We asked and you answered. Some games and franchises, no matter how popular they are, just don’t make the cut for some of us, and we wanted to know which ones just don’t click with you.
While some answers were expected (like me, lots of folks don’t get along with Dark Souls), others left me a bit surprised, including the shade some threw at acclaimed 2023 role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3.
Modern God Of War games
The new God of War games, but only because after playing Elden Ring, the combat felt too easy. That and the puzzles just screamed AAA, especially the “throw your axe at stones hidden in this one room” [type]. Wow, a real brain buster. And then telling me I need to find a way to climb up a wooden structure. I could literally do that in real life, you telling me this dude that wields weapons five times my body weight can’t climb a wooden structure? — jplearn
The new God of War games: Played the first, didn’t like it. Just seems like every other game at the moment (skill trees, crafting, open world, yawn). — r1ggs
God of War (2018). I didn’t dislike my time with it, but I also thought it to be grossly overrated, especially in comparison to the snappier original trilogy. That, and I think it speaks to a wider issue in which Sony seems to be going all-in on the “prestige” model of AAA aka: Every game does the The Last of Us thing of walking and talking to show how much “cinema” it is. Seriously, playing GoW directly after finishing TLOU Part 2 brought some strong deja vu.
I appreciate its story [and] its attempt to come to terms with both Kratos and the game industry as a whole, but the game itself is just fine. — kemuri07
Baldur’s Gate 3
After about 20 hours, Baldur’s Gate 3.
Want to like it, but I hate the interface on console, and somehow hate it more on PC.
Also, I’m gonna save-scum anyway. Just let me have the damn roll when I want it. — DrugBust
On the one hand, I’m really impressed with the level of detail that is brought to the writing and its characters. On the other hand….I really hate playing the actual game. Like oh man, it’s just largely a frustrating experience to either control characters or move the camera.
Also not helping: That the supposed easy mode that’ll let me experience that detailed story mode I’m enjoying will still wreck my shit simply because of a bad dice roll. — SkaOreo
I’ve got 45 hours in this game and I just can’t get into it. The role-playing aspect is great fun but it’s just so RNG heavy in a very unfun way. A lot of people say “lean into your failures, it makes the game more fun.” However my failure tends to be [that] every character can’t roll above a 3 in combat for 2 straight rounds, and the enemies can’t seem to roll anything less than an 18. My failures are the character with 93% chance to hit with advantage still critically fails and the enemy I impose disadvantage on critically hits with BOTH its attacks. Playing BG3 is like playing with a DM that doesn’t allow house rules because they stick to the rules to the letter and refuse to take pity on you if you happen to have an extremely unlucky streak. — Axetwin
Various Soulslikes and ‘hard games’
Dark Souls and even Elden Ring. I’ll get a few bosses in and go, “okay, so it’s going to be how many more hours of memorizing moves of boss #28 until I kill it and restart the process with boss #29, and then on forever?” Like, one kid has a karate match; the other wants help with homework; I’ve got to make dinner and if I’m only gaming for a couple of hours a week, I want to enjoy the experience more. — Belaam
I don’t play games to lose repeatedly. I don’t really get (nor understand) the “I gave myself a completely arbitrary and unimportant task that required me to beat my head against a wall for hundreds of hours before completing it, I am now a better gamer than you” thing. If you put a wall in my way that I find too irritating, I have a stack of some serious GOTY contenders that I’m still working my way through that I can gladly go play instead of your wall.
More power to those that like them. Less power to those who somehow feel their personal ability to complete a video game is a moral choice that awards them with some form of superiority. — Lurch of the SoCal
I’ve never understood the idea that you get satisfaction out of failing and eventually succeeding. All I ever get is frustration followed by relief that I’m done with a tedious task. Maybe it’s just my ADHD brain, but I cannot fathom the idea of just wasting hours of my time beating my head against a wall just because the developers decided to make the game hard. — archronos
Anything “hard” like the Dark Souls games. I think I could “git gud,” but I don’t have the patience to “git gud.” In fact, I play just about everything on easy these days because there is too much stuff out there to waste time trying to master any one particular thing. — Pandalulz
Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar Games, and other open-world crime games
Anything by Rockstar. As I’ve gotten older they just seem like they are trying too hard to be edgy. — MurderOfCrows
I enjoyed the Red Dead games quite a bit, but bounced off of GTA V after it became clear that the writers have a, uh, let’s say “problem” with women. — Tsume76
Any GTA or GTA-like sandbox game. I start them up and then ask, “Now what?” every time.
Saints Row, Cyberpunk, all those sorts of games that say, “Here’s a city with lots of crime everywhere! Go do crime! Make your own fun!” They feel directionless by comparison to other games and rely on me getting a kick out of, say, stealing a car and driving it into a crowd of pedestrians. And that’s funny exactly once, then it gets dull.
I’ve never understood the hype. — staindgrey
First-person shooter franchises
Most FPS games. Unless they have an intriguing story like BioShock, or a fun gimmick, they’re all just Doom/GoldenEye/CoD clones. — ArmoredTitan
While I do give credit to Bungie for what they did with Halo, bringing FPS’s to console; I simply cannot understand how anyone enjoys these games. From campaign to multiplayer, I just don’t see anything remarkable about any of the games. The first three games have almost literally the same gameplay sequences (fight the Covenant, fight the Flood, drive a Warthog off an exploding thing). Additionally, Master Chief has to be one of the least likeable, least relatable, emotionally void main characters ever created in a AAA series. I just don’t understand how it has become Microsoft’s flagship series. — The Guy
Call of Duty and pretty much every other FPS game out there.
FPS games were my go-to form of entertainment back in the Doom/Quake/Heretic days, but over the years, most of the popular FPS games went from having complex maps with multiple routes and secrets to unlock to being a series of well-decorated tubes connecting a bunch of cutscenes. I switched to other genres of video game entertainment (3rd person shooters, RPGs, MOBAs, etc.) and haven’t looked back. — ConwayCostigan
I never could get into any kind of competitive online game, like CoD or Fortnite. Mostly because I’m anti-social, mind you, but also just the whole culture around them seems non-inclusive and possibly toxic. — paradsecar
Metal Gear
MGS: Attempted to play the OG fairly recently. WTF was Kojima on? I wrongly assumed it was a fairly serious game based purely on the “tactical espionage” tagline. How wrong I was. It’s fucking nuts; almost seems like it’s trying to parody something, but I’m not sure what. The Psycho Mantis fight was the nail in the coffin. — r1ggs
The Metal Gear games. I have friends who love those games so much, but I just can’t get into them. They all seem like such nonsense. — arfybarfy
Various Final Fantasy games
I have played every mainline Final Fantasy game from 8 on. Except 15. The bromance/road trip thing just isn’t for me.
I’ve also tried and failed three times to get through FFVII. It may have been groundbreaking at the time, but the first disc is SO BORING. I could never get past it. — Chronophasia
Feel like FF7 doesn’t start getting good until after you get out of Midgar the Kalm Flashback even if Disc 1 has one of my favorite parts of the game. There was definitely a lot of padding in the first few hours.
Incidentally, kept dropping FF8 because Squall was insufferable. Finally powered through it a few years ago and he only gets marginally better. — Green
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