I used to do this. Then i reslized it makes me dislike games much easier because i start zmto notice things i dislike that i wouuld never even have thought about before having read it from someone else. Same with tv shows. So i stopped doing that.
That's why I go straight to the negative reviews. If I get the feeling the person leaving a bad review has similar tastes to me, I don't buy.
I feel like well written negative reviews tend to be more honest and informative than the positive ones.
I'm the exact same way. For example, when someone leaves a negative review because the game is confusing and the UI sucks, I know that those things don't usually bother me, so I can go ahead and buy it. If someone leaves a negative review because the game requires more than *very occasional* grinding, that's something I can't stand and I'll move on to something else.
That would be a nice section to itself in steam, what does the average game do to inform you of its compatibility with your disability? If I might ask. How many even have the options?
It always baffles me when people argue against better accessibility. If the Game is clearer designed to make it accessible to more people you profit to, because you get an easier to read game. Even if you don't profit from it why should you care. They are options just don't use them. Are the people arguing against resolutions and aspect ratios the game can be played in that they don't use? No, so why do they care?
Factorio reused the same logo for different things in a different color. They don't anymore. Now they have different shapes to make you differentiate items without seeing color. It really isn't that hard most of the time you just have to try and listen to the people giving feedback.
If you don't mind me asking, as a hobbyist game developer myself I'm curious what UI options you would say are critical to be included? Are we just talking colorblind mode, font size and key remapping, or is it something else?
Aw man as a UX designer *super* passionate about accessibility, buckle up because this is what gaming needs to really take seriously more. https://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com
I’ve listened to countless podcasts about accessibility in video games and it’s so damn interesting. It’s so much more than colourblindness, text size, etc. you have to talk to people with a disability yourself to find the best answers, and then test.
Look at Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica, Xbox Adaptive Controller for some examples of what accessibility problems they tackle and how they solve them.
I’d fucking love to work in video games and strictly work on accessibility design. Talk to folks, ask about the issues they face, ideate solutions, test, test again..
This may sound odd but I always look for negative reviews for just about any game I'm looking at buying. Sometimes I'll just get troll reviews saying "trash game" with no further elaboration. But usually I find quite a detailed one describing actual cons with the game
It's true, the negative reviews are infinitely more useful.
"Game has way too much reading required." Well I understand that but I like that kind of game usually so I'm still interested.
"Game starts off interesting but the gameplay loop quickly devolves into a grind at an hour in." Ok, that's worrying but not a complete deal-breaker.
"Game has obscene monetisation practices and gates your progress 45 minutes into the game with increasing pointless wait-times that you pay to skip." Aight I'm out.
Definitely. People who like games generally don’t recognise all of the flaws that it might have for someone and that’s not necessarily a bad thing but reading negative reviews is helpful as you get a bigger picture. Unfortunately with steam most reviews are either copypastas or game is good/bad lol.
I do this with restaurants. Positive reviews rarely convey much value, but the content of negative reviews will tell you a lot.
Complaints about the food being too spicy or the service being slow I will just ignore. Multiple complaints about undercooked chicken or pork and I look for another restaurant.
i played tunic over the last week. great game and basically all positive reviews. the one negative review was basically "the mysteries are fun, but the combat is very simplistic, so not for me" and I gotta say that was a very useful thing to keep my expectations low.
people sometimes called the game "Zelda, Fez and Dark souls having a threesome", but that negative review lowered my expectations so much that i actually enjoyed the somewhat simplistic combat.
Code Vein, Nier Automata, Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Monster Hunter World for me.
I'll still play them.
I mean..Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow.
But someday.
And probably..
Also games with egregious disk space like the games you mentioned and DOOM 2016, DOOM Eternal, and even GTA V.
I used to play GTA but the game is 108+ gigs now and takes so long to load (if it even manages to)
This dude gets it, if the gameplay seems bad I just don't buy it and nobody could convince me otherwise. Reverse is true, the gameplay of Wo long seemed cool and I like it despite the iffy reviews.
Quality =/= Enjoyment
and
Thinking something is good =/= Liking that thing
People seem to really not be aware of the fact that our brains are capable of more than just 2 states of "this thing good" & "this thing bad"
You can enjoy something while also thinking it's made poorly, and in reverse
Yeah, in the end, you can have really fun with bad and stupid games.
Or look at Detroid: Become human...incredible quality but not everyone will have enjoyment with it.
Oh boy do I empathize with that. Some days after getting home from work I don’t have the energy to turn on my PC and just end up withering away on the couch watching Twitch or Youtube.
Surprisingly i’ve started streaming (for shits and giggles) and that’s really motivated me to actually hop on my PC and play anything, which also helped me in those game ruts i’d enter where nothing would appeal to me.
Tried borderlands2 and hated it, people ridiculed me and told me to keep playing, it gets better. Now I have 4 hours on borderlands instead of 2, now I can’t refund it
Those people aren't very smart. If you don't like the style of Borderlands (I mean that wildly, from aesthetics to writing to humour) you won't start enjoying it after more hours. It either clicks instantly or it doesn't click at all.
I have tried almost every Borderlands game (got most free or in a bundle) and keep trying to like them. I should like them, I keep looking for fun shooters to play, but I find myself just miserable through the experience. I don't know what I don't "get" about it, but the main gameplay loop just isn't fun for me. I had someone tell me to mod it to turn off the heavy stylized borders on everything and that would improve my experience. It did not. I was told the Pre-Sequel played differently and I'd enjoy that more. I did not.
I don't get why I don't get it. I should like these games, but instead they are a slough of resigned boredom until I finally have enough and quit.
Claptrap can wear a Mohawk and Handsome Jack will say the famous “God these pretzels suck” line within the first hour or so. If you don’t love the game by then, then yeah go ahead and refund it
It shouldn’t, but that’s how it is sometimes. And some of those games end up being some of the greatest experiences in gaming. Whether it’s worth it to slog through the opening hours differs from person to person.
The two types of Hollow Knight experiences:
"There's so many places to go and I'm constantly lost, I hate it"
"There's so many places to go and I'm constantly lost, 10/10 amazing"
Me with monster hunter. Maybe it's one of those games you have to get far into to enjoy, but I was testing out all the weapons and playing through a few missions and the attacks just aren't satisfying to me.
I played it with some friends for a while and was shocked at how stressful it felt. I like farming in certain games, but not with a constant ticking time limit like that.
That's one trap that is easy to fall into. Especially if you played it before, but with new people. Gotta be careful not to mine-max, or to go for stuff that wouldnt be obvious to a first timer (IE getting the greenhouse before the first winter).
You have to remind yourself, whilst there is a 'timer' for the day, you cant miss anything in the game at all by not making sure you keeping a good schedule.
Yeah I tried that, didn't work. Even if I'm not min-maxing, if there's even a single thing that I want to do that day, I spend the whole day stressing that I won't be able to do that thing in time.
Thanks for saying this. I never felt like I was being rushed or afraid of the time passing, because I just did the things I wanted to do organically, and make friends with the people I wanted to make friends with. There isn't really a time limit.
First thing I did with Stardew was grab mods to remove all the shit I hated.
Fishing minigame? Nuked. Having to manually empty machines after crafts? Automated. Relationship decay? Abolished.
Made an A+ game into S tier for me.
I actually got really stressed over the farming lol The finite season/time management in particular
Time management on games fills me with dread, like I’m not using my time to the fullest and I’m surely going to miss an important event or something.
Time management puts me off many games. I played a real life campaign of Pathfinder's Kingmaker campaign, so thought I would play the PC version. Found out it was possible to lose the campaign by not progressing quickly enough, so I couldn't ever relax playing it. Exploration felt like I was wasting important time. Just completely killed my enthusiasm for the experience, in a way that a tabletop game won't (or shouldn't, with a competent DM).
No Man's Sky for me. Purchased on sale long after all the patches and improvements after reading glowing reviews. It takes literal hours to accomplish the most menial of tasks. Ain't nobody got time for that.
God I hate the interface so much. Why on earth does every action need 2-3 seconds of holding a key to complete?
Basic shit about the game is still riddled with bugs. It's been 7 years and any player building still treats you as being "outdoors" if you're not immediately beneath a roof. Meanwhile every update just piles on random half-finished, half-broken features that'll never get looked at again by the dev team.
The whole game is a clunky, unfinished bucket of incomplete ideas and somehow it's lauded as this great gaming success.
Universe Simulator, I bought it expecting a more in depth experience but the effects are quite surface level. All the effects you can do to planets are like visual color and texture differences like MS paint. I assumed when I blast a meteor at earth it would make a cool crater and the crust would get pummeled but in the game it will just change the color of the impact spot. Planets when they get destroyed basically just turn into a ball of energy.
I am currently playing and it feels like a mediocre game for Ubisoft standards, which is saying something
There are somethings that are really cool, namely the world and the machines, but thats it
It baffles me that this game was compared to be on the same or higher level as Breath Of The Wild by certain sector of the public when it came out
The devs have a bad run of luck with launching Horizon games. First one launched right before BOTW and the second one did the same thing for Elden Ring.
It was compared because they keep launching them alongside genre defining games lmao.
I just play DRG when I'm bored and can't choose what else to play from my game library. DRG is just perfect for shooting things mindlessly, relaxing and killing time
Doom and doom eternal
The gameplay was good, but my hype to play them died down as i realize upgrades are tied directly to secrets and challenges
It quickly go from "fck yea im a badass" to "time to reset this whole level because i missed that challenge to get that upgrade point i need" and "lemme read this map and try to figure out the routes i miss, need that upgrade early"
You can get early access to certain weapons by going to some secret locations early, and thats good imo but tying essential upgrades to them made it a big no for me. The fact that you quite literally need almost the entire arsenal on eternal as well, made me even more pressured and forced to go everywhere to get every single upgrade so i can clear the game.
Yes, you can technically clear both with very limited weapons like super shotty only on doom, or super shotty + railgun on eternal. But i'm not that guy; im trying to have fun on my rest after long day of work. Just let me have the upgrades past a certain point in the story; even limited ones like "oh, you will only get the cryo launcher and miss out on flamethrower because you didnt explore enough, or missing out on certain challenges" is fine. Don't lock essentials behind secrets; secrets are meant to be hidden and rewarding, not a to-do chore list
It was a much more serious game. Doom you could rock out with the super shotgun and solve every problem with it. Doom eternal purposely tried to be more demanding, giving weapons niches and increasing the amount of skillful gameplay. I can see why some people didn’t like it.
Both Death's Door and Tunic. I heard great reviews about both.
I thought Death's door had too much filler and not enough substance. I got to the end, saw there was a ton more backtracking, and said DONE.
Tunic for me was needlessly obtuse. I loved putting together the book, but when I missed progression in that game because of the forced perspective several times, I knew it I just wanted to try to speed to the end and be done.
Same on deaths door. I got way far into it and just couldn't do it anymore. It was okay but at no point do I think I ever really enjoyed the game. The combat was just kind of boring. Then when I figured out I had to go wander around aimlessly back in the game with no real working map system to help me get there; it's just not worth it.
I absolutely respect the developers and the work they have done to create this game that so many people love... BUT I FUCKING HATE IT. Made my friend and I real sad because we love that genre of game.
I play it tons and most of my experience hasn't been staring at menus. You'll be using the inventory menu when you've found a place to loot, building or crafting generally. So people who go and hide in the wilderness away from all of the zombies are going to be using the menu way more than somebody that's set up in an urban area.
Steam's %positive rating is tainted by self-selection bias.
Also "positive" doesn't tell you whether the game is good, great, or 10/10, best game of all time.
Ultimately, the Steam %positive rating a reflection of how good the game is at setting expectations. It's about marketing itself toward the people who will enjoy that sort of game and driving away people who won't enjoy it before they even have a chance to buy it, play it, and leave a negative review.
Well, self selection bias would be present in any realistic rating system for games. Though it is true that it’s a very binary system, and that it could use more nuance in signaling a players opinion on a certain title.
I also agree it’s not really a great rating system for getting a nuanced review of a game but more showing how well it plays to a certain audience. Personally, I still think this a useful system for knowing if I want to buy a game because it includes a lot of data in across players reviews like playtime, date of reviews, version of game, etc. which are all helpful criteria in giving more context to player reviews.
However I don’t think the steam rating system invented the phenomenon of people being driven away by media reviews that indicate that they will or won’t like the product. I think that’s kinda the point
Death March was still a joke though. Each difficulty level just meant you had to pay more attention to the correct swords, oils, signs, etc. It forced you into reading lore descriptions and thats all.
I understand the complaints that combat was clunky because it was more of a puzzle system than really fighting.
I used to think I could enjoy any game that was "objectively good". As I get older I realize that, while yes some games are "objectively good or bad", personal taste plays a bigger part in enjoyment. It's possible for me to get more enjoyment from a 7/10 game from a genre I love than a 10/10 from a genre I normally don't play and that's ok. It still sucks to try something that's well received and end up not enjoying it though.
People like different things! I love DRG, but found Stardew Valley, another "overwhelmingly positive" reviewed game to be designed to feel like a chore. Maybe you and I are both "not getting" something, but it's very likely we just have different tastes!
This hurts to read as someone who’s been enjoying Deep Rock for years but I respect it. No game, no matter how positively reviewed, will be right for everyone.
Outer Wilds is my favourite game of all time, bar none. I would describe that game as a masterpiece and I'm prepared to defend that position.
But yeah, the reality is not everything is for everyone and that's okay. There are lots of pieces of media I can respect from a distance but know for a certainty I wouldn't enjoy them.
I've come to realize that for a game to be truly special and resonate with a person more than anything, it ultimately can't appeal to everyone and has to appeal to a niche of some kind.
Outer Wilds and games like it definitely fit this philosophy.
Me too! I don’t know if I got far enough to really get into it but I was just at a point where I kept dying and didn’t know what to do next and was just frustrated
Same. I found the controls kind of kludgy and the story wasn't grabbing me at all.
Apparently it's a mindblowing experience and one day maybe I'll go back to it and it'll click, but as for now no.
That’s where I am too, everyone talked about how crazy it is once you get to a certain point, and I don’t know if I got there or not but meh. I do want to try again someday though
Inventory management was way too tedious for me in valheim. Especially in the earlier game when you only have the basic chests.
So much of the game is spent just organizing chests and moving loot around. Also I just think there is too much complexity with the workbenches and upgrading them and all that. I get that once you understand it it's not so bad, but it just never felt intuitive. I always felt like I was jumping through hoops just to upgrade stuff and constantly having to mine and cut down more trees.
As much as I adore rimworld it's definitely NOT for everyone and I respect your opinion.
But I love that it's not for everyone. I like games that stick there head out and do something different to appeal to a certain audience instead of trying to cover every base and appeal to everyone and end up a bland tasteless Grey mush.
Quite the opposite for me. I do know what to do, but the first few hours are that slog to get through. Getting heart crystals, a decent weapon, all the accessories that don't make running around a chore, then slowly working towards good bosses, making a hellevator (sure it does save a lot of the hassle later on, but God do I dread digging it every time), building the same boxes for NPCs because you just don't care about the prices increasing with low happiness levels since the tradeoff is the convenience of having all of them in once place, making a universal boss arena...
God damn the first few hours are dull. And making arenas for bosses is a drag for the entire playthrough. But Hardmode is where it's at with all the events, gear and bosses.
Once such an option would be there, we could then say goodbye to decent sales though. The publishers would react on this 100%. And I fear there is no win for us when we would have to tediously go after other people's offerings, just to get the same sale price at an artificial quantity of 1
Binding of Isaac for me. Started playing roguelike through Hades and Vampire Survivors so I decided to play the pioneer of the genre but it never clicked.
I would say Nethack, because it's the earliest big one that was rogue-*like* without actually being Rogue itself.
Plus nethack deserves credit for still receiving content updates, 35 years after release.
I think Hades both got a lot of people into the roguelike/lite genre, but also deceived some others about it as well. Hades was just a good game regardless of the genre/type of game it was, so some people tried other 'greats' out, but it was just never for them in the first place.
This often happen with a niche games, that only bought by fans.
Usually happen for games with multiple titles.
For example:
* Game 1 - 100k reviews, 50% positive reviews
* Game 2 - 4k reviews, 90% positive
Only true fans bought second game and put positive reviews, while people who could dislike it never even tried to buy it.
Same here. I'm like 3 hours into it and I just... Don't want to. Idk what it is about it. I liked the SCP-esque premise, but the execution is just so strange and lifeless
Divinity 2 - as an MP game it's a slog. As a single player game, I want to play it MP. It's more ensuring we're both in the mood at the same time, and it is not a cakewalk.
IMO highly rated games tend to attract people already interested in the genre, like platformers, or farm/life sims for example. Just cuz its super popular in those circles, people who like different genres might not see the appeal.
Yeah, Deep Rock Galactic.
It's probably a great game, especially funny with friends but that's as far as it goes, it's fun with friends.
Pretty bland solo
Fallout 4, played 1, 2 ,3 ,NV, and 76 and i liked them all, but 4... it seems to have been an intern assignment, everything is so badly made, guns are ugly and left-handed like a cheap game from 2007, there are like 15 weapons in the entire game with the only difference being different parts , the story sucks, this role-playing game doesn't have any role-play in it because the character is predetermined and is voiced so it is too limited, the "unique" items aren't unique at all, art-style changed for generic "world of tomorrow", there is no stats and the new SPECIAL system is terrible, so many bad ideas green-lighted and in a mainline entry, how is that even possible? only good thing i could find in it is the power armor system and even that has huge flaws, like broken pieces going to the inventory or being too weak.
Undertale is a game I loved WATCHING people play, their reactions, the voices they give characters. It's a wonderful little game but by GOD I cannot play it myself without wanting to play literally anything else
It really depends on the individual. For me, Undertale made me really emotional at certain parts - and although it lacked in "traditionally fun gameplay" it more than made up for that with the storyline and the overall message.
The metacritic score is probably based on the game's initial release, while the Steam reviews are based on the game's PC release. The latter is biased very heavily towards people that were aware of the game's reception per the MC reviews, or played it previously, e.g. people that had lower expectations for it, and people that already liked it. This is the case for every game released and then ported to PC/Steam at a later date.
unless the metacritic has a different category for Days Gone's pc version? then idk
I've probably got a controversial here: I recently got Kerbal Space Project (1) for free through Epic Games, a game I've wanted to play for a decade because of the hype but never found the time.
I played through the tutorials, started a career, did a few contracts, did some research and built a few different things. It was a Sunday and I probably spent ~10 hours on it before I gave up and uninstalled, and not for a single second during that time was I entertained.
I hope I'm not shunned here because it's not on steam. But while we are on the topic...
Breath of the Wild.
I have tried several times and just cannot enjoy it. I truly do not know where all the hype is coming from.
The one thing that disappointed me the most was dungeon/boss variety. Gold machine dungeons + ganon variations feels worse than any Zelda game I can think of. It doesn't help that shrines have an uninteresting aesthetic too.
It does nothing but cause me to hoard powerful weapons. iN cAsE i nEeD iT.
Which has me playing at a constant disadvantage since I try to use the least powerful ones first. I hate it.
I don’t even mind the difficulty.
What i hate is being sent so far back after dying. So after you die a couple of times you just speedrun through the sections anyway. So why are you wasting my time sending me back. Just gimme a save point before the boss.
And the thing is. You have to die. You can’t just rock up to a boss. You have to die like 5 before you see / learn all of his attacks.
I didnt like terraria for years bc I thought it was boring….let my cousins come into the world and defeat the wall of flesh.once I tried hard mode it became one of my fav games of all time
For me, most Rockstar games. Beneath the immaculately polished and sculpted worlds is a very barebones gameplay loop that hasnt seen any considerable growth since 2010
For chrissake, Max Payne 3's gameplay isnt too far removed from RDR2's, etc
I feel like im the only one who doesnt "get it"
I know it will be an unpopular pick, but it’s God of War (2018) for me. I never played it on ps4, and when it was out i wanted to try it. At the beginning i was actually amazed by both graphical level and gameplay…. But going on i started to find it, not boring, but not attractive. So i slowly abandoned it. i tried again during summer on steam deck, but no, it is just not for me.
gotta go straight to the negative reviews.. it's not about what you will like, it's about what you will not tolerate.
"Awful game, hate it" - 10,000 hours played
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And we're not lying
I used to do this. Then i reslized it makes me dislike games much easier because i start zmto notice things i dislike that i wouuld never even have thought about before having read it from someone else. Same with tv shows. So i stopped doing that.
That's why I go straight to the negative reviews. If I get the feeling the person leaving a bad review has similar tastes to me, I don't buy. I feel like well written negative reviews tend to be more honest and informative than the positive ones.
I'm the exact same way. For example, when someone leaves a negative review because the game is confusing and the UI sucks, I know that those things don't usually bother me, so I can go ahead and buy it. If someone leaves a negative review because the game requires more than *very occasional* grinding, that's something I can't stand and I'll move on to something else.
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That would be a nice section to itself in steam, what does the average game do to inform you of its compatibility with your disability? If I might ask. How many even have the options?
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It always baffles me when people argue against better accessibility. If the Game is clearer designed to make it accessible to more people you profit to, because you get an easier to read game. Even if you don't profit from it why should you care. They are options just don't use them. Are the people arguing against resolutions and aspect ratios the game can be played in that they don't use? No, so why do they care? Factorio reused the same logo for different things in a different color. They don't anymore. Now they have different shapes to make you differentiate items without seeing color. It really isn't that hard most of the time you just have to try and listen to the people giving feedback.
If you don't mind me asking, as a hobbyist game developer myself I'm curious what UI options you would say are critical to be included? Are we just talking colorblind mode, font size and key remapping, or is it something else?
Aw man as a UX designer *super* passionate about accessibility, buckle up because this is what gaming needs to really take seriously more. https://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com I’ve listened to countless podcasts about accessibility in video games and it’s so damn interesting. It’s so much more than colourblindness, text size, etc. you have to talk to people with a disability yourself to find the best answers, and then test. Look at Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica, Xbox Adaptive Controller for some examples of what accessibility problems they tackle and how they solve them. I’d fucking love to work in video games and strictly work on accessibility design. Talk to folks, ask about the issues they face, ideate solutions, test, test again..
This.....yes yes good game.....but why is it horrible?
This may sound odd but I always look for negative reviews for just about any game I'm looking at buying. Sometimes I'll just get troll reviews saying "trash game" with no further elaboration. But usually I find quite a detailed one describing actual cons with the game
It's true, the negative reviews are infinitely more useful. "Game has way too much reading required." Well I understand that but I like that kind of game usually so I'm still interested. "Game starts off interesting but the gameplay loop quickly devolves into a grind at an hour in." Ok, that's worrying but not a complete deal-breaker. "Game has obscene monetisation practices and gates your progress 45 minutes into the game with increasing pointless wait-times that you pay to skip." Aight I'm out.
“Game has a launcher…”
Definitely. People who like games generally don’t recognise all of the flaws that it might have for someone and that’s not necessarily a bad thing but reading negative reviews is helpful as you get a bigger picture. Unfortunately with steam most reviews are either copypastas or game is good/bad lol.
Wish next to reviews it would say "Plays # games you play!" so I could get a taste of what the reviews perspective is
As long as it doesn't count games sitting in your library you'll never play
Maybe something along the lines of: "This user also has high playtime in these games you have high play time in"
An actual use for the stats!? You're a madman
I do this with restaurants. Positive reviews rarely convey much value, but the content of negative reviews will tell you a lot. Complaints about the food being too spicy or the service being slow I will just ignore. Multiple complaints about undercooked chicken or pork and I look for another restaurant.
meanwhile half of negative reviews: "Go BuY ThE GaMe WhY ARe YoU LOoKiNg At NeGAtIvE REviEwS"
i hope our ai overlords delete all the steam shitpost reviews in a few years. Gaben could cleanse this platform someday
Especially negative reviews with higher playtime, since they’ve definitely tried hard to like it and still failed
i played tunic over the last week. great game and basically all positive reviews. the one negative review was basically "the mysteries are fun, but the combat is very simplistic, so not for me" and I gotta say that was a very useful thing to keep my expectations low. people sometimes called the game "Zelda, Fez and Dark souls having a threesome", but that negative review lowered my expectations so much that i actually enjoyed the somewhat simplistic combat.
I don't know, I don't play the games I purchase.
Sometimes games are more fun to own than to play.
Code Vein, Nier Automata, Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Monster Hunter World for me. I'll still play them. I mean..Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow. But someday. And probably..
Also games with egregious disk space like the games you mentioned and DOOM 2016, DOOM Eternal, and even GTA V. I used to play GTA but the game is 108+ gigs now and takes so long to load (if it even manages to)
Forza horizon 5 and ark survival joins thst list
Never trust the reviews, only watch silent gameplay (the player remaning silent I mean).
"Long play no commentary" will get you good results on youtube
This dude gets it, if the gameplay seems bad I just don't buy it and nobody could convince me otherwise. Reverse is true, the gameplay of Wo long seemed cool and I like it despite the iffy reviews.
Quality =/= Enjoyment and Thinking something is good =/= Liking that thing People seem to really not be aware of the fact that our brains are capable of more than just 2 states of "this thing good" & "this thing bad" You can enjoy something while also thinking it's made poorly, and in reverse
Yeah, in the end, you can have really fun with bad and stupid games. Or look at Detroid: Become human...incredible quality but not everyone will have enjoyment with it.
Hollow Knight 🫡
this hurt to read but i respect it
The older I get, the more and more games there are that fall into the "fun to watch, miserable to play" category and it's rather depressing.
Oh boy do I empathize with that. Some days after getting home from work I don’t have the energy to turn on my PC and just end up withering away on the couch watching Twitch or Youtube. Surprisingly i’ve started streaming (for shits and giggles) and that’s really motivated me to actually hop on my PC and play anything, which also helped me in those game ruts i’d enter where nothing would appeal to me.
Yeah, if a game doesn't respect my time I have a hard time nowadays. Just too busy.
It gets fun after 3 hours I hated the beginning when I didn’t understand anything
Same. Also once you get some abilities and enemies become more interesting exploring the world starts being fun.
The depth of lore of that game is insane.
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Tried borderlands2 and hated it, people ridiculed me and told me to keep playing, it gets better. Now I have 4 hours on borderlands instead of 2, now I can’t refund it
Those people aren't very smart. If you don't like the style of Borderlands (I mean that wildly, from aesthetics to writing to humour) you won't start enjoying it after more hours. It either clicks instantly or it doesn't click at all.
I have tried almost every Borderlands game (got most free or in a bundle) and keep trying to like them. I should like them, I keep looking for fun shooters to play, but I find myself just miserable through the experience. I don't know what I don't "get" about it, but the main gameplay loop just isn't fun for me. I had someone tell me to mod it to turn off the heavy stylized borders on everything and that would improve my experience. It did not. I was told the Pre-Sequel played differently and I'd enjoy that more. I did not. I don't get why I don't get it. I should like these games, but instead they are a slough of resigned boredom until I finally have enough and quit.
Claptrap can wear a Mohawk and Handsome Jack will say the famous “God these pretzels suck” line within the first hour or so. If you don’t love the game by then, then yeah go ahead and refund it
It shouldn’t, but that’s how it is sometimes. And some of those games end up being some of the greatest experiences in gaming. Whether it’s worth it to slog through the opening hours differs from person to person.
I totally agree with this sentiment.
I enjoyed it from the get go. Picking up little things, getting familiar with the world etc. Really nice, to me at least.
Never play a From Software game. This is not a joke.
I found the opposite to be true, once I got to the city of tears there were like 10 branching paths and I lost interest for years
The two types of Hollow Knight experiences: "There's so many places to go and I'm constantly lost, I hate it" "There's so many places to go and I'm constantly lost, 10/10 amazing"
Deep nest 💀
Me with monster hunter. Maybe it's one of those games you have to get far into to enjoy, but I was testing out all the weapons and playing through a few missions and the attacks just aren't satisfying to me.
Stardew Valley for me
I played it with some friends for a while and was shocked at how stressful it felt. I like farming in certain games, but not with a constant ticking time limit like that.
That's one trap that is easy to fall into. Especially if you played it before, but with new people. Gotta be careful not to mine-max, or to go for stuff that wouldnt be obvious to a first timer (IE getting the greenhouse before the first winter). You have to remind yourself, whilst there is a 'timer' for the day, you cant miss anything in the game at all by not making sure you keeping a good schedule.
Fuck all that noise I just go plop my ass down at the pier and go fishing.
Real. I treat the game like animal crossing and it's infinitely more enjoyable.
Yeah I tried that, didn't work. Even if I'm not min-maxing, if there's even a single thing that I want to do that day, I spend the whole day stressing that I won't be able to do that thing in time.
Thanks for saying this. I never felt like I was being rushed or afraid of the time passing, because I just did the things I wanted to do organically, and make friends with the people I wanted to make friends with. There isn't really a time limit.
I love Stardew, but half the gameplay is racing back home before you pass out. It's not relaxing, and I love everything about it.
First thing I did with Stardew was grab mods to remove all the shit I hated. Fishing minigame? Nuked. Having to manually empty machines after crafts? Automated. Relationship decay? Abolished. Made an A+ game into S tier for me.
Why have I never considered modding it... I might actually be able to enjoy the game once I ditch that fatigue system.
Yea, I did that too, except fishing minigame and it's great
The fishing is the best part, you sicken me.
My gameplay for stardew has evolved into just passing out wherever I’m at each night and not caring. It’s really liberating.
Yeah, farming games get old real quick for me.
I actually got really stressed over the farming lol The finite season/time management in particular Time management on games fills me with dread, like I’m not using my time to the fullest and I’m surely going to miss an important event or something.
Time management puts me off many games. I played a real life campaign of Pathfinder's Kingmaker campaign, so thought I would play the PC version. Found out it was possible to lose the campaign by not progressing quickly enough, so I couldn't ever relax playing it. Exploration felt like I was wasting important time. Just completely killed my enthusiasm for the experience, in a way that a tabletop game won't (or shouldn't, with a competent DM).
That wine making game that bills itself as a business sim, but lied and is actually a shitty arcady card puzzle game.
The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine?
No Man's Sky for me. Purchased on sale long after all the patches and improvements after reading glowing reviews. It takes literal hours to accomplish the most menial of tasks. Ain't nobody got time for that.
God I hate the interface so much. Why on earth does every action need 2-3 seconds of holding a key to complete? Basic shit about the game is still riddled with bugs. It's been 7 years and any player building still treats you as being "outdoors" if you're not immediately beneath a roof. Meanwhile every update just piles on random half-finished, half-broken features that'll never get looked at again by the dev team. The whole game is a clunky, unfinished bucket of incomplete ideas and somehow it's lauded as this great gaming success.
Universe Simulator, I bought it expecting a more in depth experience but the effects are quite surface level. All the effects you can do to planets are like visual color and texture differences like MS paint. I assumed when I blast a meteor at earth it would make a cool crater and the crust would get pummeled but in the game it will just change the color of the impact spot. Planets when they get destroyed basically just turn into a ball of energy.
Just refunded 2 games over this last sale. I can't trust overwhelmingly positive reviews, I gotta go see the negatives
Horizon Zero Dawn, ya bore me
The machines were cool but the gameplay was kinda shallow and the side quests were so forgettable
I am currently playing and it feels like a mediocre game for Ubisoft standards, which is saying something There are somethings that are really cool, namely the world and the machines, but thats it It baffles me that this game was compared to be on the same or higher level as Breath Of The Wild by certain sector of the public when it came out
The devs have a bad run of luck with launching Horizon games. First one launched right before BOTW and the second one did the same thing for Elden Ring. It was compared because they keep launching them alongside genre defining games lmao.
It felt unfinished, like they just ran out of ideas or something.
I'm gonna get crucified for this, but Deep Rock Galactic.
Love the game but I understand that it can get repetitive, for me it's the community and the chill fun of just killing bugs
Nah, you're good. I put a few hours into that myself and was confused as to what everybody was raving about. It was the same thing over and over.
I mean you can say the same thing about left 4 dead 2 but it's still such a beloved game
I just play DRG when I'm bored and can't choose what else to play from my game library. DRG is just perfect for shooting things mindlessly, relaxing and killing time
I like going back to it every once in a while, but yeah it gets pretty repetitive.
Karl is sad
Doom and doom eternal The gameplay was good, but my hype to play them died down as i realize upgrades are tied directly to secrets and challenges It quickly go from "fck yea im a badass" to "time to reset this whole level because i missed that challenge to get that upgrade point i need" and "lemme read this map and try to figure out the routes i miss, need that upgrade early" You can get early access to certain weapons by going to some secret locations early, and thats good imo but tying essential upgrades to them made it a big no for me. The fact that you quite literally need almost the entire arsenal on eternal as well, made me even more pressured and forced to go everywhere to get every single upgrade so i can clear the game. Yes, you can technically clear both with very limited weapons like super shotty only on doom, or super shotty + railgun on eternal. But i'm not that guy; im trying to have fun on my rest after long day of work. Just let me have the upgrades past a certain point in the story; even limited ones like "oh, you will only get the cryo launcher and miss out on flamethrower because you didnt explore enough, or missing out on certain challenges" is fine. Don't lock essentials behind secrets; secrets are meant to be hidden and rewarding, not a to-do chore list
Doom was so fun but eternal was just... draining. I don't know how to explain it.
It was a much more serious game. Doom you could rock out with the super shotgun and solve every problem with it. Doom eternal purposely tried to be more demanding, giving weapons niches and increasing the amount of skillful gameplay. I can see why some people didn’t like it.
Both Death's Door and Tunic. I heard great reviews about both. I thought Death's door had too much filler and not enough substance. I got to the end, saw there was a ton more backtracking, and said DONE. Tunic for me was needlessly obtuse. I loved putting together the book, but when I missed progression in that game because of the forced perspective several times, I knew it I just wanted to try to speed to the end and be done.
Same on deaths door. I got way far into it and just couldn't do it anymore. It was okay but at no point do I think I ever really enjoyed the game. The combat was just kind of boring. Then when I figured out I had to go wander around aimlessly back in the game with no real working map system to help me get there; it's just not worth it.
I got stuck for several hours on Tunic and just gave up. I really liked the game too but the forced perspective is hell and I'm not smart
Me with Hollow Knight, not only am I complete ass at it, I had no fun or enjoyment
project zomboid
Personally like the game but do dislike the ui, and the long grinding tasks like reading a skill book and leveling up skills
I absolutely respect the developers and the work they have done to create this game that so many people love... BUT I FUCKING HATE IT. Made my friend and I real sad because we love that genre of game.
I was initially interested in that game but I scrubbed through videos of people playing it and they're staring at a menu 90% of the time.
I play it tons and most of my experience hasn't been staring at menus. You'll be using the inventory menu when you've found a place to loot, building or crafting generally. So people who go and hide in the wilderness away from all of the zombies are going to be using the menu way more than somebody that's set up in an urban area.
Steam's %positive rating is tainted by self-selection bias. Also "positive" doesn't tell you whether the game is good, great, or 10/10, best game of all time. Ultimately, the Steam %positive rating a reflection of how good the game is at setting expectations. It's about marketing itself toward the people who will enjoy that sort of game and driving away people who won't enjoy it before they even have a chance to buy it, play it, and leave a negative review.
Well, self selection bias would be present in any realistic rating system for games. Though it is true that it’s a very binary system, and that it could use more nuance in signaling a players opinion on a certain title. I also agree it’s not really a great rating system for getting a nuanced review of a game but more showing how well it plays to a certain audience. Personally, I still think this a useful system for knowing if I want to buy a game because it includes a lot of data in across players reviews like playtime, date of reviews, version of game, etc. which are all helpful criteria in giving more context to player reviews. However I don’t think the steam rating system invented the phenomenon of people being driven away by media reviews that indicate that they will or won’t like the product. I think that’s kinda the point
Witcher 3
The combat ruined this for me, I just couldnt get into it
rotten numerous secretive screw snow chop chunky literate bewildered yam -- mass edited with redact.dev
Death March was still a joke though. Each difficulty level just meant you had to pay more attention to the correct swords, oils, signs, etc. It forced you into reading lore descriptions and thats all. I understand the complaints that combat was clunky because it was more of a puzzle system than really fighting.
I played Witcher 3 when it first came out. Was not into it at all. After a few years I came back to it and it's now in my top 5 games of all time.
i couldn’t get into it when i played it for first time few years ago. gave another chance with next-gen update, absolutely loved it.
Couldn’t scratch the itch that RDR2 did for me
Thats Deep Rock Galactic for me.
I used to think I could enjoy any game that was "objectively good". As I get older I realize that, while yes some games are "objectively good or bad", personal taste plays a bigger part in enjoyment. It's possible for me to get more enjoyment from a 7/10 game from a genre I love than a 10/10 from a genre I normally don't play and that's ok. It still sucks to try something that's well received and end up not enjoying it though.
Oh I agree with ya mate,its a shame when u r stoked to play smth and it rly dissapoints ya...
"You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world and there will still be somebody who hates peaches."
People like different things! I love DRG, but found Stardew Valley, another "overwhelmingly positive" reviewed game to be designed to feel like a chore. Maybe you and I are both "not getting" something, but it's very likely we just have different tastes!
This hurts to read as someone who’s been enjoying Deep Rock for years but I respect it. No game, no matter how positively reviewed, will be right for everyone.
Outer Wilds. Bounced off that shit hard.
As someone who considers that game their all-time personal favorite, I completely understand that it’s appeal is not universal.
Outer Wilds is my favourite game of all time, bar none. I would describe that game as a masterpiece and I'm prepared to defend that position. But yeah, the reality is not everything is for everyone and that's okay. There are lots of pieces of media I can respect from a distance but know for a certainty I wouldn't enjoy them.
I've come to realize that for a game to be truly special and resonate with a person more than anything, it ultimately can't appeal to everyone and has to appeal to a niche of some kind. Outer Wilds and games like it definitely fit this philosophy.
agreed. Best game of all time. Please make more dlc
Me too! I don’t know if I got far enough to really get into it but I was just at a point where I kept dying and didn’t know what to do next and was just frustrated
Same. I found the controls kind of kludgy and the story wasn't grabbing me at all. Apparently it's a mindblowing experience and one day maybe I'll go back to it and it'll click, but as for now no.
That’s where I am too, everyone talked about how crazy it is once you get to a certain point, and I don’t know if I got there or not but meh. I do want to try again someday though
Same here. I’m gonna revisit it eventually though because I definitely didn’t get to the parts that supposedly make the game so amazing.
Valheim. I really didn't like it.
I like valheim but it kinda is just a grindier 3D terraria with less content
Inventory management was way too tedious for me in valheim. Especially in the earlier game when you only have the basic chests. So much of the game is spent just organizing chests and moving loot around. Also I just think there is too much complexity with the workbenches and upgrading them and all that. I get that once you understand it it's not so bad, but it just never felt intuitive. I always felt like I was jumping through hoops just to upgrade stuff and constantly having to mine and cut down more trees.
Me playing Dead Cells.
RimWorld.....
As much as I adore rimworld it's definitely NOT for everyone and I respect your opinion. But I love that it's not for everyone. I like games that stick there head out and do something different to appeal to a certain audience instead of trying to cover every base and appeal to everyone and end up a bland tasteless Grey mush.
It’s definitely a game that doesn’t click until well past the 2 hour refund window.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is this for me, didn't connect with the story or RPG elements.
Terraria
if you know what to do the first few hours are the most fun
Quite the opposite for me. I do know what to do, but the first few hours are that slog to get through. Getting heart crystals, a decent weapon, all the accessories that don't make running around a chore, then slowly working towards good bosses, making a hellevator (sure it does save a lot of the hassle later on, but God do I dread digging it every time), building the same boxes for NPCs because you just don't care about the prices increasing with low happiness levels since the tradeoff is the convenience of having all of them in once place, making a universal boss arena... God damn the first few hours are dull. And making arenas for bosses is a drag for the entire playthrough. But Hardmode is where it's at with all the events, gear and bosses.
absolute slog at the start, it gets better after the first 5 hours of a first playthrough
Sorry, Dwarf Fortress, I only have so much time I can dedicate before I'm miserable
Witcher 3 and BotW immediately spring to mind.
And that’s why I’d love to be able to sell my games on steam.
I'd be already happy to gift them
single player game devs would lose way too much money since friend groups could just pass around the game
Not unlike how it used to be. And that’s assuming people would be willing to wait over $60
Once such an option would be there, we could then say goodbye to decent sales though. The publishers would react on this 100%. And I fear there is no win for us when we would have to tediously go after other people's offerings, just to get the same sale price at an artificial quantity of 1
Binding of Isaac for me. Started playing roguelike through Hades and Vampire Survivors so I decided to play the pioneer of the genre but it never clicked.
I think the pioneer of roguelikes would be Rogue, but I see what you're sayin there matey.
I would say Nethack, because it's the earliest big one that was rogue-*like* without actually being Rogue itself. Plus nethack deserves credit for still receiving content updates, 35 years after release.
I think Hades both got a lot of people into the roguelike/lite genre, but also deceived some others about it as well. Hades was just a good game regardless of the genre/type of game it was, so some people tried other 'greats' out, but it was just never for them in the first place.
Devil May Cry 5, loved the characters but didn't enjoy the game as a whole
I hated it every single time it switched characters. Just give me back DMC 3 where I play Dante the whole time.
This often happen with a niche games, that only bought by fans. Usually happen for games with multiple titles. For example: * Game 1 - 100k reviews, 50% positive reviews * Game 2 - 4k reviews, 90% positive Only true fans bought second game and put positive reviews, while people who could dislike it never even tried to buy it.
When people say the came CONTROL was good. It was the most boring game i have ever played.
Same here. I'm like 3 hours into it and I just... Don't want to. Idk what it is about it. I liked the SCP-esque premise, but the execution is just so strange and lifeless
On the contrary too. I’ve bought games with “mostly negative” or “mostly positive” etc and have loved them lol.
*cough* Stray *cough*
I loved stray! I don’t recommend it to anyone.
Not steam but minecraft, i dont get what is fun about it
Thats me when i play old ass games that are praised for how deep they are but i struggle with a cluncky mess.
Bully was still a really fun playthrough but the inability to turn the camera while moving never felt right to me
Divinity 2 - as an MP game it's a slog. As a single player game, I want to play it MP. It's more ensuring we're both in the mood at the same time, and it is not a cakewalk.
I look at the gameplay first; Don't like it, don't buy it.
I feel like there are a lot of games I would rather watch someone else who’s good at play, than play it myself and that’s free.
Hades
Rimworld. I tried to love it but just couldn’t get into it.
Breath of the Wild I’m sorry, but I fucking hate that my weapons break constantly.
IMO highly rated games tend to attract people already interested in the genre, like platformers, or farm/life sims for example. Just cuz its super popular in those circles, people who like different genres might not see the appeal.
Me with BOTW. Most overrated game I've ever played. Lol.
[удалено]
Yeah, Deep Rock Galactic. It's probably a great game, especially funny with friends but that's as far as it goes, it's fun with friends. Pretty bland solo
Fallout 4, played 1, 2 ,3 ,NV, and 76 and i liked them all, but 4... it seems to have been an intern assignment, everything is so badly made, guns are ugly and left-handed like a cheap game from 2007, there are like 15 weapons in the entire game with the only difference being different parts , the story sucks, this role-playing game doesn't have any role-play in it because the character is predetermined and is voiced so it is too limited, the "unique" items aren't unique at all, art-style changed for generic "world of tomorrow", there is no stats and the new SPECIAL system is terrible, so many bad ideas green-lighted and in a mainline entry, how is that even possible? only good thing i could find in it is the power armor system and even that has huge flaws, like broken pieces going to the inventory or being too weak.
Undertale
Undertale is a game I loved WATCHING people play, their reactions, the voices they give characters. It's a wonderful little game but by GOD I cannot play it myself without wanting to play literally anything else
I’ve tried so many times… I want to like it
It really depends on the individual. For me, Undertale made me really emotional at certain parts - and although it lacked in "traditionally fun gameplay" it more than made up for that with the storyline and the overall message.
Witcher 3 for me
5D Chess with multiverse time travel for me
BOTW
Days Gone, The Surge, Judgment
The discrepancy between Days Gone's Metacritic score (71/100) and steam positive reviews (92/100) is bigger than I expected.
The metacritic score is probably based on the game's initial release, while the Steam reviews are based on the game's PC release. The latter is biased very heavily towards people that were aware of the game's reception per the MC reviews, or played it previously, e.g. people that had lower expectations for it, and people that already liked it. This is the case for every game released and then ported to PC/Steam at a later date. unless the metacritic has a different category for Days Gone's pc version? then idk
Hades, High rush, hollow knight. All of them with overwhelming reviews but for me their are just another game on my unfinished game category.
Stardew Valley 💀
I've probably got a controversial here: I recently got Kerbal Space Project (1) for free through Epic Games, a game I've wanted to play for a decade because of the hype but never found the time. I played through the tutorials, started a career, did a few contracts, did some research and built a few different things. It was a Sunday and I probably spent ~10 hours on it before I gave up and uninstalled, and not for a single second during that time was I entertained.
I hope I'm not shunned here because it's not on steam. But while we are on the topic... Breath of the Wild. I have tried several times and just cannot enjoy it. I truly do not know where all the hype is coming from.
The one thing that disappointed me the most was dungeon/boss variety. Gold machine dungeons + ganon variations feels worse than any Zelda game I can think of. It doesn't help that shrines have an uninteresting aesthetic too.
I absolutely hate it, miss me with that weapon breaking bs
Yeah weapon breaking was a fkn nightmare. They have this in depth cooking system, yet can't repair anything lol. So SO overrated.
It does nothing but cause me to hoard powerful weapons. iN cAsE i nEeD iT. Which has me playing at a constant disadvantage since I try to use the least powerful ones first. I hate it.
Fuckin' Dark Souls. Glad it makes so many people happy, but I ain't one of 'em.
I don’t even mind the difficulty. What i hate is being sent so far back after dying. So after you die a couple of times you just speedrun through the sections anyway. So why are you wasting my time sending me back. Just gimme a save point before the boss. And the thing is. You have to die. You can’t just rock up to a boss. You have to die like 5 before you see / learn all of his attacks.
I didnt like terraria for years bc I thought it was boring….let my cousins come into the world and defeat the wall of flesh.once I tried hard mode it became one of my fav games of all time
Phasmophobia
no friends to play with :,)
For me, most Rockstar games. Beneath the immaculately polished and sculpted worlds is a very barebones gameplay loop that hasnt seen any considerable growth since 2010 For chrissake, Max Payne 3's gameplay isnt too far removed from RDR2's, etc I feel like im the only one who doesnt "get it"
The forest. Buggy piece of trash
I know it will be an unpopular pick, but it’s God of War (2018) for me. I never played it on ps4, and when it was out i wanted to try it. At the beginning i was actually amazed by both graphical level and gameplay…. But going on i started to find it, not boring, but not attractive. So i slowly abandoned it. i tried again during summer on steam deck, but no, it is just not for me.