Well Liked/Reviewed Games...That You *Didn't* Enjoy.

[lassiie]

Dishonored is the first one that comes to mind for me. I wanted so badly to like it and I just couldn't. It had everything I should've liked, stealth, intuitive controls, multiple ways to complete missions but I just couldn't get into it.

 

[tstorm823]

GTA (entire series): those controls - especially the targetting. Blugh. I tried (rentals) GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas before deciding that I just really don't care for this series.

I'm entirely with you. Luckily I have friends that play GTA instead so that I can experience and enjoy the world without having to remember how awful it actually is to play. Or I can just listen to Emotion 98.3 with Fernando Martinez and wish it was a real radio statio.

OT: Xenoblade Chronicles. I feel exactly the opposite about that game as I do about Grand Theft Auto. I loved the mechanics of Xenoblade Chronicles, but I thought the setting was silly, the plot was lame, and the characters were all absolute crap (except you, Dunban. You're cool). But my God, how can people be excited about Shulk in Smash Bros. Shulk is terrible and I hate him.

 

[1Life0Continues]

*deep breath*

Assassin's Creed 2

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Ezio is a horrible character. A loudmouthed, brash, arrogant POS. He breaks every tenet of the Creed from the very start, and is NEVER brought up on it. I loathe that character so much, that I noticed so much wrong with the game that normally would be ignored under suspension of disbelief.

AC1 blending: Altair looked very similar to the Scholars. He was able to pull off blending because of it.
AC2 blending: Ezio can blend in to a crowd of 2 people wearing beige or grey while wearing the brightest most conspicuous clothing around (Black? Really?), but the guards can't spot the only person in town who looks that way? Immersion breaking.

AC1 mission structure: Sure, the missions were all the same kind of spiel, but at least you DID the research. You checked out the target, you eavesdropped, you pick-pocketed essential information and you cased your target. You worked for your assassination, and you felt good pulling it off silently.
AC2 mission structure: Follow the map marker. That's it.

AC1 character growth: Spanned the whole game. The fall of Altair and his relearning of the true meaning behind being an assassin was a great story. Sure, the 'twist' sucked and I also hated it, but the journey was one I enjoyed immensely.
AC2 character growth: There is none. And before you start, yes, I'm aware there's supposed growth in Brotherhood and Revelations. But I don't care. In the base AC2, there is none. It is not a good idea to alienate me to this character then say 'Oh, but he gets better 80 hours in!' We don't tolerate that BS from Final Fantasy, but Assassin's Creed gets away with it? No. Not good enough. And to have the balls to make me pay to see this character grow, while a fantastic business move, is a dick move to me as a player, and I refuse to play ball. Yes, it's petty, but I have limited disposable income, and I'm not using it to reward this concept.

There is so much more I could go into, but it's just not worth it in the end. People will bag out AC1 for having lame combat, and they are right. It kind of is. But so is AC2's combat. It suffers from the same problems (counter to win) it just happen to have a gun in it, so it seems to be ignored. The only saving grace that AC2 had for me was the credit sequence. Because that meant the game was done and I could uninstall and never have to go through it ever again.

 

[Semudara]

Hylia, forgive me....

*deep breath*

Welcome to The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds! The best Zelda game ever, guys!! 10/10, game of the decade, the holy grail of literally all video games everywhere, a masterpiece, play this game or you will live in eternal sadness!

What's that? You're expecting a well-made, memorable story? Emotional context? Characters with more depth than a piece of toast? Who needs something like that!? Not in THIS Zelda game!

Not when you have a satisfyingly open world, ripe for exploration! As long as you have the Gauntlets, of course, so you can move the big rocks that are preventing exploration.

They're in the Sand Dungeon, so you'll want to do that one early. You have literally no way of knowing that.

Also, you can't do the Sand Dungeon until you rescue Osfala from the Thieves' Hideout. Isn't non-linearity great? We don't even know what that means!

What's that? You did the Sand Dungeon LAST?? Haha, you missed out on all the good side content for the vast majority of the game. And it's totally ALL YOUR FAULT, sucker!! Guess you just can't handle a REAL ZELDA GAME.

By the way, did you like Irene? Her quips when you used the fast-travel system were at least a nice hint of personality (and companionship, even) in an otherwise pretty bland game, yeah? Hope you enjoy when that completely disappears less than a third of the way through the game. <3

Yuga? More like BEST VIDEO GAME VILLAIN EVER-ga! Move aside, Zant! Get a grip, Ghirahim! None of you scrubs were worthy of being a final boss. But THIS GUY? THIS GUY HIJACKS GANON. Because he is so memorable and unique and such a great Zelda villain, no one else would have been perfect enough for such a perfect game. He is the best villain, I remember everything about him like that thing he says, and when he did a bad thing. Did I mention that this game is perfect?

If you are a Zelda fan and you do not love this game completely, YOU ARE A JOYLESS HUSK. This game is LITERALLY JESUS. LITERALLY.

If you look for anything else in a Zelda game, such as interesting supporting characters, unique settings, actually compelling villains, or HEAVEN FORBID a focus on story, you clearly have problems. Maybe you just can't handle quality.

Buy it today! Only $39.99, plus your immortal soul. You'll never want to play another game again!

 

[Elfgore]

I usually bemoan the fact that people focus on negative emotions when making these threads, but at this point, eh.

Though this thread may be a downer. I much rather have people post negative things in a thread like this, than going to the nearest sexism, racism, whatever thread and making a cluster out of it.

Half-life and Morrowind. Both of these can pretty much be explained for one reason. Time. I played these games way past their prime. I'm sure Half-life was genre breaking back in its day. Same for Morrowind. Now I see two ugly ass games, that newer games do better and with prettier graphics.

 

[otakon17]

Last of Us. Great graphics and music, good characters and absolutely dripping with atmosphere. Too bad the gameplay was average at best and glitchy(and downright save game killing in my experience). I had situations where enemies would survive stealth kill animations, shoot me through walls and the cream of the crop: being grabbed by a Clicker THROUGH a wall while being grabbed by a Runner and it causing the game to hang on the reload screen, breaking my save and my last 8 or so hours of gameplay. After that, I traded it in.

 

[TheGamerElite33]

I hate most of popular games but I go with GTA series. entire series is boring, uninspired and repetetive. they only got high score from corrupt mainstream media because rockstar pay money to critics to give high score and awards.
well same could be said about most of popular games.

Its sad state of industry

 

[immortalfrieza]

Half-life and Morrowind. Both of these can pretty much be explained for one reason. Time. I played these games way past their prime. I'm sure Half-life was genre breaking back in its day. Same for Morrowind. Now I see two ugly ass games, that newer games do better and with prettier graphics.

I get the same feeling about Morrowind, which is the reason I'm so excited about Skywind and love the crap out of Morroblivion. I just hope the end up actually getting finished.

I'm also hoping the Black Mesa graphics mod gets finished as well, but I'm not expecting it.

OT: Another vote for The Last Of Us, but mostly just for one reason, the repetitiveness. I didn't get too far in the game because actually playing it was such a slog (stealth kill everything followed by more things to stealth kill with a little third person shoot occasionally thrown in the mix) that as much as I loved everything else, at some point I just couldn't continue.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

Bastion..I don't think I've seen more than a handful of people saying anything negative about it.
What I can't stand is the sluggish input reaction and the ease with which I fall into those damn holes/over the edge.
Lastly, the annoying narrator who talks when I'm too busy fighting to listen, and I want to listen..just not right at that moment.

Fallout 3, too grey/brown. I prefer Fallout 2, but lets not talk about that old war.

Witcher seems universally liked. I could certainly agree with that, from what little I saw.
I didn't even get into the city. Can't stand Over-the-Shoulder cameras. Too bad.

Bastion with sluggish input? That is actually strange. Myn had extremely tight reactions both using a controller and using mouse and keyboard, and that is when my shitty laptop lagged on it. It shouldn't be sluggish.

And over the shoulder cameras came popular for a reason. With the old system, its practically impossible to aim upwards or downwards with ranged weapons or guns without your character model getting in the way, or zooming so far out that the ground causes a gigantic camera zoom which ruins it just as fast. It is mildly harder to control on a mouse and keyboard yeah, but it isn't done for no reason. It also has a more cinematic effect. Still doesn't explain why The Witcher uses it, especially since the downright only game to use an over the shoulder camera in melee well, and it was more at ass level, was God Hand, and only used it because it intentionally wanted to make it impossible to see behind yourself, as it forces the player to pay more attention to their surroundings and predict the AI moving around them.

Bastion does respond quickly, but it continues half a second after I've stopped giving it input. That and the slow pace of myself versus the fast pace of the enemies makes for tricky dodge reactions.
Oh and I just remembered, aiming a weapon..impossible. have to aim slightly below the line.

About Witcher, you might be right about aiming ranged weapons. I never seemed to have a problem with it in similarly "viewed" games such as Outcast, Project Eden, Beyond Good & Evil or Psychonauts. I'm not sure the constricted field of view is worth it though. Frankly, that's exactly what bothers me about it. I don't like having a skewed view. It has to be perfectly aligned. A bit of an OCD on my part.

snip

snip

the two of you do realise that the Witcher lets you switch to an isometric view, right? It's like the first thing that it asks you to set when you start a new game.

Hmmm, yes..I do seem to remember that, now that you mention it..Not sure why I didn't use it..Have to try again. Thanks!

*EDIT*
I remember another two games I disliked.
Magicka and The Incredible Adventures of Van Hellsing.
I like the atmosphere of both games..All four games actually.
It just seems that that one little thing grows so big and destroys my entire experience.

I never could get used to handling 6 different magicks, in a combination of up to 4 while simultaneously trying to fight of enemies. I don't like being stressed in games. I hate it.
Had it been Turn based combat, I would surely had praised it to the skies.

TIAoVH ( yes..deal with it ,) ) had some interesting "gimmicks". What I couldn't deal with was the rage system. That and being forced into close combat by certain mobs.
I'm sure there was more. hmmmm *trying to rack my brain*..Something..or other..eh, nvm.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

I started playing Uncharted for the very first time recently. Only lasted a couple of hours. Combat was was incredibly tedious, runny-jumpy-climby stuff was boring, overall it just felt like I was being ushered from one set piece to the next with no real control over what was happening. The story might have been good, I'll never know though since I didn't get far enough into the game for anything interesting to happen (although according to my save file I was past the one quarter mark). Usually when I dislike popular games I at least understand why people like them. I can't for the life of me understand why people like Uncharted.

The first Assassin's Creed is an weird one for me. When I started playing it I thought it was amazing, by the time I finished it I hated it. A lot of good ideas ruined by repetition and monotony.

 

[fhmy]

RAGE - I quite liked the gunplay, but the scarcity of bullets made me scared to shoot anything. Maybe the ammo situation gets better later on. Didn't get too far.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag - Same old AC gameplay, and the ships got really monotonous halfway through the game. Not to mention all the tailing and eavesdropping missions, holy shit. I swear they were taking the piss when they made you tail ships. I guess I enjoyed it enough to finish it, though.

Viewtiful Joe - I like most things about it, but not the gameplay unfortunately. Joe's tiny arms meant you had to get uncomfortably close to your enemies to punch them, a problem made more apparent in his fighting game outings. Shame 'cause that's my only real gripe but it's enough to disinterest me.

OT: Xenoblade Chronicles. I feel exactly the opposite about that game as I do about Grand Theft Auto. I loved the mechanics of Xenoblade Chronicles, but I thought the setting was silly, the plot was lame, and the characters were all absolute crap (except you, Dunban. You're cool). But my God, how can people be excited about Shulk in Smash Bros. Shulk is terrible and I hate him.

Not feeling it, eh?

 

[Racecarlock]

Telltale's the walking dead. People seem to have played a game where there decisions mattered and omg the story was so good you guys, but the demo I played mainly consisted of a generic as fuck zombie breakout with QTES and a mass effect dialogue system on a timer that didn't affect much at all. So either it was a crap demo or I'm just not into these games.

Max Payne 3. It's the best cover shooter ever with great gore and genuinely challenging combat. But good GOD, you couldn't find a more depressed, self deprecating, whiny little shit if you combined navi with the goth kids from south park. The story itself has THREE separate scenes to establish that max payne is a heavy drinker, and to top it all off the people he's rescuing are stereotypes of the people you see on TMZ that he apparently hates and you don't give a fuck about, but save them anyways because money. And later just because the bad guy misled you and therefore deserves to die.

There were so many times where I would get through a hard as balls gunfight where I would die 6 times and lose 5 minutes or more of progress, and then I'd get to the end and max would say "I wish I had died back there.". Fuck you, you little shit! I just saved your ungrateful ass. If I had known you wanted to die I would have quit the game after one of the deaths.

I actually had to quit playing for a while when one of the chapters was sarcastically called "The great american hero" because I had gotten fed up with the game's self righteous bullshit. But curiosity drove me to an unsatisfying and ultimately bittersweet ending. But only because max didn't even look happy when he was sipping drinks at a bar after killing all of his problems with a rocket launcher. Even the ending was not satisfying because of this character. That's how shit he is.

 

[DaWaffledude]

Mass Effect 2. I've already talked about this at length but to summarise...

Fuck Cerberus, fuck your cover-shooter mechanics.

 

[bificommander]

I'll limit my list of gripes to well-regarded games that I thought I would enjoy.

I also bought Divinity: Original Sin based on the reviews, but it hasn't managed to grasp me yet. Couldn't tell you exactly why, I like turn-based games like this normally. I'm going to give it a bit more time, but so far it's dissapointing.

Dragon Age: Origins is another game that I thought I would enjoy. I just can't. I hate the combat system. I get my ass kicked by trash-mobs, curse as I find out that my closest save is 45 minutes back, get back to the same trash mobs, and then kick their ass without feeling that I've done anything significantly differently.

Nexus: Jupiter incident. This one really breaks my heart. I love space games, and it actually starts out pretty fun. And then you travel through the wormhole and start fighting with and against ships with shielding. Goodbye fun, hello 5 minute slog-fests to drop the enemy's shields for 10 seconds and do some minor hull damage.

Xenoblade Chronicles: I've never owned consoles, but I have fond memories of the PC version of FF VIII. Yes, I know it's not well regarded, but it was my first JRPG and I was impressed way back in the day. But Xenoblade? Really couldn't get into it, not combat wise and (based on my brother's playthrough, who got a lot further in it) not story-wise.

Batman Arkham City: Another heart-breaker because the gameplay is just great. It's the story that I can't stand. Not because it's poorly written, but because I just felt dirty playing it. Based on the henchmen chatter you overhear, those henchman can never think of any female character in the game without saying how much they'd enjoy raping her. All other chatter is divided between gameplay hints, expressing how much they love torture and murder, and how their supervillain bosses are even worse. And after being subjected to 10 hours of that, I'm expected to want to STOP the League of Shadows of burning the place down with all the inmates in it? I'd have handed them the fucking matches if only the game would let me. But no, Batman is just going to pretend that beating up criminals and sending them to jail works in his universe... never mind that the villains ARE ALREADY IN JAIL, and still managed to poison thousands of people and (per Arkham City) regularly maul their therapists, whenever they don't feel like breaking out of jail for the 257th time.

 

[j4c0b1]

GTA 4 and 5

Much like the destiny, Its technically competent and mechanically sound, however its just missing that certain spark of life that the older GTAs had that made them such fun and instead 4 and 5 I found just boring.

 

[G00N3R7883]

Outlast. I wasn't scared because I could predict when pretty much every jump scare would happen (mostly when you try to squeeze through a narrow gap/ledge or have to press a button), so I had nothing to distract me from the terrible AI and dull story.

Transistor. The combat was excellent but the story was terrible. It never explains what is happening, so after a few hours I stopped caring.

Divinity and Xenonauts. Good games crippled by unbalanced difficulty.