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Games that Suck - Popular titles that you never understood
This is going to be a tepid OP and for that I apologize. I think there was a thread similar to this awhile back but I can't find it anymore.
I was thinking earlier today of games that the collective gaming community seemed to gush about that I never really "got." That got me wondering about whether other people have ever had similar experiences of trying out games that are praised as genre changing masterpieces that seemed to just fall flat.
I know, I should give my own personal example, but I'm already procrastinating as it is. I'll write up the three games that I have in mind when I have another moment. Until then, what about everyone else?
edit: Oh! Also, please try to give an actual reason for not liking the game. Simply stating the title and then leaving is not and adequate argument. There should also be little "hey, you're full of shit because blah blah blah" replies. We're only allowed to hate together!
edit 2: THIS IS NOT A DEBATE THREAD. Please don't treat it as such.
Final Fantasy 7. I've started it 3 times, and every time I get bored out of my mind before the end of the first disc. The characters are flat and the story is uninteresting to me.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
Halo. I don't get it. It's generic shooter as hell and I can't get into it. Further, it boggles my mind how it has become such a behemoth franchise.
Time for this thread again, eh? Popular games you didn't like! Hopefully people have better answers than "because it's popular."
Kingdom Hearts I didn't like. I mean, I guess I didn't understand it either. The appeal. The presentation was abhorrant to me.
Somewhere around the time that the boss of the Alice in Wonderland world was some bullshit clock monster that had nothing to do with Alice in Wonderland was the point where I gave the game back to the friend lending it to me.
Pretty much every JRPG that doesn't have the word "Mario" in it I don't care about at all.
Also the reason these threads always turn into shitfests is because no one ever wants to acknowledge that maybe just because they don't like something doesn't mean it's bad, and that maybe it's okay for different people to have different tastes?
I mean Final Fantasy games bore me to fucking tears but there must be something in there that keeps people comin' back to them.
Anything Bioware has put out. I own Baldur's Gate 2, Mass Effect and have tried to play a borrowed copy of Kotor, but something about their style just doesn't work for me. Mass Effect was the driest thing ever.
Halo. I don't get it. It's generic shooter as hell and I can't get into it. Further, it boggles my mind how it has become such a behemoth franchise.
yup.
Thirded. It seems to be a competent shooter, but I don't understand why it's so massive.
I'm sure it's because it was the first exposure to an FPS to many console-only people, but as a long-time PC gamer the situation is the cause of much comedy.
Halo. I don't get it. It's generic shooter as hell and I can't get into it. Further, it boggles my mind how it has become such a behemoth franchise.
yup.
Thirded. It seems to be a competent shooter, but I don't understand why it's so massive.
I'm sure it's because it was the first exposure to an FPS to many console-only people, but as a long-time PC gamer the situation is the cause of much comedy.
Yup. Started off playing amazing PC FPS games like Tribes and then I see everyone freak out about Halo and it's just baffling.
I'm not into multiplayer games, so that throws TF, TF2, L4D, all of those right out the window. But let's focus on the Half-Life series, because I gave all of those (even the episodes in The Orange Box) an honest shot. I played all the way through both HL1 and HL2, confident that there must be something I was missing. But there wasn't. It's dull. So dull. Unimaginative worlds and enemies. Boring firefights that I could half-sleep my way through. Non-existent story (I've heard people say that the story is "there" but you have to actively seek it out, etc. But the world is so damn dull that I'm not going to do that). The protagonist is mute, which I might be okay with, except that everyone he interacts with (yes, even Alyx) is so devoid of personality that they might as well be mute too. Half-Life 1 was pretty decent about setting you along your path, but half of the time in HL2 I had no fucking clue where to go or what to do, especially during the (awfully-controlling) boating segments. Also, too many stupid physics "puzzles" relying on simple machines that children are taught about in, what, kindergarten? Glad this guy's a professor.
I feel like multiplayer Halo is the true successor to the Goldeneye tradition. Very tight, mad dash fun that is absolutely a joy to play with friends, especially if they are in the room with you, and it's also alright against strangers.
Halo. I don't get it. It's generic shooter as hell and I can't get into it. Further, it boggles my mind how it has become such a behemoth franchise.
yup.
Thirded. It seems to be a competent shooter, but I don't understand why it's so massive.
I'm sure it's because it was the first exposure to an FPS to many console-only people, but as a long-time PC gamer the situation is the cause of much comedy.
Okay come on now.
"Oh man I am tittering so much because I was aware of a genre of video games before most people were."
But it really IS laughable to see people freaking out about something that's 4 years behind the times. Especially considering how long that is in videogame industry years. I mean, sure, Halo has caught up and it's on par with everything else. But that's simply on par. Nothing to continue to freak out about like it's the end-all be-all.
Vegan on
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
Halo. I don't get it. It's generic shooter as hell and I can't get into it. Further, it boggles my mind how it has become such a behemoth franchise.
yup.
Thirded. It seems to be a competent shooter, but I don't understand why it's so massive.
I'm sure it's because it was the first exposure to an FPS to many console-only people, but as a long-time PC gamer the situation is the cause of much comedy.
Yup. Started off playing amazing PC FPS games like Tribes and then I see everyone freak out about Halo and it's just baffling.
To be fair, I still think Goldeneye (N64) is awesome as all hell. By today's standards it's a lump of steaming dog turd... Halo just didn't wow me at all. I suppose it might have had it been my first FPS.
For my own contribution, I never could really get into TF2 or Diablo.
TF2 is particularly tragic because I absolutely adore everything about the game, from the idea to the aesthetics, and I regularly visit the TF2 Blog because of valve's hilarious writers. But I just don't have any fun playing the game and I do not know why. I don't feel particularly good when I win, and I'm not chastened when I die.
More broadly, I don't like dungeon crawlers...including Diablo. I know it's silly, but something about the majority of games being spent in dungeons just grates me on a fundamental level. I'll still probably pick D3 when it comes out though to see if my mind's changed.
Tarranon on
You could be anywhere
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
I enjoyed Fable but didn't really like Fable 2 -- to me, Fable 2 felt like I was playing a very forward, monotonous loading game. To me, it was loading menus, then teleporting, then running down a straight path extremely fast to my destination, rinse and repeat with the occasional combat. Not sure why, but it really just didn't click with me; I was really looking forward to it too. On the other hand, I didn't even consider Fallout 3 but bought it day of release when I worked a midnight launch and absolutely loved it.
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JebralThe guy nobody pays attention toDown South in the land of free thinkingRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 4. RPGs with no customization seem fairly pointless to me. I know they aren't the only ones, but they're the most prominent examples in my mind.
Half-Life, and later half-Life 2. I don't get it. It's generic shooter as hell and I can't get into it. Further, it boggles my mind how it has become such a behemoth franchise.
I can't say there are any games I don't get. I don't play a lot of different genres and series, but I at least get what makes them interesting and fun.
But it really IS laughable to see people freaking out about something that's 4 years behind the times. Especially considering how long that is in videogame industry years. I mean, sure, Halo has caught up and it's on par with everything else. But that's simply on par. Nothing to continue to freak out about like it's the end-all be-all.
How is this different from anything ever.
Someone comes up with something new, a group of people adopt it and talk about how great it is, and eventually a watered down version comes along that the public picks up on. This is just how shit generally works.
I mean all you're basically saying is "man I liked FPSs before they were cool." You are not better than Halo fans because you played Wolfenstein and Doom.
My perennial favorite whipping boy for this subject is Devil May Cry. Twitch gaming at it absolute worst and I don't get to control the camera. Only game to nearly make me totally destroy a game controller. It was nothing but frustrating for me to play and I was very happy to say good riddance after about two hours of play.
More recently Final Fantasy IV for the DS. Every one loves it, and the remake is pretty nice... until I get to a point were I can't use any metal weapons or armor. And I have to go all over creation to find non-metallic items to equip. And I have to play it multiple times to get the most out of it? No FFIV, fuck YOU.
Age of Empires on the PC always seemed rather punishing to me and the play never quite clicked with me. It was like I would always get invaded way earlier than I felt I should have been and it just drove me batty.
The Kingdom Hearts for the GBA... Chain of Memories? Just too much going on in the fights. I really hated that card dial or whatever.
In the too much going on corner is also The World Ends With You, but the game saves itself in that I can play it still while totally ignoring the top screen crap. I would be much more effective if I bothered with it of course, but I finished the game just fine with out ever bothering with it and concentrating on the stylus combat. So TWEWY almost made it into the popular games I never understood list but didn't.
But it really IS laughable to see people freaking out about something that's 4 years behind the times. Especially considering how long that is in videogame industry years. I mean, sure, Halo has caught up and it's on par with everything else. But that's simply on par. Nothing to continue to freak out about like it's the end-all be-all.
I never understood why people say this. Halo added a lot of things to the fps formula, many of which have become staples of the genre. It gave you dedicated melee and grenade buttons first of all, which along with recharging shields changed the flow of combat a whole lot. It also limited the player to carrying two weapons which meant that you constantly had to prioritize which weapons you needed, and added a new layer of strategy to the game. It was also one of the first FPS games to have vehicles be so seamlessly integrated into the action.
Most of those things had been done before, but Halo integrated better than anyone else had. The level design was bad in some areas, but because of the refined AI and controls, Bungie could pretty much drop a bunch of enemies, vehicles and weapons randomly into an open area and the encounter would still be dynamic and fun.
The Metal Gear Solid franchise. I've beaten the first, and nearly beat the second. I like the gameplay for the most part, and the idea of a stealth game appeals to me. But the story is fucking ridiculous, the voice acting - sans Cam Clarke - nauseating, and the cutscene-to-game ratio is way out of balance. I don't find obese, rollerblading bombers, Native American behemoths wielding chainguns, or bisexual vampires interesting. I don't think that Otacon's admission of being seduced/raped by his stepmother necessary, especially when the fate of the world is hanging in the balance.
I don't get the series, nor the breadth of its popularity. Is the series supposed to be satire or a parody? Is it to be appreciated like a Micheal Bay film where ludicrous bullshit is topped by even more ludicrous bullshit, with awesome explosions and the worst possible dialogue scattered throughout?
Any racing game besides Mario Kart, Diddy Kong Racing, or Burnout.
I don't know how it's entertaining; so much of the genre comes down to just memorizing the course and knowing how to brake-turn (And, occasionally, memorizing the shortcuts, which kinda defeats the purpose of them being shortcuts to me). MK may get a lot of flak for having random bullshit, but dammit it's entertaining random shit; and in Burnout I get rewarded for driving like a jackass. I'd much rather drive like a jackass/have random shit happening than play a game where I move the joystick while holding A and occasionally hit B in the same way every time I play the course.
You know I realized the other day that I don't like very many video games. I hate most RPGs, most FPSs, most brawlers, most fighters, all racing games, and puzzlers are fine but once you've played one you've played them all more or less.
Really the only genres I like with any sort of consistency are platformers and arcadey action games.
Any racing game besides Mario Kart, Diddy Kong Racing, or Burnout.
I don't know how it's entertaining; so much of the genre comes down to just memorizing the course and knowing how to brake-turn (And, occasionally, memorizing the shortcuts, which kinda defeats the purpose of them being shortcuts to me). MK may get a lot of flak for having random bullshit, but dammit it's entertaining random shit; and in Burnout I get rewarded for driving like a jackass.
This is about it for me. While there's a few select games I don't like here or there, I generally like most games/major franchises. But racing games that aren't kart racers just don't do it for me.
I say this in every one of these threads, but I cannot comprehend how people love Resident Evil 4 as much as they do.
It has a horrible camera that's usually too close, making Leon take up too much of the screen, and it's too static to actually be able to see much of anything. Then it's coupled with awful, awful tank controls. Put the two together and you have an experience that is, to me, a horrible, frustrating mess of a game. It's not really very hard because the enemies are designed around you having shitty controls and a terrible camera, but just trying to move around during combat is more of a chore than anything that resembles fun.
I can't even acknowledge that it's a good game not to my tastes because as far as I can tell, it's a pretty poorly designed game that uses cheap camera and control tricks to up the tension in an otherwise pretty tame game.
Yeah, Resident Evil's a big one for me. It's kinda creepy, but by the time the scares start ramping up I'm already raging so hard at the god-awful controls that my rage is overriding my fear and the game doesn't scare me at all; and without any tension it's just a mediocre action game at best.
RE4 looks pretty fun, but I've never played it. I want to though.
Posts
Kingdom Hearts I didn't like. I mean, I guess I didn't understand it either. The appeal. The presentation was abhorrant to me.
edit: guess so
Xbox : gunst4r
yup.
Somewhere around the time that the boss of the Alice in Wonderland world was some bullshit clock monster that had nothing to do with Alice in Wonderland was the point where I gave the game back to the friend lending it to me.
Pretty much every JRPG that doesn't have the word "Mario" in it I don't care about at all.
Also the reason these threads always turn into shitfests is because no one ever wants to acknowledge that maybe just because they don't like something doesn't mean it's bad, and that maybe it's okay for different people to have different tastes?
I mean Final Fantasy games bore me to fucking tears but there must be something in there that keeps people comin' back to them.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Thirded. It seems to be a competent shooter, but I don't understand why it's so massive.
I'm sure it's because it was the first exposure to an FPS to many console-only people, but as a long-time PC gamer the situation is the cause of much comedy.
Yup. Started off playing amazing PC FPS games like Tribes and then I see everyone freak out about Halo and it's just baffling.
I'm not into multiplayer games, so that throws TF, TF2, L4D, all of those right out the window. But let's focus on the Half-Life series, because I gave all of those (even the episodes in The Orange Box) an honest shot. I played all the way through both HL1 and HL2, confident that there must be something I was missing. But there wasn't. It's dull. So dull. Unimaginative worlds and enemies. Boring firefights that I could half-sleep my way through. Non-existent story (I've heard people say that the story is "there" but you have to actively seek it out, etc. But the world is so damn dull that I'm not going to do that). The protagonist is mute, which I might be okay with, except that everyone he interacts with (yes, even Alyx) is so devoid of personality that they might as well be mute too. Half-Life 1 was pretty decent about setting you along your path, but half of the time in HL2 I had no fucking clue where to go or what to do, especially during the (awfully-controlling) boating segments. Also, too many stupid physics "puzzles" relying on simple machines that children are taught about in, what, kindergarten? Glad this guy's a professor.
On the black screen
Okay come on now.
"Oh man I am tittering so much because I was aware of a genre of video games before most people were."
I mean seriously? Seriously.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
To be fair, I still think Goldeneye (N64) is awesome as all hell. By today's standards it's a lump of steaming dog turd... Halo just didn't wow me at all. I suppose it might have had it been my first FPS.
TF2 is particularly tragic because I absolutely adore everything about the game, from the idea to the aesthetics, and I regularly visit the TF2 Blog because of valve's hilarious writers. But I just don't have any fun playing the game and I do not know why. I don't feel particularly good when I win, and I'm not chastened when I die.
More broadly, I don't like dungeon crawlers...including Diablo. I know it's silly, but something about the majority of games being spent in dungeons just grates me on a fundamental level. I'll still probably pick D3 when it comes out though to see if my mind's changed.
On the black screen
Awe man really? Fuck I was all gonna pick it up on Wii too. I was afraid of that.
This too.
Do you think Zelda is amazing and great? Then you will very likely enjoy Okami if you're not Unbreakable Vow.
Always with the "Unbreakable Vow clause": Consider this a normal statement, except when Unbreakable is around.
Though I'm very probably the only person on this board who hated every single Clover game.
How is this different from anything ever.
Someone comes up with something new, a group of people adopt it and talk about how great it is, and eventually a watered down version comes along that the public picks up on. This is just how shit generally works.
I mean all you're basically saying is "man I liked FPSs before they were cool." You are not better than Halo fans because you played Wolfenstein and Doom.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
More recently Final Fantasy IV for the DS. Every one loves it, and the remake is pretty nice... until I get to a point were I can't use any metal weapons or armor. And I have to go all over creation to find non-metallic items to equip. And I have to play it multiple times to get the most out of it? No FFIV, fuck YOU.
Age of Empires on the PC always seemed rather punishing to me and the play never quite clicked with me. It was like I would always get invaded way earlier than I felt I should have been and it just drove me batty.
The Kingdom Hearts for the GBA... Chain of Memories? Just too much going on in the fights. I really hated that card dial or whatever.
In the too much going on corner is also The World Ends With You, but the game saves itself in that I can play it still while totally ignoring the top screen crap. I would be much more effective if I bothered with it of course, but I finished the game just fine with out ever bothering with it and concentrating on the stylus combat. So TWEWY almost made it into the popular games I never understood list but didn't.
Oo\ Ironsizide
Duh.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Hideo Kojima's writing is the saddest thing.
I never understood why people say this. Halo added a lot of things to the fps formula, many of which have become staples of the genre. It gave you dedicated melee and grenade buttons first of all, which along with recharging shields changed the flow of combat a whole lot. It also limited the player to carrying two weapons which meant that you constantly had to prioritize which weapons you needed, and added a new layer of strategy to the game. It was also one of the first FPS games to have vehicles be so seamlessly integrated into the action.
Most of those things had been done before, but Halo integrated better than anyone else had. The level design was bad in some areas, but because of the refined AI and controls, Bungie could pretty much drop a bunch of enemies, vehicles and weapons randomly into an open area and the encounter would still be dynamic and fun.
I don't get the series, nor the breadth of its popularity. Is the series supposed to be satire or a parody? Is it to be appreciated like a Micheal Bay film where ludicrous bullshit is topped by even more ludicrous bullshit, with awesome explosions and the worst possible dialogue scattered throughout?
I don't know how it's entertaining; so much of the genre comes down to just memorizing the course and knowing how to brake-turn (And, occasionally, memorizing the shortcuts, which kinda defeats the purpose of them being shortcuts to me). MK may get a lot of flak for having random bullshit, but dammit it's entertaining random shit; and in Burnout I get rewarded for driving like a jackass. I'd much rather drive like a jackass/have random shit happening than play a game where I move the joystick while holding A and occasionally hit B in the same way every time I play the course.
Really the only genres I like with any sort of consistency are platformers and arcadey action games.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
This is about it for me. While there's a few select games I don't like here or there, I generally like most games/major franchises. But racing games that aren't kart racers just don't do it for me.
The Pipe Vault|Twitter|Steam|Backloggery|3DS:1332-7703-1083
It has a horrible camera that's usually too close, making Leon take up too much of the screen, and it's too static to actually be able to see much of anything. Then it's coupled with awful, awful tank controls. Put the two together and you have an experience that is, to me, a horrible, frustrating mess of a game. It's not really very hard because the enemies are designed around you having shitty controls and a terrible camera, but just trying to move around during combat is more of a chore than anything that resembles fun.
I can't even acknowledge that it's a good game not to my tastes because as far as I can tell, it's a pretty poorly designed game that uses cheap camera and control tricks to up the tension in an otherwise pretty tame game.
RE4 looks pretty fun, but I've never played it. I want to though.
I could never forgive it for not being Super Smash Brothers.