Most of the video games I’ve played were pretty good. The only one I can think of that I didn’t like was MySims Kingdom for the Nintendo DS. Dropped that pretty quickly. It was a long while ago, but I’ll guess it was because there were too many fetch quests and annoying controls.
12 Minutes. It sucks because I was really looking forward to it - it’s published by Annapurna which has an amazing track record, and the trailer and concept looked really interesting. But it just kind of devolves into a really basic point and click game with one location where you just have to try every combination of things until something works. And the story itself is just a trainwreck. I wasn’t left satisfied or with any interesting thoughts, I was mostly just confused as to what the hell I was supposed to get out of it.
If you want a good time loop game published by Annapurna, just play Outer Wilds.
The ending is especially bad… I was rooting for some big reveal but the “twist” is just so bad it completely ruined the game for me.
I 100%d this game, out of some kind of angry obsession and curiosity rather than excitement, and instead of feeling satisfied with myself, I felt relief that the frustration was over and I could leave that danm apartment and never return.
I’ll list a few.
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MLB: The Show. I used to really enjoy these games because they felt like a sports game that actually cared about making a very realistic simulation while still keeping it fun. Now everything is about Diamond Dynasty, the fantasy baseball mode. All the other modes only reward you by giving you packs and giving you a gentle shove into Diamond Dynasty. One of my favorite modes was “March to October” where you play select innings in select games over the course of a whole season. Each game’s outcome determines your team’s general ability over the season. The better you do, the better you win rate and the higher chance of making it into the post season. Your rewards? Card packs. SMH.
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Ghostrunner. The levels were fun and had big Hotline Miami vibes but the boss fights were far too difficult and just utterly boring. Yeah, I really liked wall running in circles for minutes on end because the floor was lava. That was great.
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Atomic Heart. Bought it on a whim while high. I liked the bioshock influence and the level design is really cool. It just suffers from being a “survival horror” without the survival or the horror, so most of the gameplay involves you scrounging around for bullets and then dealing ultra light blows to enemies because you ran out of your 3 bullets. Pretty much none of the combat was fun and the stealth was a relentless ultra punishing slog. As a lover of stealth games, please if you’re considering making a stealth game do not take any notes from this game. It did it all wrong.
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Dying Light 2. I loved the first game but this game just sorta felt overwhelming in a way? I really don’t know how else to put it. I like open world games but developers just need to calm the fuck down. I don’t need 10 map markers.
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The Quarry. I get that it’s supposed to be a rip on teen slasher movies but that still didn’t make it very fun to me. I loved Until Dawn and played it probably 5 times so I was super hyped for this but just really let down. I hated the way the game ended and I hated pretty much every second that I played it.
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The Hunter: Call of the Wild. It was just boring. I guess that’s what hunting is like in real life, but so is truck driving and I like truck simulator games…
The quarry was hard and I even enjoyed little hope more than most.
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Progress Quest.
It’s certainly funny but it is not a fun game. It plays itself. Literally. That’s the point. It was something you ran along side with your mIRC client to show your uptime in a fun way.
I don’t find any of those kinds of games fun. From Cookie Clicker to most mobile games, “idle games” are just the most unfun, un-game-like games ever made.
That’s the thing: progress quest isn’t an idle game. It’s a parody of modern games that was made long before idle games were a thing. It wasn’t fun just like a joke isn’t an interesting story.
I would say it was the grandaddy of idle games. It was made as a joke, but actual games have followed its model seriously. And it sucks. It parodies JRPGs, many of which had an auto-battle option. But that was still just an option, and they typically had stories and other fun things about them.
Superman 64 is the only game I tried to return to Blockbuster before the rental window was done. They wouldn’t let me so I had to keep it for the rest of the week.
I had never once experienced this. They WOULDNT let you bring the game back early? Admittedly my days of blockbuster a few, I think they closed when I was 9 or 10, but I can’t see a reason they wouldn’t take it early…
Yeah that doesn’t make any sense. They had a drop-off slot at the desk where you just dropped them into to return them.
Okay, but isn’t that game just one big bug?
papers please. i thought i was doing pretty well in the beginning, but i guess it’s built in to the narrative of the game that no matter how hard you work, your family will still get sick and die, and the story progresses by you unknowingly screwing up and letting in a terrorist. not only are you responsible for paying for your own mistakes, it only gets harder and more unforgiving with each level. i realized pretty quickly that it’s not fun at all to spend my precious free time playing an extremely punishing game about working.
Agreed. I thought I would enjoy it but ended up not liking the game play.
I want to take it slow and thoroughly examine the papers but apparently I can’t because there is a time limit each day. Extremely stressful and unfun.
For me, my “misery is the point” game was This War of Mine. I got it just before Ukraine, but still couldn’t stomach it. My first character had a kid that was constantly crying and whimpering and I just couldn’t do it. I was bad at it—if you can be good. I couldn’t help others in the ways that I wanted to. I couldn’t stop the whimpering. Then I went out as someone else and came back and the dad and kid left. And I had to stop there for a bit.
I set it down to come back later, then Ukraine happened. Where it was hard to stomach while I knew this was hypothetical and the Euro-setting was pretty abstracted from the current reality there—though still very present elsewhere—knowing that people on the ground were looking and sounding similar to what was happening in game and seeing that in news daily just cut off any desire I had to play. It’s powerful and DEEPLY empathetic, but that spiral of misery and failure was the point and it made it in spades.
I feel these games are important, but I also know I don’t want to put myself through them. Thanks to people like you who tell me about them so I don’t have to play them myself lol
That game should be mailed directly to dictators and war mongers everywhere.
“THIS. THIS is what you want for your people? For ANY people? “
Fwiw, it is absolutely possible to save your whole family in Papers Please. First time players aren’t necessarily expected to manage it, though, so you’re not wrong about losing family members being the intended experience. It’s definitely a game that tries to be “engaging” rather than " fun". I enjoyed it a lot back in college, but who knows how I’d feel now that I have a full-time job.
I only played that game briefly, and I was so confused with the game mechanics, maybe I didn’t stick with it for so long, but I remember it wasn’t very clear at the beginning how you should proceed?
Definitely sitting in my backlog though.
Papers, Please has 20 different endings, you can definitely follow a different storyline!
While i agree that it’s rather punishing, but to me it feels like that’s how it works under a dictatorship. I like how i need to work toward some of the ending by breaking the law
It’s more of a tragic story than a game. The misery is kind of the point. If you don’t see that point or can’t enjoy that, then yeah, it’ll be terrible.
The video game equivalent of Dostoevsky.
The game is more of a short story. Which means the gameplay is intentionally grinding because the job is grinding. Which honestly IS bad gameplay, but delivers the message it’s going for. If reading depressing alt history dystopia is not how you want to spend your time, then I don’t blame you one little inch. ♥
Glory to Artstozka
I’ll go with a classic, “E.T. the extraterrestrial” on the Atari… It was bad. It’s badness is legendary for a reason.
And that reason was mainly because of bugs in the game!
No, it was genuinely bad. Yes bugs, but it was also the classic example of corporate overlords forcing “creativity” and hoping that the licensed property would make it a success regardless of the quality.
I played it at a video game museum and yeah it was pretty stupid
I’ve got one - Hotline Miami 2.
Hotline Miami 1 was such a fantastic game. Frantic, high energy, fun, good art style, a confusing at best story but that’s not why you played it. HM2 was full of off-screen instant kill bullshit that you literally could not prepare for in any way other than to die to it a handful of times before you memorized enemy positions off-screen. In the first game, you could always see threats before they could kill you. Not the case in the sequel. “You died and there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it” is a bullshit mechanic in any game.
I loved the first one, but couldn’t get into the second. Didn’t really like the other characters too.
Octopath Traveler. The UI was terrible, the loot was nothing but stat sticks, and most of the dungeons, of which there were too many, were just long tree walk with potions at the leaves. Genuinely the worst game I’ve ever played. The three-directional sprites were also extremely lazy. I think I lost my mind right at the start when the lazy script response saw one of the characters’ childhood friend suddenly develop amnesia and treat him like a stranger because everyone needs generic dialogue.
The music and cast of thousands worldbuilding was fantastic, but otherwise, I hated almost every single of the 80 hours I put into it trying to give ti a fair shake.
From the moment it was announced, I could not contain my excitement for Octopath Traveler from the art style to the graphics to the music. I was even into the name. I was so enamored that I bought the collector’s edition.
Then it finally came out and never have I regretted a game purchase so much; not because it was awful, but it was so mediocre. Honestly, if it were awful, I might have been more okay with it, rationalizing how a game could turn out so bad with everything going for it, mourning what could have been, etc. It did everything it promised it would, I just realized that it didn’t really promise much beyond an art style and being a turn based RPG with 8 main characters. The package was delivered, but it turned out to be Game Gear, not Gameboy.
I think buying that game put me off collector’s editions. The package for it was very impressive, but I think I finally saw the man behind the curtain and realized that what I was buying was just a bunch of plastic and art books that I was never really going to touch anyway. The only physical bonus I cared about from that point on was Steelbooks, but I don’t even buy physical games all that much anymore thanks to my Steam Deck.
Honestly, Octopath Traveler put me off blindly preordering games in general. Now I just blindly buy old games, so if they’re bad, I have no one to blame but myself for not doing the research LOL
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I got about 1/2 way through the game, but as soon as I hit the first boss of act 3 I just couldn’t progress. He’d wipe the party every time. Walkthroughs were useless.
Yeah, the game had severe balance issues too with classes not scaling properly and consequently being either completely dominant or totally useless based on what level you were.
I’m glad I’m not the only person to dislike this game! After going through like three of the chapter 1 missions for the characters, the game felt very very samey, and on top of that, it’s probably one of the only story games that I haven’t finished.
I rented Sim Earth for SNES and it didn’t come with instructions. I had no idea what to do, and it was confusing and frustrating.
For me it was Cyberpunk 2077. Yes there were all those bugs at launch but I did not have too many issues. My main complaint was the story and the characters. The protagonist V was without any compassion, just a loud asshole. I couldn’t empathize at all. I felt like I wasn’t able to make any decisions were I was happy with the outcome. Additionally the gameplay was mediocre at best. A lot of places in the world felt completely rushed and unfinished. Combined with the lies from marketing, I wasn’t hooked at all and felt betrayed.
Did you play male or female V? A general consensus I hear is that male V makes a better merc while female V acts more like a real person with some compassion
I played a male V and I looked into the differences now. I might have to give the game a second chance and play a female V.
And I’m not gonna have expectations this time arround. So I might be able to enjoy the positive sides.Thank you!
The protagonist V was without any compassion, just a loud asshole.
Would this not be mostly up to the player, since you control what V says when you pick dialogue options like any other RPG? If you play him without any compassion, of course he will sound that way.
I see what you mean with the gameplay. Personally I really enjoyed the story and the setting, as well as the level design. But the gameplay wasn’t very great.
I felt like I wasn’t able to make any decisions were I was happy with the outcome.
That’s generally a consistent theme in the cyberpunk genre. You can’t win and you can’t get out of the game.
Yes this is true. I wasn’t expecting a happy ending either (I never finished it). But there is no rule, that you can’t be the nice guy in a cyberpunk world. In the end this still is a game which is supposed to entertain the player. I think both blade runner movies are a good example of a cyberpunk story, where love and compassion is a central point to the story.
The advantage of story telling in games over movies is the decision making. The capability to influence the direction a story is headed. My point is, that I wasn’t able to connect with the main character although the game was advertised as an rpg. And I know they acknowledged this flaw as they rebranded the game as action adventure.
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competitive shooters like Rainbow Six Siege or Counter Strike are also really bad in casual modes, especially if you’re a new or lackluster player. You’ll be flamed, team killed, and your teammates will try their absolute best to ruin your entire day over a hobby
I would be fine with all of that if they didn’t also have the power to kick you from the match
Trying to get into those as a newbie is miserable dor all those reasons and also because, unless maybe if you get in right when the game first comes out, your competitors will be far more comfortable with the mechanics and have memorized the maps and so on. It’s especially bad if you’re a newbie to multiplayer shooters a whole, even if you’re good at single player shooters. It becomes and exercise in: spawn, die, respawn, die… Super frustrating to begin with. And then people insult you. Noooot something I find worth bothering with for a thing that’s supposed to be enjoyable in my free time.
It’s like that with every competitive game.
You see other people playing it and think “wow, that’s cool. I wanna try it”, only to be welcomed by what you just described. Your success then depends on whether you have a hard skin to endure the bullshit, or if you’re social enough to have others play with you that won’t dismiss everything you do so easily. More often than not we don’t have the patience/ability for either.
Where baby’s first swear word becomes baby’s first racial slur! Does Mommy know you talk like that on the PSBox?
Worms Blast. I didn’t look at any of the game screenshots and thought it would just be like a normal worms games and not more like that arcade game where you throw the coloured balls up to the ceiling to match them.
I have nothing against that style of game, but I just didn’t like it in the Worms style.
I have a few:
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Tunic: I thought it had more than one puzzle, with how it was being talked about online, but it ended up repeating the same thing for 6 hours reusing the same gimmick over and over - after a below average first half.
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Xenoblade Chronicles (DE): the characters were really uninteresting, the story kept spoiling every attempted twist it had with needless foreshadowing and the combat felt really boring. The world was empty and it felt like a dead MMO.
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13 Sentinels: I won’t spoil anything specific, but the story was just a bunch of the most generic sci-fi cliches.
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Monster Hunter Rise: I love World/Iceborne and really enjoyed the parts I played of GU and 4U but Rise just felt bad to play.
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Games that force daily tasks/gacha games: I hate being forced - or even just being hinted at having - to grind daily. It just ends up pushing me away from the game, even if I’m enjoying it. I can’t play games like Genshin Impact and Star Rail, but also the daily challenges in sf5/6 bother me every time I see them.
I also don’t really get roguelikes, but I’m not sure if I just haven’t found one I enjoy or I don’t like the genre.
XC2 is a lot better than XCDE, XCDE really suffers from the era it came out of. XC2 was when Monolith really got their stride.
I might consider it in that case, if I ever find it on sale.
Altho I’ve seen a bunch of people complain about XC2’s story, but they usually say that XC’s was better - so I’m not sure what to think.
If you have a hackable switch, dump your keys and demo it on your PC assuming it’s beefy enough. You’ll know if you like it within about an hour or two.
Xenoblade 1 is over a decade old and launched on the Wii. While it is an important game, and was mind-blowing at launch, the sequels surpassed it imo.
Skip 2 and go straight to 3. The gameplay is a combination of both titles and the battle system is FUN. By the end, you’re changing classes, 7 team members at once in battle - switching between them at will, 12 arts available to each member at once, chain attacks and transformations into massive mech-like beings called Ouroboros where you can really fuck shit up. If you install the rebalance mod it’s even better, battles are fast and if you don’t keep up you can get fucked over quite bad. Or you can just go YOLO and just punch things with the fighter class loaded up with attack gems.
The story is very strong (endless war between two nations where the lifespan is only ten years (born at 10, die at 20), and your life is replenished by taking others) with some incredible voice acting from the UK cast, the world feels alive - full of warring factions and roaming armies, and the quests all actually mean something now (help any colony and you gain their leader as a computer played party member, as well as their class and weapon that you can assign to other team members and level up through use). The game runs a dream on a good Yuzu setup in 4k 60fps too.
The great thing about Xenoblade is that you can arguably play the main games in any order and still enjoy the full story. XB2 is super horny, has a fucking terrible menu system and has a lot of it’s own issues, despite it still being a very very good game. But there’s a reason Xenoblade 3 was nominated for Game of the Year at the game awards, you know.
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Games usually have to grab me pretty quickly, or I just drop them, so I don’t play a lot of unfun games for a long time.
Some exceptions were Final Fantasy 13, and to some extent the most of the Trails series (Trails in the Sky and Cold Steel).
Final Fantasy 13 I just tried a bunch of times, put in a combined 40h over the course of like three attempts, I don’t know why, but it was just mediocre at best. During the final one last year, I made it about halfway through, and actually got turned off from gaming altogether for a few months. The story sucked, as well as the characters. I thought the combat could be interesting, even with the auto-battles, since you’d have to decide what “stance” your characters were in, but it was just lame for the most part.
The Trails series is a bit different. I actually liked the gameplay (turn-based JRPG combat is fun), but the story and especially the villains are just complete garbage. Two years ago, before Cold Steel 4 came out on PC, I sat down and played through all the games in like two months. While Trails in the Sky is trash, I was actually surprised to really, really like Zero and (to a little bit lesser extent) Azure. Those gave me hope, but Trails of Cold Steel just goes back to being terrible. I might still go back and play Cold Steel 4 and whatever other games continue or maybe finally finish the story, just because I’ve invested too much time at this point.
I tried playing Blasphemous recently and had to drop it in a couple hours. I might’ve stuck with it had I tried it when I was younger but I’ve discovered that nowadays I don’t have the patience to play games that require you to beat your head against a brick wall until it breaks. So many frustrating enemy placements and insta-kill spikes, the movement is slow, the combat is unsatisfying, I just didn’t feel like I had much incentive to continue playing (minus the art style which is absolutely gorgeous).
I felt this with Elden ring. Once I got past the starting area, it just felt like everywhere I went I’d find enemies that kill me in 1-2 hits if I made one wrong or mistimed move. I wish I had the skill or patience to get through it, but I just found it too time consuming to try those tough enemies again and again. Definitely may just be a skill issue on my part, so I don’t necessarily want to dissuade others from giving it a shot.
That’s the point of the game. It’s definitely not an easy game, but it is the easiest game of the Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Elden Ring series. And it’s okay if that’s not for you! It requires a different approach than your usual hack-and-slash game, and that’s certainly not for everyone.
I don’t know I had relatively little problem with Dark Souls 1 and 2, so I don’t get the people saying it’s the easiest game in the series. Something about the combat just didn’t mesh with me. No big deal though.
