To me right now is the first Red Dead Redemption. Finally I’m able to play it, I’ve wait for over a decade. No spoilers, zero youtube gameplay videos, zero questions about the game to my friends. It gotta be me, and the game, it happened, and I think it sucks.
Maybe you thinking in “well, you shouldn’t play the second first”. I did not. My first Red Dead game was Red Dead Revolver, I was able to play it a few years ago when I could buy a PS2, but I couldn’t get a PS3 nor a Xbox 360 to play RDR1. It grinded my gears because we got the prequel in PC. When RDR1 came to PC it was so freaking expensive, yet today, I think it is expensive. I was able to buy the game some weeks ago while there was a Steam Sale, and well, I regreat it now.
I don’t like its exploration, its missions, its characters, its world, its secondary missions. its wanted system, and nothing but less important: has a lot of bugs.
That’s my experience in a few words.
What’s the game that you wanted to play but it was a total mess?
An old one: SPORE.
Cool creature editor. Lacked all the depth that was promised in the presentations. Instead of being a cohesive game through the ages, it’s like 5 bare-bones shallow games glued together.
I loved spore as a kid, but I do agree that when I tried it again and an adult I was disappointed by the shallowness that I just hadn’t noticed as a kid
surprised you feel that way, I was 13 and played it 3 years after it came out with no expectations and really enjoyed it. I wasn’t part of the hype around it before release so I assumed a lot of other people in my position would feel the same way. I think the different “minigames” led me on a path to discover games later on like civilization, cities skylines, no man’s sky, etc
Yeah… See… I already played games like Sim City 2000, Age of Empires 2 and 3, Homeworld 1 and 2, Dungeon Siege, and space sims like Vega Strike and Freelancer.
So I understood what deep systems looked like, and also detailed character stat development. What they promised was something that sounded like a system heavy game, and my expectation (even as a young teenager back then) was that evolution was a creative spin on RPG stat development.
What we instead got was the most barebones element from each of the games I mentioned. There basically weren’t any systems, and the few that existed were entirely self-contained and could easily be completely ignored without any major loss.
Arkham Knight was pretty disappointing. The batmobile was forced into several sections. The announced Linux build never materialized.
Hogwarts. And all the horizon games.
compared to all other harry potter games, hogwarts legacy is a masterpiece
anyone who played Hogwarts Legacy after the huge outcry about boycotting it for trans solidarity deserves to be disappointed
Is Rowling a piece of trash, yes. Does the game include a trans character, also yes. Were people still pissed off at the characters name, also yes.
it was literally SIRona RYAN
ryan is a gender neutral name though
this is like naming your only asian character something dangerously close to “ching chong” or having your one black character be named some shit like “Kingsley Shacklebolt” or…
actually, i don’t know why anybody expected anything better from this franchise lmfao
- CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077:
the trailer showed V riding a crowded monorail train. I bought the game in promotion with Google Stadia. There was no monorail in the game. Or rather, you could look at it, and you could find some stations, but they were teleport points; - Obsidian Entertainment’s The Outer Worlds:
it was marketed as a role-play game, but your possible choices were either bad or good, with no in-between, and they did not influence your story at all. It’s just a shooter game, the SciFi setting is secondary and forgettable; - Blackbird Interactive’s Homeworld 3:
too far from what I loved in Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm. For some reason the developers believed they had to introduce physical people with mental issues in a game about faceless ships blowing up each other. Nevertheless, the story is bland. I would like to pretend that this game did not ever exist.
A game that I’ve been waiting years to play for years is Mobius Digital’s Outer Wilds.
I have only heard praise about it. I can’t find the courage to finally play it and end up disappointed.Outer Wilds (not Worlds) is incredible, I doubt you’ll regret playing it.
Well, you might. Some people do bounce off; usually due to not knowing where to go next, or what to do next. But if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want your hand holding, you’ll probably have a good time.
Funny! Outer Wilds was exactly the OP question for me.
Utterly frustrating realistic space controls, unguided exploration that leads to reentering the same planet for the 8th time and still not finding anything new, annoyingly specific timing-based puzzles…
Tap for spoiler
And a nihilistic “friends we made along the way” ending that doesn’t solve the initial problem. Fuck that.
I’ve had games in my wishlist now that I see “It’s like Outer Wilds!” and I start to think twice about them.
Different experience for everyone I suppose :)
I found the space controls and conservation of momentum to be such a fun aspect. I loved getting consistently good at it, and feeling like a competent rocket pilot when I nailed fancy manoeuvres.
Silksong on the other hand, I had to give up because it was way too hard for me!
Just pull the trigger and do it so you can know. Don’t rush it. Take your time enjoying the puzzle and piecing together the mystery. There is no rush, a couple moments require good timing but you’ll know what to do when they come up. It’s not everyone’s thing, but if it is your thing, you’ll wish to forget everything so you can play it anew.🙂
Uptick for the awesome nickname.
- CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077:
There was the “spiritual successor” of L4D announced. Back 4 Blood looked like a very nice and fun L4D clone with some new mechanics thrown in. I have applied for a Beta to try it out and got lucky!
Game was boring AF. Play on medium difficulty and you can’t do it without real players who actually have to be decent shooters including you. Basically, enemies hit you harder and you hit them less. Same as Left 4 Dead, right? Well… In Left 4 dead you’d just shoot special infected til they drop dead. Here, some infected are impeccable unless you shoot weak spots that are so tiny you might aswell just waste all your ammo on plain shooting. And a typical non-boss special infected on medium diffciulty is like tank on expert in L4D. PvP is locked in a small area so no actual campaign pvp like in L4D.
Also, afaik, card mechanics was broken in so many ways that they only kept nerfing it from the release til they closed servers.
Duke Nukem Forever. As a teen Duke Nukem 3D was one of my most loved gaming experiences. Awesome game, came with easy to use level editor (Never got the original doom level editors to work back then). Played many many hours, made my own levels. Just plain loved the game.
Then the wait for Duke4Ever started and I waited, and waited and waited and (continue for 20 years so) and finaly got to play it.
It wasn’t bad really, it just wasn’t as fun as Duke3D was in my teens. It still had the same kind of humor, but never really hit any high notes. Weapons were limited, instead of having a weapon behind each number on the keyboard, now it was pick one up and drop one off.
Didn’t even try to see how the level editing was.
Maybe I’ll pick it up again if it’s a euro on Steam or GOG, as Duke3D still is loved childhood memory.
Duke3D was definitely peak Duke. I didn’t love DNF either. It was just meh. Fun enough for the time I played it, but never went back to it.
Elden Ring. Love DS2 and 3 but I HATE the open world aspect. Makes it feel pointless and then sucks to find out my exploring took me somewhere I can’t deal with due to my level.
Starfield. I tried it on a more recent update and it was just boring. There was no point to exploring because outposts were useless and space combat was trivial. Just an overall boring game
Starfield only reinforced my aversion to pre-ordering.
I had about $100 set aside to pre-order the deluxe edition of Starfield when orders went available, but around that same time, a new limited-time premium cosmetic pack was announced for Warframe, and they did one of those things where “and it’s out RIGHT NOW!” (we typically know at least a couple months in advance before something drops), so I, without hesitation, redirected those funds to the Warframe item and did not order Starfield.
Still one of the best decisions I’ve made. Starfield, even had it delivered on all its promises, was just not the game I was looking for. I pledged for a Star Citizen ship two months later.
spoiler
Those last couple sentences are like a short horror story.
Any MMO, I’ll pick it up and give it an honest try for a month or so. And I feel like I’m just grinding away for days for a couple hours of fun a week.
It’s so damn boring, all of it.
1000% agree. My friends badgered me into WoW back during the Burning Crusade era. Gods that shit was boring AF. And beyond being boring to play it was even more boring to look at. I don’t require top graphics in a game. But the oversimplified flat colors and design of everything was just so damn boring. Like at one point (last night I played actually) I was in an area and it was just like looking at a series of flat gradients next to each other. A brown gradient next to a blue gradient that faded into a white gradient. Fucking snoozefest. And there was zero exploration in the game. Don’t understand why there were big open areas when you have no point in exploring off the established beeline path. Fuck WoW.
I’ve played other MMOs since then. Some are better than others. ESO was fun for a bit but mostly because I like TES and really wanted to see Black Marsh, once I finished that area it wasn’t as fun. And once they dropped the skyrim expansion I quit. I’m not going back to skyrim. Spent enough time with the main game. FF14 was fun till it wanted me to get into groups. Dungeons sucked because I wanted to watch the stories and explore the dungeon but the randos all bitch about it and are annoying. Not to mention them losing their shit if you don’t attack exactly as they want so their minmax order of operations is just so. Lost Ark was actually pretty enjoyable too until I caught up to the current content. Then it became grindy and boring. I don’t mind some grind. But MMO grind is usually untenable for me.
Sorry, bitched about MMOs more than I intended. I mostly only play them to be with friends. But every one of them ends in the same disappointment for me. Not to mention the weird ass fucks I seem to find. I try to be nice but that seems to pull in even weirder ones.
I actually had a fantastic time with ESO in the early game, because everything was new and fun and magical.
1k+ hours in I started feeling like that.
Many of the games I could make have already been mentioned (e.g. cyberpunk, rdr2, outer wilds etc), however I have another one The Alters. I thought I would really enjoy this and friends recommended it to me, but I just couldn’t stick with it. I have like 10 hours in it and it just feels tedious. Kinda sad because I like the overall idea, it just doesn’t click for me
World of warcraft. I tried so many times to get back into it. Tried many TLPs, custom emus to want to like the game.
This indie game called “selaco”,I kinda didn’t like the level design (especially the pass code parts)
Or a more main stream game:
“Lego movie 2: the video game”, I was young when I bought this and it was a confusing video game. (Don’t remember much)Red Dead Redemption 2. I played partway through, then ran into that quest where Arthur was supposed to meet one of his party members in Blackwater, but it just kept spawning bounty hunters and I gave up after dying like ten times and not finding this guy.
I don’t think you are supposed to go to Blackwater with Arthur. That’s an absolute death sentence.
Yeah, Blackwater is inaccessible for Arthur, you never go there in the game. I don’t know what quest they are talking about.
I’m pretty sure they are taking about the quest where you follow the boat up the river to rescue your friend who’s in the prisoner transport.
For what is worth, I also thought it took place in Blackwater for some reason.
GTA V.
I liked all the previous ones, but this was just more of the same on a bigger generic map and a more convulted and stereotypical story. Online never worked for me either. Too buggy.
Vice City and San Andreas were the best of the series.
Map size/design is just more important than size. Same problem in Just Cause.
I didn’t hate V, but nothing has touched San Andreas’ magic for me.
I had to mention both, because I like them for different reasons.
Initially I didn’t even like Vice City, because it was just an epigon of GTA3 with more lens flare, but the story and not least the music won me over. I know it’s a blatant mockery of Scarface, but that’s what makes it so great and funny.
San Andreas is probably the masterpiece of them all. Maybe it got a little too serious in comparison to previous games, but it managed to portrait a great feeling of freedom and doing whatever in-between the main missions.
GTA V is more like: Follow the arrow through this generic oversized map.
San Andreas just felt like it captured the 90s perfectly. I could almost lump it in as a 90s memory.
Mewgenics. I just couldn’t squeeze any fun out of it. Wish there wasn’t 10 minutes of busy work every time I want to start a new run. Wish items were game-changing like in Isaac.
Agreed.
I really wish they had found a way to make the original concept fun. I was so excited for that.
The thing they turned it in to is just sooo not for me. I bounced off it HARD.
There are game changing items combinations. But it depends also on your traits.
For example, one run, I had a cleric that shared his regeneration with other cats, and an item that gave me +3 regen if I had at least 1 armor point.
So I equipped an armor item and every turn, my cats would heal 4 hp, making them extremely tanky and making the run trivial.
But it’s hard to get a combo going.
I am with you. I really want to like the game, but it just is not fun. I gave it 15 hrs.
Add to your list just how tedious all the bosses and mini bosses are. All of them act with maximum efficiency on every turn. Causes so many battles with them to drag on.
