modern sim because I'm over that personal craze and holding a real cue is much better (not that I play the real deal much anymore either).

 

[SecondPrize]

I used to be all about JRPGS, FFXII was the last one I touched, and I didn't make it that far in it. I still like shooters, I bought Squad recently but that's the first one I've played since AAA devs thought we all wanted our FPS to be like CoD and that we also wanted to buy them twice with season passes.

I've recently got back into dungeon crawlers, picking up a bunch of 30 year old games on GoG and Steam and loving them.

 

[aozgolo]

Also, if you liked the clickies and pointies, you must check out Quest for Glory 1-4 (VGA version for 1, Tierra/AGW remake for QfG2). It's way better than KQ.

There's also a fairly new game out called Quest for Infamy that tries to recreate the feel of the QfG series, available on GoG I think.

I actually own all those games, I just haven't gotten around to them, I got the QFG series on GOG, I have the AGD remake of QFG2, and I have Quest for Infamy on Steam, they are all buried in my massive backlog, I own like close to 40 Adventure games but have only played maybe 10, and beaten only like 5.

 

[Xeros]

Anything with turn-based combat feels so draining to me anymore. Even if the game is fascinating, turn-based combat completely rips me out of the experience. I can't even get into Pokemon anymore.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Without getting into what are Genres and Sub Genres I would say FPS are one I have lost interest in. I played a lot of them but after Halo 2 I just felt really burnt out and have not really played them that much since and I really dont know what they could do to remedy that.

I also stopped largely playing fighters for about 10 years with a few exceptions but now I am back into them a lot more even if I have not yet taken any seriously enough to put in the solid practice but regardless it is a type of game I really like whether in a traditional capacity such as 2D or 3D fighters on a flat plane or arena fighters. Actually import pretty much all my fighters now either from Japan because they are the only ones who get it or from America because its a lot cheaper and they almost always get it earlier than us in the UK (also DLC is way cheaper there).

 

[Fox12]

Ugh, I hate JRPG's now. They're just a hobbled together amorphous mass of narrative cliche's and horribly outdated game mechanics.

I mean, I love Atlus and From Soft, but most developers need to catch up. I haven't seen innovation from a JRPG in a long time.