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What game(s) have you tried to repeatedly get into but ultimately could not?
This could be a gaming series that is very popular but for some reason or another doesn't resonate with you, or maybe a weird one-off within a genre that you love. What aspects didn't resonate with you and what could have been done differently that would made it easier to like the game?
The Witcher 3... It seems to be considered one of the best games ever, but I've tried to play through it a few times, and the combat was been pretty lackluster, and I could never really get that interested in the story. I think people forgive the gameplay because of the story, but if I can't get into the story then I just have subpar gameplay to work with.
Relatedly, I got maybe halfway through Witcher 2, put it down for a weekend, and then never picked it back up again đ¤ˇââď¸ Apparently I'd much rather waste my life playing Rocket League or Valheim than participate through a gripping story about love and betrayal....
Are you not talking about rocket league? Jkjk but I also left BoTW so I could rack up hours in RL, donât hate me.
Yeah, me too. I came into the Witcher 3 right off the back of Dark Souls 2 and just couldn't get into it at all. I hated all the standing around while people talked to me about the plot. The combat was awful (by any standards but especially compared to Souls), the story both boring and predictable and the characters felt flat and uninteresting.
The only reason I stuck with it as long as I did was Gwent.
The Witcher 3 for me too. I managed to die multiple times during the tutorial. Then I did a few quests, I thought it was nice (I played a lot of Qwent at an inn.). Eventually I got stuck in a cave and couldn't get out. Every time the monsters would kill me and I'd respawn right back at the early part of the cave that I couldn't get out from. That's where I gave up.
The game loop of "enter cave, kill monsters, collect loot" is so unashamedly barebones and they don't even try to hide it, but critics have eviscerated Skyrim for doing it better back in 2011.
Also, the game is at least somewhat sexist in my opinion, and there's no dancing around that one. Pretty much the only female character you can't have sex with is your adopted daughter, and many of the characters you can have sex with feel shoehorned into the plot for you to fuck.
The Witcher 3 and Skyrim. Was pretty hyped for both, and really enjoyed Witcher 2.
I think in the end what I realized is that I just don't like open world games and would prefer a linear story progression.
For me, it has to be the souls-like games. Somehow I came about owning Dark Souls 1-3 and Bloodborne but could never get into them. I beat the first two bosses in Bloodborne and then called it quits. That's the most progress I made in any of them. For some reason or another, I haven't been able to grasp the hook in a meaningful way. I understand there is a good game there, but I pretty much will drop any game if I sense my afternoon is going to be ruined playing it.
Ironically though, I really enjoy Monster Hunter so it isn't like I'm opposed to pattern recognition games with a timing element.
Strange, it's the opposite for me. I really enjoyed the Dark Souls series and Sekiro, but I couldn't find the 'hook' for Monster Hunter. I think the main problem I had with Monster Hunter is all the extraneous stuff that you have to learn before you can actually hunt monsters.
Sounds like you may have your mind made up but I would strongly consider pushing through Bloodborne after Father Gascoigne, as I feel like the game doesn't start until after you beat him. The story really starts to pan out after that point (have a wiki handy) and you'll start asking questions about the game world, that you'll want answers to. The speed of BB matches MHW pretty well, as opposed to other Souls games, so I'm surprised you feel this way.
Of course, it could be the case the game isn't for you, but I consider Bloodborne to be in the top 10 games ever and feel personally attacked if anyone says they don't feel the same.
I think at this point, I am waiting for more time to pass before giving it another shot. I have probably tried to start and get hooked on the game 5+ times since release. It would be nice if there were an incentive to try again such as an FPS boost but I may have to wait until I have modded my PS4 Pro to play.
One day maybe. Like with Dark Souls, I definitely recognize there is a good game there, I just can't get myself to the point where I want to stick with it.
Civilization. I'm usually a fan of world building, resource management games, but I just can't with this one. I bought it and immediately regretted the decision, whoops!
It's pretty easy for me to get sucked in, but I've spent a lot of time trying to force Civilization into being an interesting game, with only mixed results due to its poor pacing. Really, you're better off.
The ones I really bounce off are Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis, with their clunky UI's.
I recommend Compact Conflict, which is a trimmed-down Risk in 10 minutes or so.
Have you had a chance to try Crusader Kings 3 yet? The new UI is a substantial improvement over the previous game, and the new in-game tutorial is actually good enough that you don't have to rely on YouTube videos to learn how to play.
I thought about it, but these are games are very complicated and I'm not sure if I like this style of play.
In Crusader Kings 2, I didn't make it out of the tutorial, but one thing I noticed is that when you arrange a marriage for your character, you end up looking at a large spreadsheet of character stats to decide who might be interesting. âI'm not too interested in thinking of characters mostly as numbers on a character sheet, but somehow it seems important to try to maximize... something. I didn't play long enough to get a good feel for it.
(A similar thing happened with Rimworld where I would keep rerolling to try to get just the right mix of colonist skills to start out with, but I knew what I wanted, and it's more fun after that.)
Do you spend less time looking at numbers in Crusader Kings 3?
It really depends on how you choose to play the game. For me, marriage in CK is more about forging alliances and trying to get interesting inheritable genetic traits for my offspring, than it is about raw stat hunting. And overall, the game for me is more about the emergent storytelling, where even when I fail horribly at something it can still be enjoyable due to the amusing/intriguing events and situations that results in, than it is about "winning".
However, if you're an obsessive min-maxer who feels the need to win every battle, succeed at every scheme, and achieve every goal you set for yourself in the shortest time possible, then you can probably still just as easily fall down the "looking at numbers" rabbit hole in CK3 as you could in CK2, and so perhaps the game isn't for you. But even if that is the case, if you do ever decide to attempt to get into CK again, I would recommend just trying to take it a bit less seriously, not obsess too much about achieving perfection, and find some enjoyment even in your failures. As they say in Dwarf Fortress, "Losing is fun!" (or at least it can be, if you have the right mindset).
Well this is very cute, I love it!
Super Mario Bros. At the time it came out, I really liked platformers, but I just couldn't get into it. I don't know. It's not the worst game I've ever played, but it's just not that interesting. There's so much hidden stuff and it doesn't really hint that it's there, so you don't even know to look for it until a friend tells you about it. The "enemies" are lame. Turtles are the enemies? Really? Turtles? I just can't get motivated by that.
I can't tell if this is a joke. Pretty funny either way.
At what ages did you try, and which entries?
I would have tried it around the time it shipped (maybe a year later), so 86-ish. I would have been about 15 or 16-ish. I didn't try any of the later entries. I did go back to it from time-to-time over the years, but my opinion didn't really change.
Not trying the later entries is where you missed out. The original SMB was cool and all, but you were probably older than ideal to be hooked by it. I'd wager you would have gotten into SMB 3 as a late teen, as it was a much more polished package, not to mention the actual gameplay was just that good.
Terraria. It has supporters who absolutely deify that game and apparently the most gracious developers ever born, but I just cannot grok the gameplay. Nothing makes sense, the game doesnât explain anything, and I canât even understand watching others playing. Itâs especially frustrating because it seems like itâs supposed to be pretty simple but I have less luck playing it than I have had trying to play Dwarf Fortress.
Yeah Terraria is definitely an âalt-Tabâ to the wiki every two minutes kind of game. At least until youâve played it a couple times. The devs did release a journey mode which I havenât tried but was supposed to take some of the frustration away as I understand it
So I tried to play the game again because you brought up this new mood, but this time I did something slightly different by trying to play it on a Mac.
Everything was far too small to be able to read, and I couldnât even figure out how to access a settings menu to fix it. After putting it in fullscreen I couldnât get it back to windowed mode, and the UI didnât scale anyways. And when I tried to simply close the program to access the settings menu before a game is loaded, it crashed.
I think I might just be cursed. đ
I'm actually trying Terraria out right now and it's fun, but I have no idea what to do. In Journey Mode there's a dude to talk to for guidance, but he doesn't seem too helpful.
Every single tabletop RPG that I've encountered so far is just not for me, all of them just feel like work. I tend to enjoy the stats side of creating a character, but actually role-playing is just tiring.
As somebody who plays tabletop RPGs pretty regularly, I get this. I don't think I would be able to do it with any group but the one I always play with. We were lucky enough to mostly be college friends who had a lot of history and are really comfortable with each other. We've brought in other people a couple of times, but almost always just one at a time. The few times I've played with other groups have been exhausting.
It also helps that our style of play is deeply unserious about 90% of the time. It's mostly just goofs, jokes, kicking down doors and killing monsters, and coming up with the dumbest, most roundabout ways to solve straightforward problems. It's different from the style that you see on display a lot of the time. We're definitely not trying to tell Very Serious Stories or anything, although occasionally things do get dramatic. I've always likened it to a show like Scrubs where things are mostly fun and games, until it gets really emotional and serious. But the only reason that works is because we've spent time growing to love the characters through of all the jokes and shenanigans.
One other thing that helps me personally, as a very introverted person, when playing or DMing is using perspective. I almost always narrate my characters actions, and even use dialogue signifiers to put some distance between me and the characters, instead of just spouting off "in character" all the time. Makes it much more comfortable for me, for some reason.
I've been able to try a few different RPGs with a few different groups since I moved to this state. The kind I've found I enjoy the most is the collaborative storytelling kind. DND is very "crunchy", there's a lot of rolling and comparing numbers to other numbers.
Something like Blades in the Dark are more focused on the story you're telling. The dice rolls are mostly to tell you to what degree you have failed, instead of pass/fail. Then you explain to the group what that looks like.
All of them, really.
For some ADHD people videogames are highly addictive, while others are so hyper and innatentive that it is hard to focus even on videogames they actually like. Sadly, I'm part of the last group. My brain is pretty fucked up.
There are many games I like but I'm unable to commit to them. 20 hours is my maximum limit, but after the 4 hour mark I'm usually bored out of my mind already. Playing more than 20 hours of a game is considered a great win, and I obviously never finish any game.
That is sad because I do enjoy videogames and would love to get in on the fun and enjoy a deeper experience. Specially RPGs.
I still buy games and consoles, but, from a rational standpoint, I really shouldn't...
SAME.
I donât believe I have ADHD, but my friends know me to have a âgaming wanderlustâ where I will play hundreds of different games for only an hour or two each (often even less) all while they will play just one game for hundreds or thousands of hours.
An hour-long play session is like, a LONG time for me, whereas for them thatâs barely dipping their toe in the water. My husband will watch me start a new game and stop after an hour, and he always asks âyou didnât like it?â From his perspective, Iâm stopping early â he thinks the game didnât grab me. Meanwhile, Iâm thinking that hour was a marathon, and I thoroughly enjoyed what I played! Thatâs why I went a full hour! If I didnât like it I would have stopped after five minutes!
Unfortunately, even if I liked what I played, I donât always go back to it. Games seem to have a sort of short enjoyment half-life where if I donât pick them immediately back up, my affinity decays and I instead select something new rather than returning to something old.
I have a few games that Iâve devoted more time to, and some have been able to sustain me from start to finish. By and large, though, I tend to nibble at all the different offerings at the gaming buffet, and rarely do I make a full plate of something and finish it.
Interesting. How do your gaming habits compare to your reading?
If I'm being honest, I don't have a reading habit anymore. I like to think that I do because it's comforting, but that's really only because I listen to audiobooks on my commute. When it comes to actual reading, well...
Two weeks ago I took a "screenless day" and one of my goals for the day was to read like I used to. So, I sat down with Dune, a book that I've owned and have been meaning to read for over a decade at this point. I ended up reading ~120 pages of it that day. And it was great! I really liked it. It was really satisfying to sit down with a book and dive into it uninterrupted.
And I haven't picked it up since. It's still sitting there, waiting for me to come back.
Pull up a seat.
The Zelda series - I've played nearly all of them and haven't finished a single one. I was particularly disappointed by Breath of the Wild, which I'd seen a lot of people compare to Skyrim. That game's not Skyrim.
Dark Souls - I've given it a real try and just can't enjoy it. I don't think it's necessarily the game type though, just Dark Souls. I finished Dark Souls 3 and Salt & Sanctuary.
Final Fantasy - This is another Zelda situation. I've played all of the main entries, minus 11 and 14. The only one I've finished is 15. I guess the direct control made a lot of difference for me? Still looking forward to 16, and I've got 7 Remake but I'm waiting for the PS5 patch.
Multiplayer games - I've played plenty of Quake and UT. I'm here for a story, and I hate depending on others to get it. I especially don't want to spend 45 minutes+ on a single MOBA round just to lose. Nope, that's just not for me. I don't feel like I've gotten anything out of that experience.
Survival games - If I start the game by punching a tree to get wood, I'm quitting out of it. This also lands a lot in the MP problem of no story but what you make of it. I like exploration aspects of games like Minecraft, but if there's nothing to find, or what I find isn't worth the effort, then I'm out.
Team sports games - I'm not into team sports so it's hard for me to enjoy games based on team sports. This extends to something like Pyre too. It's more or less a fantasy skin on 3v3 basketball. I loved Supergiant's games, but I could not get into Pyre.
Visual novels - You might think how much I want to be told a story would make me the prime audience for visual novels but no thanks. I read books when I don't want to interact with the medium.
I don't like battle royale FPSes. I prefer spending time building up a character in a certain way, doing research to find the best weapon, attachment, and equipment choices for me and my playstyle, and then reaping the benefits of having done that extra homework. In Battle Royale, that's out the window, and it comes down to the luck of the draw when finding good loot (or not).
I also don't really like arcade/casual shooters, and prefer more hardcore/simulator shooters. I prefer low health, quick TTK, reduced HUD, friendly fire possible. I prefer that you're rewarded with a kill because of good, tactical maneouvering, as opposed to being rewarded for being better at keeping your cursor locked onto frenetically-moving targets, or bunny hopping your bullet sponge body better than others.
Night in the Woods. I wrote a kind of mini-review here. The game has become something of an inside joke among my friends and I, after two of my friends who were also interested in the game had the same experience as I. Eventually, one of my friends managed to pull through the game while the rest of us watched. While I appreciate that the game touches on more serious subject matters, most of the game is spent listening to characters, who although seem believable, are so insufferable and take far too long to say anything interesting/meaningful. And even when they do, what they say is inevitably undercut by some low-grade comedy. The dream sequences are also notoriously a drag. EDIT: Also forgot to mention the absolutely awful and forced rhythm mini-game sections.
As a game, I don't think Night in the Woods works. It may have been better suited for the visual novel format. I feel at least then, the writing would have been more focused.
I'm fully with you. I think that game narratively has a specific audience, and I was just outside of it. I got the references and the touchpoints but they weren't really hitting. I finished it only because it's basically impossible not to as long as you keep playing. But I found the whole loop so tedious. Every day, just slowly walking around, talking to the same people. I know the tedium speaks to the narrative, but it's also a video game.
I'm also on this side. I wanted to love it but it just took too much darn time. I think I may have worn out a controller with all the nervous button pressing happening simply because of the transitions taking too much time.
Honestly, even the narrative is super frustrating. It seems like everyone's calling out for help, but nobody seems to want to help. I think I'd get it if the characters were younger; when I was a kid everyone else was a complete ass, but these characters are young adults, and that's when most people at the very least start becoming more understanding of other people.
OMG! This is something game developers need to learn. There are a few games I've tried recently where the main character's life is so depressing that I just couldn't keep playing. Mosaic, on Apple Arcade is one example. It's a game about a young man who's in a dead-end job he hates, and he's trying to get out, but can't figure out how. I think that's a really relatable story. The problem is that the game was too literal. It was really depressing to play and I just stopped after a few hours because I didn't want to finish it at that point.
A coworker of mine told me something his film school teacher said. You want to convey that your characters are bored without boring your audience. It's the same with games. You can show us characters are bored, depressed, or whatever, without making us feel those same feelings while playing the damn game!
Guild wars 2, Iâve tried so many times but I just canât get interested in the gameplay. The story is so bland, the cutscenes are essentially nonexistent, the gameplay is passable but it just feels soulless to me compared to guild wars 1. I played countless hours of guild war 1 and guild wars 2 just disappoints me every time.
Guild Wars 2 feels floaty and weightless. I couldn't get into it either.
I don't really have this experience as much with games as with music, but two that come to mind are the Zelda and Metroid series.
Zelda I mostly like for the music really, but I just can't seem to get into the flow of things, the puzzles, etc. There's something about these games that just never worked for me, and it's hard to put why.
As for Metroid, I love the immersive atmosphere, I love the gameplay, the soundtracks are highly atmospheric and cool, boss fights are intense, etc, but I always get stuck and have no idea what to do and just quit. I do want to play them in full sometime though, but I suppose I'll have to get a guide.
When it comes to Metroid, it's best to think of powerups as keys. It's rare that you get a new powerup that doesn't allow you to get to an area you've seen but haven't been able to reach before. For example, before you get the high jump boots, you'll probably pass several areas where you can see a higher ledge, but can't reach it with your normal jump. Another situation that's a little less obvious is with the ice beam. Ice beam freezes enemies, and then you can use those as platforms. So if you see a stretch of enemies hovering over lava, you're supposed to use the ice beam to freeze them and platform across the lava.
Another hot tip is using bombs everywhere. In most Metroid games, bombs will reveal blocks that can be broken, even if you don't have the ability you need to break them.
When you get a new powerup, backtrack. But also, if you get stuck, think back to the most recent powerup you got, and read a guide starting from that pickup. It'll point you in the right direction.
I realize that that's pretty much the core of metroidvanias, but in a lot of cases it seems like you're supposed to just randomly shooting, stab or bomb around to open up new paths and that's really vague sometimes. Or there's stuff like with how to get the true final boss in Castlevania SotN. If someone can figure that out without consulting a guide or walkthrough they're probably a prodigy if you ask me.
Another one I forgot is any game that uses more than 3 button for doing things other than movement. I hate games that require a controller and use every button. I don't even know what the stupid abbreviations mean. I had to look up the "RS" meant "right shoulder" button. Learning just to play a game is becoming as hard as learning to play a musical instrument. It's just not fun if I have to spend an hour a day just to keep my chops up.
And along with that, any FPS that has more than a few weapons. I can handle a melee weapon, a small, medium and large gun, a grenade, and maybe a rocket launcher. After that, I just can't really keep track of the capabilities of each and when I should use what. And fuck me if the game requires you to buy guns from a vendor or machine that sells hundreds of different models. I'm supposed to be relaxing and blowing off steam, not budgeting and doing strategic planning for my future. I do those things normally in life and that's what I'm trying to escape by playing my escapist games!
This is going to be all over the place.
Most games it seems and it kind of saddens me because there's so many great games out there. The last game I played seriously was probably Doom II. When it became competitive and Quake came around I lost interest. I bought Doom 3 for my 365 and played it for like half hour and had to turn it of it was too scary and the story way to long and dragging. I like simple games I've learned but love the thought of open world games. I remember loving Sim City and Sim City 2000 but after that these types of games just get to complicated and I lose interest. I even follow the City Skylines sub but can't see myself play it. I've played Burnout 3 and generally like racing games as long as they are simple and not too hard. I love football but have zero interest i FIFA somehow. I know all these titles are pretty old but this is where I'm at. The funny thing is that I have good friends that play a lot and I love watching them play so it's not that I'm not exposed to new games. Every time I see a new trailer I'm blown away until I see the real gameplay and it just....looks the exact same with different visuals. Peggle and Trails is more recent games I like.
My sons has a Switch and I just love watching him play Minecraft. I think if that game existed when I was growing up I would have loved it. I loved Giana Sisters but Super Mario just doesn't do anything for me for the Switch. I recently saw a clip from Sea of Solitude and I love the concept and mood of the game and I considered buying it but I'm afraid it's not for me.
It's a weird feeling to be so fascinated and just not have the motivation to actually learn and play the games. Games my childhood me would have died to play or even experience.
Ori and the Blind Forest.
Nothing wrong with the game but it's just not what I thought it would be. It was originally advertised as a Metroidvania but it is not really that, it's more a straight 2D platformer which is not a genre I'm particularly into. Great art and music but I just don't enjoy its gameplay. I find it a weird mix of platforming that requires extremely precise timing and aim, but then it also has automated combat that is imprecise and inconsistent.
The worst part of it for me is when it throws both in at once and then forces you to run through a marathon gauntlet that ends up having some elements of RNG as a result to get through it. I always drop the game during the tree escape sequence because it invariably ends up as an exercise in frustration at the game's mechanics. There's always some part where, a dozen attempts in, my sparkly attack decides to go the scenic route to an enemy which lets him kill me and I decide that it's time to uninstall the game.
Pokemon - I've tried Emerald, Diamond, Platinum and Sun (I think that was its name, you got a rotom for a PDA) and man those games were so dull and grindy. I got quite far in Platinum I think and I got to one of the trainers and my main pokemon, a fighting/fire monkey wasn't very effective against the trainer's ghost (or maybe fairy) type pokemon. So I looked on a wiki to see what pokemon would be effective. None of the pokemon I had caught would be useful so I'd have to go out, find a wild pokemon and level it up a bunch. I said "Screw that noise" and deleted the game.
The Omnifactory mod pack for Minecraft - GregTech isn't a very popular mod in the modded minecraft community due to its unnecessary metacrafting and Omnifactory didn't do much to temper that. Also Omnifactory's ore generation was terrible, there's something like 5 different kinds of iron ore, copper ore and et cetera. You're giving an ore detector when you spawn but it's not very useful because said ore gen is a mess.
Fallout New Vegas - It's an unstable mess of a game even with all the stability mods.
The big one for me is Everquest 2. I loved Everquest. But Everquest 2 feels like such a "in name only" EQ experience. As if World of Warcraft snuck in one night, slew EQ's little brother, and now runs around wearing his skin and referring to himself by the kid brother's name.
Skyrim and fallout for me. Tried fallout 3 and skyrim and just...they didn't grab me. I like several games in similar spaces (open world fantasy games, RPG shooters, etc) - but just couldn't get into either of them.
Super Smash Bros. So many people love it. It's the game of choice at a lot of get-togethers. I really... didn't like it. The controls never made sense to me; it always devolved to button mashing. The game didn't really encourage people to be tactical or clever. People just sat in front of a TV mashing buttons and screaming.
Button mashing and no tactics? Mmm... I think this depends on the players you're watching. I've seen baiting/feinting, plus there are counters/ripostes.
For me, the main thing I don't like about SSB is that I've never learned how to consistently save my character from falling off the playing area. I see other players and they seem to know just how to jump or do a special move, and how to hang on the edge and climb up, and get back in the action. Me, I get hit 1 centimeter off the edge, and I jump and flutter and try as I might, I still end up falling off and losing a life. It's frustrating. It just seems too hard for me to figure out. I don't have problem with ringouts in general, as I've played plenty of fighting games where you can ring out (Virtua Fighter series and Soul Calibur). I just can't get a handle on it in SSB.
Up + B is almost always the recovery move.