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.
The only good part of spore is the first part of the game, going from single cell to multi cellular.
I found the rest of the game convoluted, and this despite playing it to the end. And replaying it many times over
That said my brain can’t believe it only came out in 2008. I could have sworn it was a 90s game.
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.
Sonic CD.
For years and years it was a mythical sonic game, a rare golden-era game hardly anyone had got to play. And I’d slightly mis-remembered it appearing way more advanced and fluid than a mega drive game.
After being obsessed with Sonic in my youth, after finally getting to play it, it just felt like a less enjoyable Sonic 1.
I’ve never even bothered to finish it.
My personal experience with the Mega Drive Sonic games was always “fun first 2 stages, not so fun afterwards”
I had a really love/hate relationship with the pinball stages in Sonic 2.
Elden Ring… I’m sorry I just didn’t enjoy It even after beating a few bosses
God of War: Ragnarok.
I don’t have a console so I had to wait for it to port to PC, then wait til it went on sale and I could snag it at a more reasonable price. I loved the one before it and was so excited to play. The first couple hours were good, and then I felt like it was an endless repetition of fight a boss, talk about our feelings while we walk to fight another boss, talk about our feelings some more, and repeat. The part where you have to play as Atreus helping that giant girl do her daily chores made me want to weep from boredom and it just went on forever. I think I gave up shortly after Freya met her brother again, but I don’t really remember the storyline because it was just so mind numbingly exhausting, like listening in on a bunch of therapy sessions (and I’m super pro “take care of your mental health and go to therapy if you need it”, but if I have to listen to a literal god whining and acting willfully helpless for an entire video game I’m out).
I have been told that it is actually a good game that gets better and I should give it another go, but I’m not sure if it’s good for MY mental health.
Breath Edge. I was looking for a new subnautica-like experience, having given up on any expectations from the sequel currently in development when the new owners got rid of the original devs (imo just pirate the original so they don’t get money from owning that, too).
Maybe I dropped it too soon, but Breath Edge didn’t give that sense of making progress. I was stuck having to go back to the same starting point after every trip. Those trips are longer, but I found progressing and exploring to just be annoying and frustrating rather than fun and rewarding and what you do find underwhelming. I stopped when it looked like it wanted me to set up “path extenders” for kms with effects that frost the helmet to 0 visibility. There’s probably some mechanisms I’m about to unlock that will make those easier but I just don’t want to.
Maybe I’ll try looking at a walkthrough to see what the next steps are and decide if it’s worthwhile (maybe I’m missing something important that makes the rest of it much less of a pain), but there’s plenty of other games to play so I’m not worried.
It does have a certain shift once you reach a certain checkpoint, but it is so long to get to that point. The progression curve is just not right.
Control. stuck in an office with dull attack options. I played about half way through then looked up my progress and walked away. Way too dull for me. Friends were raving about it.
I think the ray tracing drew a lot of people in. It certainly did me. I think it also rides on its reputation as a big-budget spiritual adaptation of the SCP Foundation.
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
I am so glad for game pass (at least before the price hike).
I tried Starfield and found it just so contrived and boring. To being made to touch and gather the weird space magic stuff in the asteroid to just suddenly being given a space ship to the inane combat and awful environments.
And this is someone coming from over 5,000 hours in F04 (and 2000 across Fallout titles, and God knows how much across Morrowwind, Skyrim, Oblivion etc). I am very much used to Bethesda jank.
But jeebus, Starfield is as compelling as wet toast. I read the synopsis of the game and was utterly relieved to have missed wasting countless hours in what has to be one of the worst written and developed games of the past 10 years.
That said it is clear Starfield was a huge pump and dump scheme by Zenimax to sell Bethesda to MS under the idea Starfield was gonna be the next Elder Scroll/fallout block buster. (not to mention populating stories about giving Sony an exclusive on Starfield to make MS jealous)
Little did they know they were buying pure Todd co
kepium that had been cut with a shit tone of sweet’n lowI played it out of morbid curiosity after everyone started talking how bad it was. I went in like “It can’t be THAT bad, can it?” - and indeed, it can. I’m still amazed that menus are fucking .swf files (Adobe Flash for those too young to recognize it)
It’s one of the least credible scifi settings I’ve ever seen. Also, despite the whole “multiverse” the main story tries to paint, it’s much closer to a time loop, given how nothing changes and effectively none of your actions are acknowledged by anyone. City NPCs won’t even react to your
dragon shoutsForce usetotally unique space magic, unless it hits them, then it’s just like being shot. Even Oblivion guards would tell you to holster your weapons, Starfield guards won’t even grunt if you shoot around like a maniac (but hit nobody)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 similarly priced, 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.
Cyberpunk - great environment but gameplay was boring and certain events were downright horrible, like the one were you watch/examine a past event.
Same! I played it for a while got a nonlethal hacker attack pattern down pretty well, i WAS enjoying the story but its a game that makes you feel like you SHOULD be doing the busy work. Then i just stopped because i didn’t want to.
Also something about the absurdity of just sprinting through town smaking strangers to help the obvisouly corrupt cops felt like a tonally stupid thing to do.
South Park: Snow Day! I loved Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole, so I really wanted to like Snow Day, but unfortunately it’s just not very good. I wouldn’t even call it bad, it’s just middling in almost every way. Now to add insult to injury, it was also pretty short.
If they make another South Park game it won’t be a day one purchase for me, I’ve learned my lesson. I can wait for a sale.
Funny for me it was RDR2. I still think I probably would have liked it if I stuck with it, but 20 minutes in I was told that I would have to regularly clean my gun and hunt to feed my camp etc. and it just felt like doing a bunch of chores and I noped straight out.
Skulls and bones. Sailing in black flag is probably my favorite gaming experience ever. Ubisoft announced a sailing game right after. All they had to do was add some upgrade paths so people could set up their ships for different playstyles. Like 10 years later, the game finally came out. It’s the only game I’ve ever refunded. Everything about it was terrible.
I have a friend who defines his gaming existence by black flag. He’s bought it, multiple times on multiple consoles out of sheer love for the game.
Skull and bones came out, I expected that to define the next 6 months of my life. Not a peep. Mentioned it and he just shrugs and goes: they had something good, and ubisofted it (this is after they’ve lost all consumer goodwill). I can’t help but agree
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.
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)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.
I played DNF shortly after release 🏴☠️ , but I was already an adult by then and was aware of the development hell that the game went thru. Started playing not expecting much and I was still disappointed.
“Power armor is for pussies!” - says the guy whose game is almost literally a shitty Halo: only 2 weapons, limited ammo, regenerating
shieldego.
- 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 and are okay to persevere a little, you’ll probably have a good time.
No other game for me has ever matched the feeling of exploration and discovery, and that is only possible because the game gives you a long leash.
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!
I too came in here thinking about outer wilds.
The controls are less realistic than you think, because they attempted to have the ship correct itself but it constantly fought me. I program spacecraft for a living, I know how the orbital mechanics and movement in 3D space works, and they made it super frustrating it made me rage quit the game for years. I only finished it because a close friend wanted me to experience the story.
For me, the story >!was the games weakest point. Putting together the history and the question of “what happened” was cool, but the dialogue was insufferable, I hated reading the story walls and having to string together the order things were said. Then to finally put everything together, get a half baked story about being marooned on effectively a desert island and it ends with a shrug and “yup, everyone died, you too”… Man fuck that.!<
Uptick for the awesome nickname.
Thanks mate, it’s my wish to live up to that name.
Now, though, read my comment too!Haven’t played any of the RDR series. I have RDR2 but it won’t work in my Linux box.
A game I had high hopes for was Witcher 3, simply based on internet hype. Somehow it doesn’t work for me. Maybe I was expecting a better Skyrim. The main character is too opinionated. The immersion is not there 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.🙂
- CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077:
