Any popular game genres you just can't get into?
I'll go first: turn-based combat.
While not as common as they once were, there are still a lot of games, AAA and indie alike, that get massively popular and are known for their supposedly excellent turn-based combat. Games that are probably what a lot of people who don't care for turn-based combat make an exception for, for one reason or another. Say they really enjoy how Undertale is "the RPG where you don't need to kill anything", or how Persona 5 is "so stylish". Also, there's the classic JRPGs of old, such as the older Final Fantasy games, or these more military grid based kind of games like Fire Emblem.
I just don't "get" any of it. I've never beaten a game featuring turn-based combat from start to finish. Yes, that includes Pokemon games. I don't know what it is specifically. I've beaten games of basically every other genre, but when I start any turn-based game because of some friend recommendation or good reviews, I try it, am genuinely invested for a couple hours, then my interest in the game just dies all of a sudden. I don't think it's any one issue really, probably a lot of different things.
Anyone else never really got into these kinds of games? Or do you have some other game genre that everyone else swears by that you just don't care for?
Battle royales. The only ones I could play for any amount of time were PUBG mobile and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt. I probably have about 10 hours played combined between the 2. I guess i just don't find the core gameplay loop that fun, why would i spend 10-15 minutes gathering stuff with barely any fighting just for the last few minutes of the match when i can play a normal shooter where i can fight people the whole time. The fact that i suck at these games definitely doesn't help either because i usually end up gathering stuff and dying without ever having a fighting chance, sometimes without even seeing the guy who killed me.
I strongly agree with this sentiment. It's absurd that the first half or more of a round is just preparing to actually play the game, unless you're purposely trying to get yourself into trouble early on, which the game discourages by giving you basically nothing to start with. There's entirely too much downtime to justify the unique and occasionally fun moments that can occur when people finally do bump into each other.
In a way, the extraction shooter trend that has popped up recently is a response to this. It keeps the higher stakes of dying by making the player lose anything they have on them, but mitigates the issue of a slow start by allowing players to start prepared and encourages them to congregate at objectives/valuable locations. Players have a reward incentive to seek each other out and take each others' loot, rather than just staying alive by any means.
I honestly wished that more battle royale games would randomize your drop point rather than let everyone parachute down from a common point. The parachuting section is too slow and it also means anyone nearby knows where you are and can hunt you down easily. They can be fun when you're out in the field with that enjoyable tension of trying to find other players and avoid being detected. But when you get shotgunned moments after you land and don't have any way of defending yourself, it's practically an insult.
Fortnite is particularly bad at this.
Spellbreak kind of fixed this. During pre-game you selected your drop point on the map and could see what drop points were empty snd which were hotspots (you couldn’t see exact numbers, but an indicator grew around a drop point ss more players selected it), so you could decide for yourself if you wanted a slower start or go to a hith traffic area immediately. When the match started you fell from the sky in your selected area.
You should try some extraction shooters.
Avoid Tarkov of course, try Hunt Showdown.
Sorry for replying to a comment this old, but why should Tarkov be avoided? I was considering buying it a while back
Tarkov has a design that revolves heavily into the GaaS cycle. It hides that behind the "we are making this realistic" while all that happens is that you invest lots of time into it and when inevitably you lose it all, you don't want that time to be wasted and start again, which helps the company increase metrics and whatnot.
It's basically a tedious exercise in repetition that self sustain due to the refusal from a player to accept that the game is just a big russian roulette.
For me that's the most fun part of it. It's really tense and there's a lot of strategy involved in picking places to loot while outrunning the death zone, especially because running into another player early game is about a 50/50 shot of you dying, and a solid shot of you both dying, and they're going to be making those same decisions.
Plus, there's tradeoffs on top of tradeoffs. Vehicles don't spawn as much in out of the way spots. If you're not going for one of the spots where you're immediately in the thick of the fighting, you're going to be walking for most of the game, which makes paying attention to the time limits even more important.
Sid Meier has a philosophy that good game design is about giving players meaningful and interesting choices. The most meaningful and interesting choices in a battle royale happen in the part of the game that you dismissed as not really playing it. And doing well in that part of the game is the only thing that even gives you a shot at winning the match.
Not sure if it counts as a Battle royale, but Among Us I just can't get into. I'm not a huge fan of a lot of pvp games, things Fortnite and PUBG just don't call out to me enough to try more than a handleful of times. But Among Us I tried a few and, I'm not sure what it is that stops me, but I cannot enjoy it at all.
I can understand why you wouldn't like Among Us, but I really wouldn't classify it as a PvP game. I guess in a way it is if you're the imposter, but it's a completely different game for everyone else.
It's a video game version of an old party game.
It's another category called social deception games
Oh wow, I'm just surprised someone else out there played VTM bloodhunt. My and my friends loved it because we're currently running a VTM tabletop game, but nobody else I know would give it the time of day, and apart from banner ads I didn't see anything about it online really.
This thread is my first time hearing about it, which is surprising because the original VTM stays high on everybody's best-of RPG lists year after year
I think the only BR I managed to enjoy so far is, curiously enough, Tetris 99 on the Switch. It is a BR, but it's also just utterly chaotic Tetris. I also liked Mario 35, but that's sadly over. 😭
For me it's roguelikes.
I think it's because the genre is explicitly built about replay, and I'm at a stage in my life where I can barely finish games once. Nevermind multiple times. So while roguelikes on the surface are a solution to this (individually tiny runs, fit in nicely), their theming around this concept just makes them uninteresting to play. More so because many of them are absolute timesinks, asking for anywhere from 30-100 hours or so.
I'm with you. The only roguelikes I've been able to play have to have some sort of progression for each run. Hades was the first one I completed, and that's because the story continues with each run.
If more roguelikes did this, I'd be all for it.
I'd recommend Vampire Survivor - very fast paced and has progression after each run!
Already on it! Perfect mobile game if you ask me.
Same. It felt like the roguelike was just the implementation detail of the combat mechanics for Hades, not the actual game, that was the story being told through each iteration. Loved Hades, one of the really really few roguelikes I could stand for a long time.
I also played a fair bit of Dead Cells, but beating the boss once was really enough for me there, that already took forever in multiple drop-and-pick-back-up sessions over more than a year.
Yeah I felt the same way with Dead Cells. It was fun, but the fun wears off quickly on that one for me at least.
I've loved Moonlighter. Highly recommend that one. Story was great! Plays similar to SNES Zelda with dodge mechanics.
Currently I'm playing Everspace. Story isn't strong, but the gameplay is fun. I'd still recommend it if you like dogfighting in space.
The term for games that carry progression elements over after death is "roguelite". I like them much more than roguelikes but I'm generally not a huge fan of the genre. Hades was really good though. I also enjoyed Risk of Rain and Dead Cells.
It's interesting to me that you say you're not into roguelikes because you don't have the time for them. I'm in the same boat in that I don't have too much free time in my life with all the other things I have going on, but that is precisely why I LOVE roguelikes. Like you said, each run is tiny. So sometimes when I don't have much time I might only play 20 minutes and other times I might play for a couple hours. It's gotten to the point where some of these roguelike games like Slay the Spire or Monster Train are like comfort food to me. I don't need to think much at all to load up the daily challenge and just blast through it in like 20 mins each.
On the other hand, thinking of a more traditional game with a plot and characters and different levels and grinding and new mechanics to learn.... just makes me want to go back to my comfort food, you know. I don't have the hours and hours of uninterrupted playtime that I did when I was younger, which is why roguelikes that let you play/learn/progress at your own pace are so appealing to me. I never get that feeling of going weeks without playing a game, then coming back and not knowing anything that's going on or which buttons do what.
I wonder if it's the type of roguelike that makes that difference (turn-based combat ones and deck builders that allow you to pause and breathe as opposed to fast-paced metroidvanias or top-down beat-em-ups where you constantly have to be on your toes to get better).
So Slay The Spire isn't a turn-based card game? I've glanced at screenshots after hearing its praise, and I got the impression that it was fantasy Yu-Gi-Oh, or something.
you don't build a deck before starting a run, you choose from 3 random cards (if i recall correctly, it's been a long time since i've played) after each victory in the run, so each run is different - you have to try to synergize with what is offered
I would definitely classify Slay the Spire as a turn-based game. Perhaps my wording of 'turn-based combat ones AND deck builders' was unclear: there are plenty of games that fall into both categories like Slay the Spire and Monster Train, where you both build a deck as the run goes on, but the individual combat takes place in turns where you draw some cards and play them to attack enemies that show up.
In both of these games, you start a run with a small number of starting cards depending on which class or character you pick. Then as the run goes on, you're presented with randomized options for where to go from there. Usually you end up fighting some bad guys (with the deck that you start off with), then once you beat said baddies you are given an option of like 1-3 random cards to choose from to add to your deck. Then you rinse and repeat, selecting and adding new cards to your deck with every floor or level so that by the end of the run, your deck looks nothing like when it started. There are also plenty of opportunities to get items (that give you some sort of bonus), curses (that make things a bit harder for you), or upgrades (that make your cards stronger). So no two runs feel exactly the same because of the random options that you are presented.
It differs from traditional card games like Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic or Pokemon or Gwent or Marvel Snap or whatever because in those games, you create whatever deck you want based on a pool of cards that you have available to you and then use that deck to battle other players or bots. The deckbuilding there basically sets up the actual matches where you 1v1 your opponent. Whereas in games like Slay the Spire, the deckbuilding aspect IS the entire game. From start to finish in the run you are crafting your deck, then when the run ends, your deck disappears and you start it all over again the next time, crafting a brand new deck with completely different cards and strategies depending on what's offered to you.
Then there are also turn-based games that are definitely not deckbuilders, like Darkest Dungeon for example, where a lot of the mechanics and progression elements are functionally the same or similar to the previous deckbuilding games I mentioned, but without the cards. If you're at all interested in trying any of these out, Slay the Spire is probably the gold standard for deckbuilding roguelikes (hell, even just roguelikes in general). So much so that if you look in the reviews of pretty much any other deckbuilder that's come out since, inevitably there'll be comments comparing that game to Slay the Spire.
You might like the Mystery Dungeon games. They improve on the formula by giving you a dungeon that is only usually randomized once for the main game and the ability to get out of the dungeon to a town. They have some story elements so you’re not stuck there with no context, and most of them are based on popular IPs so they aren’t just in a generic fantasy world. Most importantly you’re there to conquer one big dungeon over a long time, piecemeal, rather than just doing the whole thing in one run where the RNG is almost definitely going to get you killed.
They're also more forgiving on what you lose if you die. At least in Etrian Mystery Dungeon, you only lose what you had on you when you died, and I think any experience points you gained on that run. You don't start over completely from scratch.
I'm in the same boat. Tried Hades because people spoke so highly of it. I was dead bored after the novelty factor wore off. Even if it 'evolves' it's still too repetitive for me and I don't feel I get the same payoff as other types of games.
Maybe this is too broad of a category, but PvP kills a game for me.
Im not the most adept of players, and competitive PvP just triggers a huge stress reaction from me to the point that it's impossible for me to have fun.
I'm sure I could write a treatise on the reasons for this and what it says about my psychology, but at the end of the day it's enough to say that while I do enjoy winning a game, I get less than nothing from beating someone else.
I miss the glory days of FPS just hanging out in a server with the bros yelling at each other playing some CS or UT.
I'm in the same boat, partially. If it's a competitive FPS, I enjoy it because I have such a solid foundation when it comes to shooters that I can feel like a competitive and participating member of the game.
But take like, a competitive RTS or a MOBA, it's not fun for me at all because I'm so inexperienced with them. The prospect of getting my ass beat for hours while I learn the fundamentals isn't appealing in the slightest. I'd rather just have fun with the single player modes.
As for the satisfaction of winning vs the feeling of domination over someone else, also same. I'll play against other people because it provides a different type of challenge, but I don't have any investment in my relationship with these strangers. I try to win and cut my teeth against their skills, but I'm not trying to win at all costs or show that I'm better than them. I'm in it for the personal satisfaction of overcoming the challenges they provide, and the novelty of their strategies.
I have similar feelings. I love a challenging game (Witness, meat boy, ori, braid, fallen order/survivor) but when I decided to try proper souls games I was really bummed out by two things. The pvp element, which I was glad to hear could be turned off by playing offline, and the inability to pause.
As a parent, no pause basically means I can't play the game. My two year old is not gonna wait for me to finish my 15th attempt at this boss before swan diving off the coffee table.
Turning off pvp means turning off messages from other players, and that definitely makes the game a lot harder because these are for sure designed to be played by a community. Still, I try. And I do enjoy them. Just finished the mariketh fight a few months ago in elden ring. I attempted the next fight once or twice since then, but that's about the pace I'm able to manage with the way the game is structured.
Jedi Survivor on the second hardest difficulty? I'm on the final boss because I can pause the thing!
I guess I'm rambling, but yeah pvp elements in otherwise single player pve games are a big turnoff for me, and it's often linked to my other complaint: no pause button.
My problem with it is PVE I'm just building my character to whatever I want and sounds good at the time. Add PVP in and now I'm stressing that I'm not meta gaming enough because people who have mega refined builds by reading the wikis own me without effort. So I'm no longer playing a game, but numbers
Same. I just can't get into PvP in any form. I'd much rather play against the computer.
That’s funny - PvP is usually the most fun part of a game. Especially when you’re really invested in your character to the point of getting a legitimate adrenaline rush (the “PvP jitters”). I play DayZ, which is like a battle royale but with some PvE and no time limits. The player interactions can go any way you imagine, which keeps you in your toes!
I'm the same, with the exception of rts, where PvP keeps the game alive for me.
Nobody has mentioned the genre yet but Dark Soul games. I have genuinely tried to get into them, I understand the enjoyment people have beating them but to me it just seems like too much. In the other hand, roguelikes are amazing because you can hone your skills or choose a specific path or build yet there's no expectation that the run will be the exact same.a
Any of those games that are designed to be "challenging" are not my thing,
going back to games like Super Meat Boy, or even Mario Maker. Generally I don't want to spend my gaming free time getting frustrated at the challenge of a game. I don't mind if I have to try a bit to get past a certain point in a game, but being hard for the sake of being hard is not enjoyable.
My problem is not so much that the games are hard and more that they are unnecessarily punishing. Going somewhere the devs don’t want you to go yet? Boom, you’re dead. Enjoy the associated penalties. Get distracted while running through the same path you’ve been dying on for the past two hours? You fall off a cliff and die. Good luck retrieving your belongings this time!
That's pretty much the opposite of what Dark Souls is all about. The aspect of the first game that gets by and large the most praise is its level design and its sequence breaking. What it punishes is greed and complacency and rewards consistency and practice. It rarely does something that's outright bullshit (though, admittedly, it does happen) and very much tries to present you with a problem that you can solve in whatever way you choose.
I respect your opinion, the games aren't for everyone, but I reject the reasoning. That's just not what the games try to do and it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the game from your end.
I'm not talking about Dark Souls, though, I'm talking about soulslike games. Not all of them are as well done as Dark Souls is. In fact, most of my experience with this metagenre is with Demon's Souls, which is certainly less well put together than From's later games.
I did try to play Bloodborne, and it does indeed do a much better job of telegraphing when things are going to get tougher. But after getting past the first major corridor into where the paths start really branching out that's when it got really irritating. When you've got 8-12 paths all of which you have died trying to travel through, zero idea of what lies behind them, vague goals you were told to accomplish ages ago that you have no idea if you've progressed in or not with no clues if you're even going the right way.... You just lose your motivation to go forward after a while. There are far too many punishments and far too few rewards. You clear one path, and you are rewarded with another path. You kill a tough guy, and that should be a reward in and of itself, but then you come back later and they're back as if nothing ever happened. It's just an endless spiral of frustration.
Ah that's the opposite of what I read into it, I apologise. Soulslike games often fall in the trap you mentioned: Difficulty for difficulty's sake. Which is not what Dark Souls is about but is often (purposefully?) misinterpreted to be the unique selling point and then slapped onto some prohibitively difficult game.
It's funny though, because this is a matter of taste, but that feeling of finally overcoming the tough dude and then later in the game seeing they're just normal enemies you can dispatch with ease feels great. It shows the progress I made in learning the game and "gitting gud". It's the opposite of frustration in my mind but I can fully understand how it can be a frustrating experience.
In addition, the not knowing what's out there means there's this feeling of exploration that just makes me want to look and find out. There usually is a reward, either an item, a boss, or some big item guarded by a boss.
Souls-like fans have the incorrect assumption that everyone is good at playing games. I played sekiro and it was torture because I'm not great at games. I needed more than 200 attempts at the final boss. I did not feel good, I was just angry and frustrated. I only did it out of stubbornness.
That's why good games have difficulty settings. People like me who aren't great, people who are new to gaming, people with disabilities and people who straight up don't enjoy frustration, can play on normal and easy. People like you that enjoy the difficulty can play on hard.
The problem with Souls-likes isn't that they are difficult, it's that they don't have an easier option. There is no reason to not include it other than excluding regular people so that the hardcore players can feel superior to everyone else for having finished it
I don't assume everyone is good at games. On the contrary. However I do think not every game is for everyone.
By having the Dark Souls experience be the same for every player it becomes a rite of passage, a combined community effort that shares that experience. The soapstone messages telling people to hang on and persevere aren't just there for fun, they're because people shared something unique. The power of the community is strong within these games because of a shared, binding experience.
I don't think Dark Souls or Elden Ring need a difficulty slider. Play something else. I don't mean this as an elitist, I just mean to say that this game isn't meant for you and that's fine. But on the other hand, if you are bad at games but take the effort to learn and persevere through the difficulty I will happily say that the game is for you. Someone that tried the final boss for 200 times and won is just as much part of the community as someone that did it without being hit. On that note, I did not finish Sekiro. Unlike the other Souls games it simply wasn't for me.
The entire argument about exclusion doesn't really hold up when you see people play the game without receiving damage while blindfolded using a Nintendo powerglove or with Donkey Kong Bongos. There's a disabled dude that can move just his face and he completed Elden Ring. The games are about perseverance more so than difficulty*.
If that's what you feel for not being able to finish the game that's unfortunate, because no Souls player actually feels this way. If anything they would want you to "suffer" just as much as they did. The "no-hit no-death" players are the vast minority of players. Most are like you, they try and try and try again until they win. I've had bosses in Elden Ring I smashed myself against for 20+ times and what's important is that I made it and not how often it took.
*The games even offer items to make the game even more difficult. I'd say that's the difficulty slider. The baseline of "easy" is just higher than your average game.
I agree with that. Those kinds of games tend to have a pseudo-RNG type of effect in gameplay. For instance, if you and an enemy attack eachother in the same loose timeframe, the resulting action is going to involve a calculation of many variables in a physics model, which means that not only do you not know what is going to happen, the game itself doesn't know until it actually happens. In a roguelike game, you can get multiple floors with no food, so you have no choice but to die of starvation on your trip. the RNG-style chaos of a soulslike game means that you can fight an "easy" monster and it can win, or you can fight a boss and kill it with a series of lucky hits.
But the thing that is maddening to me is that soulslike games aren't actually random; you can win with the git gud strategy of learning the timings of attacks, dodges, and blocks. But those are constantly changing, and the game is also constantly punishing you for losing. You don't spawn back a few feet from where you were last killed, you spawn at a checkpoint and have to grind and run your way back to them. The whole thing is like grinding without numbers. It's great if you enjoy it, but it's grating to me.
Yeah, I like the aesthetic and crisp combat challenge of a souls game, but punishing the player for failing to notice some bullshit trap or choosing the wrong hallway to walk down with enemies way above their level is stupid. The developers design areas to deliberately fuck with you, with surprises that nobody could realistically see coming, and then punish you for it. Same with the enemy designs. It's not about facing challenges so much as it is about getting killed by everything once so you can memorize how to avoid the garbage the devs threw in. I'm in the party that good game design means revealing consequences, dangers, and opportunities before the players face them so they can devise a way to tackle the encounter.
I bought Elden Ring and played for about 10 hours. There’s no introduction, you’re just out of the starting dungeon / tower and left to do what you want while monster can 1 hit kill you.
Rolling around and sneaking a shot in over and over again is not fun.
And I had no idea how to make my character stronger and also not made of tissue paper.
Same. My gaming time is limited and I have no patience to die due to some random clipping error or some other bullshit. Not my type of games
Have you tried Salt and Sanctuary?
The game genre that my brain can never wrap itself around is metroidvania games. I am always interested in it, I have seen several youtubers played some of the more popular ones and yet I can never get into them. Some examples of metroidvania that I have seen/attempted are Dandara, Sundered, Momodora, Ori, Hollow Knight, Dead Cells just to name a few. They seemed so enjoyable to play and I enjoyed watching others playing them but I just cannot get into it for some reason. I just accepted that this is a popular genre that I just cannot get into and move on with my life. There are already too many games in genres that I am obsessed with, so cutting a huge chunk of games I won't be able to enjoy will only help me enjoy what I already like. i.e. turn based combat like X-Com and Xenonauts.
I will say that I do appreciate that other genres exists because everyone should have a game that they enjoy.
Thought it was just me. I’ve been trying so hard to get into Ori but I just… cant. I have no idea what it is, but every time I mention it people are stunned that I’m not enjoying it.
As a metroidvania enjoyer, I didn't like Ori that much at all, so I know exactly what reaction you get.
If you're interested in continuing to try the genre, my personal favorite is Hollow Knight. Just as much exploration as Ori, but the combat feels miles better and the movement is a bit more traditional.
Warning to anyone trying Hollow Knight based on this recommendation: one of the early bossfights (first couple hours) is one of the hardest, because you have to do it without any of the upgrades you get later. Don't let that stop you; I found everything after that fight to be a lot better.
Good point, it's been so long since I first played Hollow Knight that I forgot how much of a wall that shade in the mossy area is. I personally really enjoyed the learning the fight, but Hollow Knight as a whole is one of those games that demands some respect.
Are you talking about
Click to expand spoiler.
The Soul MasterI was talking about
Spoiler
the first Hornet fightThat's the one that made me quit the first time I tried playing. Went back years later and powered through, then had a good time playing. At least up until a much later boss fight got me so frustrated that I had to put it down for a while, and something else caught my attention.
I'm glad to hear it's not just me. Pretty art, controls are fine, but... Meh. I just don't feel any sense of fun playing it. I've tried several times. It's like I'm already tired of it, an hour or two in.
It's the fact that I need to re-do areas when I get new powers. I just can't be bothered.
I love the graphics style off Metroid, Hollow Knight etc, the game mechanics are OK. But the fact that I need to figure out what bit of map opened with which skills at what point is just grating.
Dead Cells is OK because there is no backtracking, but grinding the same area gets boring anyway.
The only one that didn't get boring was Hades, because the plot progressed a bit every time.
Dead Cells and Hades are not metroidvanias, they're roguelites.
I really don’t like the allusion to Dead Cells being a Metroidvania. Maybe a little when you first start playing, but otherwise the game is very focused towards finishing runs and optimizing everything towards those runs.
That explains why I like them :)
I really leaned into the metroidvania genre with ori, and there all the backtracking felt fun because usually you didn't realize there was an inaccessible area adjacent to a place you'd bee before until you had the associated key or skill to access it. The game did such a good job of revealing these that I was always excited to discover them, and then take my new power through that gate or whatever to explore a new area.
Ori is the first thing I'd suggest to someone trying the genre, but maybe something more like Jedi: Fallen Order would be a more transitional/ genre blending game to try if you don't like Ori. It has all the hallmarks of a metroidvania, but you could definitely play a lot of the game without thinking that, and when it opens up with your new force powers it's awesome. Plus the game doesn't force you to backtrack a lot. It's almost all optional.
Plus awesome combat. I think I liked fallen order more than survivor.
I think the reason that metroidvanias are so popular is because a lot of us grew up playing games like the Zelda titles (e.g, Link's awakening and Ocarina of Time) that used that mechanic heavily. It almost feels like a familiar core element. Old school adventure games (e.g , Monkey Island, King's Quest) had a similar feel. It's almost nostalgic.
Not trying to convince you, but for me that draw is three fold:
Not all Metroidvanias have those attributes, or their “twist” on the formula can potentially ruin the experience; like I mentioned I have no intent of converting you but I hope that helps you understand at least!
Tower Defense. I don't know what it is about the genre, but it grinds my gears right down to the nub. When I play an RTS game, my favorite strategy is to set up static defenses and let the enemy just wander in to their death, which is basically tower defense in and of itself, but the game genre? Ugh.
Also, card battle games. Yeah, I don't generally want anything to do with deck building unless it's building a standing area on my ship, thanks.
This is so funny to me because those are probably two of my favorite game genres.
That's the absolute best thing about gaming: there's no bad genre, there's only bad for you. There's enough games that everybody gets to play their favorite!
are you playing element td2 by any chance?
I haven't been, but I'm going to now!
I'll stand up for Tower Defense style, as it's one of my favorites. Here are a few things to consider:
1 - TD is the "Hello World" of game design. Because so much of the standard TD behavior is predetermined, it makes developing a game very easy for new programmers.
2 - TD has a standard format, but is easy to modify and adapt to explore new concepts. What if your towers get placed randomly? What if creeps choose their own path? What if you need to manage power delivery to the towers? What if towers are also the path? For an FPS title this is too expensive to investigate fully, but for a TD game there's already five or six out there examining this.
3 - The pacing is both thoughtful and high-stakes at the same time. Often you get the luxury of planning your towers carefully between each wave. But for any TD game with compound interest, you need to place just enough to beat the next wave, while keeping as much cash as possible generating interest. The tension is stimulating without being exhausting like the frazzled nervous twitching of FPS games.
I could recommend several titles that I think might surprise you as far as what TD is able to do as a genre, it's very diverse and I consider it like a petri dish for playtesting interesting game mechanics.
So I enjoy some Tower Defense games but not most of them. I like the mobile games of the Kingdom Rush series (though their monetization is horrible). Also enjoyed Defense Grid of course.
But beyond that, I could never really get into the genre as most just feel like they lack the "style" I'd want from such a game to keep me distracted during the rather passive gameplay.
My theory, that I just came up with right now and is totally scientifically sound, is that tower defense games' core game loop is the tower defense part, so they have to balance the game around that, while RTS games are mainly about either singleplayer set pieces, or multiplayer PvP where the AI is never that smart and its easy to tone them down if they're hard.
As a result, every tower defense level has to have a decent chance of you losing it, and since there's so little randomness involved, they have an inherent optimal path, and unit combos that are maximally efficient. The genre turns in to a puzzle game, where its all about finding the correct combo of units and placement to satisfy an equation that results in completing the level.
I have a hard time with that kind of genre (tower defense) too, because as soon as I recognize that the game is kind of a puzzle, I go "ah fuck this" and become too lazy to figure it out. Strangely there are some games that are nothing but optimization exercises and yet I love playing them and find them relaxing, like Factorio -- not sure what it is, maybe because there's not really a lose condition in Factorio, so it becomes relaxing and I don't have to worry about losing.
That is an excellent point, because I do, also, hate puzzle games... especially ones disguised as combat. Have the guts to throw a puzzle at me, don't disguise it.
Grinding ones. Especially the online ones, like MMOs, where I can't use a speedhack etc.
And fishing.
I used to be REEEEALLY into MMOs. Mainly EverQuest and especially EverQuest2. Maybe as a younger teen I didn't mind the grind as much.
A few years ago, EQ2 started up a new progression server and I got really fucking into it. I started my own guild with a bunch of Redditors and we hit the ground running. I was hooked again and I think it was nostalgia that was fueling my experience. EQ2's progression is pretty quick early on.. Levels one through about thirty go very quickly, especially if you're grouping and doing dungeons. Edit: Quickly probably isn't the right word. It still takes time, and you have to put in hours.. But it's exponential? You play the content and you move forward. It's not as grindy. It was essentially in the level 1-10 zone, if you follow the quest line, do all the quests, you will hit level 10 no problem. Move on to the level 10-20 zone and it's pretty much the same. You add in running the level appropriate dungeon once or twice and you'll fly through the levels. 20-30 is similar, but starts to slow down.
After you hit 30 though... You run out of content before you've leveled up enough to move on to the next area. You have to go back and run the dungeons over and over.. And farm various areas. I got to the point where grinding became necessary and I almost immediately lost interest.
I hate MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas). They hold zero appeal to me. The whole exercise seems boring and pointless, with repetitive low level gameplay and only a small number of simplistic strategies at the high level.
I had my fill of games that want you to spend twenty to forty hours of your life (per game) repeatedly shooting zombies or blowing up monsters or whatever around the end of the 90s, but for some reason they keep making more of them every year.
I'm a big MOBA player. I play it a lot with IRL friends and their friends.
Non-social stuff:
Thank you for your perspective. I have a feeling you'd make a good Rocket League team member!
I typically avoid online multiplayer games, but MOBAs especially because I was under the impression that they've got Fortnight style monitization that attempts to get you addicted to them and buy heroes/cosmetics/whatever. If I were to check them out, is there one that doesn't have that kind of thing that you would recommend?
Dota 2 is the clear winner here. It's the only MOBA I'm aware of that doesn't sell playable characters. So no gameplay is money-gated, only cosmetics.
DotA2 and League of Legends (LoL) are the two biggest games in the space.
@3d12 suggested DotA 2. It has a reputation for having more complex macrogameplay. But it has fewer than 1 million players.
LoL has around 125 million monthly players. The gameplay is still quite complex and deep. I find it much easier to find friends who play LoL; for me, the social component is very important.
I find that LoL doesn't compel me to spend money. I can safely bet that I've been playing MOBAs longer than 99.999% of MOBA players. I've been playing them for a long time ever since they were some new scenario map as Aeon of Strife in classic Starcraft. That's how long, and I've spent a total of $10 to get an irresistibly fantastic skin for my absolute favorite champion in LoL.
Whether or not you feel compelled to spend money depends on how you like to play. LoL offers you an initial set of dozen or so champions (out of 163), and then you can buy more with real money or in-game points earned through playing, which I find to be rather easy to get. And there is a rotating set of champions that are available to play for free.
Personally, I have a small set of champions I've gotten for free that I play deeply. And then I'll play from the rotating set to try out other champions.
I understand where your coming from, but have you considered controlling more than one unit? That's what tends to stop me from sinking my teeth in MOBAs RTS just feels so much more satisfying.
Another place where Dota 2 shines. Not only are many heroes focused on multi-unit gameplay (Enigma, Naga Siren, Terrorblade, just to name a few) but a common item progression for pushing includes Manta Style, which creates controllable copies (illusions) of your hero.
Also, see the infamous "Puppey block" of TI2 where 2 summons (Lycan's wolves) were used to block a hero's pathing so a teammate could catch up for a very early kill.
There are two types of games I can't get into:
"Git Gud" games where you need to learn the way to fight each boss and monster and execute it perfectly every time or you die. Dark Souls games and Elden Ring are in this category. I don't have the time or energy to spend that much time failing in a single game. Some people enjoy the process of slowly getting better in a game while constantly failing. I don't.
Online FPS games. If I don't get any enjoyment from getting my ass repeatedly kicked by a child hopped up on Monster just because they have 150 hours a week to play the game and learn every trick and optimal position. I might enjoy the genre if I had friends to play with so part of my team wouldn't be complete knuckle draggers - but if I could arrange my friends to be online at the same time to play an FPS, we could play something more fun instead :)
I love more tactical FPS games like Squad and Hell Let Loose. Been playing a lot of insurgency sandstorm since it's on gamepass and it's scratching that itch for me. Red Orchestra 2 was the first game in the genre that opened my eyes to more careful and thoughtful FPS gameplay after years of COD and Battlefield. I wish more people were into them because it alleviates a lot of issues people have with more traditional shooters, where the person with faster reaction time and a better (or worse) internet connection wins. It takes more creativity, care, and teamwork to effectively kill other players, and it's way more objective focused. There's just a pretty hefty learning curve, and having a mic is a massive advantage.
I'm the complete opposite of the OP. Turn based RPG or strategy games are my jam - Fallout 1&2, Shadowrun Returns, XCOM, Bahamut Lagoon, Advance Wars, Divinity: Original Sin 1&2, Wasteland 2 - love them all.
I really dislike active or pause based combat like Baldur's Gate or League of Legends. I like the calmer pace of turn based, and dislike frantic twitchy combat.
Have you tried the new Jagged Alliance? It's very good!
Looks great but with a couple of small kids running around there's not much time for gaming. On the plus side, I'll have a glut of top notch content to choose from in a few years!
Fallout 1 & 2 are better than everything that followed and I’ll die on this hill.
I have to say I have a soft spot for Fallout Tactics but I largely agree. I was so disappointed with the hurr durr Nuka-Cola flanderization of the series after Brian Fargo's departure from Interplay.
Wasteland 2 is really the spiritual successor, given Fargo's involvement. ATOM RPG is heavily inspired by Fallout 1&2 and the Wasteland series, and scratches the same itch for me.
I can't deal with open world games like Breath of the Wild. I just get stuck in decision paralysis, I don't know where to go so I just end up going nowhere and shutting the game off after a couple of hours.
The sequel, tests of the kingdom, does a better job at giving directions. It's technically just as open but it doesn't hit you with "beat the game" as a starting quest.
I am the reverse: I have extremely slow reaction times and I want my gaming experience to be one of light to moderate mental exertion, not one of mental anguish. I have never played a real time combat or shooter or resources or stragegy game from start to finish, and I never will. I know I'm slow.
I don't even play simul-turn games like Hearts or Mahjong or Poker with real people because I find the time element to be extremely stressful. Nor do I often play games that have a timer attached.
The rest of my life is already real time and stressful enough. Let me pause and take a breather and have some time to think, when I'm having fun.
This exactly for me - I like games where I can sit back and space out if I need to.
What's funny is I also have a horrible reaction time, and really struggle whenever the windows for real-time combat such as parrying are too small. I just prefer using "cheese" strategies, consumables, elemental weaknesses, over-leveling, etc. to beat real-time bosses over doing turn-based battles that in theory should be better for me, for whatever reason.
I also hate timers, lol. A big problem for me is in D&D (which I play despite being turn-based, since you can really shape the story and customize your character to extents that are impossible in video games), I always need to take the longest to plan my turn, which is really to the detriment of everyone else.
I abhor timers in video games. "Nothing is more fun than waiting for a chance to do something," said nobody ever. The reliance on them is the main reason why I categorically ignore mobile games.
They can be fine so long as they're extremely short and in a pool of other things you can do so I'm not just sticking around waiting for meters to fill up. The Xenoblade games are right around the edge of what I find acceptable for this, especially because there's no basic attack you can trigger yourself and the battle system starts off kind of hobbled, though they get better once all the mechanics are in play.
How curious! Is it...a sort of impatience or that you find the pauses break up a game?
For the life of me, I just can't get into fighting games. I enjoy watching high-level gameplay recordings that really demonstrate how much potential good players can squeeze out of a character's moveset, but when I try to carry that excitement into the game itself and learn the techniques I get bored or frustrated with it almost immediately. The specific input chains to perform moves are too precise and the amount of potential combos are overwhelming to me and I don't have fun trying to learn and execute on all of that.
As for turn-based combat and gameplay in general, I quite enjoy it ONLY when it's single-player. It gives me time to plan out my next moves rather than being constantly pressured to make a quick decision, which is great when I can take all the time I want. If there's someone else waiting on me to make a decision though, I start to feel guilty about wasting their time, so I tend to avoid turn-based multiplayer.
I similarly couldn't get into fighting games. Having to press buttons in a specific order super fast and having to do that "quarter circle" movement (and having to mirror that dpad movement when you're facing left), all while against someone who 99% of the time has better reaction time than me just makes it too stressful and basically impossible for me. I enjoy real-time combat in PvE a lot more than PvP since it's much easier to learn how an AI thinks than another human player, and in PvE things are inherently in your favor as you probably have a much bigger arsenal of spells, consumables, and weapons than the average boss, even in Souls games, and in many games enemies have some elemental weakness to exploit (as is very prominent in Elden Ring at times).
Fighting games are not all built the same way. I couldn't get into the Dead or Alive series because just reading about the "rock paper scissors" gameplay just had me saying "heck no" just from the description. Likewise I found the overly "technical" gameplay of Street Fighter that has a really strong focus on special moves that are mechanically difficult to pull off.
One of my favorite fighting game series is Virtua Fighter. It has a much wider range of combos that start off really simple that make very accessible for new players, and because there's nothing supernatural in them you feel more connected to the characters when you start to get good at the game. Most importantly, the moves generally have a flow to them that make them come more naturally and also makes it easier to choose the right action on the fly. And if you fail to do the combination you were looking for, you'll likely still make an attack, so you're not completely doomed for a failure.
The latter Tekken games have a lot of these properties, but they have a different "flow" to them. I also like SNK's fighters in general; they're a bit different but they retain the approachability that I want out of fighting games.
Part of it for me is PvP in a 1v1 scenario in general. I enjoy team based multiplayer a lot more where it's not always all eyes on you. You can pull off a really good push that takes out a lot of enemies and secures the win, but you can also just play support and let your friends have the limelight for a bit. Also when we lose, it's not entirely on me. I find it a lot less stressful overall. The only downsides are when there are randoms on my team judging me, or I'm last alive in a 1v1 with the squad watching and I mess up, that's the worst!
I rarely play fighting games in public, or even against other people for that matter. You don't play the game for other people, after all, you play for yourself! That's also why I avoid playing team-based PvP games, though it's also in part because everyone in those games is more interested in being an action star instead of being cooperative so the team can actually win.
I've been playing some Street Fighter 6 with the "modern" control setup instead of "classic" because I have the same issue, I can't technically perform the inputs I need under pressure, since I'm new and haven't built up the muscle memory. Modern streamlines a lot the controls so instead of like, two quarter circles and a button, you just press 2 buttons at once. I recommend it if you want to try the mind games of fighting games without the physical exertion.
Would you consider trying chrono trigger? It has turn based but you can set the “enemy waits” setting off and you just have to quickly go thru your skills and people to attack. Or is it that you would prefer press b to attack kind of games and don’t like the lists of spells and attacks?
On what you asked, I could never get into huge open world rpgs like the Witcher 3. I really liked Skyrim but mainly because of how free I felt to do whatever I wanted, while with the Witcher and some of the latter assassins creed I just felt like I was forced to watch mini movies all the time. Talked to this random npc? You fool! Here’s a half an hour cutscene conversation to interrupt your flow.
I've really never cared for MMO's and I was there from the beginning, more or less. I could not stand how clunky and slow they were, compared to other genres. It felt a lot like taking the busywork of an rpg, stretch it out to absurdity, so you and seven other people have to waste six hours doing it. Granted, everything is fun with friends, and I did have some fun now and then. But left to my own devices, or worse, left in a state where I had to work on my character for things, I just saw the game as "more work" because of how unsatisfyingly it was laid out. Juggling cooldowns never felt particularly good to me.
I did understand the appeal, I just hated the gameplay. I did play one for a long stretch, but it was because all my friends were there too. Without them, I quickly dropped it and never returned. Cool for a time, never something I particularly wanted to do.
Same. Even back in the day when it was at its height, I was done with WoW before the 10 day free trial was even over. For me, they're just not fun to play. I'm a single player or couch co-op guy.
Exactly. I played WoW's beta, and then didn't play anything like it for years. My friends got into EVE in college, so that's the one I played for a long stretch. While my friends were in it, I was good, and the relaxed nature of stuff like pvp/looting meant I could go have a fantastic time being a space pirate. But omg, the stat growth took forever, it is the same juggling of cooldowns, and oh hey look I need to go mine ten things to get this quest done. I just loathe the design of the thing, and no amount of playing Space Police in a Comet could get me out of that opinion lol
Oh boy looking at this topic there’s more than I thought I could make a post of at first.
Initially I was thinking Metroidvanias and I still would probably pick that as my choice.
It’s effectively “backtracking: the genre”, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but in Metroidvanias it usually feels like a chore when future progress is locked behind backtracking, If I don’t backtrack because I WANT to, It feels tedious.
Maps can be a hit or miss too, Ori’s map is great, Ori is also one of the few Metroidvanias I finished(both of them). The map is easy to read and follow.
Another aspect that can ruin a Metroidvania for me is when they don’t have convenient teleports, or none at all.
Also being less linear than platformers means that if said game also has a “Where the hell do I go now?” moment, if it is coupled with the previous 2 I just quit and play something else.
This happened with Axiom Verge after… the weird part, to avoid spoilers.
Soulsborne moreso because I didn’t play enough of them to form an opinion, I liked earliest parts of Demon Souls but the rolling skeletons in windy palace were a massive pain, it made me realize that without(hard to miss) shortcuts and checkpoints right before the boss, it’s just a test of my patience. I have Bloodborne in my to play list(maybe will be played in 2350) and I’m playing Lost Epic currently which is kind of a soulsborne meets metroidvania, though that one I’m finding to be fun with a good portion of tedious parts.
Sport games, but moreso because of lack of interest than “Not getting it”, I’d play the sport in person if I’m interested enough in it(which hasn’t been in forever), but I get that some people don’t have time, energy or people to play that sport with.
MOBA(Anything competitive really)
I find coop/PvE more fun than PvP. I played LoL against bots with a friend. Had fun. Played Summoner’s Rift against people. Uninstalled the game.
Tower Defense
Not a lot of memory about this one tbh, I’ve only played a TD once and it was on Jagex’s website with a bunch games. I had fun with it iirc but now I’m more apathetic towards it, maybe if I try it again I may like it.
Visual Novels(sort of)
I found out that I like something like Aokana, something kinda chill and non serious. But it’s not a genre I’m into, but could play(read:read) once every idk. Valhalla is one I wanna go back to, too.
Mobages/Gacha
Used to be into them, now absolutely hate them, it’s scammy,predatory, and pretty much has the worst trends of all of gaming. Somehow feels less soulless than AAA games though.
Also I forgot that this topic mentioned popular genres in the title before editing this… yeah VNs are definitely not popular, probably Tower Defense too.
With Metroidvanias, they sit in this weird spot for me where I love the feeling of remembering a spot to use a new ability, and unlocking a new area, but I dread every time I see somewhere I can't access. It feels like a chore having to take the effort to remember a colored door or item for future reference, and I have anxiety that I'll forget about them. Luckily, modern versions of the genre like Jedi Survivor will at least highlight where accessible/inaccessable areas are on your map, and allow fast travel.
I get that. I absolutely loved playing Bloodstained, but at the same time there were points where it was not at all clear where to go and so I'd fight my way through the entirety of the map just trying to figure out where to go. And then I'd consult a guide and you get that "I had to do what?!" moment.
I'm probably forgetting or missing some, but I don't care for FPS games (idk, I just never got the appeal of just shooting at stuff in first person, and these games tend to be very minimal in terms of story and characters), anything online (I prefer to play solo, although I do love online games like MapleStory if I just got to play solo and didn't have to deal with the premium stuff) and I also don't often care much for puzzle, sports, RTS, etc.
My main priorities in games are fun gameplay (typically turn based or action RPG type combat, platformers (including metroidvanias), hack & slash kinda stuff, etc), a nice aesthetic (basically, anime), good soundtracks, good stories and good characters. So for all of those I typically lean towards JRPGs, VNs, platformers, metroidvanias, hack & slash games, etc.
I can totally understand not enjoying FPS games for whatever reasons but this point doesn’t make sense to me. Plenty of shooters are chock full of characters and story, I would even say most.
Well, I'm not really that familiar with FPS so I'm just speaking from my limited experience.
Mobster games. Grand Theft Auto / Yakuza, etc. Just never found being a criminal interesting.
The Yakuza games are very different from the Grand Theft Auto games. You can't just attack random people or things like that. They also tend to have a strong (if perhaps misguided) moral cores to them.
You're certainly not playing as a fine upstanding citizen, but the difference is pretty stark.
Agreed: Yakuza should not be put into the same bin as GTA. They are similar in that they deal with organized crime, but they are vastly different in tone, gameplay and story.
One is a third person shooter / driving game hybrid in an open world setting, the other is a JRPG disguised as a brawler whose entire world consist in one or two city district. One has a strong satire aspect, while the other clearly explore and interrogate the yakuza-as-a-samurai concept.
Interesting. How do you feel about fiction that is centered around criminals, such as The Godfather, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Peaky Blinders, etc?
Not particularly interested... I did see the supercut of the Godfather movies, really to say I did it. Not really interested in it. Road to Perdition was interesting as an update of Lone Wolf and Cub. Probably the only mob fiction I actually liked was Miller's Crossing, because, duh, Coen brothers...
I see. This is pretty interesting. Is your disinterest motivated by the criminal characters themselves, or is it something about how those movies and series tell a story?
Also, is there a difference between violent criminals and white colar for you? Would you watch a show about Enron, Elizabeth Holmes, Richard Nixon, or their fictional equivalents?
Sports games. I never saw the appeal of Fifa, Basketball, or realistic racing games (Burnout on the other hand....). Gaming for me is about escapism and I just dont care about sports.
Sports games used to be about escapism. Quoting myself here:
First person shooters, hands down. I just can't get into them at all, whether multiplayer or singleplayer. Part of it is probably that I don't have much experience, so I don't have much skill. But that just makes it annoying.
I tried Borderlands, and ran out of ammo in the tutorial. Which automatically meant I was kind of screwed. I still have not gone back to try again.
Gacha games for me. I get too into them, always chasing that carrot on a stick. Genshin impact was fun, but I felt like I HAD to play. I'd log in just to do the usual daily upkeep and log off, even when I wasn't in the mood to play.
Games that feel like second jobs are no-go's for me.
"Cinematic" games; Last of Us, etc. I want to play a game, not watch a movie and be led by the nose through any of the gameplay sections.
Nintendo games. Now, hear me out: I really enjoy classic Nintendo games, like Super Mario World, but pretty much anything from the last 20 years just bores the piss out of me. The one exception I've found was Super Mario 3D Land, but otherwise, I played most of the big ones on Wii, the big ones on 3DS and no First Party games on Switch interest me in the slightest.
I'm not exactly sure why that is, but I think it may have something to do with having all the edges filed off. They're well made games, largely flawless, it seems, but I just find myself so bored by them. I'm not sure if it's a lack of friction/push back against the player or what. The last one I tried was Luigi's Mansion on 3DS. I really wanted to love it, but it just felt like there wasn't much to it. I also feel like this about Blizzard games from the last 18 years or so.
I liked the old "cinematic" games like Out of This World/Another World and even cinema-heavy RPGs like Xenosaga. But the modern ones really don't work for me. The Last of Us and Uncharted games had cutscenes that got in the way of gameplay and weren't interesting enough to care about, IMHO, and on the other end the last Final Fantasy game just took too much time; I hated that every single moment just had to be voiced, and there are some times you can skip the reading and other times you can't. Talking to background characters was particularly annoying because you couldn't skip their lines and your character slowed down so even walking away from them was slow.
Cinematics should be special; they are a reward for progressing through the game. If it becomes a hindrance something has gone severely wrong!
I think an important detail about Another World and similar is that they were effectively point-and-click/QTE games with (for the time) mind-blowingly smooth rotoscope animation. It was forgivable because it was so groundbreaking that there was nothing to forgive. Nobody had done anything like it before!
They felt like more fleshed-out versions of Space Ace/Dragon's Lair, with less studio-quality art and more substance (those Don Bluth arcade games were truly just QTE games, iirc).
An example that I think fits your bill is the recent Tomb Raider trilogy. There are so many little cinematics, and the games contain so many QTEs, that the transitions from regular play to scripted/timed bits make it hard to get into, and stay in, a flow with the game.
Because there's no cue that a scripted scene is a) a perspective-shift in regular play, like squeezing through a gap, b) a QTE, or c) just a cutscene, I don't think I survived a single QTE in any of the games on my first try. I never knew if I was supposed to be waiting for a button prompt or watching a movie until I was dead!
I liked the games, but I groaned at every QTE. Dragon's Lair required them in the '80s, but who thinks those are fun in 2023?
I'm with you on the Cinematic games, can't stand them. I'm in games almost exclusively for the gameplay, and most games' stories are really simple and cliched, and just delay you from actually playing the game.
I find the career mode of sports games to be the worst offenders in this regard. Every career mode of a sports game can be boiled down to: you and your best friend are on a high school team, your friend is primed to go to a good team, your coach doesn't think you're good enough, a pivotal moment happens, you don't make it to the major leagues right away, you have to build your way up until eventually you face your old friend in a professional game, and the story usually ends after that.
It's not bad, but they're never written well, they're never acted well, and its always so obvious that it's coming. The worst, by far the worst part, is that they don't tend to connect with the actual gameplay at all. I played a recent Madden game and got to the point of a big high school championship game. I forgot I had the game on easy mode so I ended up crushing the other team something like 100-0. After the game, the coach calls me in to the office and tells me he doesn't think I have what it takes. The biggest blowout in professional sports history, led entirely by my player, and I'm cut from the team.
There is nothing that makes me want to snap a disc and write an angry letter to the game director than a moment like that, its so clear that they really wanted to be a movie director but ended up in games instead. What the hell is the point of a game if not playing the god dang game?
Hideo Kojima will remember that.
Online games with content that comes and goes across "seasons" or "battle passes". It's frustrating when I can't switch to a different game for a couple months as I'll risk missing content I won't be able to play later.
Any type of horror game has never really appealed to me, but I'm especially not fond of zombie games. This unfortunately causes me to miss out on some highly regarded titles like The Last of Us, Left 4 Dead, and so on, but there's something about jump scares and endless hordes of enemies that are just a complete turn off to me.
I feel like you could probably try The Last of Us, they are action games first, horror games second. I only recall a few times that are "scary" and even fewer jump scares (if there are any.)
Oh, a big one. Final Fantasy. No idea what people see in it.
I love the old 8/16-bit games, but after FFVII, the 3D style completely turned me off from it.
The last Final Fantasy game that I had enjoyed was FFX and FFX-2. And with the modern ones not even bothering with them because the story is lack luster in my opinion or I have no interest in it.
I don't think that the stories are bad so much as the way they are presented are bad. Final Fantasy's stories work because the characters aren't super fleshed out; in some ways they are more conceptual than human. Your imagination fills the gaps and so the meanings behind the story are personalized in a way. Fully expressive character models, realistic (often mocapped) animations, and voice acting took that away.
The other important thing that the new ones miss is that Final Fantasy games usually had many lighthearted elements as well. This is the same series where people could be magically shrunken down, you get access to airships from kooky inventors, and a cavalcade of bad guys who look like clowns. Even the darkest and moodiest ones had lighthearted parts to them. The newer ones are more dour and serious.
Part of the reason I believe the fact that FF going down the more Game of Thrones-esq type of story telling took part of the charm away. Has you had put it, the players own imagination had filled in many of the gaps. I mean the infamous laughing scene in FFX, had a reason, being that Tidus was trying to cheer up Yuna.
Frankly, I don't believe that going down the more mature route is not the way for the series, like I know that they want a more mature games for the people who grew up with the series. But there was the allegations that Square had put the long term fans to the side with the new one.
I'm not a fan of most online multiplayer games, no matter the genre. I can have fun, but I don't stay engaged long and I hate the shit talking.
Now I will play iRacing, but I'm a huge motorsports fan which overshadowed my dislike of online multiplayer games.
I used to love multi user dungeons. Where you didn't fight against each other and had the option to fight with each other for particularly difficult missions. Like Asylum MUD, for instance.
That's an interesting point. I forgot to mention that I do love Lord of the Rings Online. I play solo though. I will join up with others for a quest to help out and then go out separate ways.
So in the same vein as what you were talking about I think cooperation is a much more positive environment for my style of game vs playing against other people.
Real-time strategy games, I just cannot keep up. The name implies some grand level of strategy and tactics, but any time I would try and get into Starcraft 2, it all goes back to "actions per minute." Fun game, fun genre, but not at all for me.
The 1v1 can be heavy swayed by APM as you climb the ladder, it doesn't really matter outside of that macro isent that important in co op (or so I've heard from CTG) so it comes down to more of knowledge and while IMO the campaigns arnt super repayable the mods for them you can find on the Giant Grant Games discount are super fun, and that not even mentioning all the things you can find on the arcade.
You know.. I hadn't even considered single player when I made this comment, but I have good memories of the old Terran campaign from back in the day. My experience is mostly 1v1 against either my younger brother, who would watch Youtube videos and effectively train himself to get better, or strangers on the Internet. Which is just completely ignoring huge swaths of the rest of the game, when you think about it.
Platformers. Not action platformers but the simple/retro style of jumping on stuff, throwing things, and solving puzzles.
They hook me for a minute, but I usually quit eventually. Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, and Odyssey were the last ones I finished. Kirby's Dream Land is one of my all-time favorite games, as is Kirby's Adventure. I've even played a bunch of Shovel Knight but in general the genre doesn't appeal to me. Action platformers/metroidvanias are even worse for me because I feel like I should enjoy them, but they tend to feel too difficult to me.
Single player games in general are a harder sell for me. I very much love the feelings of getting better and adapting to an opponent; you can definitely get better at single player games, but the process of adaptation to AI is like a short stroll compared to the infinite hike that is adapting to a human opponent.
I like feeling that the time I spent made me stronger rather than just my character, if that makes sense.
But co-op stuff is fine too. Everything's better with friends, after all. It's just the strictly singleplayer stuff that holds little appeal to me.
I perfectly understand and deeply relate to this. Games that force me to get better are immensely more satisfying in the long term than games with a ton of character progression options. That said, I've experienced this with single player games as well. A lot of modern third party Doom 2 maps for example are made to be really, really challenging, on a level that probably just wouldn't make sense for a commercial game trying to appeal to a wide market. Because of the combat puzzles they present, you can go from "how the hell do I even approach this" to finishing the level in hundreds of attempts, and you can relive this sensation over and over again because there are so many maps with different types of challenges.
True enough; as long as there's a community and modding tools, there can be an endless ocean of novel challenges to overcome. And even in the absence of such, there's still the endless treadmill of improvement in speedrunning that plenty others turn to. Plenty to learn/adapt, as you remind me.
Maybe I'm conflating a little (or a lot) my enjoyment of adapting to an opponent, with simply enjoyment of playing with company, hehe.
Roguelikes, Soulslikes, and things like the Zelda games. Yeah, I know, burn the heretic.
For the roguelikes, I just don't like replaying the same thing over and over to just get slightly stronger/progress slightly further each run. I would rather play something else.
Similar reasoning kind of applies to the souls style games. I don't care for dying over and over, or having some kind of super hardcore experience. My time is limited.
I'm not sure what the deal is with Zelda games. I like most modern open-world games, but I just could not get into Breath of The Wild, or any of the older Zeldas I've tried. I have not tried Tears of the Kingdom.
Have you ever played a rogue-like like Hades? There’s a few like it out there where they make replaying the game over and over actually part of the story and it serves a purpose. Restarting isn’t a punishment where you just start from ground zero again but instead is a part of you building your character and the story over time.
Yeah, Hades is actually the one I played the most of. I just got bored of retreading the same ground over and over.
Games like that are really good for people who learn through repetition. It's what I like about Hades and what I don't like about Zelda.
4X Games, like Civ or Stellaris. They are just so overwhelming and in theory I love the premise and I want to get into them but I just really can't. How anyone is expected to get into this genre is beyond me.
It's not that complex. You just have to really love strategy and be okay with a mostly passive sort of gameplay. It's fun to build an empire.
Gonna have to disagree with the "not that complex" assessment! It is to me.
To be more accurate, it's definitely complex compared to the average video game but I feel that it did a great job of presenting everything in takes to run a country in a digestible format, even if not for everyone.
Are you thinking of any specific 4x? I used to play a lot of civ style games but they are the only genre I like where I don't try rising the difficulty because they get very complex.
Again, I love the genre, and many of those difficulties you can learn as you go, but it gets complicated as you rise the difficulty and need to be more optimal.
I'm thinking of Civ 5 and 6 specifically. I never increased difficulty either because it's essentially giving the AIs unfair headstarts and that's not an interesting challenge to me.
I just see it as a sandbox game. Choose a playstyle I like (e.g. strong military, high cultural influence) and see how well it goes. Eventually I just want to conquer the whole world. It does feel like a chore lategame with many cities and units but it's a compromise I'm willing to accept.
Linear story games like The Last of Us, Tomb Raider, Uncharted just to name a few.
I'd rather it be a TV series or something. I just watch playthroughs on YouTube for those games.
For anyone who generally dislikes turn-based games, I would recommend Age of Wonders 4. It's a 4X style fantasy strategy game. You can make your own ruler and customize their look, race and abilities. If you wanted to have a race of magic cat people who ride giant wolves or play a giant dragon who shoots fireballs in battle, it's the game for you. If you win a game with your ruler, you have the option to add them to a "Pantheon" where they can show up as a random ruler or hero in subsequent games. There's numerous types of builds, and you can do everything from become an economic power to a diplomatic or warlike one. You can be good or evil, and it has an impact on your relations in the game. There's an eye-watering amount of customization all around.
I myself typically don't enjoy turn-based games because there's nothing I hate more than knowing I'm playing out a losing hand 5 turns in advance. However, AoW4 allows you to do a lot in a single turn, and there's an option to turn on 'simultaneous turns' so everybody plays their turn at the same time. It makes it feel a bit closer to an RTS. No worrying about taking too long for your turn, and there's a handy indicator that lets you know who's still working on their turn. It takes a bit for someone unfamiliar with 4X or turn-based games to learn, but it's really fun once you do. It just feels different from other games I've tried in a similar vein.
As for genres I can't get into, probably fighting games or JRPGs. The former I simply don't have the patience for, the latter I usually can't take seriously (not to mention that they're primarily turn-based, which I already don't enjoy, AoW4 excepted). Other than Nier Automata (which I don't think I ever finished) I've never found a game in either genre that could hold my attention or was enough of a draw that I could overlook the genre.
Deckbuilders for me. Nothing particularly wrong with most of them but I'm just not a fan of trying to have a video game and a card game at the same time. Feels kind of indecisive to me. Unless being a virtual card game is the entire concept like Hearthstone or it's a simulator for a real-life card game, I just can't really see the point in mixing them.
Don't really like deckbuilders (irl or online) since the core premise is to have non-cosmetic lootboxes. Being able to direct buy cards or sell used cards is cool, but it can get expensive and I'd rather just not.
This too. Even if you only get them by playing the lootbox mechanics that are prevelant in them are just tiring.
Any sports sim that requires a lot of knowledge of the sport and players to enjoy is a big no for me. I'm good for arcade-y racing games but that's about my limit for sports.
Ironically I did enjoy sinking thousands of hours into e-sports like Dota2 which required memorizing tons of skills, item reactions and strategies to even be considered more than a detriment to your own team.
Personally I love turn-based games. I like getting involved in the story of a large number of characters whether it is a bunch of relationships that are pre-planned (typical JRPG) or where the fun of making builds is magnified because you are developing a number of builds that work together.
I'm the exact same as you, turn based combat is the one thing I just can't get into no matter what.
I have beaten some turn-based combat games like Pokémon and a couple Final Fantasies, but it's very much a genre I actively avoid. I also can't point at what it is exactly that makes me dislike it, I don't think it's bad per se, but I derive very little enjoyment out of it.
Outside of that though, I really don't like fighting games. It always feels to me like the type of game you can't casually enjoy because there's so much min maxing. I understand the appeal behind "easy to learn tough to master", I play a ton of rhythm games after all, but with fighting games in particular it's like there's only one small set of things to do and you're just trying to squeeze out tiny improvements all the time. It's not a game loop I particularly care for because unless I spend a ton of time on it I'll just be beaten by everyone else, it's not personally fulfilling to me.
As I mentioned in another thread, I also find fighting games to be a bit too much. For more team based competitive games, you can much more easily be not good at the game, but still contribute with support classes and enemy call outs and a number of other things, and still have a good time. In fighting games? It feels like minmaxing is the reason you're there. If you're not performing well getting wins, or researching how to improve, there's not anything to do.
JRPGs. That’s not to say I’ve never enjoyed one but I’m so absolutely okay with never playing another bog standard JRPG again and it boggles my mind just how many of these things keep getting made and how popular they continue to be when they barely if ever offer anything new to the table.
They’re like the isekai of video games (there’s a meta joke in there). Maybe it says something about the Japanese market, I don’t know, but I’m tapped out on this stuff.
More directly to the question: I’ve never had any serious fun playing a sports game or a fighting game. You could probably throw racing in there but I’d be lying if I said I never enjoyed one.
What exactly is it that you dislike about JRPGs? There are so many of them and they vary so much that It's hard to figure out exactly what you mean.
I could understand not liking turn-based combat, but there are probably more that vary from the standard formula these days than there are that actually follow it, including a lot of them which do real-time combat like Tales and Star Ocean.
Is it just the way the stories are told, where you don't have a lot of personal agency like western ones? That would be odd to me, personally, but I won't knock you for your tastes; a lot of other people seem to think the same way.
Yeah I’m talking your traditional turn based JRPG. I like many JRPG-adjacent games, but your “standard” fare interests me not one bit. They all look and play the same to me, they bore me, and that’s just my frank answer.
That's where I'm confused, though. There's a lot of variety out there, so there's no real "by the numbers" JRPG. There is a by-the-numbers combat system, though (think Dragon Quest). I suppose there are so many with pixel graphics that tend to look pretty similar, so you might be talking about that, too.
I'm not upset that you don't like JRPGs, I just want to understand what it is that you don't like about them so strongly that you don't like the entire metagenre. Lord knows I don't have the patience for most of them either.
Racing (other than ones like Mario Kart). It just doesn't really interest me. I don't mind playing them at a friend's house or in an arcade, but I don't think I've ever purchased a racing game for myself and probably never will.
I find them very boring. I play mostly single player games and the ones I've played are generally lacking in single player content.
CRPG's for me. I actually love tabletop RPGs and play Pathfinder, D&D, Shadowrun, and a whole bunch of other games, so you'd think I'd also love CRPGs, but I just don't. I don't know what it is, but I just don't find the gameplay engaging. It doesn't matter if it's turn based or real time with pause, I never get more than 3 hours into a CRPG. I've tried both recent Pathfinder video games, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity Original Sin, and even some older CRPGs and I couldn't stick with any of them. It's disappointing, because I'd love a way to play "tabletop" at home by myself when I don't have a day planned with friends, but I can't really help what my brain wants, I suppose.
Unfortunately, turn based games are a challenge. Also most puzzle games because they usually require memorization, intuition, and the ability to just guess stuff (also called "moon logic").
And yeah I got ADHD.
I have a poor relationship with Souls. Soulslikes in general, but frankly, mostly Souls.
I expected this to be a relatively common answer, and it is, but the main reason for others seem to be that they don't like die & retry. I personally think it's odd that soulslike and die & retry are conflated. I love die & retry. I'll gladly die thousands of times if I get to do it in a system I find fun and get room for experimentation. Instead, soulslikes tend to offer combat I find too slow and tedious for me and huge punishments for death to the point where I would rather avoid engaging with any of the challenges offered. It's not even a matter of git gud, I've played and finished harder games.
It feels like anything Souls says it could offer me, other games already provide better. I hear praise about level design and exploration and have a much better experience engaging with that in RPGs, open-worlds, sandbox games or even just older shooters than I do in souls. Plot? Worldbuilding? Same thing. Music? Kota Hoshino's compositions were better in the games that came before.
The combat getting the highest praises is the worst part to me. It's objectively good combat, but it feels as if the 2000s-2010s left people so starved for games with actually good 3D melee action that they went gaga over the first game that dared to follow the proper principles for it and took it as gospel, making everything that followed slow and clunky like if it was a necessity. DMC and everything it spawned is RIGHT THERE...