recent: tears of the kingdom, or as i like to call it botw 1.2, its the same thing all over again just with one or two added gimicks, the open world is dead, npcs are boring and nintendo just got away with it like that
not so recent: i cant stand persona 5, joker and his entourage are annoying teenagers, the time management is a horrible gameplay addition and the artstyle is just a visual overstimulation
with that being said,~~ plz dont kill me~~
I still can’t make it through any of The Witcher games. Smooth and satisfying gameplay is super important for me to enjoy a game, and The Witcher has always felt slow, clunky, unintuitive, and super menu-heavy. I’m sure the story is great! But I just can’t get past its gameplay.
I adore Witcher 3. That said I’ve always said controlling Geralt feels like driving a boat. God help you for the very few instances that you do platforming.
They added a different control style sometimes after release, didn’t they? I can’t recall the specific difference, but I think I used it for my playthroughs and it was less boat-y.
I’m not sure there. I played it several years after release, but I can’t remember one way or the other if there were alternate control options.
Yeah, pretty quickly. Maybe a month? I remember playing it basically at launch, and deciding I was going to return it, but stopped when they said they were working on an alternative control scheme.
It was actually worse than it is now.
Didn’t return it, but much like others in this thread, never got it to stick. Doesn’t feel good to play.
Boat you say?
Same here. I really want to like The Witcher 3, but after trying to play it for 10 hours without feeling any enjoyment, I just gave up.
I’m playing mainly western RPG’s like that, but I also couldn’t get into The Witcher. The gameplay is fine actually (I played way more clunky games with lots of enjoyment). But somehow Gerald just never clicked with me, causing me never to feel really connected to my character and to what’s happening.
It’s sad because I can notice how good the games are, but I just really cannot get into it.
I tried to play Witcher 3 and the combination of strange camera angles and very “tradional rpg” style icons put me off (the later is a really sad thing to be bugged by but whatever)
However, I now have a PS5 and i believe the PS5 update has huge improvements including to camera angles etc, so I may give it another go.
It took me 3 attempts at starting The Witcher before I eventually got through it. I had just came off of Dark Souls 3 combat, so the combat in Witcher was especially clunky feeling. Eventually I moved into a new home, had nothing else to do, and proceeded to do nothing but play the game for 50 hours until I beat the game lol. I would say the story is worth it, but I agree that its kinda tough to get into.
I’ll probably get roasted for this but… Pokemon. It just seems like endless copy/paste and might be one of the laziest game franchises I’ve ever seen. I’ve really tried to get into them. I was there when the Pokemon cartoon started, I saw it rise to the phenomenon it is today, but damn if it isn’t the most boring grindfest ever.
it doesnt just feel like copy paste, thats quite literally what they are doing, there is plenty of evidence online to show that they do but hey, if you can make whatever low effort thing you want and people still buy it why bother trying?
There’s no problem with copy/paste, games do that all the time (look at portal, most of that game is reused half life 2 assets). I think the problem is that they’re just not doing anything interesting with the games. If the games were good it shouldn’t matter if the Pikachu model is reused or made from scratch.
Sure but they also straight up lied about making fancy new assets for switch while they just literally copied and pasted from 3ds That lie, I find not okay
I do agree that it’s the same thing recycled over and over.
If anyone does want to play them again, I highly recommend emulating them and accelerating the emulation to 2.5 or 3x speed. Makes it much more tolerable.
That’s a very common complaint for the last, hell I don’t even know, 20 games or whatever.
True, I’m not saying anything I haven’t heard before. It’s just crazy that people keep buying it thinking “Maybe this one will match the memories I had when I was 10.” I guess nostalgia is a powerful drug. Even more powerful than I thought… just looked up the Pokemon franchises worth and it’s estimated at 74 billion. Now I know how boomers feel cause I just don’t get it.
Yeah I don’t get it either. I don’t even get the nostalgia aspect, there are just so many new Pokémon that I feel they completely drown out the ones I grew up with, the first like 250 iirc, I have no desire whatsoever to play the new games.
But I suppose it’s still very popular with kids all around the world as well so there’s that.
The pokemon fan games have been way more inventive than the mainline games for a while now. I just recently have been getting into pokemon infinite fusion and it’s FANTASTIC
I so badly want to play infinite fusion but I cant seem to get it to work, it crashes everywhere I’ve tried to play :(
Same here, I’ve tried to get into pokemon so many times but I just don’t get it. The games just look so lazily made too
They get away with the copy-paste because the combat system is fundamentally extremely solid.
The good thing about this is that programming-savvy fans have been creating free fan-games based on the formula for the last decade or so. As with any fan-made content the quality is extremely variable, but I have found some of the newer releases to be genuinely good games, better than anything GameFreak has put out in the last 20 years. Pokémon Unbound is a personal favorite - if you enjoy the fundamentals of the Pokémon games but feel the lack of creativity and puzzle-solving in the official releases I would suggest giving them a look.
Every game after Black and White is copy paste garbage, but everything before that is pretty damn good.
This will be an extremely hot take for some: Almost all recent online games are complete garbage that solely exist to make profit and create addicted user bases and they hurt what videogames truly are, a revolutionary and interactive form of art.
Red Dead Redemption 2. Everyone goes on about how awesome it is, but I just found the story and gameplay really slow and dull.
RDR2 suffers heavily from the same problem as GTAV’s single player mode: it’s a movie posing as a video game and both aspects suffer for it.
RDR2 would have been great if it was just the part where you wander around tracking critters and collecting flowers and playing cowboy dress-up, but the game really doesn’t want you to do that. Not to belabor the point, but between how unpredictable the connection between “interact with item/character X” and “start mission with character Y” can be and the game’s tendency to fail missions the second you go off-script, RDR2 often felt like it was directed by someone who actively resented the concept of player agency.
You articulated my issue with it perfectly. In theory it was this amazing open world with tons of player freedom, but the minute you engage with the actual story at all you have no choice in anything. There was one quest where I HAD to rescue Micah and kill a butt load of people which really annoyed me given I was going for a white hat run.
There‘s this great video essay that basically agrees with you. Rockstar want to create these cinematic narrative experiences but that does not mash well with their concept of an open world.
Rockstar has been moving that way in general for years. They get so focused on the immersive and sim stuff, they forget that they made their name on over-the-top chaotic fun. Everything from GTA4 onward suffers for it, other than RDR1 that struck a decent balance between the approaches.
I was really enjoying it, but I eventually got bogged down in the sidequests, and it really could’ve used a low-gore mode. The bloody deer carcasses got to me after a while.
I think I might have preferred it if it were a little smaller and more focused on the main storylines.
I do intend to go back to it sooner or later though.
My friends love it, but two hours in, I just feel worn.
Then I just drop it and never look back.
Can’t get it to stick.
My main grip with this game is how slow ans cranky everything feels. I miss the arcade feel of RDR1.
Same here. It was so frustrating trying to play it.
Here’s a pretty awesome looking intricate and interesting world. No, you can go over there. Or there. Or do that
Honestly, Stardew Valley for me. I’ve tried it a couple times and it just didn’t work for me. I wanted to like it, and I like the idea of it, but in practice, I hated the time management aspect and not being able to just run around and do as much as I wanted in a day (I haven’t played on PC with mods; I know there’s at least one or two that let you change that). I also hated the fishing. 🙃
Didn’t play Skyrim at the time and the two times I’ve tried to get into It didn’t really click for me. I understand why people like It, may give another try sometime
Oh thank god, I came here to say Skyrim and was afraid of being the only one.
I should have liked it. Absolutely loved Morrowind. But just never could get into Skyrim despite multiple attempts and now I’ve given up.
In all fairness, you wouldn’t like it just because you liked Morrowind. The games play entirely different from one another and the story of Skyrim is a downgrade by several margins (though some of the sidequests are awesome).
This is coming from someone who has like 200 hours in Skyrim.
Perhaps try a total conversion, skyrim is basically a mod engine anyway lel
I never managed to get far in Skyrim. And even if you like it, I don’t think it’s too controversial to say that it has one of the worst intros for an open world game.
I could never get over the fucking monotone same-voice way every NPC speaks.
Everything about that game felt monotone, to me.
I think about trying again, once in a while, but haven’t yet. They keep releasing new versions at prices I’m not willing to pay for it.
Any game that has daily login bonuses or a bonus for playing every day. Animal crossing pocket or whatever it is. Pokémon go. A bunch of afk phone games. A bunch of gacha games. It just feels so shallow to me. Like, I’m not being manipulated to play something, I just end up feeling so guilty to lose a streak I’d rather delete the game.
I think this CAN work if you naturally enjoy the game, but don’t want to make decisions about your game plan when you boot up.
I like Deep Rock Galactic. When given 15 mission options, I get choice paralysis, so it’s nice to have dailies/assignments that at least push me into a particular one just to get started.
While not a daily login bonus, the weekly and monthly tasklist of Forza Horizon 5 killed the game for me. It triggered some sort of fomo and I would rush in every week to grind the new tasks/events. That burned me out very fast, so I could not enjoy the rest of the game.
Diablo and Diablo-style games like Torchlight. Every time a new one comes out a few of my friends get excited and I’ve been convinced to try it again, but I think I’ve learned my lesson finally and I have skipped Diablo IV.
Diablo and Diablo 2 robbed years of my life. I just can’t get the same enjoyment out of any other game of the genre. I legit tried to give D3 a try… it was nothing the same… not even close.
I don’t why Diablo and D2 were so damn good (IMO) and why the others just aren’t.
RTS games have similar problems for me too… I played C&C and Starcraft a lot… there’ve been no other RTS games that I can even tolerate. Even going back and playing the C&C remaster… It’s just better even though it’s laden with old game QOL issues.
Glad to hear I’m not the only one. Something about the isometric/top-down ARPG genre has never clicked with me, and I really can’t figure out why. I’ve tried torchlight, every diablo (except 4), path of exile - I end up bouncing off of them after a week or so and just lose interest.
It makes even less sense when you consider I can sink 300+ hours into Souls/Elden Ring or Xenoblade… Something about the format just doesn’t work for me, I guess.
Any MOBA really, particularly League of Legends. A number of my friends played these obsessively, but I could just never get into it. I’ve sat in on quite a few Discord calls with people playing this game and I gotta say, not once did anyone ever sound like they were having fun. I’m not sure what it is, but it just seems like the genre attracts toxicity like no other, especially when playing with strangers. On the occasions I tried them myself, the gameplay just wasn’t engaging enough for me to want to put in the tremendous amount of time necessary to become somewhat decent at the game.
Borderlands: I mean the combat is fine and all, but the story is super weak. What is my incentive to keep playing? Just to click on more heads? There are better games for that (Doom, Quake, etc)
I was enlightened about why I didn’t like borderlands when I realized it was FPS Diablo. I just don’t enjoy the gameplay loop.
I played the crap out of borderlands… until one day I asked myself why… and… I never picked it up again. After that switch was flipped, the whole series just fell apart on me.
I stuggled with it so many times. I think Borderlands games, in general, are the ones I tried the most to enjoy, because everything about it is cool to me, the eastetic, the characters, the presentation…
I restarted the first at least 4 times, alone and in coop, thinking the problem was that it doesn’t work as a solo experience. I played the sniper and then I tried the gunman because, maybe, the sniper is not that enjoyable.
Then I got the 2, because maybe the first was too raw and basic.
I just… don’t have fun.
I point the cursor toward waves of spongy healthbars, and then I get served a giant plate of paralyzing choices between 64 billion gear options that clutter me and my frail mind.
I ended up loving Tales from the Borderlands: all the good from the worldbuilding and none of the gameplay loop.
Yeah basically. It’s a loot shooter, it’s very fun in co-op but not good enough to carry itself in singleplayer.
I was watching an escapist video about modern life service games and he said “saying a game is more fun with friends is a virtue of your friends, not the game.”
If a game needs friends to be fun, I think it’s just a garbage game.
I don’t think that always holds water, some games are just made to be played with others. Nobody is going to accuse Counter-Strike of being bad just because playing against bots isn’t the most thrilling experience. But for games like Borderlands definitely. Point being, the logic goes it’s bad and only saved by playing with friends doesn’t stop it from being a bad game, not that a game is bad just because it’s more fun with friends.
I guess I’m more specifically referring to the modern looter shooter live service bullshit that’s been taking over the industry. Not standard PvP multiplayer. Of course that’s the intended experience there, can’t blame that.
Monster Hunter. It’s just so painfully slow and boring. Combat just feels clunky.
I guess I’ll take the hit for this one. Dark Souls.
The combat can be really fun and I had a great time fighting the bosses but the slow, careful crawl between boss fights is just so dull to me that it’s not worth it.
I agree on that one, but for a slightly different reason. For me it was the camera. For whatever reason I had the feeling I fought the camera more than I fought the enemies. And that kills the fun for me.
Came here to say this, from software is clearly really talented at level design and art direction, but I cannot for the life of me find enjoyment in those games because of the overall gameplay experience just being boring.
Sekiro and Elden Ring have pretty much ruined any desire I had to play Dark Souls. Sekiro, in particular, seems like a distillation of everything I loved about DS gameplay with zero bloat, and still managed to take me 40 hours to beat.
Don’t hate me but I cannot get into Minecraft. I get so bored running around collecting supplies and building things, it feels like a chore each and every time I try it out.
I enjoy Minecraft, right up until it hits me how isolated I am in that world, then something clicks and I just feel unsettled.
It feels very empty I found. Even with other people. I get the same vibe from other survival games like Conan Exiles.
Just not my bag I guess.
Nah, you’re right. Typically when I play Minecraft, I’ll go hell for leather for maybe an hour. I’ll get through the first few nights, manage to scrape together a perfectly cromulent shelter, start mining like a bastard to find iron and coal, and then get bored and go and do something else because I’ve just used up yet another iron axe and I’ve not got enough material to replace it.
I think motivation was something I was having major issues with in minecraft for a while. Exploration is only really interesting if there’s something wildly different far away. That being said, I’ve played more minecraft than I ever have before the last month because of the Vault Hunters mod. It essentially turns the game into a scavenger hunt mixed with a roguelite. You are given 4 items to go collect in the wild which gives you a “key” to enter the vault. The vault gets harder and harder and you’re given better and better items over time. You can use experience (knowledge and skill points) to give yourself passive or active abilities or even permanently increase your movement speed or attack damage. If modded minecraft doesn’t seem like a crazy amount of complicated nonsense to you, I’d highly recommend at least checking it out on youtube to see what it’s all about (though the SMP version is a bit different, so keep that in mind).
thats pobably why servers with gamemodes exist
For me botw was that game. I didn’t like the gameplay and many aspects of the game design. In contrast, I’m enjoying totk a lot more. It improved on a few aspects I didn’t like and the gameplay feels closer to what I want in a Zelda game. Overall I’d still prefer them to go in a different direction with the series though.
But in general, I’m not a fan of a lot of currently popular elements. I don’t need big, open worlds with a lot to do, that just gives me FOMO. I don’t want to build and manage stuff, and make a lot of decisions in my adventure game, I just want a good story and fun traversal and combat. And I don’t need 50+h of gameplay, I don’t have that much time and I usually start burning out after the 20h mark anyway.
GTA V. I tried playing it but it was just so boring. I never felt like picking if back up after I stopped playing around 15% into the story. The online never worked for me as it would just endlessly be stuck on a loading screen [PC].
I hate GTA V. So much.
There’s two ways to play it, story, and free roam, and they both suck.
The story missions are terrible. It’s incredibly basic task following, drive here, shoot these guys, etc.
The free roam sucks as its basically garrys mod but less freedom. There’s no incentive or reason to do anything. Everything is pointless.
