Games You Had to Force Yourself to Finish

[Kingjackl]

For me, that was Metro 2033. Don't get me wrong, it was pretty good and I was shooting for the good ending, but god damn there are some poor design choices in that game. Like not being able to buy filters after the first quarter of the game, or that level with the blob monsters.

 

[Section Crow]

Final fantasy 13

Hell, i only brought myself to do it once i had already quit on the game and decided to watch the ending on youtube, i then through a deranged sense of reason strove to complete it.

I regret my decision.

 

[Wrath 228]

Right now I find myself half-dreading every time I boot up GTA V. I actually don't hate the characters (I find them entertaining and to be the perfect people to traipse around committing heinous crimes as), but it's mainly the police that ruin it for me. They "respond" to calls from non-existent citizens out in the middle of the sticks, shoot you for simply running away without a weapon out or making any threatening movements and thus also make car chases that don't end in less than a minute with your car and/or body riddled with holes a rarity. The missions are fun enough for the most part, though the fact that they force control of the character switching away from you the majority of the time is a buzzkill. Anytime they make you fly as Trevor is terrible, since even at 100 Flying the turbulence is still horrible (and I was a damn fine pilot in GTA IV, so it can't just be me), and anytime they put anyone but Franklin behind the wheel and force you to drive as them baffles me.

Seriously though, fuck the police. I'm probably gonna sell my Collector's Edition as soon as I beat the game, because I do not have any fun free roaming in SP and GTA Online is a colossal disappointment for me. I don't like to complain about games, but the level of disappointment I've experienced with GTA V is just too damn high for me not to. Such a shame :/

 

[ShogunGino]

The only game that I have forced myself to finish is something I doubt anyone here has really heard of, because I never hear anyone hear talk about its predecessors. SBK: Snowboard Kids for the DS.

The first two games of this joyful and fun Mario Kart-clone for the N64 are both very colorful and fun, and the second one is one of my favorite games ever. There was a Japan-only expansion of the first game for the PS, which made me mad, but years later, a reboot for the DS was made.

I knew it wasn't going to be awesome, but I didn't know how completely below-average EVERYTHING it was going to be. The ONLY strong aspect was the handling. The controls were very tight, and I have no complaints for it.

Where to start...many of the characters had their personalities changed to either stock anime archetypes or otherwise unlikeable personalities. Tommy, the once slow, but gentle and happy kid who was chubby from eating too many burgers, is now a chubby school bully whose hobby is picking on the weak. Nancy went from being the kind, cheerful girl that all the boys had a crush on, to a barely legal snobbish ice queen that all the guys want because she is most 'developed' and they want to be the one to 'melt' her, so to speak.

The system of projectiles was changed so that you don't pick them up from item boxes on the track, each character has only ONE unique projectile that recharges over time. And since some characters' projectile are a LOT better than others, it makes many others feel pointless to play as.

The zany, creative, unrealistic tracks of before were changed into uninteresting venues from actual countries around the world, like SSX3 or something, but not as fun.

The composer of the fun music from the previous games was obviously not called back, because all but one soundtrack in the game sounded very shitty to me.

The touch screen was poorly implemented by having you touch multiple parts of the screen multiple times to perform signature tricks. You rarely have enough time to actually finish all the touches AND have the trick perform before your character eats snow.

Oh yeah, the draw distance for obstacles is HORRIBLE. Depending on how fast you're going, you may not see that ice wall appear before you until you're about half a second away from it.

And despite all this, I still played through most of characters' full 'hard mode' races to see their endings. The endings that all consist of ONE STILL FRAME WITHOUT TEXT. None of them are worth it, and they can be found easily through Google Images.

At least it only cost, like, $4.50

 

[Rodolphe Kourkenko]

It's rare but the first coming in my mind is ME3.
The story (no matter what you do, you can't loose, the crucible will ALWAYS be build etc...), the characters excessivly stereotyped will badly placed fanservice; the dumb AI and so on...
And Dark Soul on PC, not because the game is bad or anything else, just because the control are so badly implemented it make the game unplayable.

 

[Rutskarn]

In fifteen years of PC gaming, Daggerfall's final dungeon is photo finish for the worst level of a videogame I've ever played.

Imagine someone gave you a rusted-out smoke-belching tractor with only three wheels. Then they told you to drive it around town, flicking light switches on and off at various locations, seeing what specific combinations in what order have what effects. Now imagine driving it successfully entails getting through ramps, crushers, rings of fire, heavy traffic, and pits of tar.

Daggerfall's rotten lousy glitching puking engine didn't work with its fiddly platforming. Daggerfall's platforming did not work with its spread-out impossibly-tedious trial-and-error moon-logic puzzle solving. It was everything bad about the game, magnified and stewed together, with all the fun bits taken out. The result was a finale that ensured you wouldn't miss the game when you were done.

 

[porous_shield]

Burnout Paradise for me was a game I had to force myself to finish. I did all the jumps, smash gates, and billboards and got my A license and realized there was an elite license to do after that. I managed to finish the game completely but I'm happy to see it go. The elite license was just grueling since you only unlock a few cars, there are only a handful of race types, and you find yourself racing up and down the same roads constantly.

It took me a decade to beat WarCraft II with the way I was playing it. I'm not great at RTS games so I'd often end up repeating levels, or at least large parts of levels, and that killed any enjoyment I was having.

It took me nearly a decade to beat Thief as well. I enjoy levels where human guards and bystanders and I'm stealing trinkets out from under their fat noses but despise the levels with those dinosaur things and zombies.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

inFamous had this effect on me. The plot never really engaged me and I think it was pure determination to see what happens next with Good Cole that made me keep going. Completely not worth my time.

 

[Fox12]

Red Dead Redemption. Personally, after hearing all the hype about how magnificent it was, I was severely let down when I played it myself. Promised myself I would finish it though, believing that at some point it would all click. Never did.

Yeah, that's how I felt. The world didn't feel very immersive to me, and it seems like you fight the same enemies over and over. It had a few bright moments here and there, like the part where you meet God, but otherwise it was just... average.

 

[Fireaxe]

the Witcher 2.. combat system was just clunky and boring -- plus some skills seemed ridiculously overpowered.

 

[Trucken]

Just Cause. Now, this was one of the games I bought shortly after I bought the Xbox 360 in 2007 and a guy I worked with recommended it. He said it was even better than GTA, and me being desperate for a GTA-game decided to buy it. It was NOT better than GTA. It was neither good or bad, it was just damn boring. Finished it about 2 years ago just 'cause (pun! Hah!) I wanted the achievments.

 

[Nazulu]

Last one I remember was Skyrim. I said it several times before and it only seems more right; the patterns just became extremely obvious, coupled with the fact that you couldn't really lose. Everything just became a chore in the end.

What I mean by patterns is how the temples/tombs are laid out, the puzzles in them, how often enemy's pop up, how the dragons attack, what quests I'm about to receive, etc. It all felt so... shallow. I really liked Black Reach and I had some interest to see how the 'meeting' would turn out, but that's it.

I stopped before I finished the main quest including with many other quests. Then I came back and said to myself 'I am going to finish it', and so I pushed myself to I finished some of the main quests and then I quit. I really just don't care anymore. The final 'part' was pretty lame, very disappointed.

Can't believe I enjoyed Super Princess Peach more than it, really.

 

[Saulkar]

At the beginning of the year, I was predicting The Last of Us to be my game of the year. Upon playing it, I was underwhelmed and that feeling never went away. There are little bits that I liked and the story was alright but other than that I wasn't impressed and struggled to play to the end. Maybe I need to play it again now that my expectations have been put into check.

Heh, I was just talking about this in another thread.

As for me it would be Fa'Threar (F.3.A.R. (F.E.A.R. 3 (First Encounter Assault Recon: Three))) as the massive changes to the gameplay were a total turnoff. The only reason I finished it was to stay up to date on the story instead of reading a synopsis or paying half attention to an L.P. while working on my computer so that I could easily pick up the fourth game if and when they figure out how to UnFuck it.

 

[Caiphus]

Not many, if any. I generally just stop playing games if I get bored of them, or if something important comes up in the real world, and I can't be bothered picking the game up later and remembering what I was doing.

So, as a result I have a long list of games that I haven't finished. That doesn't mean I didn't 100% them, it means I didn't finish the game. Real world priorities probably caused at least half of these:

Dragon's Dogma - a pity, really enjoyed this game, but exams came up when I was about 40 hours in.
Thief II
Borderlands
GTA IV
GTA V
KotoR (Although I finished the second one)
The Witcher (again, finished the second)
The Last Remnant
FF 13
FF 13-2
Magicka
Rogue Legacy
Terraria
Torchlight II
Kingdoms of Amalur
And more!

And a whole lot of others that I played for around an hour before losing interest really fast. From Dust, for example. Most of these are 30+ hour games, so..

 

[Alexander Kirby]

Thomas Was Alone.

After hearing such great things about a beautiful story with excellent gameplay, I was surprised to find a glitchy platformer with simple, repetitive puzzles whose idea of a 'story' was to directly say "orange one is in love with blue one" part way through a level and then never bring it up again. There had to be something I was missing! So I forced myself to continue and just became progressively more disappointed.

 

[teebeeohh]

bioshock, the story got boring after ryan and i hate it when games take enemies and just make them stronger so that weapons like the pistol just stop doing any damage

and every game of civ ever, by the time i enter the industrial era i am usually so far ahead in whatever area i decide to win in that it's just clicking through turns and waiting. more fun if i decide to fight since at least i get to nuke people.

 

[hutchy27]

A lot of games I played quite a bit but have to take a break near the end, 3 days played about 10 hours, speeding through it then haven't played past few days, eventually I will same with XCOM Enemy Unknown, played until the last mission, didn't go back for at least a few weeks. But games I have lent I force myself to the finish, lent Far Cry 3 got near the end and burned out but continued on because I didn't want to give back a unfinished game.