Along the course of our life-long gaming careers, there’s a good chance we’ve had a game that we just plain don’t agree with the rest of our friends on. Possibly even the rest of the internet. For me, that game is Watch Dogs.
When I first heard about Watch Dogs, I was excited. I’m a nut for the surveillance scandals, you see. Pre-Snowden, people would have called me a conspiracy theorist, even though it was already known that governments were collecting calls and metadata en masse. Hell, I was working at Telstra when they installed the boxes.
So the concept of Watch Dogs is right up my alley. What isn’t is the gameplay. The first time I saw the game, at E3, I instantly wasn’t impressed. I walked out of that demo a curmudgeon, whereas everyone else was smiling ear-to-ear with excitement.
In the demo, there were two kinds of gameplay. There was a scene in which you hacked a camera and could see into the room of the person you were talking to on the phone, and you had to guide this person, a la Morpheus guiding Neo in the Matrix, so they wouldn’t get caught by pursuers. That was actual gameplay, and I was encouraged by that.
Then, there was the “Press X to hack” gameplay, which is interacting with the city in the most shallow way possible. No puzzle solving, no dexterity, no timing… Just Press X To Hack, in a city where the solution to every problem is to hack.
It also strikes me that, similar to the first Assassin’s Creed trailer, the hype for this game makes it seem like anything is possible. When, in reality, it’s likely that there are a handful of things possible. A handful of city hacks to use in interesting ways, just as there are a handful of ways to evade guards in Desmond’s DNA memory.
But in every conversation I’ve had, on podcasts, on the street, online, everyone disagrees with me. I’m not saying “You shouldn’t be having fun with this game” or anything — go nuts. I just don’t get it. Not my cup o’ tea. I was even over a friend’s place the other night and saw multiplayer being played. Everyone was riveted by it. To me it seemed dull.
Do you have any games everyone disagrees with you on? Are you a part of any circles in which you can’t join in the reindeer games, because their poison of choice just irks you? What game would you love to love, but just can’t bring yourself to do it?
Comments
163 responses to “Tell Us Dammit: Which Game Do You Disagree With Everyone On?”
Dark Souls. *folds arms stubbornly*
The Last of Us *folds arms stubbornly…er*
And yet we’re the best of pals and the worst of enemies!
I haven’t played either of them, but I won’t say no to some stubborn arm folding. *Joins in with the stubborn arm folding*.
I’m up for the arm folding, just not the stubborn part
*folds arms kinda casually*
Is it okay if I just wave my arms like this?
**waves arms above head like a lilly in the breeze**
*SMACK!*
OW!
*Rubs nose.*
I’m SOOOO sorry! Does your pain pain need a kiss kiss?
(I got kids, they love this)
@rowan: No…. But you might.
*Turns out Rowan’s waving knocked over the frappachino belonging to a professional wrester next to him.*
Wrester: “GRRRRRRRRRR!“
No. No, that’s not OK.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Jz4u8_J4U ?
Agree with both of you. Don’t get them at all *joins the stubborn arm folding*
Agreed on The Last of Us. It’s not a bad game, but is sure as hell isn’t the mature, ground breaking story experience everyone makes it out to be. It’s a zombie apocalypse story and it hits all the expected story points of a zombie story.
Also I tend to react badly to obvious emotional hooks, and The Last of Us’ emotional hooks couldn’t be more obvious if they had a giant pink buzzing neon sign strapped to them.
EDIT: sorry, wrong reply button.
I’m with D.C. Dark Souls, I get lots of people love it but I can’t seem to acquire a taste for it.
Mine is Minecraft. I just don’t “get it”.
Me too.
Same with all the other “make your own fun” games like Terraria.
I’ve actually got that, bought it cheap when it was on sale on XBLA in my quest to own every XBLA and PSN game available. Had no idea what it was about.
I like Minecraft but not Terraria. The interface for Terraria just doesn’t make a lot of sense and while I’ve seen some cool stuff done in playthroughs I just don’t see the point of playing a game that’s basically Minecraft in 2D. And since starbound is just Terraria+, I don’t see the point of that either.
The whole Metroid series can suck my balls. Oh and Final Fantasy as well.
You monster D:
THINK OF THE CHILDREN
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is the best PoP game ever created despite its flaws!
I thought I was the only one! They may have made some strange presentation decisions, but on the design front… man is it a brilliantly designed game. Especially, the way the paths through the world loop and cross, and through different points in time, is just spectacular. I love it!
It’s still the best, most deep fighting system I have ever seen in a game and I’m annoyed nobody has tried to replicate it.
Yes Warrior Within. Damn, what a game! Just when you thought it was over, you realise there’s still half a game left. The tone of the story was really awesome. The music was a bit of a misstep though.
The Two Thrones felt like some sort of cruel joke when it was released. Such an amazingly huge step down.
The Two Thrones was fine, but it seems like because of Warrior Within (or rather the reception) that they were afraid to take the risks that they wanted to. So they kinda went half way.
Then they made a reboot to tell a new story. But because of all the complaints that were usually simplified to, “It’s not Sands of Time”, they decided to go back and make a midquel in the form of the Forgotten Sands. Which was such a huge repeat of Sands of Time that not only did it feel like a waste of time, but I actually had to look up the title because the game was so forgetable.
I could never get into the Assassins Creed games. Whilst I loved the idea, I just found the gameplay so stale with vary little variation. As someone who finds every iteration of Dynasty Warriors as being endlessly fun, I somehow got bored of the repetitiveness of Assassins Creed :S
Also; I saw Watch Dogs, decided though it looked kinda fun, it wasn’t/isn’t a game I’ll be picking up. Well…Maybe when it’s like $2 on steam some time in the future on a sale………..so it can sit in my catalogue and collect dust like all my other AAA titles… >.>
Mirror’s Edge. *Don’s crash helmet.*
AGREED.
I actually rate Mirror’s Edge in my top 10, if not top 5, games of all time. I just enjoyed the experience of it so much, and must have replayed it 5 or 6 times from front to back. No game has really matched the tone or play of Mirror’s Edge.
Funnily enough, both Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Could not get into them at all. Which is a shame because I really enjoyed the RPGs they’ve done before.
Oooh, I thought you and Dragon Age would’ve been the best of pals! I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE ANY MORE!
I got spoiled by the Witcher series. Bioware’s faux morality system is kinda immature in comparison and the story just struck me as average.
I think the morality thing was exciting when they first did it. ME series just continued it because it was still popular when they did the first one and were sort of obligated to continue it. I’ll be surprised if they don’t do a massive overhaul in future games though.
Which instalment of Mass Effect? For me, ME3 was a joke as any choice I made in the first two games were only respected if it aligned with what the writers of the final game had decided. Everything else was either not considered or deemed obsolete if there was a conflict with the books or comics.
I tried getting in right at the start and I just found it bland. I know that the ME2 improved on everything but it feels bad to jump ahead to the direct sequel without playing the original.
Yes and no. The choice system remained and the removal of the Mako was welcome (considering using it was the same as trying to drive a semi after 12 pints of Guinness).
But the mission based approach made the levels feel very small and the mining for minerals felt a huge step down to the space exploration the first game had.
But that’s just me.
I played 2 first, because I’m a cheapskate and saw it had better reviews, and I’m glad I did because I wouldn’t have played after 1. 1 has qualities but the gameplay’s just average, which you can forgive when you’ve been spoilt with the story in 2/3.
ME2 is one of the best games I’ve played. Loved it.
I’m just curious, how far did you get? The interesting thing about the first Mass Effect is that, and I’m not even sure if this was intentional, the first visit to the Citadel is acts as a semi-optional tutorial for the lore. It teaches you everything you’d know if you lived in that universe. That way when you get out of the Citadel and into the main game most players already speak the Mass Effect language so they rarely need to slow down the action with exposition.
It sets a player up with the knowledge to just say ‘Go chase that suspicious looking Krogan!’ instead of ‘Go chase that suspicious looking Krogan… and just in case you forgot even though you grew up in a universe full of them, the Krogans are the big lizardy thug looking guys’. The smart thing is that they know a lot of that info is important to guys like me, but other people are perfectly happy not knowing what a VI is or are fine to learn it later when it’s relevant. So a lot of the information comes in the form of additional questioning. I’ll ask every option because that’s how I play these sorts of games, but others will be happy to stick to just the core line of conversation.
It’s really nice when it works but I feel like they made it too slow. Coupled with the slow navigation of the Citadel in general (those damn elevators) it causes people to form an opinion of the game before they leave the Citadel and dig into full game. That’s totally understandable but it’s a shame because I really think they’re missing out. At the very least it’s an interesting attempt to tackle the age old sci-fi problem of how do you teach a viewer/player/reader all the important rules and references they’ll need to know in order to follow/enjoy the story without just having someone look directly down the camera and dump an overwhelming amount of minor details on them.
That’s probably the biggest reason to power through Mass Effect before moving on to Mass Effect 2, although you can just pick up and play Mass Effect 2. Also on a personal level knowing the group Cerberus from small interactions and bits of information gathered in Mass Effect made the opening half hour of Mass Effect 2 mind blowing. It was one of those moments where my reaction and my characters reaction were completely in sync.
I agree on Dragon Age
What about Dragon Age 2?
God knows that’s the one where I seem to be in the minority by thinking it had a better story than DA:O (albeit delivered poorly) .
Final Fantasies.
Agreed, and thanks to the free demos this gen (as well as video store rentals back in the time of FFVII) I have tried them.
But their turn-based combat is impenetrable to me.
Minecraft to me was a clever novelty – to my kids it is a religion! As a fellow father once remarked to me “it’s not even a real game!”
At least I’m grateful that my son & daughter can as a result competently use KBM and Twin Stick controls
Metal Gear Solid. All of them. I’ve tried them multiple times and I just don’t get why people can stand it.
Also Prince of Persia 2008, the reboot with Nolan North and no-fail ledges. I really really liked it and it seems like just about everyone hated it for no reason other than that it wasn’t Sands of Time. Meanwhile Sands of Time I thought was incredibly average. Platforming and stuff was great but having a limit on how much you could rewind was annoying and the combat was insanely repetitive and time-consuming.
Prince of Persia 2008 is a thing of beauty! 😀
You can say “everyone hated it no reason other than that it wasn’t [blank]” to describe the majority of sequel hate.
Yeah. I never really got the hate for that one. I guess if I had of wanted another Sands of Time I’d be annoyed I didn’t get one, but I felt like the game played really, really smoothly.
Dishonoured – I hated that game for giving you a bunch of cool powers/toys to play with, yet punishing you if you decided to use any of them. There was basically no way to play the game without your character becoming corrupted (in the spiritual sense) along the way.
I always though it looked just ok. Ubisoft games in general don’t really do it for me.
Braid. What a load of crap. It got 10s across the board. Whyyyy?
Braid makes people feel clever for figuring out puzzles – like Portal. People love feeling clever.
GET OUT
Hahahaha!
It was CRAAAAAAAP!
I’m with you on this one.
I honestly don’t get the fuss over Braid at all.
It’s a nice enough puzzle platformer but I think that people got a little bit to pleased with themselves for “getting” the story. It doesn’t live up to the hype.
For me it’s Skyrim. After Morrowind, Oblivion and the Fallout games, It just felt like I was doing the same thing all over again with different packaging. I did enjoy it for a while, just lost interest really quick.
I am in the air about Watch Dogs though. I shook the hype for the game early when I thought back on Ubisoft’s history with new “exciting” IP’s and decided to go in to the game with a grain of salt. Kind of enjoying it.
All the Elder Scrolls games for me. That said I love Fallout, so who knows what’s up?
I like the dungeon crawling in Skyrim, I hated the long winded NPCs – I fell asleep playing it so many times that I eventually gave up and traded the thing to get GTA V cheaper
Also the levelling up wasn’t the slightest bit clear (contrasted with Borderlands or Dark Souls which have easy to comprehend skill systems
Halo, I did know some massive fanboys who carried on like it was the biggest revolution in the history of games so that probably didn’t help.
The issue for me with Halo was that for some of us, we had been playing quality FPS for years on PCs eg Quake, Unreal etc and then Halo launches on a console and everyone goes “Wow – this is incredible!” For me it was meh, I’ve been shooting things in this perspective for years. It was ok but nothing incredible or particularly groundbreaking.
Mass Effect 3 ending was good…
Final Fantasy 13
Sure it had its problems but overall it wasn’t (at least to me) nearly as terrible as people made it out to be.
Donkey Kong 64, people complained about the turned up to 11 collectathon that it was, but that was my favourite part, I also have mild OCD though so…
Bastion
I just found it… meh
Not a reply I was expecting to see here. Can you explain “meh” ?
Meh… ok, average, below expectations
Everyone seems to have loved Bastion, everything about it
I found it…. Meh
I agree with you. It was good, and got a couple of smirks out of me, but not mind-blowing like I was led to believe.
My favourite part was the ending, if you played it right it was the most beautiful thing
Sums it up well actually, i played a few hours after all the hype from mates, and it was just meh.
Also Kingdom Hearts cannot stand that game, and i love everything Square- Enix and Disney separately, but together, was the worst thing ever like syphilitic cancer.
Ditto this. I got maybe halfway through then I just felt like “ok, I get it, I’ve seen what that game has to offer – next!”.
I guess if I had nothing else going on I could be enthralled by it, but it doesn’t really stand out for me as a game that deserves more of my attention.
Agreed I didn’t get past about 10 minutes of demo – even my son who was eight at the time, put the controller down and went outside – which is all you need to know.
That game was sold purely on its narration
Dragon Age II
Most hate it. I love it. It’s no Origins, but it’s highly enjoyable. Plus I actually enjoyed the more personal story as opposed to another “save the entire world” type deal.
Yeah I’m with you on the personal story point. The whole mage vs templars thing was cool also. The themes and characters kept me playing to the end when I’d all but given up on the gameplay and level design.
Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3/NV
Never understood the appeal, I’ve tried playing them, they’re just boring.
I also don’t appreciate having to spend a solid hour installing mods to fix and improve the game (particularly fix, why should I give money to devs that sell broken games expecting the community to pick up the pieces… I’d rather give money to the community)
wash your mouth out crazy Fry
Dear Esther and its ilk.
walk-em-ups for LYFE.
ART
AC:IV. What people see in the sea-warfare is apparently something I do not. I like the exploration, I like the story, but the Edward Kenway is a twat. In fact, most of the pirate cast are. And pirate games, with the sole exception of Monkey Island, have never really appealed to me. At least Connor had a clear goal with an understandable rationale.
I would also say Watch Dogs, but I feel like I’m not the only person in the world thinking it would have been better if the gunplay were completely optional, or removed entirely, and expanded the hacking to social engineering and identity theft as gameplay mechanics.
I actually liked that because he starts realising that he’s wasting his life risking death for him and his friends, deciding to quit and move on to more important things.
When? I stopped after the mission where you (rot13) nffnffvangr Ubeavtbyq, and I still remember him being a moody unlikeable arse, if a slightly more earnest one. And if the main character is unlikeable for the first ~80% of the game, I’m not going to hold high hopes that they’ll change.
His dreams were rather simple, then you see him degrade himself to something worse in order to meet them. After being imprisoned and seeing his friends either die or go insane, he starts to wake up and realise there are more important things to life. He stops the Templars from total control and retires to look after his daughter, especially after finding out his wife died waiting for him.
Ah. It’s so easy to forget his initial goal was to get money to make a life for his family, and turned to piracy when a privateer’s wage didn’t hold up. But he seemed to forget that very quickly – he spends the larger part of the game acting as if that were the last thing on his mind, the only exceptions being a couple of conversations with Read.
And Hornigold’s the only one that really seems to have changed in any meaningful way – Read and Thatch were fairly consistent throughout, and you can’t tell me that Jack or Vane were particularly stable individuals when you met them. I can’t see their actions as particularly surprising, either – Vane drowns himself in drink at the slightest hint of trouble, and Jack’s a power-hungry psychopath, so the end result with those two was inevitable. You knew exactly what would happen when Thatch came back from retirement, too – it’s pure cliché.
I suppose I just couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm Edward did as the story unfolded, because nearly every character that met their end did so exactly as one would expect, as a direct result of their own actions (with the possible exception of Read, of whose end I don’t recall much beyond a dying plea for Edward to better himself). Characters this transparent simply don’t make for good stories.
Well, it’s only revealed in bits and pieces in the very rare wife cutscenes, some of the Abstergo notes, and some vague references which he mostly dodges when talking to other pirates, but at some point early in his piracy career, his motivation kinda got swept out from under him. And he made the wrong call about dropping his goal or seeing it through. So he went from having a somewhat noble reason, then when it was taken away seemingly without any room for argument on his part, he sort of stayed the course out of some vain hope that he might yet still ‘make it’ and prove himself, even knowing how pointless it now was. That… really spoke to me due to some RL parallels and definitely lent an edge to all of his discussions and reflections. It could hollow a man, that.
Totally agree about ACIV. Not every person has a pirate fantasy, and it seemed to only cater for people who do. it is the first AC game i gave up on.
Half Life 2. I just don’t think it’s a good game at all, even for its time.
I don’t believe you. You either didn’t truly play it at the time it was released or you’re just plain trolling. It was miles ahead of anything else available at the time. Fact.
I played it a few years after it came out. Thought it was really flawed. I tried to be forgiving because it was an older game, but I just could not enjoy it. Health system was poor, lack of visable feet and hands for Gordon combined with a silent protag and press E to make things float/telekinesis gun meant I felt like I was playing as a ghost, enemy design was terrible (who likes shooting at tiny things?), level layout was poor (driving through miles of nothing), story was boring and Gordon wasn’t even a character.
Also, it was not miles ahead of anything else available at that time. There were a lot of great games out back then. Half Life 2 was not one of them. If it’s any consolation (and you clearly need consolation as you seem to have trouble accepting that not everyone loves your overhyped game) then you should know that I think Half Life 1 is pretty good.
Skyward Sword. There’s a handful of people that love it and I’m one of them.
Minecraft, terarria and all MMORGS. I don’t get them despite trying them.
Journey. Way too repetitive and just pretentious.
Half Life Series. one of the most over rated games series ever. Bland, boring empty and lazy
GTAIV. I enjoyed it at first while the release hype was strong and I was enjoying exploring the city, but I quickly began to loath playing it. They took a mayhem driven open world game and turned it into a bland city life simulator staring a mopey loser. Bruce was the only traditional GTA-style character in the game (outside of the radio).
The cars suck. I’d get stuck driving some busted up old piece of junk most of the time (that actually handles like a real terrible car you’d hang yourself if you had to drive every day!). Even the good cars had a focus on realism that didn’t prevent me from enjoying driving them, but certainly got in the way.
Where once there was a Kill Frenzy there was now a internet cafe where you could check your mail and get 100% authentic e-mail spam. Woo. If only there was a typo in the phone book that meant I kept getting calls for a take-away joint by mistake. Then it would have been my Game of the Year for sure. =P
GTA’s wanted system has always been a bit wrong for my tastes. It’s a nice catalyst, you accidentally bump someone and all hell breaks loose, but the later levels have always been sort of a punishment. GTAIV goes a step further though and makes it a hassle to ditch the cops. In the past you could just step over a line into a respray garage when you were done playing with the cops but in GTAIV you have to jump through hoops. Sometimes it works, if you’re doing missions and stuff it’s a cool challenge, but if you’re just running around playing there’s no way to just go ‘ok, done playing, now I want to go do a mission’.
The bad taste GTAIV left in my mouth prevented me from enjoying the far, far superior GTAV which was a huge shame. I think my problems with Franklin wouldn’t have been enough to turn me off the game if it weren’t for GTAIV.
As for Watch_Dogs I was on the fence about even buying it, but after playing it I’m actually pretty into it. I think part of that is that I came off (finally) playing Arkham Origins and I was in that sweet spot where I could stop worrying about Dark Knight Challenges and just stealth my way through Predator missions. I was super into entering a room, taking down half a dozen guys in a minute leaving before anyone even realised I was there.
The hacking is a bit of a joke, it really is just get a clear line of sight then hold X, but the way it’s introduced in the first mission made it clear to me that it’s just an excuse to add a new dimension to the stealth aspects. It could have been a bit deeper, so far the biggest puzzle aspect has been daisy chaining cameras, but on a purely mechanical level I feel it’s a strong addition and I enjoy it.
I loved GTA, but hated San Andreas and GTA IV, I just couldn’t relate to the characters, and it was kinda boring.
I loved the older GTA and stealing mafia staff cars and just having fun, the radio stations etc. but San Andreas and GTA IV just made me sad.
Haven’t tried GTA V yet.
Yep. GTA had me from the original all the way to Vice City. Then something happened between Vice City and San Andreas, and I lost interest. GTA IV was the pits. I was so excited for it, and try as I might, I just couldn’t get into it. The Eastern European thing is my cup of tea, so I’m not sure why it failed to resonate. I have also yet to try GTA V.
I have taken positives from this though. I realized that I really did truly love Morrowind after all. Upon release, I played it for hours and hours, but I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. After the disappointment of GTA IV, I dug back into Morrowind, Oblivion and then Skyrim. Love them all. Also, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag taught me that I also like it when navel battles and gorgeous tropical colour schemes get caught up in my open-world games 🙂
I think what happened is that Rockstar over compensated in response to their critics. With GTAIII and Vice City people would respond to the Jack Thompson types with ‘it’s not just about shock value, they’ve got great characters, great stories, great game play, cutting edge technology, it’s so much more than just shooting hookers’.
Rockstar seemed to take that as ‘we need to make GTA art first, crazy mayhem driven sandbox game with an hilariously psychotic cast second’. San Andreas only saw the start of it, and personally I love the game, but by GTAIV they got so caught up in doing something people could take seriously they forgot GTA is at it’s best when it’s not serious.
I do recommend GTAV though. I found it difficult to get past Franklin being the sort of guy who would never act the way I do when I play, he lets crackheads guilt him into running the extremely boring side mission of tow truck driver where I’m still playing like Tommy Vercetti, but the game itself is a step in a positive direction.
Yeah, I guess I find Rap Culture pretty boring, and the Eastern Bloc thing was just a bit miserable.
The older GTA games were just damn good fun, and the characters less annoying.
I’d love a GTA where you were an undercover cop, or make a 70s Starsky and Hutch version, have some fun with it.
Heh. I’ve always loved the idea of a 70’s set open world crime game where you play as a loose cannon cop pushed over the edge in an extremely corrupt city.
Gimme that with some darker/noir stuff even, I don’t care… Anyone remember Interstate ’76?
Never get out of the car.
Well, I figured Watch Dogs wasn’t going to be for me just yet, I’ll wait on a sale or something.
Soooo, I plumped for Sleeping Dogs instead, haha. And I’m loving it. It’s Shenmue + Yakuza x GTA. With a dash of Stranglehold. So much fun 🙂
I hear you on GTAIV. But that said, I think a lot of people have a similar opinion. It ticked all the boxes to get a great score for reviews but it was never the game I really wanted out of the GTA series.
Probably. I think it’s one of those things where if I talk about it people agree, but I never hear other people talking about it so I feel like nobody else feels that way. Also like I said it was good to play while the hype was up so I think a lot of people who would agree with me don’t simply because they didn’t go back once the hype went down.
It doesn’t help that I usually bring up what Saints Row 2 was doing right at the time which brings up a lot of GTA vs Saints Row debate. =P
There’s entire series of games that I just skip.
I haven’t ever been all that interested in Watch Dogs. At one stage I had it preordered on PS4 as a launch title simply because there wasn’t much else on offer, then it got delayed so I dodged it altogether. Now I might save it for a Steam sale or a PS+ freebie.
Assassins Creed – I tried the first one but it got repetitive very quickly (and it killed my 360!)
Metroid games – have the original prime and 3 but never completed them. Tried the 2D games on VC but didn’t ‘get’ them. Same with castlevania.
Pokemon – I think I’m at the age where I was too old for it when it first took off so never got into it back then, thus am not into it may years later.
Call of Duty – I had Modern Warfare on 360 and it was ok. Modern Warfare 2 seemed like a map update. Never got into the series again. The same thing goes for any war shooter really and first person shooters in general I am very picky.
To be fair the Assassin’s Creed series doesn’t start getting better until the Brotherhood game (So the third one released). AC2 is a vast improvement over 1 but it still had those repetitive moments. Brotherhood added the whole investment and assassin training mechanic so they were really fun.
But ultimately, there is definitely a level of repetitiveness to them, but at least every chapter doesn’t feel like it plays out exactly the same way like it does in 1.
That’s probably what’s keeping me off Assassin’s Creed. I played the first, didn’t hate it but I didn’t love it and I felt like Assassin’s Creed 2 would be more of the same so I skipped it. Now it feels like I’d enjoy the newer entries but it also feels like I’m a dozen games behind.
AC4 is a good entry-point for you then, I feel. It’s a different game, just rememebr you’ll have some weird modern-day stuff to deal with for a couple minutes in between
This. AC IV is awesome. I jumped in here, best decision, it’s basically a Pirate simulator.
I LOVED the first Assassins Creed!
It did get repetitive around the midpoint – but once I unlocked counter-attacks that was it – I went on my merry way attacking every guard that I could see. I still rate the sword fighting in the first game as more visceral and cinematic than any of the Ezio sequels.
Also the final two chapters, story-wide had me riveted to my seat.
Despite the gameplay improvements ACII, as a story, felt flat to me until I played ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities’ (I had the GOTY ed so it was properly integrated into the story). That final speech by Ezio cemented him as an interesting character to me
Lords of Shadow 2.
Outside of the absolute crud stealth the rest is pretty cool. The locales are not as cool as the 1st but the combat is great.
Bioshock Infinite… such an incredibly Meh game.
I only got the “meh” moment right at the climax of the story. But I was so burnt out infinite at that point I just needed to finish playing it.
Half Life 2.
Found it really, really boring. Quick chat, race around on the hover thing, shoot faceless (literally) enemies. No real story, no real revelations, just dull.
I loved the original half life, the starting scenes where you are just going to work then the shit hits the fan, the wondering WTF was going on, the army guys and their flanking, being on the run from everyone, the chopper sequence, bullet holes appearing in the claustrophobic vent system…
By comparison HL2 was just a by the numbers shooter, and everyone went nuts for it, and I was so disappointed after the long wait.
Hey, does anyone have a game they *loved* that the rest of the internets hated?
Ocarina of time. While I can appreciate what it did for games at the time, I could never get into it.
Sorry junglist I know how much you love that game.
Xenobladder
@greenius
XENOBLADE IS AMAZING BUT YOU LIKE OTHER THINGS I LIKE SO IT’S OKAY THAT WE DISAGREE ON THAT ONE
NO! Platttnym is bedder!
shole shivere
Pokemans Slack Vurshun 2
omegaegalaphoahoasaphirerubyemermaldadelta!
Yeah, that Emerald delta announcement is off, eh?
Watch Dogs was meant to be something special according to the last year’s E3 hype, and instead it’s like any other mediocre free roam game. It’s basically a second-rate GTA with a hacking gimmick on the side – not half as diverse as everyone was originally making it out to be. The story is also pretty crap.
I bought the game just because my friends were going crazy about it, only to discover the gameplay is far from innovative. Instead you’re stuck doing the same old free world scenarios.
Some of the stealth missions have their moments (akin to Splinter Cell), but the rest of the game just feels like you’re doing fetch quests GTA style – kill bad guys, drive to some other place while avoiding enemy vehicles, and then kill more bad guys.
In short, if you want the ultimate free roam game, GTAV is still the one.
If games like Watch Dogs are considered to be at the forefront of modern day gaming, I guess I’m just not with it anymore, because right now I’m actually struggling to enjoy this experience – which has its ups and downs throughout.
Hopefully Mario Kart 8 turns things around on the weekend. No doubt a good Nintendo game will revitalise my passion for gaming after this mid-week slump.
I really enjoyed Aliens vs Predator (2010).
Variety in gameplay between marine, alien and predator, plus a decent story to move the game forward.
(It got mediocre reviews at best)
I enjoyed it too :/
Uncharted. I bought a new PS3 after reading the 10/10 reviews, every man and his dog claimed it was amazing. It turned out to be a generic 3rd person shooter with fancy cut scenes……whoopie di freaking do da.
The Last Of Us. The story is generic as hell, the gameplay is basically Manhunt on PS2 & nothing special, the characters (Ellie was ok) were dull & unlikable. Also, the ending sucked major asscrack. I did somewhat enjoy the part where you play as Ellie though. And to think I spent $118 on the Ellie edition!
Im referring to Uncharted 2 by the way, forgot to add the 2!
The one point about LoU that I agree with is that the gameplay was basically Manhunt on PS2. I think that’s what I liked most about it, I loved that game. Very stealthy. And stabby.
I dunno if they’re hated, but I feel Jak 2 and 3 don’t get the love I think they deserve
Trials. Sorry to Mark (if he reads this), but I really have not been able to get into Fusion, and it’s not for a lack of trying.
God Of War for me. When it first came out it seemed crazy that a game could be such a facsimile of the Devil May Cry gameplay with a simple re-skin and get away with it. I remember giving it another chance with God Of War 2 and I stopped playing 3 hours in.
Everything was so, hollow, in that game. Characterisation seemed non-existent, graphics were never as good as people seemed to think, the gameplay was repetitive as hell.
Does anyone feel this way about Titanfall? I tried so hard to love it…but it just seemed so small and one dimensional. I felt like I’d done all the “Titanfall moments” that they said would be awesome within the first hr of playing it…
I have a couple, First is Far Cry 2, everyone loves is but in my honest opinion it’s the most tedious, boring repetitive game i have played, What is the fun in driving for 10 seconds, clear a checkpoint rinse, repeat until you get to your objective. FC1 and FC3 i highly enjoyed but this i didn’t.
Dead Island, What put me off was the “Australian” character with such an appallingly bad accent i quit the game and immediately uninstalled it and never touched it or the other Dead Island game since.
Lastly is Duke Nukem Forever… Yes as in the butt of all video game jokes but i found it enjoyable, certainly not the worst game i have played.
Infamous 1&2 and borderlands 1&2
Alan Wake.
Way too long for such a repetitive game. The story wasn’t half as clever as it seemed to think it was. Pointless collectibles, some of which actually spoiled sections of the game for you before you encountered them.
Graphics were good, and I liked the various nods to King and Lynch. But I couldn’t get past the repetition.
I agree about Alan Wake. With regard to the story, the only thing good I’ll say is that it did a good job building the suspense but the payoff/reveal was hugely disappointing (to the point where I don’t remember what it was).
I thought the gameplay was good (not great mind you) but as you say, it got repetitive.
I seem to always be that one guy that holds a different opinion, but I’d say Bioshock Infinite and Uncharted (the series) are the two games I absolutely cannot fathom people’s glowing praise for. It’s for the same reason too, they’re both very pretty games with somewhat interesting stories but stretch that over standard, uninspired gameplay.
As for the other side, I can’t understand why people don’t like FF XII. I absolutely loved the gambit system and though the story wasn’t always great, it was a refreshing break from the usual fare.
Agree with you on FFXII.
Interesting characters (even though Vaan is slightly annoying). Also the vibrant and colourful game world reminds me of Star Wars. Furthermore I enjoyed the more political and nuanced story and the morally grey characters compared to the more clearcut “good” vs “evil” stories and characters that the Final Fantasy is more known for.
Combat system was innovative and I think the closest comparison can be found in Knights of the Old Republic (which I enjoyed)
I think most people were turned off because the first few hours are a chore before you become more familiar with the characters and the world. Also I feel people didn’t give the combat system a chance.
I’ll bite the bullet, I can’t stand most of nintendo’s first party games. Never Liked Zelda I tried it on several occasions and just didn’t like it.
Mario games I find too repetitive I mean outside of galaxy it’s the same thing over and over.
I don’t get the big deal of the Zelda games either.
I missed the whole Nintendo thing as a kid, and yeah, I can’t find any fun in Mario or Zelda games.
I’ve tried over and over, but just don’t see the attraction.
Halo.
Everyone seems to love it. I don’t understand why.
Coming from a long background in PC first person shooters, I saw nothing in it I hadn’t seen before. After all of the hype surrounding it, when I finally saw it I shrugged and said “Oh, Is that it?”
Boring, derivative, clunky, not groundbreaking in the slightest. Games like Quake 2, Quake 3, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Hexen and Half-LIfe were doing it all YEARS before Halo hit the scene.
I don’t remember any of the games you listed have anything like the warthog and the drive or gun scenario it added to the game.
It mostly was an evolution thing, it took elements from a bunch of things, and for the first time brought them all together. I had been a PC FPS guy for years before Halo, but for me, Halo got so many things right that the others had gotten wrong over the years. Dynamic music, NPCs that actually had enjoyable dialogue, and multiple accents. Enemies that would dodge, cover and run away. Epic music, vehicles and designs straight out of Aliens, sticky grenades and more story than any FPS had really packed in up until that point. It was greater than the sum of its parts really. And of course the double betrayal plot twist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfDPOeU5yfo
GTA IV and GTA V.
IV because of the stupid dating sim shit in it (yes, I know you don’t have to do them, but if you want all the goodies then you have to) and I really dislike the controls and handling of everything (cars, planes, boats and the character you control)
The entire final fantasy series.
Infamous 1 & 2!!!
I liked 3 though I didnt think I would!
Mass Effect 3 I didn’t bother to finish even after I did absolutely everything in ME2!
Halo. I finished it in one sitting but it was a bit disappointing especially considering the hype. Then again I had just finished Metroid Prime which is a vastly superior game in almost every way.
You know what, Final Fantasy X. I just don’t get it, and I’ve finished the game. Found nothing to like at all. The entire cast/plot was meh at best for me.
And yet I love Final Fantasy 9 to pieces…go figure
Gotta be Bethesda RPGs. I just don’t tend to like the “go anywhere” aspect of them, they seem hell-bent on fluffing everything out with pointless inventory items and quests to obtain them, I never really know what I’m suposed to be doing… I’ve tried. They’re just not for me.
They’re also very self contained quest-wise. You can go anywhere and do anything, but don’t expect it to be long or have much of an impact on anything else beyond a general alignment stat. When people say free-form RPG I tend to picture a world that’s always moving, always generating new content and threading all your choices into the new content, completing one quest closes another, rather than a giant map with a set amount of scattered short questlines.
I do enjoy them I just feel like a lot of Fallout content plays like DLC. Self contained modules dumped into the greater world. I’m hoping this generation we see Cloud computing used to make a truly endless Fallout game where the people and environment are ever changing, like roaming a wasteland SimCity.
See, I could get behind that sort of idea. And I’m perfectly happy to sink hours into RPG’s from other studios. It’s just something about the way they present themselves which makes me think, “I just can’t be arsed with this”.
Agreed. Shitloads to do, but it’s all completely meaningless repetition.
Doesn’t help that the base gameplay is dry as hell either.
I bought that Eye: Divine Cybermancy because it seemed to have a similar concept, hacking
cameras etc, but the game was so confusing and hard to understand that I gave up after trying to work it out.
I think Duke Nukem Forever was okay.
Uhhh…
Do Not Like:
~ Call of Duty
~ GTA
I’d like to throw in Unchartered and TLoU… as I haven’t played them though, I’ll stay my hand.
Like:
Every ‘Tales of’ game.
I’ll try to think of some more…
Tales really has to grow on you. It took me around 6 hours of Symphonia before I fell in love with the series. Battle system changes title to title too which makes it interesting.
Heavy Rain *yawn*
Poosibly my favourite game ever was Alien vs Predator on the Atari Jaguar.
There. I said it out loud.
MORROWIND. My god, was I bored :\
Mobile gaming in general. Everyone assumes that every game on the app store is a rubbish IAP cash grab with no real value. I disagree. I’ve found so many great experiences on there, and it disappoints me that some people consider it a dark plqce filled only with ‘clones’.
Fallout 3 and all the expansion packs for it.
Issue I believe is that I loved fallout 1 and 2 and was hoping for More ™. What I got was generic FPS. I’m not an FPS fan so I got extra disappointed by it. I blame it on my “I’m not a twitch gamer”. I’m a strategy gamer (Hence why 1 and 2 were loved)
I loved d3 and I hate day z…
Hey I made a rhymes
Zelda, Pokemon, Mario, Final Fantasy, Halo.
Never got what was so amazing and ‘unique’ about those franchises. I always found them boring. That being said being made to have MY PlayStation used to play FFVII when I stayed at a mates multiple times was shitty, especially since he knew I found it extremely boring to sit there and watch him and his mates wank (figuratively not literally) over the game whilst they played it.. Halo was the same, was all some mates played when I went to their place, it was great when I went to a mates place and they had a PS2, meant we’d play the shit out of Vice City or another decent game!
I don’t get Uncharted especially 2. My friends are hardcore fans, so they lent me 1 and 2 quite recently actually and I went through them. The first game was kind of fun seeing as everything was new character wise etc, I did enjoy feeling a bit like Indiana Jones, but to be truthful I was just excited about how much 2 would step it up…
And then it didn’t. Uncharted 1 of 2 is just walk into an area (village, jungle cleaning) where there are weapons leaning against stuff. Firefight ensues, terrible combat, enemies take a billion rounds, the reticule is hopeless, it sounds bad…then they all die, move to next area, cut scene, maybe run from a big explosion, enter new area…platforming, climb brightly coloured stuff (they are the only option), now enter area with weapons leaning against stuff again. That’s it. As maligned as they were the jetski bits at least were different in the first one.
I get that the story is kind of fun in an action way, but I also don’t happen to enjoy that lolz (full disclosure)
But the biggest criticism is just the lack of danger or strategy or tactics or anything. You could watch a million different players play it and you’d never see any differences, it’s just leading you from one area to the next where death isn’t an inhibitor, there’s nothing at stake and there is only one way to do anything. You can’t say use your climbing skill to take a different approach and avoid combat, you will fight these dudes and you will climb this exact route when we say.
Any Mario stuff -giant mushrooms blah blah who cares!