Games you don't like but keep trying to go back to.

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Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
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So you play a game, maybe you have some fun initially but for whatever reason you end up disliking it and you abandon it. Then a few months or even years down the line you feel the urge to play again. So you reinstall and dive back in. Maybe you even have fun again but then before long all the old problems resurface and you remember why you dropped it the first time so you abandon it again. And thus the cycle continues.

I'm talking games you've attempted... let's say... three times or more.

I have several:

Dying Light

It's graphically quite pretty, it can make for some cool emergent moments and the combat is initially fun forcing you to improvise.

Then as you level up the combat devolves into just mashing the basic attack and sidequest exhaustion sets in and you realise you're just playing a sexed up remake of Dead Island. The developers clearly learned nothing from their previous game.

Dark Souls (the first one)

I actually really like the combination of danger and exploration offered by Dark Souls. Venturing into a new area crouched behind my trusty shield and cautiously poking everything is a treat. I'd love to see that imitated in a better game.

Unfortunately the clunky controls, muddy graphics, terrible voice acting and repetitive combat always wear me down. Funnily enough I always end up quiting at roughly the same spot, around Anor Londo. The furthest I ever got was beating Ornstein and Smouge before petering out.

Dragon's Dogma
The game has one of the better character editors I've seen allowing you to make anything from a steroid casualty to a little wizened old woman and the combat had potential with varied enemies, a wide range of abilities and being able to climb around on larger foes.

Sadly, the graphics are hideous, the gameplay quickly gets monotonous, every class except the basic fighter is crap, the story is a joke, the dialogue is outright painful and the world is one of the most generic and flavorless fantasy settings I've ever seen.

And yet somehow I keep forgetting all that and heading back for another brief helping.

...

So yeah, please tell me other people do this.

And somebody slap me the next time I even think about Dying Light.
 

Comic Sans

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Oct 15, 2008
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For me it's Fallout 4. It's probably the most disappointing game I have ever played, not bad but completely opposite of everything I want from a Fallout game. Yet I find myself going back to it every so often. I'm usually not having a ton of fun, but it's kind of like a TV dinner. Low effort basic entertainment that doesn't tax my brain in any way. Just walk around and shoot stuff, sometimes setting up new decorations in whatever settlement I decided to make my home base. Or maybe I keep hoping I will find something that will change my mind and make me love it. I think I am finally done with it for good but I'll probably boot it up again at some point when I don't know what I feel like playing.
 

Bob_McMillan

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The whole Fallout series. I enjoyed Skyrim enough, no idea why I can't get into its sister franchise.

COD. I keep hoping it will be different every year, but it never is.

Deus Ex. I just hate the controls of the game, and the stupid takedown animations piss me off. But the universe is interesting and I like stealth games.
 

TheMigrantSoldier

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Nov 12, 2010
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Borderlands. While I like the concept of a class-based co-op shooter with RPG elements and a sense of humor, I'm not a fan of how the gunplay actually is. I pretty much threw in the towel twice while attempting to pass early game.

There's also Sonic. I feel like its very premise, being a speedy platformer, is constantly at war with its level design. Haven't played in a couple of years so I'm tempted to give Sonic Mania a try.
 

Gordon_4_v1legacy

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Aug 22, 2010
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Dragon Age: Origins.

Every time I think of going back I get a little bit further, but the combat is so janky and fucking awful that I have trouble with it. Also having been spoiled for voiced protagonists I find it difficult to interact as one who talks but has no voice.
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
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Gordon_4 said:
Also having been spoiled for voiced protagonists I find it difficult to interact as one who talks but has no voice.
Oh yeah,I know that feeling. Every time your character "says" something dramatic and the camera goes to them and they're just standing there like a fence post.

I found the combat pretty solid though. Rather outstayed its welcome mind you. Granted, I haven't played in quite some time.
 

Skatalite

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Zhukov said:
Dark Souls (the first one)

I actually really like the combination of danger and exploration offered by Dark Souls. Venturing into a new area crouched behind my trusty shield and cautiously poking everything is a treat. I'd love to see that imitated in a better game.

Unfortunately the clunky controls, muddy graphics, terrible voice acting and repetitive combat always wear me down. Funnily enough I always end up quiting at roughly the same spot, around Anor Londo. The furthest I ever got was beating Ornstein and Smouge before petering out.
Although I don't feel the same way I do get most those criticisms, but terrible voice-acting? How's that?
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
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Skatalite said:
Although I don't feel the same way I do get most those criticisms, but terrible voice-acting? How's that?
...

If you have heard any spoken line in Dark Souls and reached any conclusion other than the voice acting being terrible then nothing I say is going to carry any weight.

Oh, except the narrator. The narrator was okay.
 

Saelune

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Dark Souls 2. I hate it, but I 100%'d DS1, and I want to "complete the series". But I hate it and stop for awhile every so often.

Baldur's Gate. As stated in the topic about it, I hate 2nd Edition DnD, but I want to beat it for the sake of beating a "classic". I appreciate why it is a classic, but I am too aware of the superior 3rd Edition.
 

Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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I'm kinda with you on Dying Light. Was thinking of picking it back up recently and I'm still wrestling with the idea, remembering that I never finished it because the sidequests get so tedious after a while. Also, I remember getting to a point where daytime gameplay was too easy and therefore dull, while the nightitime still felt like a pointless chore.

For me, it would be Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. I like all the other main series ES games (yes, even Arena and Daggerfall), but Oblivion I never understood. The combination of hideous character models, the most generic and bland setting of any ES game and the repeptitive drudgery that are the Daedra portals prevents me from ever coming anywhere near to finishing that one.

Next, Icewind Dale 2. I love the infinity engine games to bits, they are awesome. But IWD2 feels like a chore. I'm not quite sure why, because on surface it has all the ingredients. When I look at individial pieces of the game, they all sound fun. But when put together, somehow it's a painful slog. Again, I can't quite put my finger on the reason, but if I had to make a guess, I'd say that the 3rd ed DnD rule implementation is just horribly clunky in that engine, making the core gameplay unsatisfying. I'm in the middle of a playthrough right now, and I won't be making it past the 5-6 hour mark. I do, however, have a hankering to play the BG series, or NWN2.

Divinity: Original Sin. I should adore this game. The feature list is everything I want in an RPG. But the interface feels terrible, the writing is so uninspired that I can't bear to read it even once, the visuals are horribly bland. I just get outright bored halfway through the first town. I am willing to accept the possibility that it gets better later on. But even with that in mind, the initial hours of the game are sooooooo damn boring and uninteresting that I can't power through them, despite multiple attempts to do so...
 

Pseudonym

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I'd like to nominate most of the RPG genre. Every so often I want to try to play an RPG again, and with the exceptions of mass effect 1, 2, 3 and fallout: new vegas and fallout 3 I never get through any of them. And ME1 only after I'd played ME2. If I do get through them I often skip as much of the content as I can.

Most of them are just so slow and have shitty UI and I never know what the hell I'm supposed to be doing and the gameplay is ussually somewhere between mediocre and painful to play.
 

Neurotic Void Melody

Bound to escape
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Xcom 2. That piece of scheming RNG riddled, fuck-your-game perked, time-sinking, rickety house-of-cards building, stress-inducing, stack raising, under-supplied, over-choiced, save-scumming, but finely made, evil plotting detritus! Did I also mention scheming?

Yet...

...Only 3 more in-game days of scanning for those cool armour upgrades...

...Only 5 more days till those Psi-labs open...

...Only NOOOO! Not another randomised necessary mission so soon after the last casulties! Screw you, Xcom...This is hibernation period...I should be hibernating!!

It's a love/hate emotional rollercoaster relationship. No middle ground.

...So tired.
 

maninahat

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Nov 8, 2007
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Skyrim. A boring, tedious, bland and largely pointless game that keeps me pre-occupied for hundreds of hours longer than I care for.
 

Fox12

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I'll toss in Fallout 4 as well. Lord knows I've tried every method imaginable to make that game fun, but it's just no good. The voice acting severely limits your role playing options, and the fun factor just isn't there anymore. Blowing things away in your power armor is kind of nice, I guess, but it wears down fast as a novelty. That said, it's the one game I always come back to when I don't want to think or feel very much, and I'm not in the mood for fast paced action. It's kind of like a bad sitcom. It's bad, and you know it's bad, but it's not very taxing either. Sometimes all you need is to wander around aimlessly while listening to a podcast on your computer.



Zhukov said:
Skatalite said:
Although I don't feel the same way I do get most those criticisms, but terrible voice-acting? How's that?
...

If you have heard any spoken line in Dark Souls and reached any conclusion other than the voice acting being terrible then nothing I say is going to carry any weight.

Oh, except the narrator. The narrator was okay.
I must admit, I've never, ever heard this complaint leveled at the Soul's series before. I guess I could see a few places where this is true, but much like Silent Hill 2, it tends to just add to the surreal atmosphere. That said, Frampts throat noises are pretty fucking funny. What the hell happened there?
 

aozgolo

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For a long time The Witcher 1 and 2 fit that bill, I guess they still do since I've never made it out of Chapter 1 of either game. I wanted so much to enjoy the games because I knew they were fantastically written mature RPGs with an excellent story... The Witcher 3 was my saving grace for the series, because it finally had gameplay that didn't make me fall asleep... I've still not gone back to The Witcher 1 & 2 but somehow feel redeemed on the series a bit.

Agarest: Generations of War is another big one for me. I want to love it because I love high fantasy, I love JRPGs, I love tactical RPGs, and I actually like dating sims and multi-generational games. The game sounds amazing but... oh my god is the combat system ever horrible. Instead of tactical battles you get this weird grid combo game where it feels more like you're a choreographer syncing your units to just the right spot instead of what would actually make sense on the battlefield, not that it matters because every battlefield is an incredibly boring flat grid on uninspired backgrounds. I keep going back to it though hoping I can overlook it to enjoy the game, but you just can't overlook a bad part of a game if you spend over 75% of your play time doing it.
 

Drathnoxis

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Dwarf Fortress. Stories people tell about this game are usually really interesting and I feel like I'm missing out on something amazing, but every time I try to play it I can't get past the terrible user interface that reverses controls from menu to menu, the notification system that will let your dwarves be massacred with only a little dot in the corner to inform you, and the fact that the game absolutely drowns you in so much detail that it's impossible to keep track of.

You have around 50 different types of rock that serve around 5 different purposes. Every dwarf has 30 lines of description about their likes/dislikes, desires, personality traits, so that none of them actually stand out as unique because, with 100 dwarves, I'm never going to remember any of this:

Heck, I'm not even going to remember which one was Litast Ralrab, or the name "Litast Ralrab".
Then even on a small world with a short history you have thousands of historical figures, spread across hundreds of different groups and sites. When the human liaison comes , I want to try and understand what's going on in the world, but then he blathers for 3000 words about some place I've never heard of being conquered and hundreds of groups of refugees all splitting off and giving themselves stupid interchangeable names like the wilted ponies or the infected hammers, it's all just meaningless incomprehensible gibberish and doesn't have any affect on my fort at all.
 
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Mass Effect trilogy.

They're all ugly and clunky games with the poorest combat I've ever experienced. But I do want to experience the characters and choices I can make (even if I find both versions of Shepard fucking booooooorrriiiinnnggggg).
 

DOOM GUY

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If I don't like a game, I typically just drop it, and I rarely give second chances... kinda glad I did give Grand Theft Auto IV a second chance though, that one ended up becoming my favorite in the series, even after V came out.

Now, when it comes to games I still can't get into after trying it a few times, I'd have to say Dark Souls is definitely one of the top picks there, just can't find anything I really like about that game... also Skyrim, which I may not have played for as long as some people, but I feel 10 hours is more than enough to judge whether you like a game or not.
 

The Wykydtron

"Emotions are very important!"
Sep 23, 2010
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For me it's Guilty Gear. I keep trying to get into it every 2 months or so but it just never gels with me y'know? There's a good game in there but I don't like the main stuff it has going for it. Since I started my fighting game career with a year and a half of UMVC3 daily, I very much dislike the Roman Cancel system (meter should be for supers only!) and the way there's a long distance Slash and a short distance Slash attack on one button is annoying.

I fuckin' ADORE BlazBlue though which is from the same developers. Plus when it comes to Central Fiction, i'd always been wondering why ArcSys mixes up the characters' combos in BlazBlue every new release, it seemed unnecessary and just arbitrary. Then I came from SIGN to Revelator and realised how little had changed so I got hella bored hella fast. All the guys I played didn't even get new supers! That's just lazy!

I spent god knows how long figuring out what they did with Makoto and Mu from CSEX to CPEX in comparison. Even if I didn't like Mu's new combos in the end (goodbye my wallbounce corner combos T_T) it was still a fun experience. It looks like all that changed from SIGN to Revelator was boring ass frame data.

ArcSys, you can change Terumi's combo pathways from CPEX to CF, just as long as he has that standing overhead he should have had in CP from the fucking start. Also English dub DLC when? JP Terumi is nice and all but English Terumi was my jam.