Games that were ridiculously difficult to get into?

[Racecar1994]

I am one of the few (or so I'm led to believe) that thought Red Dead Redemption was pretty hard to get into. I'm not sure why I didn't really get into it at the start, but once I got deeper into the mexico story, I kept on playing for a long time.

Shame about the ending, though... goddamnit

 

[Nooners]

Deus Ex, but not because of the graphics. The first mission on Liberty Island basically has you running around as the most pathetic secret agent ever. Learning how the gameplay works after Halo and CoD have been branded into your head makes for a very tough experience. Sticking with it, though, was well worth it in the end.

 

[baddude1337]

I'm gonna say F1 2010. Not only is it quite complicated, especially if you are somewhat new to the sport, Being a Sim Racer the handling is VERY unforgiving.

 

[Vivace-Vivian]

Hellooooo Demon's Souls.

 

[Soods]

I have to go with minecraft. It really needs some kind of tutorial, not just "You have a hand, you can punch stuff with it. Now go build a castle."

 

[Denamic]

When I first bought X3, I was terrified by it.
I would never even have played any more than the first 20-30 minutes if it wasn't for an internet blackout.
I had nothing else to do, so I just powered through it, restarted several times because I died and lost everything, etc.
Before I knew it, my internet was back, and I was still playing X3.
And I kept playing.
For weeks.

 

[TheNewDemoman]

Dead Rising 2
HoN
Demon Souls


AND EVERY FIGHTING GAME EVER MADE.


Yahtzee said it best

It has a dificulty curve with a ****ing overhang

 

[AetherWolf]

Fallout 3. I got into the game hearing of all the hype around it, but I found a half-decent RPG inside even though I had little idea of what the fuck I should be doing at any given moment.

Tales of Symphonia, again, hyped too much and was a sub-par RPG that is the biggest fucking cliche storm I have ever laid my eyes onto.

Bioshock was this at first, since I was a newbie at FPSs at the time.

Infamous. I think the way Cole's jaw moves when he talks just creeped me out.

 

[Cogwheel]

Since Drawf Fortress is already mentioned I'd have to say any roguelike, especially those still using ASCII graphics.

Hey, that's not fair. Stone Soup has a tutorial, tileset and is generally quite easy to get into.

Otherwise? Yep.

 

[Irriduccibilli]

Oh god the first Fallout game was so hard you wont ever understand. So I just got out of the vault and almost died from a couple of rats... yes, rats (I dont think anyone has been killed by a rat in an RPG). So after defeating the rats with my are fists I find out that I actually have a gun... great, thanks for the info. Alright, so I get ot of the cave and go west on my map. Eventually I get to a random encounter and see a couple of super mutants kill a bunch of nomads or farmers or whatever they are, and immideatly they go for me after they have dealts with the other bystanders. Its a pretty unfair fight. They have laser rifles, miniguns and rocket launchers, and I have... now hold on... a 10mm pistol and my bare hands. So after getting annihilated I start all over again because there is no such thing as an autosave in this game. So I get out of the cave and go west again as I had been told. There should be a town if I headed west but nothing comes up. Eventually I find some sort of miliary camp and of course I think this is the town I have been told of... but no.The camp belongs to the supermutants, but these dont attack me, so I talk to one of them and for some reason I failed the speech test and gets captured. So they take me to their leader and asks me if I want to cooperate. No I dont want to, you just killed me in my earlier life, so I reject his offer and he wacks me in the head, alright. He then talks to me again and asks me if I want to cooperate... no, I dont want to. He wacks me one more time... and again... and again. I finally tell him yes, and a cutscene pops up. I see this living mummy (which I guess is he player) being lowered into a huge jar with radioactive goo and turn into a super mutant, and the game ends. Well fuck me, that was a short game.
I know that isnt the real ending, but after that I just lost my nerve and started playing the second Fallout which is a bit more forgiving

 

[CAPTCHA]

I recently played Valkyrie Profile for the PS1 and it was pretty difficult to get to grips with. Mainly because in this game leveling is not really that important and can actually be bad if you start leveling too soon.

But the games worst crime is just how long it takes to start the game thanks to the abserdly long intro. Because I had to learn how to play the game I had to restart a few times and even skipping all the text by hammering X, it took 45 min before I got control of my character. I don't know how long it took me on my first go when I was actually reading what was being said, but as I also watched the optional prologue I'm guessing it took something like an hour and 20 minutes before I could play. The story was terrible as well, full of plot holes, confused motivations and terrible voice acting.

The game gets better after that but what a fatal flaw for the game to start that way. The games rare too, often been sold at over £100. I suppose anyone who pays that much for a game is going to force themselves to play it at any cost. Well they'll need that kind of determination to get through, because lord knows that intro's a turn off.

 

[Mouse One]

The Void. Man, it's got everything I usually like in videogames (I'm one of those who loved The Path). Fantastic art, puzzles, intriguing out of box thinking about combat, ambiguous morality, metaphor and philosophy.

But darn it, I just can't get over the collection mechanism. I've studiously avoided walkthroughs, since I prefer surprises. So, I'm not really sure what colors to get, or even really how the trees work.

I'm pretty sure I'll return to it and love it. But right now, it's uninstalled.

 

[burgbrand22]

Oblivion! Dang, that game had some boring quests at the start.

Devs, if you want to give us a good impression of your game, please do not start with dull fetch quests and kill x number of weak animals!!!!

 

[Flames66]

I am currently playing the trial of eve online. I was doing ok until I realised that most of the ships look like poorly designed sex aids and the few that I would consider flying were some of the worst equipped ships in the game.

 

[Solo-Wing]

Minecraft (DUH)
And the .Hack series. I am SOOOO glad I took the time to actually try to understand it. Now I absolutely love the series.

 

[Continuity]

So, what games had a learning curve so steep that it's a niche game because of it. Or alternatively, any game that was simply difficult to understand or start playing.


Personally, X3, I'm still figuring out how the economy works in regards to stations and all that. Dwarf Fortress if certainly up there with its interface.

Oh, and you could say minecraft, try to play that without any guides or anything, and you basically run around picking up dirt and dieing from mobs.

Yes X3 is a major example, but its also a major example of exactly why an impenetrable vertical cliff face of a learning curve isn't always a bad thing, the fun of X3 is exploring and discovering for yourself how things work... and believe me, there are many hundreds of hours of gameplay just to that end, never mind the actual campaigns.

A comprehensive tutorial would ruin X3.

Baldurs Gate. Dear god the manual for that thing was atleast 300 pages and it was actually stuff you had to know not like whats in the manuals these days. If that game hadnt been so dam fun and with a hilarious story I dont think I ever would have been able to do it. It by far has the highest learning curve of any game I have ever played.

For a veteran AD&D player the learning curve was actually almost non-existent as baldurs gate is a lot simpler than fully fledged AD&D, not to mention that the computer takes care of all of the calculations and rules for you.
But yeah, to a complete novice I can see that baldurs gate has a steeper learning curve than your average game, its still really not that bad though.

But in the case of Deus Ex, well, it was just a ton of...grey blocks. I know, I know, it's dystopian cyberpunk, but it didn't give me the Blade Runner feel. I missed things like dynamic lighting and shadows a lot. It depends a lot on the genre and feel the game is trying to produce whether I really mind old 3D graphics or not.

Look, if you don't like old games then don't play them.. but don't play them and then complain that they're old. you're not going to make any friends with fans of the game nor are you making any sort of constructive criticism.

...Alpha Protocol

Are you even serious, I just completed that game this weekend... Its pretty average dumbed down console fare from my experience. Ok the plot was something of an occult miasma but the actual game did not have a steep learning curve by any measure.

 

[LittleJP]

Yes X3 is a major example, but its also a major example of exactly why an impenetrable vertical cliff face of a learning curve isn't always a bad thing, the fun of X3 is exploring and discovering for yourself how things work... and believe me, there are many hundreds of hours of gameplay just to that end, never mind the actual campaigns.

A comprehensive tutorial would ruin X3.

Oh yes, I've finally got myself a self sufficient economy (I've had 10 different games, but always restarted after a certain point, but of course, I decided to install X-Tended mod before I realized it was save incompatible. Ah well, now since it's entirely different, I can have fun relearning. Kinda.