Second Chance Gaming

[Johnny Novgorod]

God Hand. Started the game, sucked balls at it, thought it was one of the worst purchases I'd ever made, played Tales of the Abyss for a month, came back to God Hand and got totally hooked into it. I guess I got over the crap camera and learned to love the controls.

 

[GundamSentinel]

I give every game I dislike a second chance. Sometimes a couple more chances.

Mirror's Edge became a success. At first I couldn't get into it. But when playing a few weeks later with a friend we finished the game in one session and really loved it.

Final Fantasy X was alse very difficult for me to get into. I'm really not that experienced with jrpgs and I couldn't get used to it. I came back to it a year later and really enjoyed it.

The Uncharted series. I still don't see it as a very good game series, but I enjoyed it for what it is after a couple false starts. The shooting in the first game in particular really frustrated me.

 

[aozgolo]

I keep really really hoping that The Witcher becomes this for me, I've heard about what an amazing game it and it's sequel are, I bought both of them, I've heard how mature the storytelling is, how awesome the setting and the choices are, but at this point I just want to ask someone to give it to me in novel form because everytime I play I get frustrated with the controls and never get anywhere.

The biggest example I think was Final Fantasy XII, I think I was one of those very few Americans who actually bought Dragon Quest VIII because I wanted to play Dragon Quest, but it had a free FFXII demo in it, which I played briefly and quickly cemented my disdain for all PS2 era Final Fantasies (Damn you X, damn you!) Then on one bored afternoon I decided I'd just give it a whirl because I had fuck all else to do and somehow... strangely I felt compelled to keep playing it... then less than a month later I plop down money at Gamestop for it and it goes from originally being "Gah Final Fantasy is dead" to "This is the best Final Fantasy game I ever played EVER!"

I think the combat system is what originally through me off, it at first glance to an outside observer looks ridiculously convoluted and needlessly complex with it's use of color arcing lines and strange looking license board. Once playing it though it all became very easy to pick up and get into, and in my mind was tons of fun, it was the first time in a long time I actually had FUN grinding in a JRPG.

 

[MetalDooley]

Mass Effect - First time I played it for a couple of hours and it just bored me.Came back to it about a year later and it just clicked.I've since played it to completion 4 times now averaging around 45-50 hrs per playthrough

 

[MarcellusMagnus]

I tried Master of Orion II when I was 14, and I just couldn't make any sense of it. I couldn't figure out the specifics of how the rules worked, and I found it unbearably slow compared to Heroes of Might & Magic III (the only other turn-based game I'd played before). I uninstalled it the same day. And then pretty much the same thing happened with the original Fallout.
I tried both again a year later, and this time around things just clicked for me. In fact, to this day, these two games are among my all-time favourites, and even on recent plays (thanks, GOG!) they still held up incredibly well.

 

[WhyWasThat]

OBLIVION

Had never played an Elder Scrolls game before, nor indeed any open-world RPG.
I remember being utterly baffled by it and thinking it the most boring rubbish in the world.

When I picked up a PS3 in 2007, something compelled me to buy it, no idea what...
Now, it's my favourite game of all time, with an obscene amount of hours logged on across multiple characters.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

KOTOR: Found it extremely simple and boring and uninstalled in the first corridor. I still find it extremely simple but I don't mind that as much as I used to, so I tried again and finished it and KOTOR2 in under a week and a half. I also watched all the movies again in between once or twice so that might have something to do with it. I still think it's an overrated game, but an enjoyable one. There's so very little of interest in the gameplay, it's very repetitive, with good characters and voice acting combined with excellent quest design, some of the best I've seen in an RPG.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Played GTA4 briefly after release, found it thoroughly tedious and stopped playing it. Last Summer as GTA5 was given a release date I thought I'd give it another crack. Reinstalled it, played it for some hours, found it just as thoroughly tedious and stopped playing it.

That's the only game I stopped playing which I think I've given a second chance. Other games which I've stopped playing I've quite simply not bothered returning to, nor do I intend to do so. Kingdoms of Amalur, Mirror's Edge, Crysis 3 are the most notable. All were so awful and boring I had to uninstall them and I have no intention of going near them again.

 

[Silvanus]

I've just bought Super Mario Galaxy again, assuming I judged it too quickly the first time.

Now I'm not so sure.

 

[DanielBrown]

Bought LOTRO when it was about a year old. After getting three classes to level 20ish I scrapped it because I thought the game was shit. After another year I was bored with all my current MMOs and decided to try again. A few changes had come to the game, one of them being the option to solo main quests that were for full groups before, and I fucking loved it.
Played it almost daily for three years before I got bored due to crappy expansions. I've just started playing again after a six month break and while end game is seriously lacking I still greatly enjoy leveling alts.

Morrowind would also fit in this thread. Bought the game after seeing a friend play it. I was like 12 years old and didn't understand shit, so it was a horrible experience to me. Quite recently gave it another go with the overhaul mod and had a blast. Felt awesome playing a game without holding hands with it constantly.
All running back and forth eventually got the better of me however.

 

[Battenberg]

Definitely Battlefront 3 for me. I played a few hours on a friend's copy when it came out and thought it was just a slowed down CoD and fairly generic. Then I got it for free on PS+ and gave it another go, now I'd have to rate it as probably the best fps multiplayer game I've ever played; purely for its focus on teamwork over the whole quickscoping lone wolf thing you get in other fps multiplayer games. Plus you can blow up bits of the map which is very cool, can't wait to see that taken to the next level in 4 (although hopefully next time they'll make it easier to get into right from that start rather than 10 hours of play in).

 

[Tom_green_day]

Fallout 3. I played it for a few hours and then gave up, not liking it. A few weeks I played it again, when I had less other games I wanted to play. Now it's my favourite game.

 

[likalaruku]

Only happened to me once, & it was with a cartoon; specifically the old Sam & Max animated series. Despite max's annoying-as-shit voice & the fact that it was aimed at small children, it turned out to be pretty enjoyable.

I suppose it could happen with an MMO, since they continuously get new content over the years. I've been considering retrying DDO.

 

[FPLOON]

Portal - At the time, I could never play anything first-person (with the small exception of the first Metroid Prime game and Geist for the GameCube) and that went double for first-person anything on PC. I went into the game already with extreme dislike since I could never get used to aiming with a controller, let alone aiming with the mouse I was using while playing through the PC version...

Luckily, the same day I hated playing it was the same day I fell in love with Portal as well as got over hating anything first-person in gaming, which lead to playing games such as Mirror's Edge, Portal 2, MW2 (that one time on the 360 at a party), and a few others on console like Resistance and Borderlands...

I guess my second chance happened sooner than expected, I guess...

 

[Hero of Lime]

Halo 1: My brother really wanted me to try it out, so I played the first mission where you escape from the Pillar of Autumn. It didn't impress me, I felt like it was just a little fun, but not worth my time. I later went in for a more serious play through, and I really liked it outside of the first Flood level. I actually liked the Library more than 343 Guilty Spark, which is a bit of a rarity considering the Library's infamous reputation.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

The first time I played Super Mario Galaxy, I got honest-to-goodness vertigo and, dizziness. The game couldn't hold my attention and I just couldn't even play the thing. Months later, I had finished a couple of games on my backlog and thought "what the Hell", giving it another shot. I haven't played through every last level but I have beaten the narrative of the game at this point, really enjoying it but being just pissed off enough to not go back and finish the levels I never set foot in.

As soon as I got to Mexico in Red Dead Redemption, I lost interest. I grabbed it again and...Well, I'm still not getting into the thing. This is a game I can't get back into but I want to like it...then I started playing games that can hold my attention like Pokemon Y and, Fallout New Vegas.

Wind Waker was similar; the beginning of the game is really, really slow so after I slogged through that I stopped playing for a few months. When I came back I was fully engaged and couldn't put the thing down.

More or less the same with Twilight Princess. Slow start, I stopped for a month or so, I got back in and ran with it.