Call of Duty. I had fun for the first few and Modern Warfare, but then it just kept going.
Same! I could just never get into it even though I enjoy first person shooters
FIFA, NBA, Madden or any popular sports game, really. Just to start off, I don’t like sports games in general, but that’s on me. The part I don’t understand is the level of hype for each new iteration when for the last decade it’s been the same game with the same engine, same effects, slightly different roster and sometimes even missing features. Like, what are people excited for exactly? More of the same?
I can’t speak for the other games, but as a former player, FIFA did change a lot each year, usually its changes to physics, game speed, skill moves, mini games, and ofc graphics. Not $60 worth of game changes, but I’d argue it’s similar with things like call of duty. Best value was always to skip every other year.
Also gambling. Doesn’t get talked about enough but FIFA YouTubers are more or less payed by EA to shill packs and get people (usually teens) addicted to opening them. I probably bought $200 a year on packs from 2016-2020, usually money I didnt have too. Mostly why I stopped buying the games. (Stopped playing CounterStrike for the same reason)
These days, I just casually play mods of older games and get football manager every other game.
Also gambling.
I can’t believe I completely forgot about the gambling aspect, good call. The trailer for NBA 2k20 was especially disgusting in this regard.
I had an aggressive gambling problem as a teen. 2016 would have been my worst because I was still gambling on counter strike skin sites. I’d save up every dollar mom would give me to run to the store or whatever (I’d lie and say things were more expensive than they were), throw it onto prepaid visas and just waste it.
I can’t even begin to describe the amount that I spent.
I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you’re doing better now.
Dark souls and the like. It just feels tedious and boring. Monster Hunter is the same for me
Are you too skilled for Dark Souls, sir? The process of killing enemies and being afraid of dying thus losing 20 minutes of progress is the game itself.
Nah definitely not too skilled, I just got burnt out on ds2 and blood borne. Felt like the same thing over and over again in a new pretty area.
CoD and Battlefield. There is so much war in the modern world and all it creates is sorrow. Not sure why i’d want to re-enact that.
Pokemon. Behind the pleasant facade of the game series, there is a reality: people kidnap animals in the forest, lock them in pokeballs, and force them to fight in arenas, at least until they are damaged. I didn’t understand this game series when I was younger and I still don’t. Do people really like playing this game?
I enjoyed Pokemon Red and Pokemon Snap. I’m vegan and don’t associate playing Pokemon with animal cruelty as the video game is fictitious.
By the way, surprisingly, cartoons are also fictional, but for some reason, child abuse in cartoons is 18+ marked or prohibited. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Ratings among different media are indeed strangely incoherent.
Well, I have nothing against the players. It’s just that it’s really hard for me to play this series.
The bad guys in Black and White were Pokemon rights activists and your heroic allies were watching them speak being like “everyone knows Pokemon love being captured and made to fight each other, these guys are a bunch of nutjobs!”
Then later it turns out the Pokemon rights thing was just a cover for something nefarious because nobody could actually believe what these people are claiming to.
Ah, as one person on YouTube dubbed it, the debate and switch
I somewhat understand the game, although i never was into it. But if you look at the newer games, they are just shitty looking cash grabs. But pokemon fans are insane and they would buy anything. I watched one or two movies with my nephews and god damn, they are super shitty. Don’t get me started on pokemon cards…
I hope the movies are not the same as the cartoons of the 90s. I once watched a couple of episodes where Ash sends Pikachu to fight in the arena and then cries when Pikachu gets hit hard. I just wanted to ask, “buddy, you literally sent Pokemon into the damn arena where he was supposed to FIGHT, what were you hoping for?” But in general, I understand you now. In fact, the plot is not important at all. People just collect Pokemon like things, like Magic the gathering cards. Now I’m not sure if this is as insensitive or logical as possible.
I tried one of the old parts, it’s incredibly repetitive and boring.
Collecting monsters and fighting them is fun, but Pokemon, to me, is just not the best game for that.
GTA. I’m a SciFi and fantasy guy so it just doesn’t do anything for me.
Mobile games that have a cooldown timer when you play too much. Oh you don’t want me to play your game anymore? Cool. Uninstalled.
I do get those, but not that I think they’re good. You have to understand the design philosophy is not to make a good game. It’s to make a game that’s addicting and wallet draining.
The timer does two things. It makes you plan your time around it, always coming back as timers end (often with notifications when they finish). It also creates an obstacle they can sell you the solution to. Its pretty antithetical to good game design, but it’s profitable game design.
Persona 5 and disco Elysium.
Gameplay akin to pulling your own teeth out but you don’t even get to choose which tooth you want to pull
Persona 5 is one of my least favorite games of all time and I regularly rant about how much I hate the UI/UX.
Wdym (genuine), persona 5 gameplay is the best turn based system with shin megami tensei v
It’s an anime with a “press a to view next scene” feature
This brushes aside the superb combat and dungeon design it offers. But that’s unfortunate you don’t like visual novels
Don’t really have one of those I suppose :3… even with games that are very much not my cup of tea I can see what aspects may be enjoyable to other people
Yeah, it’s actually the concept of not understanding the popularity that is alien to me. Even with something like QWOP I can imagine someone liking the extreme challenge along with the ridiculous animations.
Final fantasy and everything Hideo Kojima. I don’t get it.
“Everything Hideo Kojima,” do you mean Metal Gear Solid 5 and Death Stranding?
I find it hard to believe that you’ve played his other games and still have this opinion. It’s much more believable that you’re kind of young and only played what was released when you were around.
No I never got those because I don’t like Hideo Kojima, watching about a hour of each on twitch was good enough to tell it’s not gonna be significantly more my taste than the other MGS games, nice try at patronizing an opinion simply because you don’t share it though, real cute.
It’s okay if I was right about my assumption.
You’re inexperienced, and it makes sense you would be insecure about that.
Dense and patronizing, classic Kojima fanboy, just adorable.
If you don’t like him, that’s fine. You’re just basing your opinion off of what I assumed you were.
Now you’re insecure and attacking me instead of learning. I can’t say I expected more from the next generation.
Having just finished the first Death Stranding, I agree with you re: Kojima.
Don’t get me wrong, the game is great; I ended up enjoying the delivery aspect more and more as it went on. But man, the story is…tough. The broad strokes of it are interesting, but I feel like the inertia of it got lost in the attempt to make it a multiple-hour open world.
As a whole, the game is undeniably an incredible piece of work. While you’re immersed in it it’s wonderful. But when you stop to think about it for even a few seconds, it flakes away.
And, like I said, while you’re playing, you’re really into it, you get to the end game, you ‘defeat’ the final boss. Then there’s the best part of 90 minutes worth of exposition to explain the parts of the story that weren’t explained DURING THE STORY. Never before have I played a game that had to put so much effort into explaining itself.
But somehow it all works. The experience of playing it is excellent. Or maybe Kojima just has his own reality distortion field.
BioShock! I somehow missed it years ago when it came out, so I’ve had nothing to go off of for all this time, and I was excited to finally have a chance to sit down with it recently after 15+ years of hearing people rave about how amazing and fun it is.
The artists involved were obviously very skilled, it’s visually gorgeous even a decade and a half later, and the sound design is top notch. No complaints there, and if that’s what the hype was all about, then it’s well-deserved.
However, the plot was almost non-existent, leaving me wondering what the hell my character was motivated by for the vast majority of the first game. Then there were a couple “twists” that I saw coming a mile away near the very end of the game. It felt like watching a young adult fantasy show or something, I dunno.
I managed to finish the first game, feeling very disappointed, and figured the 2nd one might be better. I made it only a few hours into that before I lost interest in it entirely and have yet to drag myself back to finish it. The story was maybe slightly better in BioShock 2, but not by much and not enough to keep me going.
There are people I know who are obsessed with this game series, and I just do not get it, even after giving it more of a chance to hook me than I give to most games. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they played it initially when they were kids/teenagers, and nostalgia has carried them through the series to overlook how utterly dull it actually is. I’m not going to challenge people on it or anything, I’m glad people enjoy it, but I don’t understand the why (aside from the art).
The Bioshock games are the most popular and least good of their spiritual franchise. Prey (2017) and System Shock 1 and 2 are all fantastic games. For story SS1 is my favorite, while Prey has the most developed gameplay (perhaps obviously given the release date). I still haven’t played more than a couple hours of SS2, but it’s a classic on the level of Deus Ex.
SS1 also has the distinction of being possibly the most influential game ever made. It’s bonkers how many systems and ideas it was the first to explore or use. A very faithful remake came out recently, with one for SS2 under development.
(Edit: just saw that I somehow missed you mentioned this already, sorry! I’ll leave my comment here, as a second opinion about it though!)
Yes! System Shock is one of my favorite games ever. If you get a chance, check out the recent remaster/remake of SS1, they did an excellent job with it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/482400/System_Shock/
Looks like they also released a remaster of SS2 a few months ago, I haven’t played that yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing if they did as good a job as with the first one.
From the other side, I felt gameplay was very underwhelming for that game. Navigating it and fighting felt boring and repetitive. And I do like boring and repetitive games.
Not a series but I tried playing Witcher 3 because of the meme about how much redditors loved it. I played for about 10 hours and got bored and never bothered playing again. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad game but I didn’t understand the hype. Also, despite playing it years late with a decent graphics card, I had regular issues with frames. That is not a performant game.
I will say Witcher 3 kind of forced AA/AAA games to up the quality of their writing. It still stands up as some of the best writing in games, but maybe a little less obviously so after a decade of other competent game stories.
What’s really exceptional is how pretty much every sidequest is also very well written, with believable characters and compelling situations. Many games, again especially before W3, might have pretty good main plots, but the sidequests would just be endless dross with maybe one or two standouts.
As for performance, you probably enabled some silly options. Both Witcher 2 and 3 pushed the envelope in crazy ways for PC graphics; there’s an ultra setting on W2 that was still bringing GPUs to their knees a decade later as well. The game still looks great if you turn it down a little.
Yet unmentioned: Halo. I remember being introduced to the first one and being completely unimpressed. It just wasn’t that much technically better than the competition, and the world as far as I could see was super boring.
You were probably a PC player. Halo was designed for the console experience, which is why (on top of massive marketing) it did so well. It really dragged shooter design into the mud for years, arguably we’ve never recovered.
Halo was one of the few decent games xbox fans had to themselves.
Most of the top-tier developers made sure to release on PS2.
Hollow Knight. I know the new game is coming out tomorrow (?) but I just couldn’t get into the way the game feels. I love Metroidvanias but something about Hollow Knight and it’s gameplay just didn’t make me come back for more.
It’s the walking and movement for me. Getting to places takes ages. Compared it most other metroidvanias, which have denser fast travel and/or more movement options, HK is lacking, the dash is marginally faster and the ultra dash is situational, basically only for dedicated spots. This isn’t as much of an issue in most Soulsborne games, which HK was going for, but you don’t go back to old areas as much there. Even Elden Ring’s open world throws a shitton of fast travel spots and has everything you need in a small hub.
I will admit the combat didn’t gel with me too much either, despite being a FromSoft fan. Not sure about that one, maybe it’s the precision of movement required.
Maybe Silksong will do better with Hornet’s faster movement, but I won’t be buying it now.
For fast travel, part of the design is about shortcuts, which I prefer. It’s closer to the Dark Souls 1 philosophy instead of the later games. One cohesive world that makes sense that you exist within and learn, instead of fast traveling every 10 meters.
I agree with the dash though. Spamming it to move a little faster was so annoying. I’m playing Silksong and the new dash you can hold to sprint, and it’s much nicer.
The thing is that even Dark Souls 1 had the decency to put the main blacksmith near a warp bonfire (and still decently close to the hub before you get warp, Blighttown being the only stretch far from one. You can reinforce anywhere, mind you, but Andre’s the main source of Titanite shards anyway), and letting you redeem your currency items at any moment.
Hollow Knight has you dragging your feet to both for what felt like 5 minutes, and then another 5 minutes to get back to the fast travel point, and then maybe some 5 more to get to wherever you might want to spend that currency on, because few of them are in what’s supposed to be the hub of the game. Actually, just fuck the currency items in particular. Technically it makes currency more precious than Souls’, where you can pull 30k at any moment if you want, but it’s just a pain the ass in practice.
I remember the merchant in the brown toxic place taking time in particular. Maybe there was some skill issue there where I should have ignored them and went on shopping sprees only every 5 hours or so, rather than trying to make things easier regularly, but in either case I didn’t like it.
Well, Hollow Knight you upgrade what, like 3 times, maybe 5. I don’t remember. It’s not many. Dark Souls is designed such that you do it much more frequently. If you want to do the spelty upgrades though, you’re in for a trip. That and many shops are total pains in the ass to reach in DS. HK does include a shop near the main base, as well as a lot of other important characters. (Also, it definitely isn’t 5m each direction. Maybe if you fight everything on the way, but not if you just run.)
It’s fine to not like it though. I think you’re misremembering how bad it was, but it isn’t as easy as most games make things. In my opinion that’s good. It makes things feel more real and earned. If everything is just conveniently at the hub or in your menu then it would just feel far too gamey and simple. There’s already plenty of games like that. HK is something different.
I played it, but I just found it mind-numbing.
Metroidvania always do that to me.
That’s crazy… The only complaint I ever hear about the game that I have to begrudgingly accept and move on is from people who just detest any amount of backtracking, i.e. people who hate metroidvanias.
Everything about the game’s feel, from the controls and movement to the art and atmosphere, I would rate as best-in-class. Unless you get creeped out by bugs or cannot stand anything animated, I cannot fathom what your complaint is.
I’m curious how much you played – I will say that the game does bury the lead a bit, both artistically and mechanically. The first area seems almost monochrome and until you get the dash your prime form of locomotion is walking. But once you’ve been to a few different areas you start to realize how much bigger the game world is than you initially thought.
I think one issue with the game is that you should probably play largely unguided. Most gamers today can’t play games without a guide up though. Yeah, the game is going to suck if you aren’t engaging with the main premise of exploration and discovery.
I put about 10 hours into the game. I think the way hits and getting hit feels. It’s been a while but doesn’t the screen pause slightly when it happens?
I know people complain about the difficulty but I was fine with what I experienced in it. I grew up in the 80s playing the original Mega Man games hahaha.
Mmm, there is a bit of knockback. There’s a trinket you can equip that basically eliminates that, but learning to deal with it is just part of the combat flow.
This is what I’m talking about. There’s a pause when you take hits. It reminds me of how Zelda games makes combat feel in the 3D titles.
Oh okay yeah on big hits there is a bit of hitstop.
It seems like more reddit indie shit. It would make sense there are people who can’t comprehend how others wouldn’t like it.
Reddit is a bubble.
Elder Scrolls and Fallout. This style of game is just super hard to get into. I get super bored after a few hours
Which have you played? There are multiple eras for them. I’d say Morrowind is easier to enjoy personally, but you have to be OK with reading. The later you go the more brain dead they become.
Tried Oblivion, Skyrim, FA3, and FA New Vegas.
Morrowind looks like an objectively good game but, I suspect once again I’d fail to enjoy/finish it
If you don’t like any of those, odds are you won’t like Morrowind either.
Bethesda has been making the same game since Daggerfall. It’s not for everyone.
I get super bored after a few hours
You would’ve beaten another game in that period of time.
True, I often feel games are far too long for my taste. I would love more games in the 3-5hr length
