Poll: "The game gets better later on"

[JohnnyDelRay]

Depends on a couple of things really. I'll admit I answered the poll before reading, a grindy RPG I'll usually drop quite quickly. Then again, there's not many games that I have dropped in my gaming history, which extends over a solid 20+ years now. I used to give games much more of a chance, hell I'll admit there's even games that I finished that I didn't even like that much. But nowadays, I'm much quicker to put them in the backlog behind other priority games or just leave them on the shelf for eternity.

If it's a game I'm hyped up for, I'll give it more of a chance. Dungeon Siege 3 was one of my most anticipated sequels to play (loved the 1st 2 to bits), and I gave it quite a few hours, just wishing it would get better despite being a complete let down from the get go.

 

[liza01]

funny, but yes, i would definitely!as long as i see something good on the game, sometimes this make up some challenges that should go through .. i always find games like this, it's not new to me anymore.

 

[KenAri]

It's definitely worth enduring Taris in the first Knights of the Old Republic, because what follows is immense. Inversely, it's most definitely not trudging through the first 10-15 hours of Final Fantasy 13 before the supposed good parts.

 

[CrystalShadow]

It can happen... But if everything that precedes it is really dull and boring, then it had better be pretty amazing to make it worth the effort...

 

[Dalisclock]

Like a lot of others have said, it depends.

FF13 making you wait till 15-20 hours for the game to get good is too long.

OTOH, I'm generally willing to give a game the benefit of the doubt to some extent. So, for example, the game doesn't really hit stride until 10 hours in(and I'll pretend it's a JRPG so it's a roughly 40-50 hour game). If the game gives me something to keep my interest until then, either a gripping story, interesting characters or expanding/upgrading game-play mechanics, I'm willing to keep going to get to the 10 hour point.

However, if that first 10 hours until the game "gets good" is just a slog with nothing enticing other then "Well, it's really great past the 10 hour point" means somebody messed up and should have placed "It gets good" far closer to the beginning of the game.

Right now I'm playing X-COM:Enemy Within. It's challenging and a couple missions have been brutal so far, and I'm still in the early game. I don't have MECs, just got the first armor upgrade and laser rifles, and I'm working as fast as I can to get more Sats aloft.

I suspect that fairly soon it'll get easier because I can do more to control panic and I'll have better weapons to play with(and a veteran squad with gene mods). However, the game has been fun to play and kept my interest because I'm seeing slow but sure progress, always have another new toy to work towards along the way, or a new enemy/mission type that comes along every so often.

So maybe I'm not at "It gets good", I'm still having fun.

 

[Killclaw Kilrathi]

This is why I hardly ever get to endgame in MMOs. Most of them have fun endgames, but repetitive grindy drudgery for weeks on end to get there.

 

[Nazulu]

Nope. Most games get better as you get new items and see new interesting places. However, if it's boring or crappy at the start then I couldn't care less.

Unless I hear those parts later are absolutely amazing, but I've never heard of such a game. No! Don't mention Heavy Rain. I couldn't disagree with you more.

 

[cip_raziel]

Most of the games I've tried, never got better and I abandoned them. I see most people mentioned FF13. I tried to enjoy it, I still got it on my PC, but I just can't return to it; I'm 20 hours in, chapter 8 and nothing from that games lures me back, bad combat, bad, unrealistic characters, stupid factions names and all of those freaking corridors. I did't believe all those reviews back when the game launched, so that's why I tried the steam version. It's only saving grace would've been if at some point it allowed me to control each character individually in combat, but that's not gonna happen.
Another recent game that comes to mind is Killer is Dead. Same thing: story is all over the place, 1 button sluggish, boring combat (not a spectacle fighter imo). I kinda dig the art style. And I never got what's with the dating part. I played quite a few missions hoping the combat would get more stylish, more fun, but nope.
Other mentions: Max Payne 3 (I played almost till the end), Hitman Absolution, Kindgom Hearts 1, Witcher 1 & 2. Most of these games got praised for been good, but they just didn't work for me, even if they might get good later on, if they didn't captivate me in the first 2-3 hours, then their lost on me.

 

[jklinders]

Maybe I'm being stupid here but if the game is not good at the beginning why should I believe it will improve? Savvy design dictates that the first hour should "hook" you in. Something I noticed about the more recent Assassin's Creed games is that there is so fucking much buildup that I have lost interest a lot of the time before I reach the "good" parts. Some of us have jobs, spouses and kids. Hook me early or stay on that backlog and forget about repeat business.

I really don't see why there should be a slog to get to the good parts. Most of it is just horrid tutorial design. Sometimes, it's something else.

 

[Danny Dowling]

it depends, it always depends. but yeah there are some games that you need to put a bit of time in for it to escalate to something worth while.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Yes.

Witcher 2 is my favourite game in recent memory, and that easily took between 4-8 hours to 'get good'. Same sort of thing with Shogun 2(had to pay attention to the details and adopt a strategy), and Persona 4(literally nothing happens for the first four hours).

I'm currently playing Dragon Age Inquisition, and as many people have said, the game truly shines about 6 hours-YMMV(for me, it was easily about 20 hours to get to Skyhold cause I kept fucking about), and I stuck by it.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Yeah, i'm happy to wait an entire game for a good part...hell, i've finished plenty of games that are crap from start to finish just to prove that i can. It's very rare a game is bad enough that i won't play it all the way through but i will happily moan about some games that would seem on paper like i should love them. The original dragon age got around 100 hours of my time and i thought it was one of the most boring and pointless games i've ever played. Mass Effect 2 got around 4 playthroughs and i absolutely hated it against where it had come from. Damn, i even finished borderlands and that was probably the most tedious pile of shit i've ever had the misfortune to carry on playing to finish.

I suppose it all depends what kind of gamer you are. I wear my hardcore badge in many ways...

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I find that in general if my first impression of a game is poor, that my experience will continue to remain poor no matter how much I 'invest' into it. This isn't always the case but holds true most of the time.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Like a lot of others have said, it depends.

FF13 making you wait till 15-20 hours for the game to get good is too long.

OTOH, I'm generally willing to give a game the benefit of the doubt to some extent. So, for example, the game doesn't really hit stride until 10 hours in(and I'll pretend it's a JRPG so it's a roughly 40-50 hour game). If the game gives me something to keep my interest until then, either a gripping story, interesting characters or expanding/upgrading game-play mechanics, I'm willing to keep going to get to the 10 hour point.

However, if that first 10 hours until the game "gets good" is just a slog with nothing enticing other then "Well, it's really great past the 10 hour point" means somebody messed up and should have placed "It gets good" far closer to the beginning of the game.

Right now I'm playing X-COM:Enemy Within. It's challenging and a couple missions have been brutal so far, and I'm still in the early game. I don't have MECs, just got the first armor upgrade and laser rifles, and I'm working as fast as I can to get more Sats aloft.

I suspect that fairly soon it'll get easier because I can do more to control panic and I'll have better weapons to play with(and a veteran squad with gene mods). However, the game has been fun to play and kept my interest because I'm seeing slow but sure progress, always have another new toy to work towards along the way, or a new enemy/mission type that comes along every so often.

So maybe I'm not at "It gets good", I'm still having fun.

X-com is a strange game. It starts well and then gets more and more boring as you get higher and higher level. Once you reach plasma weapons the game gets too easy and then it becomes a slog to bother finishing the game. The entire game revolves around the first 4-6 months and then everything else is about how long you want to spin it out hoping for something better but never really getting it.

 

[Tojumaru]

I hated Arkham City for the first hour and then... just quit. After almost 3 years, I gave it another shot. And i still hated the first hour or so, but kept going and found myself loving it. But Skyrim, Oblivion, Deus Ex, I never gave a second chance. Which is weird considering I still hold Morrowind as the finest RPG I have ever played. Also, Dark Souls is beyond awful and i never gave that even 20 minutes. Oh, boss fight before I even manage to get my sense of direction? No thank you, I don't like getting angry while trying to have fun.

 

[Signa]

There are games that this really held true for me. I couldn't get into the original Deus Ex because I had a hard time with the first mission. If I had not been out of things to do, I don't know if I would have gotten over the initial learning curve in Morrowind. I also had a hard time being successful in Thief, but with a little practice, I got better, and so did the game.

On the flip side of that, I gave Skyward Sword several hours and eventually put it away. I have a friend that says the end is amazing, but I don't know if I can care long enough to get to that point. Final Fantasy 13 sounds unforgivable. 10 hours in Final Fantasy 7 would have you on the Junon boat, by which point you would have learned about saving the planet, gone cross dressing in whacky hijinks, invaded Shinra and saved Aerith, witnessed Sephiroth's devastation, and then escaped on a motorcycle. Not to mention learning about Cloud's past, and riding chocobos. That's A LOT to keep you interested and engaged in the characters and story. I never played FF13, but if you've played THAT long and got nothing even close to the above, then why are you still playing?

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

You have one hour after the tutorial to get me involved, else it's sayonara. This is one of the reasons I can't get into MMOs. If I jump in and the excuse is "it gets better later, promise" then I'm out... unless the game has a stellar reputation. Then I MAY stick around to see what all the hubbub is about.

 

[HHammond]

Yeah I'm willing to give a game a lot of time if it has something in there that interests me. Wasn't blown away by the first Mass Effect at first but the fact there was a gay relationship in the game kept me interested as it was untrodden ground for games, got to Virmire and now I'm in love with the series!

Hell, I've played entire games that I didn't like that much just because the sequel was meant to be better. Knights of the Old Republic didn't really engage me and I felt was flat, dull and standard Star Wars fare (except for messing with Bastilla which was just plain fun) but the sequel was written by Chris Avellone. Having the knowledge of the original game made KOTOR 2 even better than an already superb game. Even KOTOR 2 has it's crappy moments, such as Telos but that's not the beginning.

 

[G00N3R7883]

Voted "depends" just because of how the question is phrased. Would I play 30 hours of grind for 1 final hour of awesome? Probably not. First 2 hours are slow but the next 20 are great? That's more worthwhile.

This thread actually reminds me of the Witcher 1. I've read so many forum posts over the years from people who said they quit in the first 2 hours because the combat was crap, and I always respond by saying it gets much better after you level up and unlock some skills.

 

[lacktheknack]

Sometimes, like with Spacechem, it's only an hour of simple boring slog before it really picks up, and it's really worth it.

But generally, if you're going to ask me to risk three plus hours of boredom to get to the good stuff, I'm going to conclude that a dev who knew what he was doing could have cut that down immensely and skip.