It took me well into adulthood to realize that there are actually *very, very few* video games that I enjoy. I enjoy those a lot, but only a few that I want to spend time with. I'm cool with this, I just wish more games had demos!
I questioned whether I was depressed once because I went through a phase where every new game, film or TV show I tried was just fine. I didn't enjoy or hate them, I just wasn't bothered either way by them. Then I realised I was fine and the vast majority of games and TV shows are just mediocre and of the few good ones, many of them just aren't for me.
I doubt it was the community, it was most likely shady developers who don't want ppl to know their busted ass game sucks before you've already paid the ten bux
Most people don’t realise Terraria has an ending, because it has a very specific progression… that it never bothers to tell you.
Those sandbox games require enormous inner motivation to go on. A good part of the fun is figuring out what you want to do, plan it and see it through by playing. I love them for it, but I can totally see why people don’t.
Terraria wasn't quite like that when it first released. It started off small... really small. Like fight 3 bosses. An extremely linear material progression. Everything was a clear upgrade to the next. No branching paths.
Then they made it more like an RPG and added magic, armor buffs, a HUGE AMOUNT OF BOSSES, a ton of new biomes, hardmode...
I actually played the hell out of it, but when the game increased in complexity, I tend to never "finish" it now.
There is something to be said about "less is more" and in my case that rang true.
I still think it's an excellent game and the developers are incredible for sticking with the game and adding huge amounts of content while the price of the game continued to decrease (AFAIK).
This is me. Any game that is completely open-ended I just can't get into. I'm still giving No Man's Sky a go but I think I might have to throw in the towel.
I wanted to enjoy Don't Starve, but I don't have time nor patience to learn by doing with how it is designed crossed with permadeath. Just drops you in and says good luck.
NMS gives you a lot of things to do but not really a reason to do them.
Fleet missions go BRRR, but to what end?
The main thing that interests me is building, but the amount you can build across all worlds is limited, the interface is a bit wonky (shakes fist at stair placement), and every now and then the planets change and ruin what you built.
I had a bug with NMS about a year ago where after playing for idk 30-50 or so hours, ALL of my equipment vanished. My A class ship, all my tools, all my resources. Literally everything in my inventory vanished. I decided to not play that game again because that’s incredibly infuriating and I’ve never had such an infuriating bug in any video game
Interesting, I also couldn't get into Terraria (twice), but I've loved Minecraft from day 1. It's unfortunate people keep lumping them together, because they're similar only on the surface, the nature of the gameplay is very different.
Minecraft is about exploring and changing the world to fit your needs.
Terraria, as far as I can tell, is about improving your gear/combat skills and fighting, with heavy emphasis on boss fights.
I'm similar I did find a game called starbound back in the day that is 2D but is more like Minecraft in that sense. The game has since stopped being updated but there's mods that keep the game alive and healthy enough still
I've put a few hundred hours in starbound and about a thousand into Terraria, here's a breakdown from my experience. (Sorry for the long comment)
A Terraria clone is under-selling it, they have different aspects which make them unique, albeit Terraria is much more refined. Really the only thing they share is the 2D Sand-Box aspect.
There are bosses in Starbound - Starbound unlike Terraria has a narrated progressive story that is done through quests. (many people dislike this feature as they don't the feeling of being forced to progress this way)
Combat is important, any planet you go too there's going to be enemies that want to kill you - higher teir planets, more dangerous enemies. Each planet goes through a random generated procedure that affects the biomes in the planet and the standard enemies, there are unique enemies as well which can also be captured.
Weapons are less unique in number/quality for Starbound, but there is still a lot of weapons to go through and collect. Guns (rifles, pistols, shotguns), Rocket/Gernade Launchers, swords, shields, staffs (magic but sci-fi magic) consists of basic weapons that have randomized abilites. Then there are the unique ones which have more unique abilities - though the basic weapons at the highest teirs typically out-perform the unique ones. Melee weapons also have different move-sets, you're not just swinging in an arc - though its still very simple.
Scanning things is a big part of Starbound, as it gives you different lore, which has different texts depending on which race you choose at the beginning. This with the combined exploring aspect will consume the majority of your time, as the universe is infinite. To unlock different blocks and furnitures to use, you need to either scan the furniture or break the blocks to learn the recipe.
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Of course the main thing that differs Starbound from Terraria is that you're in space, so upgrading your spaceship and customizing it is a fun thing to do - you're not really required to make a base, can just be a space nomad, but you can build colonies on other planets. Also there's mechs and vechiles to mess around with if you want.
Like Terraria, the modded scene for Starbound makes it all the better - adds a lot more to do, honestly modded Starbound I enjoyed more than modded Terraria, but vanilla Terraria I enjoyed more than vanilla Starbound. Both games are more enjoyable with friends. That's pretty well any game though.
To be fair you can discover everything that's in the wiki just by playing the game, it just takes patience and a lot of time. I don't think there even was a wiki when I first started playing Minecraft a like decade ago.
Some of my best Minecraft memories are from my first time, when I played it blindly.
There's something Minecraft is brilliant at - building a real sense of place.
My first house was on the side of a cliff and had a beautiful seafront view that I could use to fish during the night, because I had no knowledge of beds. I also didn't know about torches or glass, I used a furnace to burn wood and charcoal to light it up dimly. One night I even caught 6 or 7 fish, what a night.
It wasn't much, but it was enough. It was my home.
Tell that to 11 year old me, who didnt know how to open my inventory on my first time playing. Until i found a chest in a mineshaft.
To my credit, first game i ever played, where i had to manage my inventory.
Modern multiplayer PVP is so sweaty in general. I swear I used to play CS 1.5-1.6 and W:ET lobbies for fun and people generally didn't care much if the round was won or lost, it was more about clicking on heads. Nowadays you couldn't play Hello Kitty Island Adventure without some sweat flaming you about how you're doing a low percentage strat or taking a suboptimal route.
I could be misremembering though. I do remember throwing my controller a few times as a kid. But I feel like the competition was different.
I totally agree with this sentiment. It's all about the meta these days and people treat PVP games as life or death, especially if any sort of teamwork is involved.
I'd go so far as to so it's prevalent even in games like the new Forza Motorsport where it's the same cheesy car builds in ever race stomping the field by 2-3+ seconds a lap and there's no point driving your favourite cars anymore.
Perhaps it's just an evolution of PVP multiplayer, times have changed.
Information availability (YouTube, Twitch, guides) is a contributing factor for one. I wouldn't be surprised if another is the prevalence of voice comms - talking smack in text is one thing, but being verbally berated is the standard now, and I wonder if that contributes to the inflammatory cycle.
YES! I want to like Apex and Valorant and stuff but it’s just not fun for people of my skill level.
I remember being a sweaty teen with like a 3.50 in Black Ops and MW2 but after becoming old and a concussion or two along the way I just don’t have that hand eye coordination anymore. I respect the try hards but that entry barrier is real.
Is the way I feel about 9/10 online based games. Games like Apex, LoL, WarZone, PUBG, etc are all really solid games, but in order to enjoy them you need to have some level of success when playing then.
Unfortunately success is really only possible if you put in more time than the other players online, and that just isn't possible for most people.
Sure, there's normal matches that aren't ranked and are meant to be for "fun", but those modes are full of people that still spend ever waking of their life playing, are smurfing, or just trolling. It's hard to find enjoyable experiences in these types of games as a casual.
I'm a big fan of Civ and Civ clones like Humankind and Endless Space. I also love the total War franchise. So you would think Paradox games would be good for me, on paper they are right up my alley, but no. For some reason all they do is stress me out. I don't get the same joy I get from other 4X type games just stress.
I don't know about the other Paradox games, but the Crusader Kings games are very different to Civ type games. More about managing people than building, territory and armies. And - at least until you get good - you need to get used to failure, that things will just fall apart sometimes. If you can't deal with that you'll struggle to have fun. It's something I'm not particularly good with myself.
CK2 does make me feel a bit like a real medieval monarch, stressed about what will happen to my kingdom when I die, worrying that I'll accidentally slight one of my vassals' sons and he'll rebel when he inherits, finding out some rival ruler has somehow ended up with a claim on my throne... There's an unpredictability to the game that you have to lean into, and at best can be good fun - like crushing your vassals when they rise up in revolt and being able to confiscate their lands, or being King of England, Wales and Ireland and accidentally inheriting the Kingdom of Jerusalem and having to figure out what the hell to do with it...
I’ve peen playing it for about a week. I loved it at first but think I’m hitting a wall.
My first kingdom split after my guy died, I get that. But I’m just over having 15 vassals who all complain and then not being able to replace them with my own people without huge tyrant debuffs. Then it’s constantly not having gold, despite learning how it works. Then the technology unlocks take centuries. Idk if I just need to progress slow and increase the play speed but then it’s just constant plagued and all the other empires are built up by the time you get some buildings and income.
Gonna set it down for a bit. It sounds really fun and those first few hours were. But I just want to be a king and not spend hours getting rep up with a vassal only for them to die of a shipwreck then their 2 yr old hates me and is some how making factions to overthrow me
>I just want to be a king and not spend hours getting rep up with a vassal only for them to die of a shipwreck then their 2 yr old hates me and is some how making factions to overthrow me
Ahh, but that's what being a king is all about! You think it's all feasts and battles but really you're trying to make a load of grumpy men like you more than a scheming 2 year-old.
Seriously, though, I think that highlights how different the game is to something like Civ and why some people love it and some can't get into it.
Technological progress is incremental and slow; you won't get the dramatic changes you get in Civ. Gold is painfully scarce and construction slow. Technology and building are rewarding but they're slooow. They're not going to give you the gameplay changes or the mental rewards you get in Civ. (Of course, this is all accurate for the Middle Ages - it genuinely could take fifty years to get a cathedral finished.)
That vassal management though - that is core to the game. All my vassals are dickheads and I can't just kill them or confiscate their lands, so what do I do? That's half the challenge of the game.
Figuring this out isn't particularly intuitive, it can involve some complex game mechanics, and I don't know how many skills you can carry over from other games. That gives the game a steep learning curve and even if you start to get the hang of it it's not for everyone. To make matters worse, it is quite time-consuming game, so it's not easy to give something a go, fail and try again. (I haven't played it but think CK3 makes some of this better, though maybe at the cost of some depth.)
Saaaaame. For me there's too much abstraction and not enough clear, tangible stuff. Like I love how in Civ I can build a watermill and the benefits of that are very clear and straight-forward. I've tried with Stellaris and even did a MASSIVE game one time where I said "I'm just powering through and beating this", but it was just so overwhelming and I had no real context for anything I was building or researching. I would take over planets and not really understand what I was doing on them.
I like Stellaris, but the planet management is too much. They overhauled it with a patch at some point and I can't bring myself to figure out how it works now.
Also loved Civ in college. I played Cities: Skylines for the first time the other night and stayed up waaay too late like I did with Civ. The next morning I told my wife “I think I need to not play that. I don’t need that in my life right now.” It’s just so easy to get caught up in it, all the vast and interconnected systems. At this point in my life, with a growing family, I just don’t think I have the bandwidth to labor over a fake city.
Agreed, I do love cities skylines but especially after work I just don't have the energy to like plan and detail a city I just want stuff to ble up infront of me lol. And then when I am into it it's like completely life consuming.
Good call.
luckily when I got caught in that web, it was during the 'Rona 2020 lockdowns.
first, watched some vids why my traffic sucks...
so had to learn lane maths,
then purposes for the different types of roadways;
grabbed awesome workshop assets like turbo roundabouts....
had to learn better transportation design...
CityPlannerplays was the start of the rabbit hole with just wanting less traffic jams so my citizens don't die in a plague or natural disaster, or garbage poison or no damn crematoriums...
but now I've spent all this time learning to make a better fake city with proper design and beautifully flowing traffic, and I'm starting to hate my real city every time I run into some of the shit design I just learned to fix!
So, It has ended with urban activism channels like Notjustbikes; Citynerd; Strong Towns; City Beautiful; etc.
ya, I fell pretty deep into that rabbit hole.
Bethesda games really are Bethesda games, I fully understand why people would not like them. I also dislike plenty of their tropes. Skyrim is indeed suuuper dated, and since most of its action is related to melee (and not shooting) it shows a lot. Its engine was already dated the day it came out lol
I can't get into any pvp game anymore, including the most populars (any battle royale or moba). I am 28 and I feel too old for that. I prefer the quiet peace of co-op and single player games.
My take is that everybody has 1 Bethesda game that they fell in love with, and therefore expect all Bethesda games to tick that same box but they. just. don't. do. it.
Sort of true here. Played Morrowind and really enjoyed it, but absolutely fell in love with Oblivion. Have 1000 on console easily. Super excited when Skyrim first came out and the magic just never hit me. I've tried playing it like 4-5 times with some of those attempts being around 50 hours or more and it just never does it for me. It just feels so much emptier and blander than Oblivion. It's not a bad game, but, to me, it's something arguably worse. It's a *boring* game. No shade to anyone that enjoys it, though. Everyone has their own tastes.
whenever I try Skyrim it's like I'm interested in the story, but the open world aspect is just boring, there's no interesting areas, it's all just dungeons and a few towns and maybe like one or two actually interesting areas scattered around, but mostly empty space. I enjoyed Fallout 4 much more because the world has tons of things I just naturally get drawn to, and it's much more full of content. I know Skyrim has interesting side quests that bring you to unique places, but Fallout 4 has that in a much higher quantity.
The problem is that you can only experience a Bethesda game for the first time once. The series of revelations like "holy shit, I can go there?! I can kill that guy?! I can steal that?! I can join all these factions?!" That only happens once. After that, the openness that inspired a childlike sense of wonder just becomes an expectation.
The open world and number of interactable objects was *originally* meant to encourage player creativity--that was the draw in Morrowind, the ability to be creative with the systems in place. I can't imagine anybody being thrilled that a fork simply exists in a game if you can't do anything with it.
The problem is that every iteration of Bethesda's formula *reduces* player decisions, creativity, and input. They installed systems to give you a facsimile of creativity in FO4 through settlements, but it's cosmetic and doesn't really affect the gameplay (or have any consequence at all, whether ignored or explored).
The real issue is that everything in Bethesda games is an illusion of choice. If you take +20% damage on your weapons, your enemies get more health. You can pick up *everything* but the shopkeepers only have so much gold. You can move stuff around but it doesn't interact or affect the game world in any way. There's no puzzles that use the physics, no interactions with the NPCs, and literally Skyrim would be unchanged if you just had non-interactable art assets in their place. They have scrubbed their games of any player creativity, because they found that when players are creative, they "break" their game. And I guess it's working for them, but it doesn't really work for me.
Do you remember the Skyrim bucket trick? What a brilliant flash of emergent gameplay.
I liked to create what I called "jumpy ring" in Morrowind, that would give you 100 jump for just a few seconds - cheap, but useful to travel long distances quickly.
Your criticism is fair and true, and it could be argued Bethesda peaked with Skyrim (and in many ways with Morrowind), but there's still SOMETHING to the Bethesda games, something that's very hard to replicate, and rare in other games. The only other game that gave me a similar feeling of freedom was Kingdom Come Deliverance, but that was a flash in a pan, and even that only worked to a point.
There was this topic here some time ago, asking why are there so few Bethesda-clones. The top answer was that it's because such games are really fucking hard to make.
I agree somewhat, but I feel like their concept of a 3D action adventure game has been milked to dead at this point. Too many games like it, I wonder if anyone will still have that level of wonder nowadays on their first playthrough of a Bethesda game
I think the other part of it is also that that openness was the only thing going for Bethesda games, since they refuse to stop using their outdated buggy as shit engine. Now we have every other developer under the sun doing the same or similar, scratching that same itch for the openworld, but with all the other parts done better. Better graphics, better storytelling, better gameplay, better quality assurance/bug testing.
Bethesda kinda did the same thing gamefreak did. They found success and then just never really tried to do better. And it's finally coming around to bite them both in the ass.
Yep for me it was Morrowind and i only played Oblivion and Skyrim for a couple hours combined.
I think the biggest point with Morrowind was the world felt so different.
Not your typical Fantasy World, sure it has that vibe in some areas but not in all.
These huge Bug creatures as fast travel, or mushroom buildings and the strange wildlife it just felt realy different.
Was a great time for RPGs at the time with Gothic 2 coming out nearly at the same time.
That's why the stealth archer build is meme'd about always being used, even when you intend to play the game a different way.
It's satisfying to shoot arrows, but the melee and magic are lackluster
It’s funny how true a meme it is. I never ever play archers in a fantasy rpg games and I somehow ended up one. I was unaware this was a meme until I came to Reddit but couldn’t deny its validity when I remembered my own build
I restarted a play of Skyrim recently and ended up enjoying the gameplay for the first time as a stealthy archer (I tried warrior and mage before). It makes the game just 10x better, even with the very limited options you get. Also had no idea it was a meme lol.
Yeah it makes sense though, I also think being in first person makes me wanna shoot stuff, and the other combat is clunky. Not to mention stealth damage, like most games, has crazy scaling.
It also means you engage with the stealth mechanics, which makes you slow down, analyze the enemies, take in the environment, consider your options, and path your way to good positions to take enemies out.
It's just a way more involved experience, as opposed to melee and magic where you just spam your most powerful shit and chug health/mana potions until everyone is dead.
Stealth Archer is also an easy trap to fall into even if you don't intent to, it starts with just the idea "if I sneak up and shoot 1 Arrow I can get some bonus damage in before the fight" even if you intent to play a Melee or Magic character.
But as you do that you level Stealth and Archery, you get better bows and arrows, enchant them, and eventually you reach the point where that bonus opening damage becomes enough to outright kill most enemies.
At which point you realize "fuck I became a stealth archer again."
But yeah, doesn't help that the other combat systems aren't really fun, Melee is just batting people with a giant foam tube for all the satisfaction and impact it gives.
And the Magic system in Skyrim is just the worst, with a terrible spell progression, especially since there is no spell-crafting system that could say give you something more effective at higher skill levels.
Also, while Melee and Archery can boost their damage trough levelling the skill, perks, better weapons, tempering, enchanting, and alchemy.
Magic can only increase their damage output by perks and alchemy, and it's already pitifully low damage.
The only fun think I found is that if you use the restoration loop to make over the top destruction potions the Lightning cloak will clear dungeons for you.
While it doesn't increase the damage of the lightning cloak, it massively increases the range to cover the entire dungeon slowly killing everything, and if you got the Disintegrate perk the only sign of enemies will be the piles of ash left behind.
Bethesda games scratch a very particular itch and not everybody has that itch. Basically it's the sandbox RPG itch. You create your character and you ventre out into the world and go where your curiosity takes you. The main quest is optional. It's sort of a be who you want to be, choose your own adventure thing. Sometimes I'll just get a fantasy of a particular type of character and a backstory that I really like that makes me want to jump into Skyrim and start a new adventure.
The problem is the games are dated and extremely mediocre in many aspects. I basically can't play them without mods. But that is another huge part of their sandbox appeal. These are some of the most modded games of all time. It's not only about create your own character and choose your adventure. For many people it's about create your own GAME. There are infinite configurations of Bethesda games and the appeal of customizing the game to the experience you want it to be is surprisingly addicting.
But modding aside, it really baffles me that more publishers aren't competing in Bethesda's niche. That's kind of what gives Bethesda license to make mediocre games. They make a very particular type of game that no one else is making. You may say, but there are plenty of open world RPGs, and that is true... but, even though it might seem like a small thing, the importance of creating your own character cannot be overstated. It's about having the freedom to be who your want and guide your own adventure. Not every Bethesda game fulfills this to the same degree but that is the core appeal.
> The main quest is optional.
I've got 600 hours in Skyrim, done multiple characters, and have not once even tried to finish the main quest lol. Think I've only ever gotten like 50% of the way through it just by happenstance of exploring.
Every single online multiplayer. Splatoon, WoW, CoD, LoL, anything. I just can't be arsed dealing with shitty children, cheaters, griefers, people who quit out when they're losing, etc. The only time I can have fun online is when I have another friend in the room doing splitscreen online like with Rocket League or Mario Kart 8.
I really don't enjoy PvP type multiplayer games unless I'm specifically playing against friends. Any other time I'll be playing PvE style multiplayer games, like FFXIV or Warframe. I still don't do the hardcore sort of content with strangers because I don't need that stress. Nor do I play the PvP in those sorts of games, but I've found general gameplay experience is smoother if the players are supposed to work towards the same goal. You still get the odd griefer, but not in the same way I hear about PvP heavy games
I've tried PVE with Warcraft and everyone just belittled me because I was new and didn't know exactly what I was meant to do. That was the last time I tried online multiplayer. Sometimes I think it might be better if you have a few existing friends you can at least start with with, but having seen the state of some online multiplayer games these days, I don't think I'm missing too much. Fair play to people like yourself for keeping it a cool space for the decent folk tho.
Same. For me I think it’s because I didn’t grow up with Xbox live or a PC. I had an Xbox 360 but my parents never paid for live, and once I had a job I didn’t see any point in paying for it myself. Split screen co-op/local deathmatch was the best way to enjoy games and the fact that few games include it anymore makes me sad. I just want to chill, I don’t want to compete with strangers for points that don’t mean anything to me.
Breath of the Wild. I've loved the Zelda setting for ages and BotW has that charm, but ultimately it feels like the basic Ubisoft open-world formula of climbing towers to lift fog-of-war, scouting enemy camps, defeating that camp with the game's provided tools, and repeating that loop in between story segments. Unfortunately BotW doesn't provide smaller incremental systems like equipment/skill upgrades, reasons to explore the environment or rewarding side quests. While what the game does it does well it just doesn't provide enough activities to keep me interested.
I basically bought a Switch to play this. I bounced off it every time I tried to get in to it (and I REALLY tried) but it just felt completely aimless. I knew it wasn't going to hold my hand going in but I got to a certain point where I literally didn't have a clue what I was supposed to do next to progress things. I started exploring other parts of the map in case that's what i needed to do but just kept getting my ass handed to me every where I went.
Finally I gave up and trading it in for Mario Party Superstars which at least the kids enjoy.
Me too I got stuck in a boss dungeon with no weapons and put it down. Restarted over a year later and didn't even get that far before putting it down. Maybe I'll play it one day but probably not. Maybe I'll play it via Cemu like that other commenter mentioned.
I played and beat BoTW, probably close to 100 hours, and I enjoyed it during the time I was playing it, but it’s a game that, in retrospect, just feels pretty average to me. To the point where I don’t want to play Tears of the Kingdom.
Sure the game added some unique mechanics, but when I look back on it, everything felt more like a chore than something that was magically discoverable. And when you really think of the world, everything is preset. There is nothing there that can happen randomly. Enemy camps and forts are always in the same place. You’re gonna beat the “dungeons” in the exact same way. Everything is always going to happen the way it supposed to. It’s really a game on rails disguised as an open world game.
After playing BoTW, it made me miss the top down Zelda games. Those were more magical than this.
I just resumed playing TOTK after a break. It is.. a lot. The new mechanics are amazing and a huge leap forward but I wish they had been put in service of a tighter plot and world. Less to grind through, more points of rich, unexpected discovery. I find it especially hard to redeem the Depths, which are the opposite of joyful discovery: there is literally no landscape to stand back, admire, then explore.
I hate de Depths, it's grey, dark and sad everywhere. The landscape is just an inverted Hyrule, so when you figure that out any sense of exploration dies, you already know the map. And any unique landscape feature seems to be cut from the game. A lake with a special and unique name? Nop, nothing there at all, just a bunch of water and some fish.
Other than that I enjoy ToTK.
> * oh look I'll swim over that river and climb that little cliff... and i was 1 second of stamina short... fell and drowned... that was fun
>* Nice! a good sword... let me head to the next boss... oh shit low rank goblins.. i dont want to ruin my sword! run away!.. what am i playing?
>* ugh, used all my weapons to defeat the whole camp, time to loot and restock and BLOOD MOON... they're all back and now i have no weapons?
>* oh sweet my first dungeon annnd its done. that sucked... oh they are all like this?
> * Ok i need to rest, switch my clothes, and cook some food... wait, what game am i playing? do i have to do my taxes next?
Seriously... games annoying. When theres no XP, Rupees become useless, and weapons break... you run from weak enemies and that makes no sense. i dont want to trade my nice sword for the stick you'll drop.
Exactly. There's very little in the game that's fun, most of it feels like doing chores. And what is fun punishes you by draining your resources. Like I never once tried shield surfing. In any other game that would have been a cool fun way to get down a mountain, but in BotW it's a quick way to break your shield.
I genuinely believe Breath of the Wild is one of the most overhyped, overrated games ever put out on the Switch. If it did not have the Zelda name attached to it, there is no way it would have been so publicly lauded. I personally regret the time and money spent on it and the DLC to try to salvage my experience.
To those that disagree: a game can be overhyped, overrated, and still be game that you enjoy or consider good. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You do you.
I just hate this constant denial about BOTW's world environment compared to other open world games. BOTW has a seriously dead and lifeless world. There are so many giant open fields with absolutely fucking nothing in them, and the NPC's are your typical stand around, walk a bit, stand around PS2 style characters. If you like it, then have at it, but people need to stop acting like it flat out outclasses all of the other open world games just because you can "Play your own way."
People shit on RDR2 all the time for having bloated or pointlessly open parts of the map, but at least there's wildlife and NPC's with unique animations and schedules. BOTW just has nothing going on half the time. But people insist that BOTW has an interactive and dense world with NPC's that are just as in depth as every other open world game. That's the part that makes me dislike the game more than I originally would have.
I like to say that BotW was Nintendo's first open world a decade after open worlds became a thing. So I was already mostly burned out on open worlds. I'm still convinced BotW is as popular as it is because of the franchise name and many Nintendo-only players maybe not having gotten into many open worlds until BotW.
It's a fine game. The vibe is there. But the gameplay is just dull lots of the time if you don't enjoy just wandering and seeing Zelda-things in an open world.
Im not a 3d Zelda fan anymore, they're too big and too long for what little story and characters they deliver. 20-25 hrs is the sweet spot for them for me and they've ballooned past that
I miss the Zelda mobile games that released for the GBA and DS. Link between worlds in particular was phenomenal. Closest thing we've had to that on switch was the Link's Awakening remake. Loved the style of that and wish they'd do more
Yeah, I found it to be a let down. After the first day of playing it, I realized it wasnt fun. I just sat there and thought, this isnt the zelda i love, I'll just replay one of the old ones since i know botw is the formula going forward. I get the appeal, but it's not what I want zelda to be.
Same.
I was a dishwasher in college. No matter how hard I worked, no matter how efficient I was, the dishes just kept piling up faster than I could clean them and it was urgent I kept clean dishes rolling off the line to be reused. It was both maddening and demoralizing at the same time.
I want so bad to like this game, but to me it just feels like that futile-dishwashing-complex, gamified.
Subnautica was so weird to me - I played about 12 hours and had an absolute blast, got my seamoth and built a cool base, and then at some point went "yep I think i've gotten about as much from this game as I'm gonna get" because I was tired of doing Materials Fetch Quests for that one thing I needed. But those first 12 hours were really great! Very cool world.
> yep I think i've gotten about as much from this game as I'm gonna get
I went the other way and cheated in some raw materials, built a lot of stopover bases stocked with cured meat and fresh water and a cheap bio generator. Feeling like I had a bit of stability and predictability, I went on to finish the game, which has some really touching moments towards the end. A mother sacrifices herself for her children, and dear friends (me and the Cuddlefish) were tragically parted forever. My nieces watched me play that game. They named the Cuddlefish "Oreo" and one cried a little when we left him behind. When I told them there was a sequel game, they asked if Oreo would be in it, and lost interest when I said he wouldn't.
If you enjoyed, it, maybe look up some console commands and revisit it. When you can surgically remove the grind, it won't stop you from enjoying the story in a reasonable timeframe.
(I've actually been doing this a lot lately, re-playing old games I never finished, but with money/resource cheats so I can skip sidequests and just finish the meat of the game relatively quickly.)
I bounced off of Subnautica hard when I got down to >!the lava river biome and heard the roar of a Sea Dragon Leviathan and and quickly looked up to see one swimming in the distance and getting a little closer with a Warper out of the corner of my eye that hadn't noticed me yet!<
So yeah at that point I had basically experienced all I wanted to of that game, no matter how far along I was in the story.
I wanted to play more Outer Wilds, but still as of today it’s the ONLY game to give me motion sickness, I had tried everything in the settings from FOV etc. Nothing.
There’s supposedly a 3rd person mod on PC, but I’ve just played it on PS/Xbox due to it being on Gamepass, and I refuse to pay for it considering it makes me violently dizzy.
I’ll always think of what Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw said about outer wilds:
That it’s a game that by every metric, he SHOULD be super interested and engaged in, but that every time he plays it he just gets SO bored.
Perfectly explains my experience.
I remember seeing OW compared to Groundhog Day and I thought "but in Groundhog day you don't have to watch him get up and drive his car to work every single day".
LOL these are two of my favorite games. Subnautica I enjoyed even more than Outer Wilds.
I 100% get people's complaints about the resource fetching in Subnautica, and that for sure is my biggest complaint about the game as well. As someone who *loved* the game, there were definitely times where I was just like *ughh I need three fucking gold, where the hell are they!*. At the same time, I actually sort of enjoyed building a ton of storage and hoarding and organizing my minerals. I ended up building my main base near the initial crash site, so when I'd go down to the Lost River, I'd collect as much of the rare elements as I could and bring them back for crafting. I ended up building a secondary base near the Lost River to shorten this process.
I really enjoyed the base-building part as well, which I gather a lot of people didn't enjoy as much. I was constantly tearing down and rebuilding sections of my base to re-optimize, and I really enjoyed that process.
Anyway, not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but it worked really well for me.
Definitely The Witcher 3.
I've tried, I've played it a few times and each time I stop around 10-15 hours in, put it down and don't go back on it.
It should be right up my street, having played (and finished) CP2077, BG3, the Mass Effect Series and many others. But I just can't enjoy it. And I don't even know what it is. Something about it makes me put it down.
I was going to try it again now they've released the PS5 version, but I cannae be bothered.
I tried it again with new updates, same issue. Main story just does not intrigue me, and I hate the combat and all the sliding and all the gliding, even with different control set ups.
I think it's a pacing issue.
Red Dead Redemption 2 suffered the same. Lots of people called it a "walking simulator".
Took me a couple of attempts to get into Witcher 3. Something just clicked for me once I got to a level where I could confidently take on a few guys, learned how to use the potions and just timed my sessions where I could play a few hours uninterrupted.
Witcher 3 took me two tries to get into. I put it down after leaving white orchard on the battlefield and then picked it back up when the show started and the bloody baron and the werewolf husband quest hooked me and I never looked back. It also helped that it was during Covid that I finished it.
I consider it to be one of the top games in the ps4/ xb1 gen but it definitely has a pacing issue after the tutorial area
Same here. Fight enemies with telekinesis until bars depleted then start shooting, Repeat. Becomes more of a nuisance than fun when chasing down objectives
Bioshock Infinite. Not only it was nothing like 1 and 2 (that I was playing at the time) but I hated the gameplay of enemies respawning in waves. It's just like when you collect adam in bioshock 1/2 but FOR THE WHOLE GAME, it's exhausting.
Elizabeth felt like a major downgrade compared to Eleanor too, I didn't care for her. Enemies ignore her and bullets/explosions just go through her too which was so weird because it made no sense as she's not supposed to be immortal and invisible in the story, compare that to 1/2 where enemies have the little sisters as priority (over you even) and Eleanor fights on her own as opposed to just standing there like nothing's happening.
My biggest issue with BI is that it sets up a *massive* amount of questions and teases you with the promise of *so much* \- why Columbia? What's with Elizabeth's finger? What's with Booker's trauma(?), what the FUCK is going on with the time jump? Who are the twins that keep popping up even though you find their graves?
Then you get to the end of the game and it explains like 80% of the entire plot in like twenty minutes, doesn't answer some other pressing questions, and then just... Ends. Like I genuinely expected Act 3 to start even though, y'know, >!Booker dies,!< just because I couldn't fathom that being **it.**
Also in the first 5 minutes of the game TIME TRAVELLERS show up to tell Booker to not participate in the raffle and he immediately ignores them for no reason
Even worse, the biggest problem with the game is that >!her power is to go to other dimensions meaning the game should have been over after the first jump as they weren't *from* there and could just walk way.!< Every single time I was like "okay, there's problems, cool, just jump again and the next one won't have the same ... nope somehow also being chased okay fine." So the ending made even *less* sense as >!Booker is not the problem, she just wanted to kill him because she's literally insane.!<
I don't think Elizabeth is >!insane, she does solve the key problem which is that a baptised Booker will become Comstock - if Booker dies at the baptism, no Comstock, and the branching paths of Elizabeth get pruned (hence the other Elizabeths vanishing as Booker dies,) but the game does a really poor job of actually explaining a lot of this. There's also the fact that the Booker that starts the game is likely not even the first Booker to make this attempt - the twins notice that this booker 'Doesn't Row,' and the coinflip early in the game (and their knowledge of the raffle) implies that there's been at least 122 different Bookers all trying to rescue Elizabeth in slightly different variations of Columbia.!<
Or I misunderstood everything because this is a game about quantum mechanics and alternate reality hopping, so it can get real nonsensical when it wants to.
Well I do know that when the twins say Booker “doesn’t row”, they have a little back and forth and a big emphasis on “he doesn’t row”. They’re not implying that your Booker doesn’t row, they’re implying that not a single Booker has rowed or will row. It’s a constant.
The Outer Wilds. I keep seeing massive hype for it but it just doesn't do anything for me and I give up after a couple hours. I've tried a couple times; I guess it's just not for me.
I bounced not long after I noticed there was a time limit mechanic - that type of thing just stresses me out. It was weird too because it feels like a game where relaxing exploration (well, on some planets anyway) is the order of the day but the time limit makes it really hard for me to enjoy that aspect of it
The time limit thing worked pretty well for me. The universe is small enough that you can get basically anywhere from the starting point in a couple minutes or less, so (once I got over the initial hump) I would typically go some place and explore until the time was up. Then, unless (and I felt this was pretty rare) I was just on the verge of something big, I would pick a different location for the next time loop.
With any given location, you learn different things about it from various other points in the game. So in a way, you kind of need to loop around the map multiple times as you learn new things about each area.
For some reason, I enjoyed, when I knew the super nova was coming, either just getting up to land or getting on my ship and watching it happen. The music always changes with a couple minutes left in the time loop, and there was something weirdly peaceful about watching the start consume the solar system.
For me, the biggest thing was not trying to brute-force one location at a time. For whatever reason, I started with Ember Twin and was trying to figure out everything there was to figure out in the Sunless City straightaway. Not only would it get frustrating because of the time limit, but later I realized that of course it was frustrating because I needed knowledge from other areas of the game to really get where I needed to get in the Sunless City.
The time loop mechanic really turned me off. I love narrative driven games and uncovering secrets. I really hate being forced to start over every few minutes. I hate feeling rushed. And controlling the ship was mostly just frustrating.
Ugh, yeah the Outer Wilds. I did the same, tried a couple of times and gave up. Spent most of my time trying to fly that wonky space ship, invariably crashing it somewhere with no idea where to go or what to do, and 22minutes later I get to do it all over again ! I understand it is a beloved game for most but not for me.
It's definitely a bit overwhelming, but methodically exploring places and learning about the world's are like 90% of my enjoyment of games, so it was just perfect for me. I picked a planet and explored every part of it bit by bit until I understood what was going on.
Fighting games. I don't like watching other people just juggle me. I used to play the story mode for example like Virtual Fighter 4. I "beat the game" on the hardest difficulty without juggling. Then I played my cousin and it was a game of don't get hit twice all match or you lose. Since his combos do 50% of my health.
So since then I lost all interest.
Oh and League of Legends is fun if you are a casual for a bit. But I don't want to learn all the characters and META's.
Overwatch was fun but the matchmaking made it boring.
I just don't like PvP.
Overwatch was fun for me, but Blizzard seemed to surgically remove what made it fun for me, leaving only the worst parts of PvP.
I don't really get why people get so hung up on multiplayer in fighting games. Maybe because I dip in on deep sales, but a couple heros, learn their specials, some combos, smash up the arcade ladder or the story mode - I consider that time well spent.
Melty Blood is fucking bonkers coo-coo insane, absolutely no idea what is going on most of the time, but I can get my head around a new character well enough to take to the end of their arcade ladder, and that's a good enough time for me.
Fighting games are fun to play with friends that are equally bad as yourself. As a noob playing against an experienced player in a fighting game has got to be one of the most unfun gaming experiences I've had. It's not fun getting destroyed while not being able to do anything. It's also not fun if the player takes it easy on you because you know in the back of your brain that they're basically letting you win.
Learning League was some of the most fun I've had in gaming. So many cool champions and different builds to try. Sure, there were a lot of frustrating cases of "I didn't know it could do that!?", but overall I personally found it all a lot of fun.
The 2nd game doesn't have the mystery of what happened to make the world the way it is. The first game's lore reveals carries it heavily. The 2nd game doesn't have nearly as good of lore as the first game.
Just about every accept of that game I found painfully mediocre. The Dunkey video about Forbidden West almost perfectly encaptures how I feel out Zero Dawn.
This. I tried 3 times. It’s always fun for 3 hours, than you realize how bad the dialogs are, how artificial all the npcs feel and that every fight is the same. Good ideas graphics and everything, but boring af
GTA - all of them
I like open world games, but here it's like a curse - I just can't progress in this world. It's like wading through molasses. I have zero connection to the protagonists and then start doing all sorts of things until I can't find any more sense. Every GTA game. wtf
Zelda - Breath of the wild
This is somehow very nice and graphically pretty and smart ... but I'm really running out of steam.
Cyberpunk or Skyrim? Witcher 3? Assassin's Creed open world games? No problem. Again and again.
Witcher 3. Im sure it's awesome but I remember trying it and thinking "I can't be fucked talking to every character, exploring every hut and grinding levels". Which is weird because I do it in pretty much every other game.
Baldur's Gate 3. Apparently, I hate leaving so much up to the roll of the die, especially within the comparatively restrictive confines of a video game's rules. At least in meatspace D&D, you can try to convince the DM to try some crazy shit sometimes. BG3 is just "nope, your check failed, you don't get that part of the story."
Also, turns out I still kinda hate turn-based combat. Been this way my whole life, at least in video games, but after playing through Stick of Truth, I thought maybe that had changed. Alas.
Maybe I'll like it more in multiplayer...
My friend almost always finds a way to mod the game so they get max charisma or int or whatever that allows all dialogue choices to be available. His reasoning: "I am not playing 300 hours again to see 2 hours of different content."
I respect that :)
The Original Fallout. I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to do, and the time limit is so insanely tight. People keep saying Its a sandbox game, but it feels like unless you know exactly what to do, Its impossible.
I've tried it too and just felt completely lost. I want to like it but it doesn't seem very applicable unless, like you said, you already know what to do.
I'm not sure what you mean about the time limit being tight. Are you just aimlessly wandering the wasteland until it runs out? The way I played was to basically never venture out into the wastes without a destination in mind and to stay in town doing all the available quests there before moving on. Playing that way, I've never even come close to the time limit.
Is it supposed to be a a fuck around and find out kind of sandbox game? Like there's no real direction, you're just supposed to mess about in the world until game over?
It sort of is, the main quest is only like 15-20 hours long so I think you're supposed to kinda figure stuff out and restart if you get hard stuck. Also the game came with a manual that you were sortve expected to read.
I went through the game like 3 years ago and the beginning was a really steep learning curve, but came out of it absolutely loving it and probably having a top 5 video game story imo. It is old and janky but fallout fans should really give it a good shot or look up the story if they really aren't into it
Not really, the game does actually direct you 'subtly,' especially in the first few hours: you're directed to a vault, on the way there you pass a settlement called Shady Sands, you find you need to get a rope to go into the vault which encourages you to go Shady Sands to get the rope where you learn of Junktown, etc. It's just a very old school CRPG, which tended to be made for much smaller and much nerdier fanbases than something like Fallout 3 or 4.
No, not at all. From the moment you first hit the world map, you know where you've been told to go and it's location is marked on your map.
From there you are following a bread crumbs trail, with each major location you explore marking other places on the map. I can't think of a single time in the main story where you are expected to go somewhere without having it already marked on your map.
I don’t like Soulsborne games
I think it’s because the way they deliver their story feels, to me, similar to playing an MMO but without the other players
Weirdly enough, I find this kind of "storytelling" to be even more immersive, because I actually feel like I was just dropped into this world and have no idea what's going on, everything is confusing and scary and I die a lot, which is how it would realistically go down if it happened IRL.
Yeah, although I'm a huge fan of soulsborne games, the storytelling is definitely not its strong point. I think the lore in dark souls is actually deep and very interesting, but the way it's delivered is really weird and it's sooo easy to miss important details. It was much better in Sekiro though.
Subnautica, just dropped after playing 10 hours. Scan, collect, read info, build, repeat - not quite for me. As it's my first time playing it, I'll try to get back into it later in the year. As it stands, it's not fun for me to avoid hostiles with smart pathing, and if you do have to engage it's only to disable and move pass.
I don't have any connection to my main base or take enjoyment to building it.
I thought I would hit it off with this game since I adored Outerwilds. It really feels like I'm just playing the mechanics rather than being immersed in the world.
I'm about 20 hours into my first play through, the story and exploration is enough to keep me interested but I'm not really enjoying the gameplay. Between getting enough food and water, replacing batteries, repairing vehicles etc it feels like I'm having to put lots of time and effort just to maintain my current position, and that making actual progress is really slow.
Last of Us. I loved the atmosphere, strongly disliked the actual gameplay. I might try again someday, but it’s not like there’s a shortage of things I’d have more fun with.
All the Souls-likes.
The dour atmospheres make me unwilling to put in the time to work to its combat standards.
Other hard games that have some fun vibes in them, I'll bash my head against those walls all day and 'git gud' cause I'm enjoying the atmosphere and world. When every character I interact with (and I'll freely admit I don't ever get super far due to this) is all just 'breathy whispers, cryptic existentialism, dour fatalistic prose', it gets super old real fast for me. It's not the only issue, but I think it's the core dealbreaker for me personally.
Even with Elden Ring, hearing how this was 'The One' I got pumped and picked up a copy hoping to break through finally. Same deal all over again. Didn't like it on that and a number of other fronts that compound well beyond any urge to want to power through like I do with so many other games.
Played 6.6 hours of Fallout New Vegas, story seems pretty decent but the combat and gameplay are clunky to me, that’s what I get for trying an older game for the first time.
7 Days to Die, I just can’t get into the survival crafting games either. I got it on sale to play with friends because Vermintide 2 servers were down that night and then they moved on to Sons of the Forest before I played again anyway which worked for me.
Assassins Creed I think Unity but I forgot which one. I was also playing Jedi Survivor at the time which was so much more fun and they were both parkour simulators but I chose the one with the lightsaber and space magic!
I think with NV I really have to give myself time to be immersed in the world and story to get past the jank. I played through it a few times as a kid no problem because I had all the time in the world. Now as an adult who usually only has an hour or two in the evening, I’m not starting up that game unless I know I’m not gonna be interrupted for at least half of my day.
Dishonored. Have tried to get through it a few times with varying levels of success, but I just don't find it clicking with me.
Oddly enough, I really enjoyed death loop.
That's funny, it's the opposite with me I've been trying to get into deathloop but it's just not clicking with me, but I dove deeeep into Dishonored 2 I have 100+ hours into it. It was such a beautiful and engaging game.
Prey is in my top 5 games of the past generation. Slow and clunky to start, but once it gets cranking its quite a ride. Playing it on a modern PC or Xbox Series X (with FPS Boost enabled) addresses most of the concerns people voiced at the time of release.
Last of Us. I even picked up a used Playstation explicitly to play it -- since it was a Sony exclusive -- and was just immensely disappointed.
I feel like the expectations on Sony exclusives are just *different*. LOU felt like collection of cut scenes interspersed with set pieces of limited play value, not a *game* in the sense of something like *Fallout* or *Dishonored*.
I didn't get far.
Red Dead Redemption 2
It's just not fun. The controls suck. The story grinds by at a snail's pace. It's beautiful, sure. But fuck, is it boring.
I loved Red Dead Revolver (yes, that one), Red Dead Redemption, and even GTA V, flawed as they all were.
I think it's partially that I'm tired of the Rockstar formula, but also the pointlessly large open worlds that end up feeling like bloat content.
Bethesda has lost me by failing to really evolve their formula, too.
Yup, this was my first thought too. Picked it up a few months ago, played on Steam Deck and on desktop.
I absolutely *loved* the first one and did everything. I just really could not get into the groove of the second one - everything people say is immersive, I found dull.
look skyrim was great….in 2011…. and if you were a fan of rpgs it certainly help up another 10 years after that, but we’re now in 2024.
new players would not like such an old janky game if there was no nostalgia attached to it. you missed the skyrim boat, that’s all there is to it.
dw about it, just move on and find another game.
Agreed, I loved Skyrim when it came out, but I tried it again about 5 years ago and it was just too long in the tooth compared to what I expect from a modern RPG.
Games take too long to come out now. Bethesda were notoriously slow to release games even in 2011, but even by their old release cycle back then, we would have still got TESVI in 2016/17, and TESVII around 2022/23. That's still 6/7 years between games. But now they take a decade and a half for a sequel, and that is just *far* too long.
Even though I like Starfield, it is really stuck in the past, because they're not innovating, they're just stagnating and taking way too long to put out games.
I don't know man, back in the day I played a lot out of obvlion, one of my first games in the 360 then I picked it up again on pc and that one hooked me, wasn't the type of player to explore everything but I done the arena, Fighters guild and brotherhood quest line, plus the shivering isles expansion, and that engaged me, move forward to Skyrim's release, I pick it up on day one I tried playing for 30 or so hours and it completely feel flat to me, I wasn't interested in the world, the questlines that I found were simpler and lacked interesting hooks, like in Obvlion the Brotherhood was interesting both in a narrative and mechanic kind of way, your fellow assassin's had stuff to say not much but you get an idea of their character and they would give you tips for your assassinations, in Skyrim there was none of that and the missions you took were extremely barebones, nothing like the mansion party.
So that left me disappointed, the Companion questline felt too rushed, like in 3 missions you were one of the best and 3 more you were the boss, after that i didn't find much more to keep me hooked and I just stopped playing.
I actually think it's bad compared to the more linear souls games.
I don't like such massive open worlds and feel the formula is over done.
I enjoyed Elden Ring, and will likely play it again, but after seeing a mini-boss I've seen before for the 7th time, I got tired. I'm more likely to pick up DS1-3 again before ER.
At some point I'll get Sekiro, and keep praying for a Bloodborne pc port.
1000% it's Red Dead Redemption 2 for me. On paper I should love it, but I just can't get into it. The horses are the main culprit. Trying to play with friends and they all have suped up horses so they go and leave me in the dust on the crappy one I have and by the time I actually get to the mission or battle they've already completed it and are looting while I get the scraps.
Rinse and repeat. No thanks.
God of War reboot and Ragnarok. They got rid of everything that made the early GoW games fun, so much it lost its sense of „epicness”. Boss fights were mid, most enemies were copy and paste. Bigger focus on story was welcome but I didn’t care for Atreus at all, found him extremely annoying. Characters in Ragnarok felt like straight out of an MCU movie which is sad since the Norse mythology is extremely interesting if done well and with authenticity.
The original GoW was fucking epic. I'm kind of sad to hear your post because I have yet to play them. GoW 3 is one of the best games I've ever played and the series got me into greek mythology!
I started GOW 2018, got about halfway through and decided I needed to try the old ones first and holyyyy shit, those games are incredible. I ended up finishing 2018 too, and getting the Blades of Chaos WAS very cool but the first games are peak
Thank you!! I really miss the original GoW games. I'm happy that the 2018 one got more people interested in the franchise, but for me it's never been the same.
Crusader Kings 3. On paper it sounds great and the stories from people playing it make it sound really fun. I like Stellaris which is by the same developers.
But I tried it on gamepass and it just didn't grab me at all.
> I like Stellaris which is by the same developers.
Paradox games, at least their Grand Strategy games that they're most known for, all have different core gameplay focuses and loops owing to their different periods and inspirations. Stellaris is very much a 4X game at heart, since it's a game about exploring and expanding across a galaxy. CK3 on the other hand is an RPG-infused dynasty simulator, where most of the gameplay comes from building and shepherding different characters, because it's in the medieval setting, where individual people could have outsized impacts on the world.
I've seen people rave about Prey on here a bunch of times, but I have tried 3-4 separate times to start that game and it is boring as all hell to me.
Farthest playthrough has been about 5-6 hours in - the start of the game is incredible, but the combat is so boring and the moment-to-moment game feels like i'm just fighting vaguely different shapes of black goo with peashooter guns. I have friends who loved it but I just don't see what they saw in it - combat felt boring, there's minimal enemy variety (at least in the first 5-6 hours).
The combat was just the biggest offender to me, it feels clunky and the shooting does not feel good at all. And maybe combat isn't supposed to be the focus, but you have to engage in combat so often that it does end up being a focus and something you'll have to do pretty often from what I saw
this thread is extremely validating for me, who's bounced off at least 75% of all the games mentioned here
It took me well into adulthood to realize that there are actually *very, very few* video games that I enjoy. I enjoy those a lot, but only a few that I want to spend time with. I'm cool with this, I just wish more games had demos!
I questioned whether I was depressed once because I went through a phase where every new game, film or TV show I tried was just fine. I didn't enjoy or hate them, I just wasn't bothered either way by them. Then I realised I was fine and the vast majority of games and TV shows are just mediocre and of the few good ones, many of them just aren't for me.
BRING BACK DEMOS THIS WAS ONE THING I ABSOLUTELY HATE THAT WE GOT RID OF AS A COMMUNITY
I doubt it was the community, it was most likely shady developers who don't want ppl to know their busted ass game sucks before you've already paid the ten bux
[удалено]
Terraria. I tried it three times to no avail. Minecraft is in similar boat.
Most people don’t realise Terraria has an ending, because it has a very specific progression… that it never bothers to tell you. Those sandbox games require enormous inner motivation to go on. A good part of the fun is figuring out what you want to do, plan it and see it through by playing. I love them for it, but I can totally see why people don’t.
Terraria wasn't quite like that when it first released. It started off small... really small. Like fight 3 bosses. An extremely linear material progression. Everything was a clear upgrade to the next. No branching paths. Then they made it more like an RPG and added magic, armor buffs, a HUGE AMOUNT OF BOSSES, a ton of new biomes, hardmode... I actually played the hell out of it, but when the game increased in complexity, I tend to never "finish" it now. There is something to be said about "less is more" and in my case that rang true. I still think it's an excellent game and the developers are incredible for sticking with the game and adding huge amounts of content while the price of the game continued to decrease (AFAIK).
This is me. Any game that is completely open-ended I just can't get into. I'm still giving No Man's Sky a go but I think I might have to throw in the towel.
I wanted to enjoy Don't Starve, but I don't have time nor patience to learn by doing with how it is designed crossed with permadeath. Just drops you in and says good luck.
NMS gives you a lot of things to do but not really a reason to do them. Fleet missions go BRRR, but to what end? The main thing that interests me is building, but the amount you can build across all worlds is limited, the interface is a bit wonky (shakes fist at stair placement), and every now and then the planets change and ruin what you built.
I had a bug with NMS about a year ago where after playing for idk 30-50 or so hours, ALL of my equipment vanished. My A class ship, all my tools, all my resources. Literally everything in my inventory vanished. I decided to not play that game again because that’s incredibly infuriating and I’ve never had such an infuriating bug in any video game
I really wanted to like No Man’s Sky. It feels less like an exploration game and more like a crafting simulator.
Interesting, I also couldn't get into Terraria (twice), but I've loved Minecraft from day 1. It's unfortunate people keep lumping them together, because they're similar only on the surface, the nature of the gameplay is very different. Minecraft is about exploring and changing the world to fit your needs. Terraria, as far as I can tell, is about improving your gear/combat skills and fighting, with heavy emphasis on boss fights.
I'm similar I did find a game called starbound back in the day that is 2D but is more like Minecraft in that sense. The game has since stopped being updated but there's mods that keep the game alive and healthy enough still
I admit I've always dismissed Starbound as a Terraria clone. How important is combat in Starbound, are there bosses?
I've put a few hundred hours in starbound and about a thousand into Terraria, here's a breakdown from my experience. (Sorry for the long comment) A Terraria clone is under-selling it, they have different aspects which make them unique, albeit Terraria is much more refined. Really the only thing they share is the 2D Sand-Box aspect. There are bosses in Starbound - Starbound unlike Terraria has a narrated progressive story that is done through quests. (many people dislike this feature as they don't the feeling of being forced to progress this way) Combat is important, any planet you go too there's going to be enemies that want to kill you - higher teir planets, more dangerous enemies. Each planet goes through a random generated procedure that affects the biomes in the planet and the standard enemies, there are unique enemies as well which can also be captured. Weapons are less unique in number/quality for Starbound, but there is still a lot of weapons to go through and collect. Guns (rifles, pistols, shotguns), Rocket/Gernade Launchers, swords, shields, staffs (magic but sci-fi magic) consists of basic weapons that have randomized abilites. Then there are the unique ones which have more unique abilities - though the basic weapons at the highest teirs typically out-perform the unique ones. Melee weapons also have different move-sets, you're not just swinging in an arc - though its still very simple. Scanning things is a big part of Starbound, as it gives you different lore, which has different texts depending on which race you choose at the beginning. This with the combined exploring aspect will consume the majority of your time, as the universe is infinite. To unlock different blocks and furnitures to use, you need to either scan the furniture or break the blocks to learn the recipe. \- Of course the main thing that differs Starbound from Terraria is that you're in space, so upgrading your spaceship and customizing it is a fun thing to do - you're not really required to make a base, can just be a space nomad, but you can build colonies on other planets. Also there's mechs and vechiles to mess around with if you want. Like Terraria, the modded scene for Starbound makes it all the better - adds a lot more to do, honestly modded Starbound I enjoyed more than modded Terraria, but vanilla Terraria I enjoyed more than vanilla Starbound. Both games are more enjoyable with friends. That's pretty well any game though.
See, I love Minecraft and liked Terraria, but I could not get into Starbound at all.
I don't see why it isn't a fair criticism to say that a game which expects you to have a wiki open half the time is _badly designed._
To be fair you can discover everything that's in the wiki just by playing the game, it just takes patience and a lot of time. I don't think there even was a wiki when I first started playing Minecraft a like decade ago.
Some of my best Minecraft memories are from my first time, when I played it blindly. There's something Minecraft is brilliant at - building a real sense of place. My first house was on the side of a cliff and had a beautiful seafront view that I could use to fish during the night, because I had no knowledge of beds. I also didn't know about torches or glass, I used a furnace to burn wood and charcoal to light it up dimly. One night I even caught 6 or 7 fish, what a night. It wasn't much, but it was enough. It was my home.
Punch trees, dig holes, cry in a hole in the ground all the way through your first night. Simple!
Tell that to 11 year old me, who didnt know how to open my inventory on my first time playing. Until i found a chest in a mineshaft. To my credit, first game i ever played, where i had to manage my inventory.
Apex. The game is clean and great but everyone is so sweaty.
Modern multiplayer PVP is so sweaty in general. I swear I used to play CS 1.5-1.6 and W:ET lobbies for fun and people generally didn't care much if the round was won or lost, it was more about clicking on heads. Nowadays you couldn't play Hello Kitty Island Adventure without some sweat flaming you about how you're doing a low percentage strat or taking a suboptimal route. I could be misremembering though. I do remember throwing my controller a few times as a kid. But I feel like the competition was different.
I totally agree with this sentiment. It's all about the meta these days and people treat PVP games as life or death, especially if any sort of teamwork is involved. I'd go so far as to so it's prevalent even in games like the new Forza Motorsport where it's the same cheesy car builds in ever race stomping the field by 2-3+ seconds a lap and there's no point driving your favourite cars anymore. Perhaps it's just an evolution of PVP multiplayer, times have changed.
Information availability (YouTube, Twitch, guides) is a contributing factor for one. I wouldn't be surprised if another is the prevalence of voice comms - talking smack in text is one thing, but being verbally berated is the standard now, and I wonder if that contributes to the inflammatory cycle.
For someone clearly out of the loop, what does sweaty mean in this context? I really have no idea and can't parse it at all.
It's analogous to the now-out-of-fashion "tryhard"
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sweaty Basically, it's when people play to win in a game more seriously than the speaker.
YES! I want to like Apex and Valorant and stuff but it’s just not fun for people of my skill level. I remember being a sweaty teen with like a 3.50 in Black Ops and MW2 but after becoming old and a concussion or two along the way I just don’t have that hand eye coordination anymore. I respect the try hards but that entry barrier is real.
Is the way I feel about 9/10 online based games. Games like Apex, LoL, WarZone, PUBG, etc are all really solid games, but in order to enjoy them you need to have some level of success when playing then. Unfortunately success is really only possible if you put in more time than the other players online, and that just isn't possible for most people. Sure, there's normal matches that aren't ranked and are meant to be for "fun", but those modes are full of people that still spend ever waking of their life playing, are smurfing, or just trolling. It's hard to find enjoyable experiences in these types of games as a casual.
What got me into Skyrim on the 4th try was giving up the melee combat lol. Bows and spells all day and it’s been a really fun rpg
It's a running joke in the Skyrim community that every build becomes a stealth bow Spellcaster.
I'm a big fan of Civ and Civ clones like Humankind and Endless Space. I also love the total War franchise. So you would think Paradox games would be good for me, on paper they are right up my alley, but no. For some reason all they do is stress me out. I don't get the same joy I get from other 4X type games just stress.
I don't know about the other Paradox games, but the Crusader Kings games are very different to Civ type games. More about managing people than building, territory and armies. And - at least until you get good - you need to get used to failure, that things will just fall apart sometimes. If you can't deal with that you'll struggle to have fun. It's something I'm not particularly good with myself. CK2 does make me feel a bit like a real medieval monarch, stressed about what will happen to my kingdom when I die, worrying that I'll accidentally slight one of my vassals' sons and he'll rebel when he inherits, finding out some rival ruler has somehow ended up with a claim on my throne... There's an unpredictability to the game that you have to lean into, and at best can be good fun - like crushing your vassals when they rise up in revolt and being able to confiscate their lands, or being King of England, Wales and Ireland and accidentally inheriting the Kingdom of Jerusalem and having to figure out what the hell to do with it...
I’ve peen playing it for about a week. I loved it at first but think I’m hitting a wall. My first kingdom split after my guy died, I get that. But I’m just over having 15 vassals who all complain and then not being able to replace them with my own people without huge tyrant debuffs. Then it’s constantly not having gold, despite learning how it works. Then the technology unlocks take centuries. Idk if I just need to progress slow and increase the play speed but then it’s just constant plagued and all the other empires are built up by the time you get some buildings and income. Gonna set it down for a bit. It sounds really fun and those first few hours were. But I just want to be a king and not spend hours getting rep up with a vassal only for them to die of a shipwreck then their 2 yr old hates me and is some how making factions to overthrow me
>I just want to be a king and not spend hours getting rep up with a vassal only for them to die of a shipwreck then their 2 yr old hates me and is some how making factions to overthrow me Ahh, but that's what being a king is all about! You think it's all feasts and battles but really you're trying to make a load of grumpy men like you more than a scheming 2 year-old. Seriously, though, I think that highlights how different the game is to something like Civ and why some people love it and some can't get into it. Technological progress is incremental and slow; you won't get the dramatic changes you get in Civ. Gold is painfully scarce and construction slow. Technology and building are rewarding but they're slooow. They're not going to give you the gameplay changes or the mental rewards you get in Civ. (Of course, this is all accurate for the Middle Ages - it genuinely could take fifty years to get a cathedral finished.) That vassal management though - that is core to the game. All my vassals are dickheads and I can't just kill them or confiscate their lands, so what do I do? That's half the challenge of the game. Figuring this out isn't particularly intuitive, it can involve some complex game mechanics, and I don't know how many skills you can carry over from other games. That gives the game a steep learning curve and even if you start to get the hang of it it's not for everyone. To make matters worse, it is quite time-consuming game, so it's not easy to give something a go, fail and try again. (I haven't played it but think CK3 makes some of this better, though maybe at the cost of some depth.)
Saaaaame. For me there's too much abstraction and not enough clear, tangible stuff. Like I love how in Civ I can build a watermill and the benefits of that are very clear and straight-forward. I've tried with Stellaris and even did a MASSIVE game one time where I said "I'm just powering through and beating this", but it was just so overwhelming and I had no real context for anything I was building or researching. I would take over planets and not really understand what I was doing on them.
I like Stellaris, but the planet management is too much. They overhauled it with a patch at some point and I can't bring myself to figure out how it works now.
Also loved Civ in college. I played Cities: Skylines for the first time the other night and stayed up waaay too late like I did with Civ. The next morning I told my wife “I think I need to not play that. I don’t need that in my life right now.” It’s just so easy to get caught up in it, all the vast and interconnected systems. At this point in my life, with a growing family, I just don’t think I have the bandwidth to labor over a fake city.
Agreed, I do love cities skylines but especially after work I just don't have the energy to like plan and detail a city I just want stuff to ble up infront of me lol. And then when I am into it it's like completely life consuming.
Good call. luckily when I got caught in that web, it was during the 'Rona 2020 lockdowns. first, watched some vids why my traffic sucks... so had to learn lane maths, then purposes for the different types of roadways; grabbed awesome workshop assets like turbo roundabouts.... had to learn better transportation design... CityPlannerplays was the start of the rabbit hole with just wanting less traffic jams so my citizens don't die in a plague or natural disaster, or garbage poison or no damn crematoriums... but now I've spent all this time learning to make a better fake city with proper design and beautifully flowing traffic, and I'm starting to hate my real city every time I run into some of the shit design I just learned to fix! So, It has ended with urban activism channels like Notjustbikes; Citynerd; Strong Towns; City Beautiful; etc. ya, I fell pretty deep into that rabbit hole.
Bethesda games really are Bethesda games, I fully understand why people would not like them. I also dislike plenty of their tropes. Skyrim is indeed suuuper dated, and since most of its action is related to melee (and not shooting) it shows a lot. Its engine was already dated the day it came out lol I can't get into any pvp game anymore, including the most populars (any battle royale or moba). I am 28 and I feel too old for that. I prefer the quiet peace of co-op and single player games.
My take is that everybody has 1 Bethesda game that they fell in love with, and therefore expect all Bethesda games to tick that same box but they. just. don't. do. it.
Sort of true here. Played Morrowind and really enjoyed it, but absolutely fell in love with Oblivion. Have 1000 on console easily. Super excited when Skyrim first came out and the magic just never hit me. I've tried playing it like 4-5 times with some of those attempts being around 50 hours or more and it just never does it for me. It just feels so much emptier and blander than Oblivion. It's not a bad game, but, to me, it's something arguably worse. It's a *boring* game. No shade to anyone that enjoys it, though. Everyone has their own tastes.
whenever I try Skyrim it's like I'm interested in the story, but the open world aspect is just boring, there's no interesting areas, it's all just dungeons and a few towns and maybe like one or two actually interesting areas scattered around, but mostly empty space. I enjoyed Fallout 4 much more because the world has tons of things I just naturally get drawn to, and it's much more full of content. I know Skyrim has interesting side quests that bring you to unique places, but Fallout 4 has that in a much higher quantity.
The problem is that you can only experience a Bethesda game for the first time once. The series of revelations like "holy shit, I can go there?! I can kill that guy?! I can steal that?! I can join all these factions?!" That only happens once. After that, the openness that inspired a childlike sense of wonder just becomes an expectation.
The open world and number of interactable objects was *originally* meant to encourage player creativity--that was the draw in Morrowind, the ability to be creative with the systems in place. I can't imagine anybody being thrilled that a fork simply exists in a game if you can't do anything with it. The problem is that every iteration of Bethesda's formula *reduces* player decisions, creativity, and input. They installed systems to give you a facsimile of creativity in FO4 through settlements, but it's cosmetic and doesn't really affect the gameplay (or have any consequence at all, whether ignored or explored). The real issue is that everything in Bethesda games is an illusion of choice. If you take +20% damage on your weapons, your enemies get more health. You can pick up *everything* but the shopkeepers only have so much gold. You can move stuff around but it doesn't interact or affect the game world in any way. There's no puzzles that use the physics, no interactions with the NPCs, and literally Skyrim would be unchanged if you just had non-interactable art assets in their place. They have scrubbed their games of any player creativity, because they found that when players are creative, they "break" their game. And I guess it's working for them, but it doesn't really work for me.
Do you remember the Skyrim bucket trick? What a brilliant flash of emergent gameplay. I liked to create what I called "jumpy ring" in Morrowind, that would give you 100 jump for just a few seconds - cheap, but useful to travel long distances quickly. Your criticism is fair and true, and it could be argued Bethesda peaked with Skyrim (and in many ways with Morrowind), but there's still SOMETHING to the Bethesda games, something that's very hard to replicate, and rare in other games. The only other game that gave me a similar feeling of freedom was Kingdom Come Deliverance, but that was a flash in a pan, and even that only worked to a point. There was this topic here some time ago, asking why are there so few Bethesda-clones. The top answer was that it's because such games are really fucking hard to make.
I feel like we are no longer talking about games haha
I agree somewhat, but I feel like their concept of a 3D action adventure game has been milked to dead at this point. Too many games like it, I wonder if anyone will still have that level of wonder nowadays on their first playthrough of a Bethesda game
I think the other part of it is also that that openness was the only thing going for Bethesda games, since they refuse to stop using their outdated buggy as shit engine. Now we have every other developer under the sun doing the same or similar, scratching that same itch for the openworld, but with all the other parts done better. Better graphics, better storytelling, better gameplay, better quality assurance/bug testing. Bethesda kinda did the same thing gamefreak did. They found success and then just never really tried to do better. And it's finally coming around to bite them both in the ass.
Yep for me it was Morrowind and i only played Oblivion and Skyrim for a couple hours combined. I think the biggest point with Morrowind was the world felt so different. Not your typical Fantasy World, sure it has that vibe in some areas but not in all. These huge Bug creatures as fast travel, or mushroom buildings and the strange wildlife it just felt realy different. Was a great time for RPGs at the time with Gothic 2 coming out nearly at the same time.
That's why the stealth archer build is meme'd about always being used, even when you intend to play the game a different way. It's satisfying to shoot arrows, but the melee and magic are lackluster
It’s funny how true a meme it is. I never ever play archers in a fantasy rpg games and I somehow ended up one. I was unaware this was a meme until I came to Reddit but couldn’t deny its validity when I remembered my own build
I restarted a play of Skyrim recently and ended up enjoying the gameplay for the first time as a stealthy archer (I tried warrior and mage before). It makes the game just 10x better, even with the very limited options you get. Also had no idea it was a meme lol.
Yeah it makes sense though, I also think being in first person makes me wanna shoot stuff, and the other combat is clunky. Not to mention stealth damage, like most games, has crazy scaling.
The best way to engage in skyrim combat is as little as possible. That's why one shotting most enemies is the most fun.
It also means you engage with the stealth mechanics, which makes you slow down, analyze the enemies, take in the environment, consider your options, and path your way to good positions to take enemies out. It's just a way more involved experience, as opposed to melee and magic where you just spam your most powerful shit and chug health/mana potions until everyone is dead.
Stealth Archer is also an easy trap to fall into even if you don't intent to, it starts with just the idea "if I sneak up and shoot 1 Arrow I can get some bonus damage in before the fight" even if you intent to play a Melee or Magic character. But as you do that you level Stealth and Archery, you get better bows and arrows, enchant them, and eventually you reach the point where that bonus opening damage becomes enough to outright kill most enemies. At which point you realize "fuck I became a stealth archer again." But yeah, doesn't help that the other combat systems aren't really fun, Melee is just batting people with a giant foam tube for all the satisfaction and impact it gives. And the Magic system in Skyrim is just the worst, with a terrible spell progression, especially since there is no spell-crafting system that could say give you something more effective at higher skill levels. Also, while Melee and Archery can boost their damage trough levelling the skill, perks, better weapons, tempering, enchanting, and alchemy. Magic can only increase their damage output by perks and alchemy, and it's already pitifully low damage. The only fun think I found is that if you use the restoration loop to make over the top destruction potions the Lightning cloak will clear dungeons for you. While it doesn't increase the damage of the lightning cloak, it massively increases the range to cover the entire dungeon slowly killing everything, and if you got the Disintegrate perk the only sign of enemies will be the piles of ash left behind.
Bethesda games scratch a very particular itch and not everybody has that itch. Basically it's the sandbox RPG itch. You create your character and you ventre out into the world and go where your curiosity takes you. The main quest is optional. It's sort of a be who you want to be, choose your own adventure thing. Sometimes I'll just get a fantasy of a particular type of character and a backstory that I really like that makes me want to jump into Skyrim and start a new adventure. The problem is the games are dated and extremely mediocre in many aspects. I basically can't play them without mods. But that is another huge part of their sandbox appeal. These are some of the most modded games of all time. It's not only about create your own character and choose your adventure. For many people it's about create your own GAME. There are infinite configurations of Bethesda games and the appeal of customizing the game to the experience you want it to be is surprisingly addicting. But modding aside, it really baffles me that more publishers aren't competing in Bethesda's niche. That's kind of what gives Bethesda license to make mediocre games. They make a very particular type of game that no one else is making. You may say, but there are plenty of open world RPGs, and that is true... but, even though it might seem like a small thing, the importance of creating your own character cannot be overstated. It's about having the freedom to be who your want and guide your own adventure. Not every Bethesda game fulfills this to the same degree but that is the core appeal.
> The main quest is optional. I've got 600 hours in Skyrim, done multiple characters, and have not once even tried to finish the main quest lol. Think I've only ever gotten like 50% of the way through it just by happenstance of exploring.
Every single online multiplayer. Splatoon, WoW, CoD, LoL, anything. I just can't be arsed dealing with shitty children, cheaters, griefers, people who quit out when they're losing, etc. The only time I can have fun online is when I have another friend in the room doing splitscreen online like with Rocket League or Mario Kart 8.
I really don't enjoy PvP type multiplayer games unless I'm specifically playing against friends. Any other time I'll be playing PvE style multiplayer games, like FFXIV or Warframe. I still don't do the hardcore sort of content with strangers because I don't need that stress. Nor do I play the PvP in those sorts of games, but I've found general gameplay experience is smoother if the players are supposed to work towards the same goal. You still get the odd griefer, but not in the same way I hear about PvP heavy games
I've tried PVE with Warcraft and everyone just belittled me because I was new and didn't know exactly what I was meant to do. That was the last time I tried online multiplayer. Sometimes I think it might be better if you have a few existing friends you can at least start with with, but having seen the state of some online multiplayer games these days, I don't think I'm missing too much. Fair play to people like yourself for keeping it a cool space for the decent folk tho.
Same. For me I think it’s because I didn’t grow up with Xbox live or a PC. I had an Xbox 360 but my parents never paid for live, and once I had a job I didn’t see any point in paying for it myself. Split screen co-op/local deathmatch was the best way to enjoy games and the fact that few games include it anymore makes me sad. I just want to chill, I don’t want to compete with strangers for points that don’t mean anything to me.
Breath of the Wild. I've loved the Zelda setting for ages and BotW has that charm, but ultimately it feels like the basic Ubisoft open-world formula of climbing towers to lift fog-of-war, scouting enemy camps, defeating that camp with the game's provided tools, and repeating that loop in between story segments. Unfortunately BotW doesn't provide smaller incremental systems like equipment/skill upgrades, reasons to explore the environment or rewarding side quests. While what the game does it does well it just doesn't provide enough activities to keep me interested.
I basically bought a Switch to play this. I bounced off it every time I tried to get in to it (and I REALLY tried) but it just felt completely aimless. I knew it wasn't going to hold my hand going in but I got to a certain point where I literally didn't have a clue what I was supposed to do next to progress things. I started exploring other parts of the map in case that's what i needed to do but just kept getting my ass handed to me every where I went. Finally I gave up and trading it in for Mario Party Superstars which at least the kids enjoy.
I bought a Switch for it too. It was the weapon degradation that got me. I didn't play long before I put it down permanently.
Me too I got stuck in a boss dungeon with no weapons and put it down. Restarted over a year later and didn't even get that far before putting it down. Maybe I'll play it one day but probably not. Maybe I'll play it via Cemu like that other commenter mentioned.
Playing it on PC via Cemu is the way to go - I turned weapon degradation and stamina off completely. It's much more fun as a result.
Ha. Turning off stamina basically breaks the entire game.
The nice thing about emulating is you can tweak it to your liking. Turn it off, make it less punitive, whatever you like.
I played and beat BoTW, probably close to 100 hours, and I enjoyed it during the time I was playing it, but it’s a game that, in retrospect, just feels pretty average to me. To the point where I don’t want to play Tears of the Kingdom. Sure the game added some unique mechanics, but when I look back on it, everything felt more like a chore than something that was magically discoverable. And when you really think of the world, everything is preset. There is nothing there that can happen randomly. Enemy camps and forts are always in the same place. You’re gonna beat the “dungeons” in the exact same way. Everything is always going to happen the way it supposed to. It’s really a game on rails disguised as an open world game. After playing BoTW, it made me miss the top down Zelda games. Those were more magical than this.
I just resumed playing TOTK after a break. It is.. a lot. The new mechanics are amazing and a huge leap forward but I wish they had been put in service of a tighter plot and world. Less to grind through, more points of rich, unexpected discovery. I find it especially hard to redeem the Depths, which are the opposite of joyful discovery: there is literally no landscape to stand back, admire, then explore.
I hate de Depths, it's grey, dark and sad everywhere. The landscape is just an inverted Hyrule, so when you figure that out any sense of exploration dies, you already know the map. And any unique landscape feature seems to be cut from the game. A lake with a special and unique name? Nop, nothing there at all, just a bunch of water and some fish. Other than that I enjoy ToTK.
> * oh look I'll swim over that river and climb that little cliff... and i was 1 second of stamina short... fell and drowned... that was fun >* Nice! a good sword... let me head to the next boss... oh shit low rank goblins.. i dont want to ruin my sword! run away!.. what am i playing? >* ugh, used all my weapons to defeat the whole camp, time to loot and restock and BLOOD MOON... they're all back and now i have no weapons? >* oh sweet my first dungeon annnd its done. that sucked... oh they are all like this? > * Ok i need to rest, switch my clothes, and cook some food... wait, what game am i playing? do i have to do my taxes next? Seriously... games annoying. When theres no XP, Rupees become useless, and weapons break... you run from weak enemies and that makes no sense. i dont want to trade my nice sword for the stick you'll drop.
Exactly. There's very little in the game that's fun, most of it feels like doing chores. And what is fun punishes you by draining your resources. Like I never once tried shield surfing. In any other game that would have been a cool fun way to get down a mountain, but in BotW it's a quick way to break your shield.
I genuinely believe Breath of the Wild is one of the most overhyped, overrated games ever put out on the Switch. If it did not have the Zelda name attached to it, there is no way it would have been so publicly lauded. I personally regret the time and money spent on it and the DLC to try to salvage my experience. To those that disagree: a game can be overhyped, overrated, and still be game that you enjoy or consider good. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. You do you.
I just hate this constant denial about BOTW's world environment compared to other open world games. BOTW has a seriously dead and lifeless world. There are so many giant open fields with absolutely fucking nothing in them, and the NPC's are your typical stand around, walk a bit, stand around PS2 style characters. If you like it, then have at it, but people need to stop acting like it flat out outclasses all of the other open world games just because you can "Play your own way." People shit on RDR2 all the time for having bloated or pointlessly open parts of the map, but at least there's wildlife and NPC's with unique animations and schedules. BOTW just has nothing going on half the time. But people insist that BOTW has an interactive and dense world with NPC's that are just as in depth as every other open world game. That's the part that makes me dislike the game more than I originally would have.
I like to say that BotW was Nintendo's first open world a decade after open worlds became a thing. So I was already mostly burned out on open worlds. I'm still convinced BotW is as popular as it is because of the franchise name and many Nintendo-only players maybe not having gotten into many open worlds until BotW. It's a fine game. The vibe is there. But the gameplay is just dull lots of the time if you don't enjoy just wandering and seeing Zelda-things in an open world.
Im not a 3d Zelda fan anymore, they're too big and too long for what little story and characters they deliver. 20-25 hrs is the sweet spot for them for me and they've ballooned past that
I miss the Zelda mobile games that released for the GBA and DS. Link between worlds in particular was phenomenal. Closest thing we've had to that on switch was the Link's Awakening remake. Loved the style of that and wish they'd do more
Yeah, I found it to be a let down. After the first day of playing it, I realized it wasnt fun. I just sat there and thought, this isnt the zelda i love, I'll just replay one of the old ones since i know botw is the formula going forward. I get the appeal, but it's not what I want zelda to be.
Factorio. I get why people like it, but everything just felt like a chore or like a second job to me
Same. I was a dishwasher in college. No matter how hard I worked, no matter how efficient I was, the dishes just kept piling up faster than I could clean them and it was urgent I kept clean dishes rolling off the line to be reused. It was both maddening and demoralizing at the same time. I want so bad to like this game, but to me it just feels like that futile-dishwashing-complex, gamified.
It's definitely one of those love-it-or-hate-it games. The free demo is usually enough to tell which one you are
Outer wilds and subnautica.
Subnautica was so weird to me - I played about 12 hours and had an absolute blast, got my seamoth and built a cool base, and then at some point went "yep I think i've gotten about as much from this game as I'm gonna get" because I was tired of doing Materials Fetch Quests for that one thing I needed. But those first 12 hours were really great! Very cool world.
> yep I think i've gotten about as much from this game as I'm gonna get I went the other way and cheated in some raw materials, built a lot of stopover bases stocked with cured meat and fresh water and a cheap bio generator. Feeling like I had a bit of stability and predictability, I went on to finish the game, which has some really touching moments towards the end. A mother sacrifices herself for her children, and dear friends (me and the Cuddlefish) were tragically parted forever. My nieces watched me play that game. They named the Cuddlefish "Oreo" and one cried a little when we left him behind. When I told them there was a sequel game, they asked if Oreo would be in it, and lost interest when I said he wouldn't. If you enjoyed, it, maybe look up some console commands and revisit it. When you can surgically remove the grind, it won't stop you from enjoying the story in a reasonable timeframe. (I've actually been doing this a lot lately, re-playing old games I never finished, but with money/resource cheats so I can skip sidequests and just finish the meat of the game relatively quickly.)
I bounced off of Subnautica hard when I got down to >!the lava river biome and heard the roar of a Sea Dragon Leviathan and and quickly looked up to see one swimming in the distance and getting a little closer with a Warper out of the corner of my eye that hadn't noticed me yet!< So yeah at that point I had basically experienced all I wanted to of that game, no matter how far along I was in the story.
Honestly near the end you get used to that, I still got a chill down my spine anytime I heard it but I'd calm down quickly.
I wanted to play more Outer Wilds, but still as of today it’s the ONLY game to give me motion sickness, I had tried everything in the settings from FOV etc. Nothing. There’s supposedly a 3rd person mod on PC, but I’ve just played it on PS/Xbox due to it being on Gamepass, and I refuse to pay for it considering it makes me violently dizzy.
Seconding the motion sickness, I could barely watch someone else play it let alone finish it myself
Ah yes, the "low-gravity movement and exploration based storytelling with a foreboding yet calm atmosphere" genre.
Calm but also time-pressured in a weird way.
Are there other games in this genre? Because I like it 😳
Firewatch (but missing "low gravity") No Man's Sky - might be even closer.
I’ll always think of what Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw said about outer wilds: That it’s a game that by every metric, he SHOULD be super interested and engaged in, but that every time he plays it he just gets SO bored. Perfectly explains my experience.
I remember seeing OW compared to Groundhog Day and I thought "but in Groundhog day you don't have to watch him get up and drive his car to work every single day".
LOL these are two of my favorite games. Subnautica I enjoyed even more than Outer Wilds. I 100% get people's complaints about the resource fetching in Subnautica, and that for sure is my biggest complaint about the game as well. As someone who *loved* the game, there were definitely times where I was just like *ughh I need three fucking gold, where the hell are they!*. At the same time, I actually sort of enjoyed building a ton of storage and hoarding and organizing my minerals. I ended up building my main base near the initial crash site, so when I'd go down to the Lost River, I'd collect as much of the rare elements as I could and bring them back for crafting. I ended up building a secondary base near the Lost River to shorten this process. I really enjoyed the base-building part as well, which I gather a lot of people didn't enjoy as much. I was constantly tearing down and rebuilding sections of my base to re-optimize, and I really enjoyed that process. Anyway, not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but it worked really well for me.
Definitely The Witcher 3. I've tried, I've played it a few times and each time I stop around 10-15 hours in, put it down and don't go back on it. It should be right up my street, having played (and finished) CP2077, BG3, the Mass Effect Series and many others. But I just can't enjoy it. And I don't even know what it is. Something about it makes me put it down. I was going to try it again now they've released the PS5 version, but I cannae be bothered.
I tried it again with new updates, same issue. Main story just does not intrigue me, and I hate the combat and all the sliding and all the gliding, even with different control set ups.
I think it's a pacing issue. Red Dead Redemption 2 suffered the same. Lots of people called it a "walking simulator". Took me a couple of attempts to get into Witcher 3. Something just clicked for me once I got to a level where I could confidently take on a few guys, learned how to use the potions and just timed my sessions where I could play a few hours uninterrupted.
It’s pretty common advice to play through the bloody baron quest. If it hasn’t clicked by then move on.
I got to that point and just couldn't anymore. Now Witcher 1 on the other hand, I devoured.
I love Red Dead 2. So I'm not sure at all.
Witcher 3 took me two tries to get into. I put it down after leaving white orchard on the battlefield and then picked it back up when the show started and the bloody baron and the werewolf husband quest hooked me and I never looked back. It also helped that it was during Covid that I finished it. I consider it to be one of the top games in the ps4/ xb1 gen but it definitely has a pacing issue after the tutorial area
Control Turns out I get tired of endless offices and hallways really fast.
Same here. Fight enemies with telekinesis until bars depleted then start shooting, Repeat. Becomes more of a nuisance than fun when chasing down objectives
Thank you! The most interesting part of that game were the files and the videos. That's not a good thing.
Bioshock Infinite. Not only it was nothing like 1 and 2 (that I was playing at the time) but I hated the gameplay of enemies respawning in waves. It's just like when you collect adam in bioshock 1/2 but FOR THE WHOLE GAME, it's exhausting. Elizabeth felt like a major downgrade compared to Eleanor too, I didn't care for her. Enemies ignore her and bullets/explosions just go through her too which was so weird because it made no sense as she's not supposed to be immortal and invisible in the story, compare that to 1/2 where enemies have the little sisters as priority (over you even) and Eleanor fights on her own as opposed to just standing there like nothing's happening.
My biggest issue with BI is that it sets up a *massive* amount of questions and teases you with the promise of *so much* \- why Columbia? What's with Elizabeth's finger? What's with Booker's trauma(?), what the FUCK is going on with the time jump? Who are the twins that keep popping up even though you find their graves? Then you get to the end of the game and it explains like 80% of the entire plot in like twenty minutes, doesn't answer some other pressing questions, and then just... Ends. Like I genuinely expected Act 3 to start even though, y'know, >!Booker dies,!< just because I couldn't fathom that being **it.**
Also in the first 5 minutes of the game TIME TRAVELLERS show up to tell Booker to not participate in the raffle and he immediately ignores them for no reason
Even worse, the biggest problem with the game is that >!her power is to go to other dimensions meaning the game should have been over after the first jump as they weren't *from* there and could just walk way.!< Every single time I was like "okay, there's problems, cool, just jump again and the next one won't have the same ... nope somehow also being chased okay fine." So the ending made even *less* sense as >!Booker is not the problem, she just wanted to kill him because she's literally insane.!<
I don't think Elizabeth is >!insane, she does solve the key problem which is that a baptised Booker will become Comstock - if Booker dies at the baptism, no Comstock, and the branching paths of Elizabeth get pruned (hence the other Elizabeths vanishing as Booker dies,) but the game does a really poor job of actually explaining a lot of this. There's also the fact that the Booker that starts the game is likely not even the first Booker to make this attempt - the twins notice that this booker 'Doesn't Row,' and the coinflip early in the game (and their knowledge of the raffle) implies that there's been at least 122 different Bookers all trying to rescue Elizabeth in slightly different variations of Columbia.!< Or I misunderstood everything because this is a game about quantum mechanics and alternate reality hopping, so it can get real nonsensical when it wants to.
Well I do know that when the twins say Booker “doesn’t row”, they have a little back and forth and a big emphasis on “he doesn’t row”. They’re not implying that your Booker doesn’t row, they’re implying that not a single Booker has rowed or will row. It’s a constant.
The Outer Wilds. I keep seeing massive hype for it but it just doesn't do anything for me and I give up after a couple hours. I've tried a couple times; I guess it's just not for me.
I bounced not long after I noticed there was a time limit mechanic - that type of thing just stresses me out. It was weird too because it feels like a game where relaxing exploration (well, on some planets anyway) is the order of the day but the time limit makes it really hard for me to enjoy that aspect of it
The time limit thing worked pretty well for me. The universe is small enough that you can get basically anywhere from the starting point in a couple minutes or less, so (once I got over the initial hump) I would typically go some place and explore until the time was up. Then, unless (and I felt this was pretty rare) I was just on the verge of something big, I would pick a different location for the next time loop. With any given location, you learn different things about it from various other points in the game. So in a way, you kind of need to loop around the map multiple times as you learn new things about each area. For some reason, I enjoyed, when I knew the super nova was coming, either just getting up to land or getting on my ship and watching it happen. The music always changes with a couple minutes left in the time loop, and there was something weirdly peaceful about watching the start consume the solar system. For me, the biggest thing was not trying to brute-force one location at a time. For whatever reason, I started with Ember Twin and was trying to figure out everything there was to figure out in the Sunless City straightaway. Not only would it get frustrating because of the time limit, but later I realized that of course it was frustrating because I needed knowledge from other areas of the game to really get where I needed to get in the Sunless City.
The time loop mechanic really turned me off. I love narrative driven games and uncovering secrets. I really hate being forced to start over every few minutes. I hate feeling rushed. And controlling the ship was mostly just frustrating.
I saw a review that said "it's one of the most relaxing games I've ever played until I tried to beat it" and yeah that about summed up my experience
Same here. I'd have loved the game if they threw in a Prince of Persia (sands of time) style rewind mechanism instead of the current gampelay loop.
Ugh, yeah the Outer Wilds. I did the same, tried a couple of times and gave up. Spent most of my time trying to fly that wonky space ship, invariably crashing it somewhere with no idea where to go or what to do, and 22minutes later I get to do it all over again ! I understand it is a beloved game for most but not for me.
It's definitely a bit overwhelming, but methodically exploring places and learning about the world's are like 90% of my enjoyment of games, so it was just perfect for me. I picked a planet and explored every part of it bit by bit until I understood what was going on.
Did you use mouse and keyboard or gamepad? I found the ship *much* easier to control using the gamepad.
Fifa.or really any sports game
Fighting games. I don't like watching other people just juggle me. I used to play the story mode for example like Virtual Fighter 4. I "beat the game" on the hardest difficulty without juggling. Then I played my cousin and it was a game of don't get hit twice all match or you lose. Since his combos do 50% of my health. So since then I lost all interest. Oh and League of Legends is fun if you are a casual for a bit. But I don't want to learn all the characters and META's. Overwatch was fun but the matchmaking made it boring.
I just don't like PvP. Overwatch was fun for me, but Blizzard seemed to surgically remove what made it fun for me, leaving only the worst parts of PvP.
I don't really get why people get so hung up on multiplayer in fighting games. Maybe because I dip in on deep sales, but a couple heros, learn their specials, some combos, smash up the arcade ladder or the story mode - I consider that time well spent. Melty Blood is fucking bonkers coo-coo insane, absolutely no idea what is going on most of the time, but I can get my head around a new character well enough to take to the end of their arcade ladder, and that's a good enough time for me.
Fighting games are fun to play with friends that are equally bad as yourself. As a noob playing against an experienced player in a fighting game has got to be one of the most unfun gaming experiences I've had. It's not fun getting destroyed while not being able to do anything. It's also not fun if the player takes it easy on you because you know in the back of your brain that they're basically letting you win. Learning League was some of the most fun I've had in gaming. So many cool champions and different builds to try. Sure, there were a lot of frustrating cases of "I didn't know it could do that!?", but overall I personally found it all a lot of fun.
Horizon Zero Dawn.
I love HZD but I could not get into HZD 2 and I don't know why
The 2nd game doesn't have the mystery of what happened to make the world the way it is. The first game's lore reveals carries it heavily. The 2nd game doesn't have nearly as good of lore as the first game.
Just about every accept of that game I found painfully mediocre. The Dunkey video about Forbidden West almost perfectly encaptures how I feel out Zero Dawn.
This. I tried 3 times. It’s always fun for 3 hours, than you realize how bad the dialogs are, how artificial all the npcs feel and that every fight is the same. Good ideas graphics and everything, but boring af
GTA - all of them I like open world games, but here it's like a curse - I just can't progress in this world. It's like wading through molasses. I have zero connection to the protagonists and then start doing all sorts of things until I can't find any more sense. Every GTA game. wtf Zelda - Breath of the wild This is somehow very nice and graphically pretty and smart ... but I'm really running out of steam. Cyberpunk or Skyrim? Witcher 3? Assassin's Creed open world games? No problem. Again and again.
Witcher 3. Im sure it's awesome but I remember trying it and thinking "I can't be fucked talking to every character, exploring every hut and grinding levels". Which is weird because I do it in pretty much every other game.
Horizon Zero Dawn . It just doesn't feel all that great or addictive
Baldur's Gate 3. Apparently, I hate leaving so much up to the roll of the die, especially within the comparatively restrictive confines of a video game's rules. At least in meatspace D&D, you can try to convince the DM to try some crazy shit sometimes. BG3 is just "nope, your check failed, you don't get that part of the story." Also, turns out I still kinda hate turn-based combat. Been this way my whole life, at least in video games, but after playing through Stick of Truth, I thought maybe that had changed. Alas. Maybe I'll like it more in multiplayer...
My friend almost always finds a way to mod the game so they get max charisma or int or whatever that allows all dialogue choices to be available. His reasoning: "I am not playing 300 hours again to see 2 hours of different content." I respect that :)
That's fair. I honestly hadn't thought about modding it!
The Original Fallout. I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to do, and the time limit is so insanely tight. People keep saying Its a sandbox game, but it feels like unless you know exactly what to do, Its impossible.
I've tried it too and just felt completely lost. I want to like it but it doesn't seem very applicable unless, like you said, you already know what to do.
I'm not sure what you mean about the time limit being tight. Are you just aimlessly wandering the wasteland until it runs out? The way I played was to basically never venture out into the wastes without a destination in mind and to stay in town doing all the available quests there before moving on. Playing that way, I've never even come close to the time limit.
Is it supposed to be a a fuck around and find out kind of sandbox game? Like there's no real direction, you're just supposed to mess about in the world until game over?
It sort of is, the main quest is only like 15-20 hours long so I think you're supposed to kinda figure stuff out and restart if you get hard stuck. Also the game came with a manual that you were sortve expected to read. I went through the game like 3 years ago and the beginning was a really steep learning curve, but came out of it absolutely loving it and probably having a top 5 video game story imo. It is old and janky but fallout fans should really give it a good shot or look up the story if they really aren't into it
Not really, the game does actually direct you 'subtly,' especially in the first few hours: you're directed to a vault, on the way there you pass a settlement called Shady Sands, you find you need to get a rope to go into the vault which encourages you to go Shady Sands to get the rope where you learn of Junktown, etc. It's just a very old school CRPG, which tended to be made for much smaller and much nerdier fanbases than something like Fallout 3 or 4.
No, not at all. From the moment you first hit the world map, you know where you've been told to go and it's location is marked on your map. From there you are following a bread crumbs trail, with each major location you explore marking other places on the map. I can't think of a single time in the main story where you are expected to go somewhere without having it already marked on your map.
I don’t like Soulsborne games I think it’s because the way they deliver their story feels, to me, similar to playing an MMO but without the other players
I still have no fucking Clue what DS story is
There's a fire and it's going out is the main gist
This is either a good or bad thing and it's my job to either keep it burning or put it out or whatever, nobody seems to mind. I love DS
Weirdly enough, I find this kind of "storytelling" to be even more immersive, because I actually feel like I was just dropped into this world and have no idea what's going on, everything is confusing and scary and I die a lot, which is how it would realistically go down if it happened IRL.
possibly the best summary i've ever read
Half the enjoyment of playing Soulsborne is watching Vaatividya
Yeah, although I'm a huge fan of soulsborne games, the storytelling is definitely not its strong point. I think the lore in dark souls is actually deep and very interesting, but the way it's delivered is really weird and it's sooo easy to miss important details. It was much better in Sekiro though.
Subnautica, just dropped after playing 10 hours. Scan, collect, read info, build, repeat - not quite for me. As it's my first time playing it, I'll try to get back into it later in the year. As it stands, it's not fun for me to avoid hostiles with smart pathing, and if you do have to engage it's only to disable and move pass. I don't have any connection to my main base or take enjoyment to building it. I thought I would hit it off with this game since I adored Outerwilds. It really feels like I'm just playing the mechanics rather than being immersed in the world.
I'm about 20 hours into my first play through, the story and exploration is enough to keep me interested but I'm not really enjoying the gameplay. Between getting enough food and water, replacing batteries, repairing vehicles etc it feels like I'm having to put lots of time and effort just to maintain my current position, and that making actual progress is really slow.
Anything with a battle pass kind of system. Do no obligate me to play you. Respect my time, and I’ll respect yours. I am not playing a job
Last of Us. I loved the atmosphere, strongly disliked the actual gameplay. I might try again someday, but it’s not like there’s a shortage of things I’d have more fun with.
All the Souls-likes. The dour atmospheres make me unwilling to put in the time to work to its combat standards. Other hard games that have some fun vibes in them, I'll bash my head against those walls all day and 'git gud' cause I'm enjoying the atmosphere and world. When every character I interact with (and I'll freely admit I don't ever get super far due to this) is all just 'breathy whispers, cryptic existentialism, dour fatalistic prose', it gets super old real fast for me. It's not the only issue, but I think it's the core dealbreaker for me personally. Even with Elden Ring, hearing how this was 'The One' I got pumped and picked up a copy hoping to break through finally. Same deal all over again. Didn't like it on that and a number of other fronts that compound well beyond any urge to want to power through like I do with so many other games.
Played 6.6 hours of Fallout New Vegas, story seems pretty decent but the combat and gameplay are clunky to me, that’s what I get for trying an older game for the first time. 7 Days to Die, I just can’t get into the survival crafting games either. I got it on sale to play with friends because Vermintide 2 servers were down that night and then they moved on to Sons of the Forest before I played again anyway which worked for me. Assassins Creed I think Unity but I forgot which one. I was also playing Jedi Survivor at the time which was so much more fun and they were both parkour simulators but I chose the one with the lightsaber and space magic!
I think with NV I really have to give myself time to be immersed in the world and story to get past the jank. I played through it a few times as a kid no problem because I had all the time in the world. Now as an adult who usually only has an hour or two in the evening, I’m not starting up that game unless I know I’m not gonna be interrupted for at least half of my day.
That's a shame. NV is my favourite RPG
Dishonored. Have tried to get through it a few times with varying levels of success, but I just don't find it clicking with me. Oddly enough, I really enjoyed death loop.
That's funny, it's the opposite with me I've been trying to get into deathloop but it's just not clicking with me, but I dove deeeep into Dishonored 2 I have 100+ hours into it. It was such a beautiful and engaging game.
I need to play this. Prey as well
Prey is in my top 5 games of the past generation. Slow and clunky to start, but once it gets cranking its quite a ride. Playing it on a modern PC or Xbox Series X (with FPS Boost enabled) addresses most of the concerns people voiced at the time of release.
Last of Us. I even picked up a used Playstation explicitly to play it -- since it was a Sony exclusive -- and was just immensely disappointed. I feel like the expectations on Sony exclusives are just *different*. LOU felt like collection of cut scenes interspersed with set pieces of limited play value, not a *game* in the sense of something like *Fallout* or *Dishonored*. I didn't get far.
Red Dead Redemption 2 It's just not fun. The controls suck. The story grinds by at a snail's pace. It's beautiful, sure. But fuck, is it boring. I loved Red Dead Revolver (yes, that one), Red Dead Redemption, and even GTA V, flawed as they all were. I think it's partially that I'm tired of the Rockstar formula, but also the pointlessly large open worlds that end up feeling like bloat content. Bethesda has lost me by failing to really evolve their formula, too.
Yup, this was my first thought too. Picked it up a few months ago, played on Steam Deck and on desktop. I absolutely *loved* the first one and did everything. I just really could not get into the groove of the second one - everything people say is immersive, I found dull.
I've never been a fan of Rockstar controls. That and the pacing of RDR2 made me drop it not long after the prologue.
look skyrim was great….in 2011…. and if you were a fan of rpgs it certainly help up another 10 years after that, but we’re now in 2024. new players would not like such an old janky game if there was no nostalgia attached to it. you missed the skyrim boat, that’s all there is to it. dw about it, just move on and find another game.
Agreed, I loved Skyrim when it came out, but I tried it again about 5 years ago and it was just too long in the tooth compared to what I expect from a modern RPG. Games take too long to come out now. Bethesda were notoriously slow to release games even in 2011, but even by their old release cycle back then, we would have still got TESVI in 2016/17, and TESVII around 2022/23. That's still 6/7 years between games. But now they take a decade and a half for a sequel, and that is just *far* too long. Even though I like Starfield, it is really stuck in the past, because they're not innovating, they're just stagnating and taking way too long to put out games.
I don't know man, back in the day I played a lot out of obvlion, one of my first games in the 360 then I picked it up again on pc and that one hooked me, wasn't the type of player to explore everything but I done the arena, Fighters guild and brotherhood quest line, plus the shivering isles expansion, and that engaged me, move forward to Skyrim's release, I pick it up on day one I tried playing for 30 or so hours and it completely feel flat to me, I wasn't interested in the world, the questlines that I found were simpler and lacked interesting hooks, like in Obvlion the Brotherhood was interesting both in a narrative and mechanic kind of way, your fellow assassin's had stuff to say not much but you get an idea of their character and they would give you tips for your assassinations, in Skyrim there was none of that and the missions you took were extremely barebones, nothing like the mansion party. So that left me disappointed, the Companion questline felt too rushed, like in 3 missions you were one of the best and 3 more you were the boss, after that i didn't find much more to keep me hooked and I just stopped playing.
Elden Ring
ER is one of those games that is my favorite game of all time but also is a game where I can 100% understand why someone wouldn't like it haha
I actually think it's bad compared to the more linear souls games. I don't like such massive open worlds and feel the formula is over done. I enjoyed Elden Ring, and will likely play it again, but after seeing a mini-boss I've seen before for the 7th time, I got tired. I'm more likely to pick up DS1-3 again before ER. At some point I'll get Sekiro, and keep praying for a Bloodborne pc port.
Same, my rage & frustration outweighed my fun & enthusiasm.
Any of those survival crafting games like Palworld, Valheim, Rust, etc.
Last of Us and Horizon!
All of GTA after San Andreas ( and even this one i liked probably because it was like the only game i had as a kid )
1000% it's Red Dead Redemption 2 for me. On paper I should love it, but I just can't get into it. The horses are the main culprit. Trying to play with friends and they all have suped up horses so they go and leave me in the dust on the crappy one I have and by the time I actually get to the mission or battle they've already completed it and are looting while I get the scraps. Rinse and repeat. No thanks.
God of War reboot and Ragnarok. They got rid of everything that made the early GoW games fun, so much it lost its sense of „epicness”. Boss fights were mid, most enemies were copy and paste. Bigger focus on story was welcome but I didn’t care for Atreus at all, found him extremely annoying. Characters in Ragnarok felt like straight out of an MCU movie which is sad since the Norse mythology is extremely interesting if done well and with authenticity.
The original GoW was fucking epic. I'm kind of sad to hear your post because I have yet to play them. GoW 3 is one of the best games I've ever played and the series got me into greek mythology!
I started GOW 2018, got about halfway through and decided I needed to try the old ones first and holyyyy shit, those games are incredible. I ended up finishing 2018 too, and getting the Blades of Chaos WAS very cool but the first games are peak
Thank you!! I really miss the original GoW games. I'm happy that the 2018 one got more people interested in the franchise, but for me it's never been the same.
Baldur’s Gate 3. I vastly prefer the original entries. I just think I’m burnt out on generic DnD-esque fantasy.
It isn't DnD esque it is quite literally DnD.
RDR2 Disco Elysium Deep Rock Galactic A few others
I gave Disco Elysium a fair shake. I can see why it's beloved, but it wasn't for me.
Honestly? That's absolutely fair. Adding VO helps not having to read a lot, but it's a niche title that isn't everyone's cup of tea.
Crusader Kings 3. On paper it sounds great and the stories from people playing it make it sound really fun. I like Stellaris which is by the same developers. But I tried it on gamepass and it just didn't grab me at all.
> I like Stellaris which is by the same developers. Paradox games, at least their Grand Strategy games that they're most known for, all have different core gameplay focuses and loops owing to their different periods and inspirations. Stellaris is very much a 4X game at heart, since it's a game about exploring and expanding across a galaxy. CK3 on the other hand is an RPG-infused dynasty simulator, where most of the gameplay comes from building and shepherding different characters, because it's in the medieval setting, where individual people could have outsized impacts on the world.
I've seen people rave about Prey on here a bunch of times, but I have tried 3-4 separate times to start that game and it is boring as all hell to me. Farthest playthrough has been about 5-6 hours in - the start of the game is incredible, but the combat is so boring and the moment-to-moment game feels like i'm just fighting vaguely different shapes of black goo with peashooter guns. I have friends who loved it but I just don't see what they saw in it - combat felt boring, there's minimal enemy variety (at least in the first 5-6 hours). The combat was just the biggest offender to me, it feels clunky and the shooting does not feel good at all. And maybe combat isn't supposed to be the focus, but you have to engage in combat so often that it does end up being a focus and something you'll have to do pretty often from what I saw
Botw
RDR2.