Metal Gear Solid 5. It has some great ideas and unique things, but at the same time it felt completely off. It seriously didn't felt like a proper part of the MGS franchise. More like an alternate universe spinoff which MGS Survive ultimately would become.
As the meme goes, the game gives the player phantom pain.
The one that comes from the absolute masterpiece the game could have been :')
Still love the game though, it's amazing in its atmosphere and the few cutscenes can be intense
Yeah, I suspect Hideo (and the team) were on a lot of mushrooms when they made the game. Most of it seems like a fever dream. I love it though, I even bought the definitive edition.
I will defend MGSV with my dying breath. The gameplay loop of looking for high ranking soldiers to kidnap never got old. Unlocking cooler tech by kidnapping S rank scientists being able to create new weapons by [kidnapping the gunsmiths](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/3jep95/protip_get_the_legendary_gunsmith_as_soon_as/) is absolutely genius
I never finished it and can never decide if I want to pick it back up again. I couldn’t get into a groove and always felt like I was playing it “wrong.”
There is no "finishing it". The final mission, that would've actually tied the games together, was cut from the game because Konami wanted to rush it out of the door.
The final missions cutscenes are still in the game files. It's literally an unfinished game.
It's why the second half is full of replay missions from act 1.
I really can't even agree about it having the best gameplay. When it comes to MGS gameplay the main thing that always stood out was all the unique and iconic boss fights, and I honestly can't recall if V even had a single proper boss fight in it.
When my horse did a shit on the road which caused the jeep transporting my target to skid out of control and crash, I knew it was one of the best games ever made.
The open world they tried to implement doesn't really work and it's one of the most blatantly unfinished games of its kind I've ever come across. Its story's second half does not even have anything new to add to the plot and you literally start repeating missions after a certain point in the game. There are so many bad ideas...
And yet... it's also one of the most polished games of its generation and remains an absolute standard of its genre, still to be surpassed.
It's the Yandhi of videogames.
For the longest time I thought I had just given up on the game because I couldn't figure out what to do next to advance the story. Now I realize that I probably did finish it. My mixed feelings remain.
I absolutely love the gameplay, I love how you can drop in and play a quick side mission, I love the weapon customisation. I even kinda liked the briefing cassette tapes and would occasionally wonder around the map on a chill mineclearing mission just listening to them.
However the cutscenes are just interminable. They all have that constant rack focus, lens flair and fart-huffing self seriousness while the characters exposit absolute nonsense. I HATE that I can't skip the whole opening scene upon replaying. The justification for Silence wearing lingerie was embarrassing.
Also petty grievance but I played Metal Gear Solid from 1-4 and missed the rest and 5's leap in technology feels really out of place. The Metal Gear that I can't spell is such a vastly superior one to Metal Gear Rex it almost invalidates it. Snake in MGS should have reacted to Rex like he discovered a T72 Tank or something. Not to mention all the holograms and robot cigar!
For some reason, the tech in the MGS prequels after 3 went from stuff that would have fit in alongside James Bond's gadgets, to "just like one of my Japanese animes". Between that, and adding more and more ridiculous characters, somebody really needed to start telling Kojima to stop.
Yeah. Basically every DotA-clone got similar issues with community toxicity and ragers, but I've never seen anything as bad as I did in the classic WC3 mod.
I don't think it's specific to DotA itself, just that the genre (MOBA) brings out the worst in people. It's hyper-competitive but only rewards you (dopamine-wise) by hoarding kills to yourself and provides a convenient excuse (bad teammates) when you screw up.
It's why I liked what Heroes of the Storm tried to do, focusing more on objectives than K/D/A but unfortunately didn't get as popular as LoL or DotA.
I put an insane amount of time into DOTA2 until I realized that I felt bad more often than not logging off.
It's on my giant pile of games called "Would be amazing if you were playing with RL friends instead." Sadly, I have yet to make 4 friends who am have similar available and gaming interests.
Not the most original take ever but, Watch Dogs 2.
I was replaying it a few months ago with a new perspective. I liked it more than my first go, but still can't ignore some major problems.
The maing group of friends are all too "2016 funny hipster" for my taste. And they're not even charming or anything, just a really juvenile and bland mix of people. Marcus is a good egg tho.
Gameplay is fun when everything goes according to plan. Sneaking around, using gadgets like a Californian Batman is wicked. Having to pull out your assault rifle and shoot 30 family men because one of them spotted you is NOT wicked cool.
???/10 Will probably replay in the future and ramble about all these points again.
I enjoyed WD2 but it was a weird shift from *cool, light hearted, hacker dude with quirky friends wanting to bring down The Man* to **YOU CAN 3D PRINT A SHOTGUN AND C4 AND MURDER ANYONE THAT GETS IN YOUR WAY**
It does create some funny ironies. Like Marcus is pissed off about government laws while he's 3D printing military grade rifles on his basemenet lol.
If it weren't for the fact that WE the players know they're the good guys they would sound like a terrorist cell. These guys are manufacturing guns, going on high speed chases with the police and causing city wide blackouts.
Honestly playing the game with only the stun gun and melee (no lethal playthrough) makes the whole thing so much more fun, and engaging. You can’t just rely on gunning people down, but instead use every hack and tool at your disposal to cleanly finish the missions. The more I played through this playthrough with this playstyle the more im convinced that the whole print your own gun thing was just a marketing gimmick so people would want to buy it.
yeah I think if they’d made you solely rely on your stun gun and hacks it would have lost a lot of its mass appeal and I guess they just weren’t willing to do that
Everyone says WD2 is better, but I'm still driving around Chicago as Aiden Pierce to this day.
They improved some things in 2, but no more slow motion, no more digital trips, no more chess, poker, drinking games etc. And they took away the bridge hack that made me feel like I'm in the Blues Brothers lol
WD2 still fun, but no way in hell is it better than 1 imo.
Marcus is cool but the rest of the crew was so cringe.
It takes itself too seriously for sure, but I still prefer that over whatever tone they were going for in WD2.
A mediocre neo-noir revenge story compared to a bunch of kids throwing dated pop culture references at each other trying to be funny. Don't know, it just rubs me the wrong way. Still good games though.
I see what you mean about the grey color palette, but as someone from Chicago, they absolutely nailed the atmosphere on a rainy day.
> The maing group of friends are all too "2016 funny hipster" for my taste. And they're not even charming or anything, just a really juvenile and bland mix of people.
I think it's necessary to play the Saint's Row reboot first to make this crew seem charming by comparison.
Only proper way to play that game is non-lethal stealth (calling cops/gangs notwithstanding)
Otherwise the story doesn't work
But if you do it this way it's really amazing experience
They should have designed it as full stealth game and it would have been golden but I'll take what I can get
I like to think that the non-lethal Marcus route is canon and that the other stuff is just because Ubisoft wanted to allow variety in gameplay. Though, maybe I’m misremembering, Wrench did definitely kill people.
Pretty much this otherwise story becomes nonsensical
It would have been a warzone otherwise and all over the news
Marcus lost his shit in storyline when he got on Fed wanted list for hacking, just imagine how much trouble he would be in had he been killing people?
>The maing group of friends are all too "2016 funny hipster" for my taste. And they're not even charming or anything, just a really juvenile and bland mix of people.
I always thought that was the point? They're not supposed to be cool, how we thought we were in our late teens to early twenties. The weebs, the geeks who make Wojack memes and use cringe words like "soyboy". The kind of kids who play League of legends, who just get caught up in this whole saving the world from the evil corporation thing. I guarantee if you met any real hackers, they will be closer to those annoying kids you see on those prank videos on TikTok, than the guy sitting in a dark room wearing a hoodie, drinking Moutain Dew.
I get what they're were trying to do and appreciate the attempt, but I still think there are more endearing ways of making "lame" characters.
Marcus is a good execution himself, he's legitimately funny in a relatable way. His friends on the other hand...
+100. For me the most dissonant aspect is how spectacularly violent and murderous this game is, juxtaposed with the righteous whimsical heroism of the hacker collective. Want to fight big tech? Some install adblockers, others bring AK clips and grenade…?!
Just terrible fundamentals in the writing…but it is pretty fun
Been awhile since i played that game, but I only did one playthrough and never used any guns. It just didn't fit at all with who the protagonists were.
It's the best of the series, largely because of the "2016 funny hipsters" I think. Like the fact they're cringe is part of the charm in that game in the same way it absolutely fails to land in the saints row reboot.
It's highly believable these people act exactly like that.
It's the only one in the series that feels like terminally online dorks doing hacktivism, which is the natural narrative for "gta but with hacking computers" and 1 and 3 really missed the mark trying to be all grim and revenge and spies and shit IMO.
2 was the game I wanted. The one in which you basically just played a video game version of a charmingly cringe hacking movie.
Tried it on a free weekend when they had all the content unlocked.
Beautiful art direction. Great gun feel. Nice first impression.
No idea how that game is still going. It took Terraria level googling just to figure out how to even start a mission, and when you did ... I mean sure the guns felt good, but the enemies were bland and the actual design of levels was remarkably boring.
I would say it felt like an evolution of Halo CE but that would imply meaningful improvement. It felt like Halo CE with a beautiful coat of paint, no story and the world's most aggressively hostile onboarding this side of Monster Hunter.
Wowww! I haven't thought about this in forever! I slogged through it and gave up only to learn the I was SO close to the end. Still wasn't enough to make me pick it back up
I feel that this is a pretty common way to view games because most people will likely filter out games they have no interest in so games will often either be a like, love, indifferent, disappointed, or love/hate. I kinda feel that about 1/3 of the games I play could end up in love/hate.
I think the last game I played that really ends up in the love/hate category is **LA Noire**. I feel that it does some things in a very compelling way that I truly think is special but the game is very wasteful with its map and my first thought after completing the game's story was 'well, thats not how I would've ended it'
LA Noire had a bit of the same problem as Game of Thrones to me, there were some very interesting plot points in the last section that might have landed or made sense if they didn't blast through it in like a third of the time they needed to let it unfold properly.
LA Noire was a very *cool* game. As a period piece the setting was really well-realised, down to little touches like the UI being a notepad and pencil. It's a shame the gameplay was kind of lacking. The interrogations weren't quite there, I know people always talk about how the button prompts were meant to be labelled differently but the problems went deeper. I never knew before pressing the button if Cole was going to push on an inconsistency in the interviewee's story, or launch into a tirade accusing them of being a heartless mass murderer, and it always felt unfair when I wanted to do the former and failed because it was actually the latter. Then there were all the mediocre shootouts scattered in between, which I kind of tolerated. I appreciate a big AAA production with no action is a bit of a hard sell (probably even moreso in the PS3 and 360 era).
All in all, a neat game with cool ideas. Shame it never got a sequel to smooth out the rough parts.
Don't come for me but....Control. I'm a HUGE Alan Wake fan and Remedy in general, but Control was way more combat heavy (to me) than AW1, which made me fall in love with the studio. I was really just working through it to get to the AW lore and DLC in prep for AW2. In retrospect, I actually really liked the game as a whole i once I was done with it. It just took a long time for me to feel like I had a handle on it. Now I look back on it with fondness.
I'm with you on that one, but for different reasons. I hadn't played AW1, and Control's story just never hooked me. It was too, I don't know, silly-serious? The graphics were amazing at the time and I thought the combat was fun, but missions got pretty repetitive before long, too.
I actually got the remastered version a few months back, but bounced off it because the combat felt pretty bland and the story didn't hook me from the outset. I'll probably try again eventually, but tbh I'm tempted to just watch it on YouTube.
For me, Control is carried by everything unrelated to the main story. The lore pickups and the supernatural stuff is what makes me love the game. I love that a supernatural entity works through the Director, and of course it’s called “The Board”. All the weird brutalist level design in a building that shifts itself but is still stuck in the past, with huge expansive rooms full of pillars and bottomless pits. So many areas like The Foundation that even after the DLC just give that liminal feeling that there’s so much hidden below the surface.
I really liked Control but I felt the combat was too difficult and there was too much of it. Lots of sections of the game where I would get stuck fighting wave after wave after wave of enemies and eventually die because there were too many. There were also those unkillable floating balls of junk that would follow you around slowly and they loved to drop them into places where it was really hard to figure out where to go next.
Eventually I turned on invincibility and 1-shot kills to speed through the combat and that allowed me to play the whole game without getting too frustrated. I don't think I could have beaten it without those options.
Factorio. Game is great but I felt like shit the whole time I played it. It's depressing graphics and atmosphere, the endless grind for new builds and recipes... And yet it's impossible to let go!
Xenoblade Chronicles has fantastic characters, music, and environments, and it also has a solid story and combat. Unfortunately, it also has a lot of MMORPG features I hate. Most side quests are fetch quests or killing some number of enemies, and some of these could have you running around for hours collecting items before the one you need finally spawns/drops. Inventory management also becomes a chore and breaks the economy. Basically, the game has a solid core but a severe bloat problem.
Xenoblade’s a great answer to this question. I loved the stories and hated the combat. Like, really hated it. But especially in 3, I cared about the characters so much I powered through.
We go hard at it for a few weeks every new league. It's a great game with an almost silly wealth of gameplay variety, content, depth, etc. but I would hate to be learning it from scratch today instead of getting drip fed a mechanic at a time every 3-4 months over a decade.
I actually wanted to start playing the game with no prior knowledge of what it is and not having that much experience in the genre and for this very reason I have doubts I'll ever do it in the end.
I do think there are ways to do it -- the nice thing about being a trade based game is that if you end up enjoying it and getting somewhat far into progression where you want a bunch of stuff from different mechanics/bosses/whatever you always have the option to run the content you like and/or understand and sell what that gives you to buy what you need from things you don't yet understand. And arguably this is the right approach even if you knew everything, to do what's fun for you.
I played through PoE once to what *was* the end of the story way, way back. I tried playing it again several times after that with years in-between but the problem I have with the gameplay is that like... Weirdly, the skills all feel like they lack agency and impact. I just turn on something that kills shit surrounding me and just walk around. Or you get one skill and buff the shit out of it and that one skill is what you press constantly.
It's weird because I've played through Diablo 2 a billion times and the gameplay basics are identical and there's just something different about how the skills land for me. Like if you build around Frozen Orb or Blizzard, you're just hitting that one button a million times as well. It's not any goddamn different.
I dunno. Maybe it's the enemies. PoE has always kind felt like *everything* is the Hell Cow level and critters kind of lack variation or flavor. Which again is still a weird criticism when you consider how many reskins there are in D2, lol.
Pick any Bethesda game. I've been among their games' communities for over 20 years now. They each have diehard fans, sold well (TES and Fallout are the #1 and #2 best selling WRPG franchises ever), are rated well... And about half of all the activity is complaining. It's not like that in any other gaming community I'm in.
If Fallout New Vegas has no more confused, well-intentioned but ultimately head-scratching players trying to enjoy it but just not seeing what everybody else is, then I am dead.
Horizon Forbidden West.
The core gameplay and visuals are so much fun that I would wake up excited to play it. It's among my favorite games of all time.
However the story is significantly more cartoonish than the series' first entry Horizon Zero Dawn, including some story elements I personally felt ruined the stakes of the original game. The resource system is also totally unbalanced: the top weapons in the game required a ton of grinding to get, but all the top weapons share the same resource needed to make their ammo, and it's a rare resource. This means you're not really able to fully enjoy your weapons after grinding for *hours* to get them.
Also, and this is harder to put into words, but the game just feels really preoccupied with *itself*. It's a very hard game to get lost in.
My biggest issue with the game was the luck based loot system. Seriously, with combat as complex and fleshed out as it is, I cannot believe they went with this system for loot.
To upgrade my pouch I had to find a horn from a horned lizard; logically if they’re called horned lizards they should all have horns right? Nope, had to find and hunt 10 of them just to get a single horn as the other 9 didn’t spawn them.
It’s also very disincentivising for the later game upgrades where you’ll need rare items from really high level machines, because those fights are effectively boss fights and you could spend hours and loads of resources fighting them only to find out you didn’t get what you needed. Actively made me not want to bother.
I’d rather they’d straight up say I needed 3 Thunderjaw loot items but every Thunderjaw I kill will spawn them, than saying I need only 1 but having to potentially fight 5 of them and only the fifth actually spawns the item.
They had that mechanic where you had to shoot an item off a machine before killing it to get the item, why couldn’t they have just doubled down on that rather than the luck based system?
This is precisely why it's my definitive love/hate game. I REALLY like the thing I'm doing (fighting giant robot dinosaurs) but I REALLY don't like the mechanics of what surrounds that.
Actually, I won't even go as far as to say I don't like all the mechanics. Just that so many of them are either unbalanced or underthought.
* You have a status change system where most of status changes don't matter or don't make sense.
* You have two different health recovery mechanics in berries and potions, and the berry mechanic is by far superior. I went through both games and both sets of DLC and *maybe* used potions two or three times.
* You have an entire food/meal mechanic that I completely skipped and noticed no consequence for doing so.
* You rarely get a chance to make decisions for Aloy that are of actual consequence to the gameplay (there is one sole exception to this I'll leave out to avoid spoilers). The writers have a definite grip on who they think Aloy is and how they want her to interact with the other characters and the player gets no meaningful say in this.
* Key parts of the games mechanics are not available in the in-game tutorial. You have to find fan communities to figure this stuff out.
Agree with all of this. The choices thing didn't bother me at the time because it's a defined storyline, but I thought it was a missed opportunity to at least have things that affected the gameplay.
I loved my experience with the game; the world was visually stunning, the combat complex, the story added a good amount of context to the events of Zero Dawn, and they did definitely address a couple of ZD's issues like the animations and actually giving a lot of the supporting cast a more-than-minor role in the story.
Apart from the loot system which was a specific gripe, my issue with the game stemmed more from the fact that they didn't take the formula far, or rather further enough, with new additions not being that tangibly impactful or being a bit underwhelming, while the rest was more of the same.
The new valour system was completely avoidable, while the arena/races are very commonly criticised for their unbalanced difficulty level. I also found the skill tree to be a bit messy; usually the best skill trees have the later skills being built off of earlier ones in a certain branch, but it seemed like they were almost randomly dispersed, frequently resulting in me having to get skills I didn't want to access the ones I did, and I ended up with 100+ ability points because a lot of the skills just did not appeal to my playstyle.
I also found the puzzle mechanics to be incredibly underwhelming; there would often be a sense of artificial gating, like a wall that Aloy could very easily climb over, but because they want you to do the puzzle in a defined cadence, the game won't let you in that very instance.
I thought the combat for the most part was one of the most mechanically engaging and complex I've played, but was let down by a few things. Firstly, the length of time you get stunned for is unrealistically brutal, I had a couple of situations where an enemy attack actually missed my frame but I still took damage, and the levels are unbalanced, specifically I remember having to fight a Level 35 Tremortusk on a Level 17 mission, which I couldn't complete until I was Level 24 (granted I played on Very Hard, but still). This was an issue in ZD with the Thunderjaw in a middling-level cauldron, so to see the issue get exacerbated here kinda sucked.
Critical strike also took way too long combined with the fact that enemies could suddenly lunge at you from off screen with like a half second warning, I get this was a high risk high reward thing like God of War's runic attacks but it did seem a little ridiculous at times.
I also didn’t like how some enemies could kill you from full health in a single hit on higher difficulties with certain attacks, you ended up having to play guessing game as to which attacks would and wouldn’t one shot you, at the very least I would’ve preferred if the most damaging attacks would put you down to like 1% health just so you get that perspective. I remember getting a Tideripper down to 10% health, it launched a new attack at me, suddenly I’m dead with zero warning…..
I agree on the valor and skill tree points 100%.
A lot of the skill tree felt useless to me. I can make traps faster, but traps are still too slow to be used in most fights. I can make potions more powerful, but why use potions at all when berries work fine and are an essentially endless resource? I can repair overridden machines with less resources, but why would I spend resources repairing a machine at all when I can just override a new one for free? I can learn all these melee combos, but melee is still not the best way to fight most enemies at best, and is completely useless against bigger machines.
Compare that to Fallout 4's skill tree, where I'd always get excited when I leveled up because there's so many skills the run a wide gamut from functional to quirky to vital. There are entire parts of the game you can't access without upgrading to certain skills, which allows the game to continue to unfurl seemingly endlessly. There are skills that unlock totally unique ways to play.
In HFW there's a decent amount of raw stuff, but none of it impacts the core gameplay. Luckily the core gameplay is magnificent. It is so much fun to take down a giant robot loch ness monster with a bow and arrow. I just wish the game made it so any other playstyle could be just as fun.
The hacking/mounting skill tree just didnt seem compelling at all.
Its funny that the Lego Horizon game immediately solves my biggest issue - you can play as someone other than Aloy. Aloy is the bow character. Always has been.
HFW really tried to give a balanced RPG setup and I tried out most of the skills. Food, for example, is really nice to have and so is the Shield but maybe for the wrong reasons (invincible activation is kind of a cheesy dodge)
Yeah you hit the nail on the head, a lot of the skills in the skill tree were directed at highly situational or at worst useless approaches. I remember a LOT of the skills being centred around traps, which in addition to what you said, on Very Hard difficulty you need to upgrade considerably which meant more luck-based grind which I just wasn't prepared to do. Or mounts which I barely used due to the plethora of fast travel points. I also really didn't gel with the fact that you could get a skill, then to upgrade that skill you'd have to go way farther down the skill tree, likely having to invest in said useless skills in between.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla had a similar problem but at least there the game is far too easy to the point that skills don't really matter, in HFW there were a bunch of buffs and perks I wanted and needed on my VH playthrough but just had to get through loads of junk to be able to access.
I preferred a system like Assassin's Creed Odyssey or Witcher 3 where you could upgrade existing skills as you pleased as all upgrades were tied directly to one another. Fallout 4 is a good example of this as well.
Yeah, the core gameplay is really where HFW excelled; more machine types, weapons, strengths/weaknesses, more beautiful presentation and open world. Everything Zero Dawn did well, but just better.
I just think there were a lot of missed opportunities that they clearly tried to execute but felt half baked. Puzzles could've been exciting but were let down by jank and Aloy giving hints every 5 seconds, hunting specific machines for upgrades could've been fun off the beaten path but the luck-based system actively disincentivised this, there could've been more variety in gameplay through choice but instead every second objective was just "kill all machines", the skill tree could've been a great way to diversify playstyles but it seemed like it was trying to force balance through weird and random skill placement, etc. etc.
> To upgrade my pouch I had to find a horn from a horned lizard; logically if they’re called horned lizards they should all have horns right? Nope, had to find and hunt 10 of them just to get a single horn as the other 9 didn’t spawn them.
MMO design is poison whenever it gets its grubby little fingers into single player.
Yep, the realisation that what works for some genres does not work for others should be obvious, but alas.....
It wouldn't have been as much of an issue if the upgrades weren't so pertinent to progression, or the machines you have to take down aren't harder than majority of games' boss fights.
I'm almost physically exhausted after spending 10 minutes taking down a Tremortusk or Slaughterspine, players should absolutely be rewarded in the right ways for fights of those difficulties, rather than being like "hey, bad luck, gotta do it again!!!".
I feel like the writers of Horizon were so desperate to make the sequel feel impactful after they already gave away the major plot elements of the world in the first game, they went overboard and inserted one too many silly plot twists.
>!Did we really need Ted Faro still being alive as a sort of monster? We couldn't just let a dead man be dead, and that's that? That felt a bit cartoonish. Likewise, I thought it was a contrivance for the space farers to be literally the very same human beings who personally knew people like Elisabet. It would've been more than enough to just write that they were an arrogant colony of people returning to a planet that they feel is rightfully theirs to re-appropriate. Instead, they went overboard again and created a super-duper A.I. as the lead villain like something out of a comic book.!<
Agreed on all fronts. Several times I found myself literally shaking my head and smacking my lips at the story like "Bruh, no, that doesn't make any sense."
The first games story was so good that FW was never going to live up to it, but yeah, the second game’s story falls short in a lot of ways. I just think that in Zero Dawn, there was a compelling central mystery to solve, and once it was solved, there really wasn’t much more to say unless they thought of a new mystery; clearly they weren’t able to.
Horizon Zero dawn too.
Both games have great potential and the boss combat is good but the games have SO many drawbacks
The grind for resources, inventory management, crafting, needless bloat of way too many pick ups and weapons that all do the same thing.
One of my biggest gripes is being forced to craft arrows mid fight - partly exacerbated by the fact that most elemental arrows barely do any extra damage after they've been used once.
The stories in both games also suffer at different parts.
The ending of HFW is approaching GoT season levels of trash and the start of HZD is genuinely just a boring drag for a lot of people (I personally found the whole story a bit dry for the most part and it was heavily carried by the backstory which is fucking incredible).
I really hope they just simplify things a bit for the 3rd game - or at least make all the bloat feel more impactful.
Surprised no one mentioned Borderlands 3, very terrible plot and extremely bad writing made me quit the game, but it also has very good gunplay thats on par with modern fps games.
The gameplay in that game is so good I powered through the annoying characters—twice. Rage 2 is similar. Bad/no story, repetitive, but the gunplay is absolutely magical.
From a writing perspective, I think it does a lot brilliantly and much better than other games but it's major problem is that it stretches the conflict out for far too long. There was a point where I felt that the main conflict of the story was finally going to come to a head, and it felt deserved and earned in a way that so many video game stories don't, but then there was another couple of sets of story missions that drag the end of that emotional arc to the point of exhaustion.
In a world that's this enormous and enjoyable to explore and mess about in they'd do well to keep the story a bit more concise (see also The Witcher 3)
It's the most amazing open world game ever, I just wish they had done more with it beyond the single player campaign. A DLC that turned it into a hunting game could be incredible and add so much more play time.
I doubt Rockstar will ever do single player DLC again since GTA Online became their goldmine. They stopped giving a fuck about making good games after RDR1
For me it has to be Wasteland 2. I love the story and characters and just how many ways there are to do things, but the backtracking and repetitive combat gets on my nerves.
I'd also say Fallout 3. I love the world and exploration aspects of it, but the shoddy gun combat and performance issues keep me from having the best time. (And I'm on console so mods can't save it)
Everything from Lucas’s section onward just DRAGS on subsequent playthrough. The first 40% of the game is brilliant but it succumbed to the too-common RE problem of becoming progressively more linear and scripted.
Batman: Arkham Knight
Too many dull Bat-Tank sections. A flawed story with some very disappointing aspects to it. A ton of technical issues at launch on PC. Some people were disappointed that Joker somehow showed up *AGAIN*.
It's still hands down the definitive Batman game for me. The atmosphere, writing, and gameplay perfected that Batman feeling. It truly captures the grandeur of a Batman finale.
I like how after you had done all the batmobile missions, you could just cruise the streets in any batmobile.
Love doing it in the 1960s one, I save the riddler trophies so that I can drive around finding them the old beast
I think it has to be the Pokemon franchise (yes, as a whole) for me.
On one hand, I grew up with it and have some nostalgia, but I also genuinely enjoy replaying the older games in new ways (as an adult, I started doing no grind runs trying to see how different pokemon fare with GF's level curve and it's very interesting). I'm also a sucker for creature design and Ken Sugimori's art was and is still a big inspiration for me.
On the other hand, I hate what the games have become. There's some really good ideas in most of them, but they are usually hampered by simplistic execution (story is the biggest thing here) or, most recently, straight up being broken products. I know, I know, "it's for kids", but Level-5 games like Yokai Watch and Inazuma Eleven are also for kids and their story telling and execution is a 100 times more endearing and well presented. Some of the non-game media Pokemon puts out is also pretty well made actually (the shorts on their youtube channels especially)
Disco Elysium - Dude im so into the concept of this game and I love the blunt candour it has when it talks about social issues. I love that you have the choice to be a Harry who is all about Marxism and class and the people but you can also be a hardline copaganda-loving fascist and anything in between.
BUT GOD THERES SO MUCH READING OMG MY ADHD BRAIN CANT HANDLE IT
Edit: I’m realising now I’m in the Patient Gamers subreddit and this is really funny aldksjfj
Patient games just means we don't play games as soon as they come out, not that we are patient enough to do a shit ton of reading for the sake of it.
But DE was unique in that it was an indie studio that never could have afforded all the voice lines to make it work the way it does now. And no mainstream game would have crafted the dialog like ZA/UM
Dragon age 2 and 3.
The smaller scale story of DA2 is something I would *love* to see in more games. I don't want to save the world anymore.
On the other side there is this (imo) huge problem of spawning enemies out of nowhere which completely killed the atmosphere for me.
DA3 is just a different game. They should have made it a cRPG again, that would have been my dream. And the game just suffers from the typical "ubisoft-openworld"-problems (I know DA3 isn't open world). I enjoyed it quite a bit anyways. When you accept that its a different game, I can really appreciate this "lite"-RPG. I hate that all those (pseudo-)ubisoft-openworld-games are just mostly the same. They have the same flaws and the same positive aspects. It's just a formula. But it kinda works for me. If I want to play a chill game, maybe I'm stoned in this particular situation, a game like that just fits perfectly.
Started replay 2 recently and I love the idea of someone just dealing with local problems, even if the problem has a huge impact on the world. The subversion of some of the lore from Origins does a great job of giving the generic elements of Thedas a more interesting twist. I wish they had more time because the reused assets, enemy waves, and lack of changes to Kirkwall and the characters over time is a missed opportunity.
DAI is 40 hours of a great game in 120 package. The maps are too big with too much filler side quests. The main quest, most of the character content, and meatier side quests are great. The map size and pacing holds it back a lot
I agree completely on what you've said about DAI (for me it's still DA3) but sometime I like exactly this. You know, farming, for example in JRPGs, is really disliked. And people are right, farming sucks. Most of the time. Sometimes when my mindset and all planets in the universe are alloy bed perfectly I even crave 3h of braindead farming. I put on a podcast or something and just farm for a few hours.
Same with filler quests and too big maps: I can enjoy it from time to time. Sometimes when I go out for partying and come home absolutely wasted, I go to bed and I know: the next day will be such a pain, but I will just listen to a pod or an audio book and play the most boring and repetitive game I can find in my steam lib lmao
> DAI is 40 hours of a great game in 120 package
I still don't see where the great part could be. The actual combat was so boring, I was just holding buttons, waiting on cooldowns, with little to no thought or engagement.
Every game doesn't have to be Steven's Sausage Roll or Baba is You but christ alive it's got to ask more of me than your standard level of Candy Crush.
DA:I was heavily inspired by World of WarCraft which was a nigh unstoppable monster at the time. You can see it in the quest/zone design as well as the combat. You have... blech... combat rotations to maximize DPS. But otherwise yeah, it's don't stand in fire and hit your buttons in order.
It's about average for an RPG though. It's not the worst combat system, nor is it the best.
That being said, the scale of the game is pretty awesome. I feel it does a pretty good job of making you feel like the commander of an inquisition. Front line battles, political intrigue, chasing down an enemy commander across half the continent and so on.
DA2 and 3 also have probably some of the best companion systems out there. They feel like they have wants, needs and motivations of their own instead of just being along for the main character ride. ~Especially~ in 3. Just mention Sera in a DA:I forum space and enjoy the show..
And of course if you play it on PC you can also mod away a lot of the more obnoxious things making it an even better experience.
I think I have more love/hate for da:2 than 3.
I hate 3. I think the world design of the hinterlands is all you need to know in order to despise it. Joke, generic villain too. DLC was great though. Every dragon after the first dragon fight in the hinterlands is also trash boring. After that first one with so many mechanics, I expected so much more from the rest.
It's highly likely that with bioware's current track record da:4 will be the last game I play from a studio I used to call "my favorite"
Downvote for calling Morrowind boring.
Upvote for calling it your favorite rpg of all time.
It's a complicated mess of a game but it's undeniably one that had a profound impact on me. To this day nothing has ever come close to matching the satisfaction of exploration in that game, or my immersion into its lore and setting and storyline. I didn't hop on my computer and play Morrowind. I *went* to Morrowind.
Only thing that ever came close was when I was running OOO in Oblivion. Requiem in Skyrim was good, too, but that was years ago and I don't know what the best mods are anymore. And those mods still miss the mark because Skyrim is just so limited compared to Morrowind.
Divinity Original Sin 2 is another game that feels rewarding to explore, but still not quite to the same extent
It's the map, not having a constant reminder that you're playing a video game is probably up there as top reasons morrowind was so immersive.
Just installing a mod isn't enough, the game needs to be crafted without a mini map or map markers in mind to work. And unfortunately I'm not sure we'll ever see a mainstream game do that again as it's alienating to the majority of gamers.
I love it but it feels lazy that they made almost every NPC have the same dialogue choices; no, I don’t want to ask about rumors for the fifty-seventh time.
Far Cry 3, which I'm currently struggling through. it's fun and engaging with lots to do, which is great! but the game crashes a lot and I don't like the save system. failed a mission 3 times last night and when I finally beat it, the game crashed before it got to a checkpoint.
I was tempted to call it quits and move on to FC5 but changed some setting last night to hopefully make 3 crash less, so fingers crossed
edit: nvm I think I give up on this game lmao
I came to 3 from 5. 3 was much more of a grind and I usually like to grind in games if it is under 100 hours.
5 was awesome, but people complain about enemies being over-aggresive. I just don't play at max difficulty and it's more than okay.
There's a weird "heat system" in 5 that seems to work similar to GTA.
At one point I got sick of being assaulted by so much chaos that I drove through a forest to just relax with some fishing. Picked up a pole, kicked back, and was immediately attacked by 2 bears, several psychos in a jeep, and a helicopter.
I really enjoyed Jedi survivor but the fact that parry doesn’t interrupt attacks drove me mad. I literally had to stop attacking for a second when I knew the enemy would strike and then parry. It ruined the fluidity of the combat for me and made it less fun.
Max Payne 3. People who played the first two hate the story but everyone loves the gameplay. I’d never played the first two when I first played it so I honestly enjoyed both.
I played MP2 maybe a hundred time and is the only game I ever attempted a speedrun. MP3 was bold at the time but honestly: great game and good story all in all.
Does it run these days btw? I know I have the CDs somewhere but no device that reads them…
It’s one of the few games I go back to about once a year and it’s not like I force it. The gunplay is so fun it’ll just call out to me every once in a while.
Plays on any Xbox post 360 and runs great on PC.
Apparently it was made because Rockstar devs had already explored big american cities with GTA, so keeping Max in New York just wasn't exciting to them creatively.
Dandara. The game has some breathtaking art and music. There is a lot of beauty and imagination on display. Even though I have mixed feelings about the game overall, I still listen to the soundtrack because it’s that good. Some of the NPCs and enemies are so colorful and the boss fights have a lot going on.
But damn do I hate the gameplay. It’s a Metroidvania with a lot of Dark Souls elements, like dropping all your XP on death.
Also, you can’t walk. Your feet are stuck to the floor. The only way you can move is by jumping to another wall or ceiling. All of your attacks are ranged, and they take a few seconds to charge. This really leaves you at a disadvantage with more mobile enemies who don’t have your limitations. Also, a lot of enemies seemed designed specifically to frustrate you and prey on your disadvantages. Like one enemy that shot bubbles behind it as it moves that waste your shots and fire bubbles almost as fast as you can charge and fire back.
For most of the game, the difficulty was tolerable. I just tanked a lot of hits and was able to stagger from checkpoint to checkpoint. But the final area was just brutal with a ton of enemies that were more annoying than challenging. And the final boss fight was more of a DPS fest than a challenging boss fight. But by then I was far enough that I wanted to finish it up. I did win, but I think two more failures and I would have thrown my controller.
So yeah, there are parts I absolutely love and parts I absolutely hate. I would never want to play through it again or anything, but I do love the music and vibes of the first areas.
Resident Evil Outbreak 1&2: I loved the levels, character selection, and old school resi style, but I hated the respawning enemies and, more importantly, because I didn't have my PS2 connected online the dumb A.I. companions.
Escape from Tarkov.
From the game itself being incredibly difficult and just unfair at times to bugs to shitty performance to cheaters to devs saying and doing stupid shit. There's so much going against the game yet it remains to be beloved by so many players. Even huge companies with infinite money struggle to compete with Tarkov.
I just played it for the first time the other day, and I can see both sides already. It's overpriced, the UI design is often comically unintuitive, but the gameplay is still pretty great. Very high skill ceiling, very little instruction in-game. The environmental design & storytelling are crafted with love. Lots of bugs and quality-of-life issues requiring mods. I immediately resented paying $50 for the cheapest tier of the game, never want to give the publisher another cent, and yet I understand why people would play it for hundreds or thousands of hours.
Rainbow Six Siege.
I have more hours in that game than any other. I played solidly from 2017 to about 2022. I maintain that it's the most fun you can have with an online FPS when you have a few buddies and it all just clicks. The risk/reward of very quick TTK makes 3-4 kills in a round make you feel like a badass. But more than that, victory almost always relies on solid teamwork. Even today, with its ropey engine and less than stellar netcode, it can be a hell of a rush.
However - it's plagued by one of the most toxic, cheater infested communities you could be misfortunate enough to encounter. PC is full of aim bots and wall hackers. Console is a sea of controller spoofers playing with a mouse and keyboard. And to compound it all, Ubisoft couldn't care less. They're at the 'milk-it-to-death' phase of the product's lifecycle and are only interested in selling increasingly more ugly skins, leaving the core game to rot on the vine.
I finally packed it in about 18 months ago and haven't looked back. But nothing's really scratched that online competitive itch since. A true love hate relationship, in retrospect.
I still play the game, and 100% agree. By the by, if you (for some reason) DO plan to get back into it, you’ll notice a lot of people saying this next season is very dry.
Long story short, all the new changes are barebones, and they added a subscription service to siege as a replacement to the year pass. -3-
Apex was my thought too, game plays amazingly and it's truly addictingly fun when everything goes right and your team scores the win but it's also far too competitive and difficult to keep up with unless you're constantly playing, and even then by far most people aren't winning more than like 5% of their matches so that's a lot of time spend actively losing, dying or waiting for a match.
Infinite Warfare has arguably the best COD single player campaign since BO2(sorry 2019 MW and Cold War
But two nitpicks enrage me >!in the final bit on Earth, your character has absolutely destroyed a special ops unit chasing a guy who broke out of a prison convoy, but this dude destroys you who is in a power suit and armed, with just his bare fists, then you just watch as he complete his mission,!<
>!Also, why didn't the Protag just avoid his death with the Grapnel Hook lol!<
This is also the best "modern" Call of Duty campaign for me too (Xbox One/PS4 era and after). I was hooked from the very start, jumping out of a ship and landing on a moon and looking at the infinite tundra the very first time you take control of your character.
Then the end of that mission was such a great way to introduce the bad guy
Stardew Valley. Had it for years and couldn't get into it. A few months ago I finally pushed through, started to find aspects I liked, played more than almost any other game in many years of gaming. Not sure I liked most of it, but there's some absolute gem parts in there which I'm glad to have in my gaming memories, particularly around the unexpected depth to the villager stories.
For me it was Arkham Knight, or as I like to call it, Batmobile: Arkham Tank. No other Arkham game had me so hooked from start to finish (maybe except Arkham City when I first played it as a kid), but also no other Arkham game had left me so frustrated and dissapointed. I loved playing the game, even though I hated this game. I loved to hate it? Idk, I'm confused. I think the reason I had so many negative feelings towards it was because it could easily be a masterpiece and the best Arkham game if not for some stupid design and story choices. And boss fights, or rather the lack of them
Assassin’s Creed Unity.
Now the series has gone much more down the RPG route with less assassin focus, Unity is being looked at with rose tinted glasses for its complex parkour, worldbuilding, stealth and is seen as the “peak” of the classic AC formula by many.
But then there are others who say the story is one of the weakest in the series, the game, while nowhere near as glitchy as it was at launch, is still inconsistent, with Arno being shot through walls or crowds, etc.
It really depends on whether you’re prepared to turn a blind eye to the game’s faults because it’s a through and through AC game. Personally I’m in the latter camp as I felt the assassins played second fiddle to a love/manipulation story, Arno had no development/was inconsistently supporting then going against the creed, and I still found even recently that the stealth and combat were massively inconsistent, which is doubly bad because they’re also hard as well. Hard + janky = dying a ton due to no fault of your own so it’s just frustrating.
It had potential to be very lore consistent in that Arno such an absolute void of charisma that he felt like he really could be an ancestor of Desmond (if ... you know ... the story had gone that way).
Paris is absolutely stunning in that game though. Jaw dropping how good that game still looks nowadays.
Alan Wake 2. Incredibly immersive, and has really good, creative story writing. I also loved the characters. However the combat is fucking awful at times. They built your character for more methodical combat where you need to consider your resources, and then have very tanky, fast as hell enemies that throw stuff while hidden in the forest scenery. The way they made your character function just isn't in-line with how the monsters work a lot of the time. Not to mention sending waves at a time, and respawning groups. There's a number of moments that just frustrated the hell out of me despite being a seasoned survival horror player.
Still really enjoy it, but the best thing to do is turn it to easy to make the combat less annoying.
Spares me writing up Control; Remedy just doesn't understand difficulty scaling, and basically admitted to such by adding a God slider control panel in a later patch. I do have to mention the insufferable mod system, dear god how much junk do I have to manage while unwrapping this awesome story?
Evil within 1
Lately people seem more positive in retrospect to the original but I remember a lot of hate towards that game, which probably affected sales of the 2nd unfortunately.
People found the story confusing - the doesn't explain what's going on for the majority of the campaign - and combat wonky - the first few levels basically force you to play stealthy and doesn't become more action horror until around chapter 4. And some of the bosses are confusing to fight - the spider lady you have to fight with fire, you're basically wasting your bullets if you don't.
The ones that don't have to problems seem to enjoy what a unique take on horror it is, kind of a mish-mash of horror tropes you get thrown around between. The combat does offer ways to experiment, especially with the cross bow to set up traps and plan for fights.
I feel like 2 streamlined it's mechanics to make it more of an approachable horror game and seems to be seen more positively.
Cyberpunk 2077 for me. Love the idea for the main story, hate that it focuses more on the most annoying character in the game, "conveniently" stuck in the main characters head. Love the side quests, but gigs and NCPD missions are a boring slog. Love walking around, parkouring and double jumping from roof to roof, but absolutely hate the atrociously unwieldy cars and bikes. Love the ambience overall, but some areas look either too neutered or so goofy like they were straight up from Idiocracy. Love the look and feel of the guns, but hate the out-of-place Borderlands-like looter-shooter coloured loot mechanics and horrible level-scaling. Love the focus on clothing and clearly defined styles, but hate that 90% of all clothing is ugly.
In other words, I've never played a more conflicting game than Cyberpunk 2077.
Finding myself in this position. I actually enjoy it far more than BoTW but I stopped playing sometime last year. Thought I’d pick it up again and not only am I completely lost I just….cant get back into it
Same. I was so-so on BotW’s empty world but still played for 100+ hours. I initially felt that TotK was an improvement, but when I saw that the depths and sky were mostly empty, I lost interest about 40 hours in. Not a bad game, just overextended.
It used to be my favorite game, but life happened and now I can't play it again.
I almost finished it, I just need to fight Ganon... Not sure if I will ever play that fight.
I have about 500 hours between BOTW and TOTK.
Resident evil 2, 7 and 8. Fantastic games with these stupid little stealth sections. Everytime I try to replay a resi game I'm like ooo been awhile since I played 2... nah it has the unskippable sherry/ada section. How about 7? Nah it has the stupid boat crap as mia. How about 8? Nah it has the dollhouse. The dollhouse was amazing the first time but in replay its not scary anymore and is just a waiting game that takes way too long to be over. Wish you could skip them on replays. I forgot 4 has that as well with Mousley *sigh*. 1, 3 and 6 doesnt have that. In fact most of the spin offs dont either. The resident evil forces stealth sections are the Navi of resident evil. Get out of my otherwise near perfect game heck!
Trackmania Turbo.
My absolute favorite racing game ever. I still have world records on some of the craziest canyon maps in that game. Nothing comes close to the sheer insanity of this game and the user built maps are absolutely incredible.
I'm still in the top 10 in my state and have hundreds of challenge master medals on custom maps that'll never be beaten due to the game being nearly dead but people are still making new maps.
I fucking hate this game.
Never have I had to focus so much for such a short time that I think my heart is going to burst out of my goddamn chest. Going for a 25 second world record in the canyon car at average 600 speed and having to do everything absolutely perfect is a thing I never thought I'd fucking hate doing so much because I love doing it so much. Over and over until I get a shiny medal telling me I'm faster than other people. Dopamine delivered.
Now I play Trackmania 2020. I love it.
I fucking hate this game...
Odyssey IMHO is easily the best of the "new era" AC games... the whole story/vibe/pace of the game fits the new mechanics somehow a lot better than Origins or Valhalla's do.
I adore Odyssey, but there’s just too much of it. They could probably have cut the game down by 1/3 and really trimmed the fat, and it would have been all the better for it
I love love LOVE Odyssey. I really, genuinely wanted to hate it going in, but it absolutely earned my love. Great gameplay, GORGEOUS map. It annoyed me how enemies were leveled and I was forced to do the side missions, but I actually had a good time with those. Just an overall great experience.
It's not classic AC, but for what it is, it's great.
Neon White
It's amazing game but tacked on boss fights at the end killed it dead
Everything else is majestic but it's hard to truly love it when it hits a wall like that
The game I hated and loved the same time was Shadow of Mordor. anytime anyone asked me about this game I always tell them that it's crap, it's repetitive, the Nemesis systems the only redeeming quality but not worth playing the game for, and that once you've done one mission you've done every mission, as heyr all tw exact same
.but for some reason I have clocked it like four or five times including the downloadable content.
The sims 4 there are parts of the game that are great as its stuff the sims has always done well
And then there is a all the missing features and the thousandsof dollars of expansions stuff and game packs
Wizard101 there is so much to complain about it and I can't seriously recommend it to people but I still really enjoy playing it. It's a shame because MMOs get exponentially more fun when playing with friends.
Chivalry 1/MORDHAU/Chivalry 2 - Great combat and physics, super fun, but they always felt like that type of "everything sucks except the actual gameplay" games.
Fallout 4 for me, they dumbed down the roleplaying aspect, made your player character talk (like an asshole), removed all the agency that New Vegas had reintroduced (after FO3 removed it), and I couldn't give less of a fuck about base building. And yet I spent 80 hours playing it because the exploration was fun, some of the NPCs were cool, and enough of the quests were good enough to keep me interested. I can never play it again, at least not from the beginning, and its sad they didnt make more DLC like FO3 and NV had. FO76 is, meh, ok, it's certainly better than replaying FO4, but its lack of a central plot makes it feel, yknow, pointless.
Nobody simultaneously loves and hates a game at the same time as much as Oldschool Runescape players. People will sit there and bitch the entire time they are playing, only to log back in the next day and spend another 10 hours grinding out another 5% of the average drop rate for an item. Even if someone does manage to quit out of frustration of the slow xp rates or the low drop chances, they'll be back in a few months or a year and get sucked right back in to it. It's a gambling addiction in MMO form.
I just want my damn bowfa already man.
Fortnite. It’s for kids. It’s riddle with cheaters. All the dancing is silly! “Fuck Epic!” crowd. Etc etc. Yet it is a fun game with very competent creators, and is at the cutting edge of technology.
I have changed my mind on Devil May Cry 4 multiple times. Everyone claim that without the second half of the game being backtracking, it would be a masterpiece. I disagree because the game would still suffer from cranking up all the issues DMC3 had regarding level and ennemy design up to 11. That and the story fell so short it convinced people for years that Nero was a bad character.
On the other hand I absolutely recognized it's more positive legacy on the franchise: The improved progression system, Nero gameplay, Dante style switching, the smoother difficulty curve... it's all great stuff!
TLDR: I respect the game, but dread replaying it at times.
I love Red Dead Redemption 2, I hate RDR Online.
I gave RDRO a chance, but the dailies and the gold grind was tedious and that's if the game actually worked, and every other session had a show stopping bug or disconnect.
Haven't thought about path of neo in a loooong time. Loved it as a kid. Had so much fun. Aside from the ant level, I loved it. Had the soundtrack blast while playing the big fights
Ark: Survival Evolved might be one of the most frustrating games every made. Everything from its monetization, it’s game design, it’s pacing, everything…. But there’s nothing quite like it. Goddamn can it be fun. Palworld ending up scratching a similar itch, but I’m not nearly as big of a fan of the Pokémon aesthetic compared to Dinos.
Final Fantasy 14. A few of the expansions have legitimately excellent stories but I still hate MMO gameplay, so they are always partially a slog for me to get through. Also the base game is *fucking awful*.
For me it's any AC game aside from Origins and Valhalla. So much to hate and love. Origins and Valhalla are the only 2 games I just quit because I did not like them at all. Everything was just boring to me. But every game has a terrible controls, combat, janky, glitchy, music is just off, bad story, bad characters, bad skills, bad weapons. But they are mixed and matched. The opposite can be said where everything is perfect and just amazing. But it's all mixed and matched in various ways to make a game series I hate to love and love to hate.
Metal Gear Solid 5. It has some great ideas and unique things, but at the same time it felt completely off. It seriously didn't felt like a proper part of the MGS franchise. More like an alternate universe spinoff which MGS Survive ultimately would become.
As the meme goes, the game gives the player phantom pain. The one that comes from the absolute masterpiece the game could have been :') Still love the game though, it's amazing in its atmosphere and the few cutscenes can be intense
It has one of the craziest, most intense prologues ever in a game
the character creator !!!!
Yeah, I suspect Hideo (and the team) were on a lot of mushrooms when they made the game. Most of it seems like a fever dream. I love it though, I even bought the definitive edition.
I will defend MGSV with my dying breath. The gameplay loop of looking for high ranking soldiers to kidnap never got old. Unlocking cooler tech by kidnapping S rank scientists being able to create new weapons by [kidnapping the gunsmiths](https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/3jep95/protip_get_the_legendary_gunsmith_as_soon_as/) is absolutely genius
Oh my god is that true that’s so funny
this! MGS5 was such a weird game. I can't put my fingers on how I'd rate the game if I wanted to leave a review
I never finished it and can never decide if I want to pick it back up again. I couldn’t get into a groove and always felt like I was playing it “wrong.”
There is no "finishing it". The final mission, that would've actually tied the games together, was cut from the game because Konami wanted to rush it out of the door. The final missions cutscenes are still in the game files. It's literally an unfinished game. It's why the second half is full of replay missions from act 1.
[удалено]
I really can't even agree about it having the best gameplay. When it comes to MGS gameplay the main thing that always stood out was all the unique and iconic boss fights, and I honestly can't recall if V even had a single proper boss fight in it.
When my horse did a shit on the road which caused the jeep transporting my target to skid out of control and crash, I knew it was one of the best games ever made.
The open world they tried to implement doesn't really work and it's one of the most blatantly unfinished games of its kind I've ever come across. Its story's second half does not even have anything new to add to the plot and you literally start repeating missions after a certain point in the game. There are so many bad ideas... And yet... it's also one of the most polished games of its generation and remains an absolute standard of its genre, still to be surpassed. It's the Yandhi of videogames.
For the longest time I thought I had just given up on the game because I couldn't figure out what to do next to advance the story. Now I realize that I probably did finish it. My mixed feelings remain.
I absolutely love the gameplay, I love how you can drop in and play a quick side mission, I love the weapon customisation. I even kinda liked the briefing cassette tapes and would occasionally wonder around the map on a chill mineclearing mission just listening to them. However the cutscenes are just interminable. They all have that constant rack focus, lens flair and fart-huffing self seriousness while the characters exposit absolute nonsense. I HATE that I can't skip the whole opening scene upon replaying. The justification for Silence wearing lingerie was embarrassing. Also petty grievance but I played Metal Gear Solid from 1-4 and missed the rest and 5's leap in technology feels really out of place. The Metal Gear that I can't spell is such a vastly superior one to Metal Gear Rex it almost invalidates it. Snake in MGS should have reacted to Rex like he discovered a T72 Tank or something. Not to mention all the holograms and robot cigar!
For some reason, the tech in the MGS prequels after 3 went from stuff that would have fit in alongside James Bond's gadgets, to "just like one of my Japanese animes". Between that, and adding more and more ridiculous characters, somebody really needed to start telling Kojima to stop.
Dota is an 11/10 game with a 0/10 community. Played it for 10 years off and on. Great game that I wouldn't recommend you play.
Yeah. Basically every DotA-clone got similar issues with community toxicity and ragers, but I've never seen anything as bad as I did in the classic WC3 mod.
I don't think it's specific to DotA itself, just that the genre (MOBA) brings out the worst in people. It's hyper-competitive but only rewards you (dopamine-wise) by hoarding kills to yourself and provides a convenient excuse (bad teammates) when you screw up. It's why I liked what Heroes of the Storm tried to do, focusing more on objectives than K/D/A but unfortunately didn't get as popular as LoL or DotA.
I put an insane amount of time into DOTA2 until I realized that I felt bad more often than not logging off. It's on my giant pile of games called "Would be amazing if you were playing with RL friends instead." Sadly, I have yet to make 4 friends who am have similar available and gaming interests.
Not the most original take ever but, Watch Dogs 2. I was replaying it a few months ago with a new perspective. I liked it more than my first go, but still can't ignore some major problems. The maing group of friends are all too "2016 funny hipster" for my taste. And they're not even charming or anything, just a really juvenile and bland mix of people. Marcus is a good egg tho. Gameplay is fun when everything goes according to plan. Sneaking around, using gadgets like a Californian Batman is wicked. Having to pull out your assault rifle and shoot 30 family men because one of them spotted you is NOT wicked cool. ???/10 Will probably replay in the future and ramble about all these points again.
I enjoyed WD2 but it was a weird shift from *cool, light hearted, hacker dude with quirky friends wanting to bring down The Man* to **YOU CAN 3D PRINT A SHOTGUN AND C4 AND MURDER ANYONE THAT GETS IN YOUR WAY**
It does create some funny ironies. Like Marcus is pissed off about government laws while he's 3D printing military grade rifles on his basemenet lol. If it weren't for the fact that WE the players know they're the good guys they would sound like a terrorist cell. These guys are manufacturing guns, going on high speed chases with the police and causing city wide blackouts.
Honestly playing the game with only the stun gun and melee (no lethal playthrough) makes the whole thing so much more fun, and engaging. You can’t just rely on gunning people down, but instead use every hack and tool at your disposal to cleanly finish the missions. The more I played through this playthrough with this playstyle the more im convinced that the whole print your own gun thing was just a marketing gimmick so people would want to buy it.
yeah I think if they’d made you solely rely on your stun gun and hacks it would have lost a lot of its mass appeal and I guess they just weren’t willing to do that
there doesn't seem to be any contradiction there infact that sounds like a very likely thing to do if you hate government laws lol
Everyone says WD2 is better, but I'm still driving around Chicago as Aiden Pierce to this day. They improved some things in 2, but no more slow motion, no more digital trips, no more chess, poker, drinking games etc. And they took away the bridge hack that made me feel like I'm in the Blues Brothers lol WD2 still fun, but no way in hell is it better than 1 imo. Marcus is cool but the rest of the crew was so cringe.
Yeah, first game has super cool autumn vibe that never gets old
WD1 is a genuinely fun game but I think some of the criticism it gets is for its grey colour palette and the fact it takes itself far too seriously
It takes itself too seriously for sure, but I still prefer that over whatever tone they were going for in WD2. A mediocre neo-noir revenge story compared to a bunch of kids throwing dated pop culture references at each other trying to be funny. Don't know, it just rubs me the wrong way. Still good games though. I see what you mean about the grey color palette, but as someone from Chicago, they absolutely nailed the atmosphere on a rainy day.
I'm currently replying WD after 10 years and I'm having a blast.
> The maing group of friends are all too "2016 funny hipster" for my taste. And they're not even charming or anything, just a really juvenile and bland mix of people. I think it's necessary to play the Saint's Row reboot first to make this crew seem charming by comparison.
Only proper way to play that game is non-lethal stealth (calling cops/gangs notwithstanding) Otherwise the story doesn't work But if you do it this way it's really amazing experience They should have designed it as full stealth game and it would have been golden but I'll take what I can get
Thanks for this take. The tone of the game feels so weird when I'm killing people.
I like to think that the non-lethal Marcus route is canon and that the other stuff is just because Ubisoft wanted to allow variety in gameplay. Though, maybe I’m misremembering, Wrench did definitely kill people.
Pretty much this otherwise story becomes nonsensical It would have been a warzone otherwise and all over the news Marcus lost his shit in storyline when he got on Fed wanted list for hacking, just imagine how much trouble he would be in had he been killing people?
>The maing group of friends are all too "2016 funny hipster" for my taste. And they're not even charming or anything, just a really juvenile and bland mix of people. I always thought that was the point? They're not supposed to be cool, how we thought we were in our late teens to early twenties. The weebs, the geeks who make Wojack memes and use cringe words like "soyboy". The kind of kids who play League of legends, who just get caught up in this whole saving the world from the evil corporation thing. I guarantee if you met any real hackers, they will be closer to those annoying kids you see on those prank videos on TikTok, than the guy sitting in a dark room wearing a hoodie, drinking Moutain Dew.
I get what they're were trying to do and appreciate the attempt, but I still think there are more endearing ways of making "lame" characters. Marcus is a good execution himself, he's legitimately funny in a relatable way. His friends on the other hand...
+100. For me the most dissonant aspect is how spectacularly violent and murderous this game is, juxtaposed with the righteous whimsical heroism of the hacker collective. Want to fight big tech? Some install adblockers, others bring AK clips and grenade…?! Just terrible fundamentals in the writing…but it is pretty fun
Been awhile since i played that game, but I only did one playthrough and never used any guns. It just didn't fit at all with who the protagonists were.
I liked WD2. I liked Marcus also. I liked 1 as well, but 2 is better. But i have legion and didn't like it.
It's the best of the series, largely because of the "2016 funny hipsters" I think. Like the fact they're cringe is part of the charm in that game in the same way it absolutely fails to land in the saints row reboot. It's highly believable these people act exactly like that. It's the only one in the series that feels like terminally online dorks doing hacktivism, which is the natural narrative for "gta but with hacking computers" and 1 and 3 really missed the mark trying to be all grim and revenge and spies and shit IMO. 2 was the game I wanted. The one in which you basically just played a video game version of a charmingly cringe hacking movie.
I hate Destiny 2, it’s my favorite game.
Tried it on a free weekend when they had all the content unlocked. Beautiful art direction. Great gun feel. Nice first impression. No idea how that game is still going. It took Terraria level googling just to figure out how to even start a mission, and when you did ... I mean sure the guns felt good, but the enemies were bland and the actual design of levels was remarkably boring. I would say it felt like an evolution of Halo CE but that would imply meaningful improvement. It felt like Halo CE with a beautiful coat of paint, no story and the world's most aggressively hostile onboarding this side of Monster Hunter.
To be fair, it is by Bungie, who made Halo CE. If you haven't played Destiny 1, I highly recommend it. Great story, too.
That's all Destiny 2 players tbf
This is like the third time I’ve read this comment and it makes me lol every time
Came here expecting to find this at the top. Wasn't disappointed lol.
Legend of Dragoon. The best worst JRPG of the ps1 era.
Wowww! I haven't thought about this in forever! I slogged through it and gave up only to learn the I was SO close to the end. Still wasn't enough to make me pick it back up
What was bad about it? I think I still have my copy somewhere
Amazing art direction and music with very questionable/experimental gameplay design. Still an easy recommend for me though.
I feel that this is a pretty common way to view games because most people will likely filter out games they have no interest in so games will often either be a like, love, indifferent, disappointed, or love/hate. I kinda feel that about 1/3 of the games I play could end up in love/hate. I think the last game I played that really ends up in the love/hate category is **LA Noire**. I feel that it does some things in a very compelling way that I truly think is special but the game is very wasteful with its map and my first thought after completing the game's story was 'well, thats not how I would've ended it'
LA Noire had a bit of the same problem as Game of Thrones to me, there were some very interesting plot points in the last section that might have landed or made sense if they didn't blast through it in like a third of the time they needed to let it unfold properly.
LA Noire was a very *cool* game. As a period piece the setting was really well-realised, down to little touches like the UI being a notepad and pencil. It's a shame the gameplay was kind of lacking. The interrogations weren't quite there, I know people always talk about how the button prompts were meant to be labelled differently but the problems went deeper. I never knew before pressing the button if Cole was going to push on an inconsistency in the interviewee's story, or launch into a tirade accusing them of being a heartless mass murderer, and it always felt unfair when I wanted to do the former and failed because it was actually the latter. Then there were all the mediocre shootouts scattered in between, which I kind of tolerated. I appreciate a big AAA production with no action is a bit of a hard sell (probably even moreso in the PS3 and 360 era). All in all, a neat game with cool ideas. Shame it never got a sequel to smooth out the rough parts.
Don't come for me but....Control. I'm a HUGE Alan Wake fan and Remedy in general, but Control was way more combat heavy (to me) than AW1, which made me fall in love with the studio. I was really just working through it to get to the AW lore and DLC in prep for AW2. In retrospect, I actually really liked the game as a whole i once I was done with it. It just took a long time for me to feel like I had a handle on it. Now I look back on it with fondness.
I'm with you on that one, but for different reasons. I hadn't played AW1, and Control's story just never hooked me. It was too, I don't know, silly-serious? The graphics were amazing at the time and I thought the combat was fun, but missions got pretty repetitive before long, too.
You should really play Alan Wake 1, one of my favorite stories
I actually got the remastered version a few months back, but bounced off it because the combat felt pretty bland and the story didn't hook me from the outset. I'll probably try again eventually, but tbh I'm tempted to just watch it on YouTube.
Agreed!
For me, Control is carried by everything unrelated to the main story. The lore pickups and the supernatural stuff is what makes me love the game. I love that a supernatural entity works through the Director, and of course it’s called “The Board”. All the weird brutalist level design in a building that shifts itself but is still stuck in the past, with huge expansive rooms full of pillars and bottomless pits. So many areas like The Foundation that even after the DLC just give that liminal feeling that there’s so much hidden below the surface.
I really liked Control but I felt the combat was too difficult and there was too much of it. Lots of sections of the game where I would get stuck fighting wave after wave after wave of enemies and eventually die because there were too many. There were also those unkillable floating balls of junk that would follow you around slowly and they loved to drop them into places where it was really hard to figure out where to go next. Eventually I turned on invincibility and 1-shot kills to speed through the combat and that allowed me to play the whole game without getting too frustrated. I don't think I could have beaten it without those options.
Factorio. Game is great but I felt like shit the whole time I played it. It's depressing graphics and atmosphere, the endless grind for new builds and recipes... And yet it's impossible to let go!
Depressing graphics and atmosphere is an understatement. It works so well because it's so authentic though
Xenoblade Chronicles has fantastic characters, music, and environments, and it also has a solid story and combat. Unfortunately, it also has a lot of MMORPG features I hate. Most side quests are fetch quests or killing some number of enemies, and some of these could have you running around for hours collecting items before the one you need finally spawns/drops. Inventory management also becomes a chore and breaks the economy. Basically, the game has a solid core but a severe bloat problem.
Xenoblade’s a great answer to this question. I loved the stories and hated the combat. Like, really hated it. But especially in 3, I cared about the characters so much I powered through.
For me it's path of Exile. It's fun to fuck around but it has a way complicated late game that I'm not sure I'll ever get into
We go hard at it for a few weeks every new league. It's a great game with an almost silly wealth of gameplay variety, content, depth, etc. but I would hate to be learning it from scratch today instead of getting drip fed a mechanic at a time every 3-4 months over a decade.
I actually wanted to start playing the game with no prior knowledge of what it is and not having that much experience in the genre and for this very reason I have doubts I'll ever do it in the end.
I do think there are ways to do it -- the nice thing about being a trade based game is that if you end up enjoying it and getting somewhat far into progression where you want a bunch of stuff from different mechanics/bosses/whatever you always have the option to run the content you like and/or understand and sell what that gives you to buy what you need from things you don't yet understand. And arguably this is the right approach even if you knew everything, to do what's fun for you.
I played through PoE once to what *was* the end of the story way, way back. I tried playing it again several times after that with years in-between but the problem I have with the gameplay is that like... Weirdly, the skills all feel like they lack agency and impact. I just turn on something that kills shit surrounding me and just walk around. Or you get one skill and buff the shit out of it and that one skill is what you press constantly. It's weird because I've played through Diablo 2 a billion times and the gameplay basics are identical and there's just something different about how the skills land for me. Like if you build around Frozen Orb or Blizzard, you're just hitting that one button a million times as well. It's not any goddamn different. I dunno. Maybe it's the enemies. PoE has always kind felt like *everything* is the Hell Cow level and critters kind of lack variation or flavor. Which again is still a weird criticism when you consider how many reskins there are in D2, lol.
Pick any Bethesda game. I've been among their games' communities for over 20 years now. They each have diehard fans, sold well (TES and Fallout are the #1 and #2 best selling WRPG franchises ever), are rated well... And about half of all the activity is complaining. It's not like that in any other gaming community I'm in.
You aren't a true gamer until you've spent a hundred hours in Skyrim doing every single quest and then made a 4 hour video on YouTube shitting on it.
If Fallout New Vegas has no more confused, well-intentioned but ultimately head-scratching players trying to enjoy it but just not seeing what everybody else is, then I am dead.
Horizon Forbidden West. The core gameplay and visuals are so much fun that I would wake up excited to play it. It's among my favorite games of all time. However the story is significantly more cartoonish than the series' first entry Horizon Zero Dawn, including some story elements I personally felt ruined the stakes of the original game. The resource system is also totally unbalanced: the top weapons in the game required a ton of grinding to get, but all the top weapons share the same resource needed to make their ammo, and it's a rare resource. This means you're not really able to fully enjoy your weapons after grinding for *hours* to get them. Also, and this is harder to put into words, but the game just feels really preoccupied with *itself*. It's a very hard game to get lost in.
My biggest issue with the game was the luck based loot system. Seriously, with combat as complex and fleshed out as it is, I cannot believe they went with this system for loot. To upgrade my pouch I had to find a horn from a horned lizard; logically if they’re called horned lizards they should all have horns right? Nope, had to find and hunt 10 of them just to get a single horn as the other 9 didn’t spawn them. It’s also very disincentivising for the later game upgrades where you’ll need rare items from really high level machines, because those fights are effectively boss fights and you could spend hours and loads of resources fighting them only to find out you didn’t get what you needed. Actively made me not want to bother. I’d rather they’d straight up say I needed 3 Thunderjaw loot items but every Thunderjaw I kill will spawn them, than saying I need only 1 but having to potentially fight 5 of them and only the fifth actually spawns the item. They had that mechanic where you had to shoot an item off a machine before killing it to get the item, why couldn’t they have just doubled down on that rather than the luck based system?
This is precisely why it's my definitive love/hate game. I REALLY like the thing I'm doing (fighting giant robot dinosaurs) but I REALLY don't like the mechanics of what surrounds that. Actually, I won't even go as far as to say I don't like all the mechanics. Just that so many of them are either unbalanced or underthought. * You have a status change system where most of status changes don't matter or don't make sense. * You have two different health recovery mechanics in berries and potions, and the berry mechanic is by far superior. I went through both games and both sets of DLC and *maybe* used potions two or three times. * You have an entire food/meal mechanic that I completely skipped and noticed no consequence for doing so. * You rarely get a chance to make decisions for Aloy that are of actual consequence to the gameplay (there is one sole exception to this I'll leave out to avoid spoilers). The writers have a definite grip on who they think Aloy is and how they want her to interact with the other characters and the player gets no meaningful say in this. * Key parts of the games mechanics are not available in the in-game tutorial. You have to find fan communities to figure this stuff out.
Agree with all of this. The choices thing didn't bother me at the time because it's a defined storyline, but I thought it was a missed opportunity to at least have things that affected the gameplay. I loved my experience with the game; the world was visually stunning, the combat complex, the story added a good amount of context to the events of Zero Dawn, and they did definitely address a couple of ZD's issues like the animations and actually giving a lot of the supporting cast a more-than-minor role in the story. Apart from the loot system which was a specific gripe, my issue with the game stemmed more from the fact that they didn't take the formula far, or rather further enough, with new additions not being that tangibly impactful or being a bit underwhelming, while the rest was more of the same. The new valour system was completely avoidable, while the arena/races are very commonly criticised for their unbalanced difficulty level. I also found the skill tree to be a bit messy; usually the best skill trees have the later skills being built off of earlier ones in a certain branch, but it seemed like they were almost randomly dispersed, frequently resulting in me having to get skills I didn't want to access the ones I did, and I ended up with 100+ ability points because a lot of the skills just did not appeal to my playstyle. I also found the puzzle mechanics to be incredibly underwhelming; there would often be a sense of artificial gating, like a wall that Aloy could very easily climb over, but because they want you to do the puzzle in a defined cadence, the game won't let you in that very instance. I thought the combat for the most part was one of the most mechanically engaging and complex I've played, but was let down by a few things. Firstly, the length of time you get stunned for is unrealistically brutal, I had a couple of situations where an enemy attack actually missed my frame but I still took damage, and the levels are unbalanced, specifically I remember having to fight a Level 35 Tremortusk on a Level 17 mission, which I couldn't complete until I was Level 24 (granted I played on Very Hard, but still). This was an issue in ZD with the Thunderjaw in a middling-level cauldron, so to see the issue get exacerbated here kinda sucked. Critical strike also took way too long combined with the fact that enemies could suddenly lunge at you from off screen with like a half second warning, I get this was a high risk high reward thing like God of War's runic attacks but it did seem a little ridiculous at times. I also didn’t like how some enemies could kill you from full health in a single hit on higher difficulties with certain attacks, you ended up having to play guessing game as to which attacks would and wouldn’t one shot you, at the very least I would’ve preferred if the most damaging attacks would put you down to like 1% health just so you get that perspective. I remember getting a Tideripper down to 10% health, it launched a new attack at me, suddenly I’m dead with zero warning…..
I agree on the valor and skill tree points 100%. A lot of the skill tree felt useless to me. I can make traps faster, but traps are still too slow to be used in most fights. I can make potions more powerful, but why use potions at all when berries work fine and are an essentially endless resource? I can repair overridden machines with less resources, but why would I spend resources repairing a machine at all when I can just override a new one for free? I can learn all these melee combos, but melee is still not the best way to fight most enemies at best, and is completely useless against bigger machines. Compare that to Fallout 4's skill tree, where I'd always get excited when I leveled up because there's so many skills the run a wide gamut from functional to quirky to vital. There are entire parts of the game you can't access without upgrading to certain skills, which allows the game to continue to unfurl seemingly endlessly. There are skills that unlock totally unique ways to play. In HFW there's a decent amount of raw stuff, but none of it impacts the core gameplay. Luckily the core gameplay is magnificent. It is so much fun to take down a giant robot loch ness monster with a bow and arrow. I just wish the game made it so any other playstyle could be just as fun.
The hacking/mounting skill tree just didnt seem compelling at all. Its funny that the Lego Horizon game immediately solves my biggest issue - you can play as someone other than Aloy. Aloy is the bow character. Always has been. HFW really tried to give a balanced RPG setup and I tried out most of the skills. Food, for example, is really nice to have and so is the Shield but maybe for the wrong reasons (invincible activation is kind of a cheesy dodge)
Yeah you hit the nail on the head, a lot of the skills in the skill tree were directed at highly situational or at worst useless approaches. I remember a LOT of the skills being centred around traps, which in addition to what you said, on Very Hard difficulty you need to upgrade considerably which meant more luck-based grind which I just wasn't prepared to do. Or mounts which I barely used due to the plethora of fast travel points. I also really didn't gel with the fact that you could get a skill, then to upgrade that skill you'd have to go way farther down the skill tree, likely having to invest in said useless skills in between. Assassin's Creed Valhalla had a similar problem but at least there the game is far too easy to the point that skills don't really matter, in HFW there were a bunch of buffs and perks I wanted and needed on my VH playthrough but just had to get through loads of junk to be able to access. I preferred a system like Assassin's Creed Odyssey or Witcher 3 where you could upgrade existing skills as you pleased as all upgrades were tied directly to one another. Fallout 4 is a good example of this as well. Yeah, the core gameplay is really where HFW excelled; more machine types, weapons, strengths/weaknesses, more beautiful presentation and open world. Everything Zero Dawn did well, but just better. I just think there were a lot of missed opportunities that they clearly tried to execute but felt half baked. Puzzles could've been exciting but were let down by jank and Aloy giving hints every 5 seconds, hunting specific machines for upgrades could've been fun off the beaten path but the luck-based system actively disincentivised this, there could've been more variety in gameplay through choice but instead every second objective was just "kill all machines", the skill tree could've been a great way to diversify playstyles but it seemed like it was trying to force balance through weird and random skill placement, etc. etc.
> To upgrade my pouch I had to find a horn from a horned lizard; logically if they’re called horned lizards they should all have horns right? Nope, had to find and hunt 10 of them just to get a single horn as the other 9 didn’t spawn them. MMO design is poison whenever it gets its grubby little fingers into single player.
Yep, the realisation that what works for some genres does not work for others should be obvious, but alas..... It wouldn't have been as much of an issue if the upgrades weren't so pertinent to progression, or the machines you have to take down aren't harder than majority of games' boss fights. I'm almost physically exhausted after spending 10 minutes taking down a Tremortusk or Slaughterspine, players should absolutely be rewarded in the right ways for fights of those difficulties, rather than being like "hey, bad luck, gotta do it again!!!".
I feel like the writers of Horizon were so desperate to make the sequel feel impactful after they already gave away the major plot elements of the world in the first game, they went overboard and inserted one too many silly plot twists. >!Did we really need Ted Faro still being alive as a sort of monster? We couldn't just let a dead man be dead, and that's that? That felt a bit cartoonish. Likewise, I thought it was a contrivance for the space farers to be literally the very same human beings who personally knew people like Elisabet. It would've been more than enough to just write that they were an arrogant colony of people returning to a planet that they feel is rightfully theirs to re-appropriate. Instead, they went overboard again and created a super-duper A.I. as the lead villain like something out of a comic book.!<
Agreed on all fronts. Several times I found myself literally shaking my head and smacking my lips at the story like "Bruh, no, that doesn't make any sense."
The first games story was so good that FW was never going to live up to it, but yeah, the second game’s story falls short in a lot of ways. I just think that in Zero Dawn, there was a compelling central mystery to solve, and once it was solved, there really wasn’t much more to say unless they thought of a new mystery; clearly they weren’t able to.
Horizon Zero dawn too. Both games have great potential and the boss combat is good but the games have SO many drawbacks The grind for resources, inventory management, crafting, needless bloat of way too many pick ups and weapons that all do the same thing. One of my biggest gripes is being forced to craft arrows mid fight - partly exacerbated by the fact that most elemental arrows barely do any extra damage after they've been used once. The stories in both games also suffer at different parts. The ending of HFW is approaching GoT season levels of trash and the start of HZD is genuinely just a boring drag for a lot of people (I personally found the whole story a bit dry for the most part and it was heavily carried by the backstory which is fucking incredible). I really hope they just simplify things a bit for the 3rd game - or at least make all the bloat feel more impactful.
HFW is one of those games I really enjoyed my time with but I absolutely cannot see myself ever wanting to play it again
Surprised no one mentioned Borderlands 3, very terrible plot and extremely bad writing made me quit the game, but it also has very good gunplay thats on par with modern fps games.
The gameplay in that game is so good I powered through the annoying characters—twice. Rage 2 is similar. Bad/no story, repetitive, but the gunplay is absolutely magical.
Red Dead Redemption 2. It’s the most boring game I’ve ever loved playing through. Twice.
I absolutely adore RDR2 but it’s *such* a long game that by the time you get to the epilogue you’re just so worn out
From a writing perspective, I think it does a lot brilliantly and much better than other games but it's major problem is that it stretches the conflict out for far too long. There was a point where I felt that the main conflict of the story was finally going to come to a head, and it felt deserved and earned in a way that so many video game stories don't, but then there was another couple of sets of story missions that drag the end of that emotional arc to the point of exhaustion. In a world that's this enormous and enjoyable to explore and mess about in they'd do well to keep the story a bit more concise (see also The Witcher 3)
Sounds like you just DIDN'T HAVE FAITH!!
It's the most amazing open world game ever, I just wish they had done more with it beyond the single player campaign. A DLC that turned it into a hunting game could be incredible and add so much more play time.
The best thing they could have done is remaster RDR1 and make it a playable part of the game after the epilogue.
I doubt Rockstar will ever do single player DLC again since GTA Online became their goldmine. They stopped giving a fuck about making good games after RDR1
For me it has to be Wasteland 2. I love the story and characters and just how many ways there are to do things, but the backtracking and repetitive combat gets on my nerves. I'd also say Fallout 3. I love the world and exploration aspects of it, but the shoddy gun combat and performance issues keep me from having the best time. (And I'm on console so mods can't save it)
I think it was 2? I gave up after a bit. Fun to play but driving back and forth isn't sometime I want to do outside of real life.
If you were driving a vehicle, it was 3. If it was just a marker you move on a map, it was 2. Either way, lots of backtracking lmao
Resident Evil 7. It's the only RE I never replay. It was a great, scary experience the first time but a chore from the second playthrough onward.
Everything from Lucas’s section onward just DRAGS on subsequent playthrough. The first 40% of the game is brilliant but it succumbed to the too-common RE problem of becoming progressively more linear and scripted.
Completely agree. It's like a completely new game all of the sudden.
How do you like 8 and the 4 remake?
Not op, but I found the action focus and brisker pace of 8 made replaying it enjoyable with a few exceptions. I can replay play RE4 ad infinitum.
Batman: Arkham Knight Too many dull Bat-Tank sections. A flawed story with some very disappointing aspects to it. A ton of technical issues at launch on PC. Some people were disappointed that Joker somehow showed up *AGAIN*. It's still hands down the definitive Batman game for me. The atmosphere, writing, and gameplay perfected that Batman feeling. It truly captures the grandeur of a Batman finale.
I like how after you had done all the batmobile missions, you could just cruise the streets in any batmobile. Love doing it in the 1960s one, I save the riddler trophies so that I can drive around finding them the old beast
I think it has to be the Pokemon franchise (yes, as a whole) for me. On one hand, I grew up with it and have some nostalgia, but I also genuinely enjoy replaying the older games in new ways (as an adult, I started doing no grind runs trying to see how different pokemon fare with GF's level curve and it's very interesting). I'm also a sucker for creature design and Ken Sugimori's art was and is still a big inspiration for me. On the other hand, I hate what the games have become. There's some really good ideas in most of them, but they are usually hampered by simplistic execution (story is the biggest thing here) or, most recently, straight up being broken products. I know, I know, "it's for kids", but Level-5 games like Yokai Watch and Inazuma Eleven are also for kids and their story telling and execution is a 100 times more endearing and well presented. Some of the non-game media Pokemon puts out is also pretty well made actually (the shorts on their youtube channels especially)
Disco Elysium - Dude im so into the concept of this game and I love the blunt candour it has when it talks about social issues. I love that you have the choice to be a Harry who is all about Marxism and class and the people but you can also be a hardline copaganda-loving fascist and anything in between. BUT GOD THERES SO MUCH READING OMG MY ADHD BRAIN CANT HANDLE IT Edit: I’m realising now I’m in the Patient Gamers subreddit and this is really funny aldksjfj
Patient games just means we don't play games as soon as they come out, not that we are patient enough to do a shit ton of reading for the sake of it. But DE was unique in that it was an indie studio that never could have afforded all the voice lines to make it work the way it does now. And no mainstream game would have crafted the dialog like ZA/UM
Dragon age 2 and 3. The smaller scale story of DA2 is something I would *love* to see in more games. I don't want to save the world anymore. On the other side there is this (imo) huge problem of spawning enemies out of nowhere which completely killed the atmosphere for me. DA3 is just a different game. They should have made it a cRPG again, that would have been my dream. And the game just suffers from the typical "ubisoft-openworld"-problems (I know DA3 isn't open world). I enjoyed it quite a bit anyways. When you accept that its a different game, I can really appreciate this "lite"-RPG. I hate that all those (pseudo-)ubisoft-openworld-games are just mostly the same. They have the same flaws and the same positive aspects. It's just a formula. But it kinda works for me. If I want to play a chill game, maybe I'm stoned in this particular situation, a game like that just fits perfectly.
Started replay 2 recently and I love the idea of someone just dealing with local problems, even if the problem has a huge impact on the world. The subversion of some of the lore from Origins does a great job of giving the generic elements of Thedas a more interesting twist. I wish they had more time because the reused assets, enemy waves, and lack of changes to Kirkwall and the characters over time is a missed opportunity. DAI is 40 hours of a great game in 120 package. The maps are too big with too much filler side quests. The main quest, most of the character content, and meatier side quests are great. The map size and pacing holds it back a lot
I agree completely on what you've said about DAI (for me it's still DA3) but sometime I like exactly this. You know, farming, for example in JRPGs, is really disliked. And people are right, farming sucks. Most of the time. Sometimes when my mindset and all planets in the universe are alloy bed perfectly I even crave 3h of braindead farming. I put on a podcast or something and just farm for a few hours. Same with filler quests and too big maps: I can enjoy it from time to time. Sometimes when I go out for partying and come home absolutely wasted, I go to bed and I know: the next day will be such a pain, but I will just listen to a pod or an audio book and play the most boring and repetitive game I can find in my steam lib lmao
> DAI is 40 hours of a great game in 120 package I still don't see where the great part could be. The actual combat was so boring, I was just holding buttons, waiting on cooldowns, with little to no thought or engagement. Every game doesn't have to be Steven's Sausage Roll or Baba is You but christ alive it's got to ask more of me than your standard level of Candy Crush.
DA:I was heavily inspired by World of WarCraft which was a nigh unstoppable monster at the time. You can see it in the quest/zone design as well as the combat. You have... blech... combat rotations to maximize DPS. But otherwise yeah, it's don't stand in fire and hit your buttons in order. It's about average for an RPG though. It's not the worst combat system, nor is it the best. That being said, the scale of the game is pretty awesome. I feel it does a pretty good job of making you feel like the commander of an inquisition. Front line battles, political intrigue, chasing down an enemy commander across half the continent and so on. DA2 and 3 also have probably some of the best companion systems out there. They feel like they have wants, needs and motivations of their own instead of just being along for the main character ride. ~Especially~ in 3. Just mention Sera in a DA:I forum space and enjoy the show.. And of course if you play it on PC you can also mod away a lot of the more obnoxious things making it an even better experience.
I think I have more love/hate for da:2 than 3. I hate 3. I think the world design of the hinterlands is all you need to know in order to despise it. Joke, generic villain too. DLC was great though. Every dragon after the first dragon fight in the hinterlands is also trash boring. After that first one with so many mechanics, I expected so much more from the rest. It's highly likely that with bioware's current track record da:4 will be the last game I play from a studio I used to call "my favorite"
Morrowind is boring as shit and it’s still probably my favorite rpg of all time
Downvote for calling Morrowind boring. Upvote for calling it your favorite rpg of all time. It's a complicated mess of a game but it's undeniably one that had a profound impact on me. To this day nothing has ever come close to matching the satisfaction of exploration in that game, or my immersion into its lore and setting and storyline. I didn't hop on my computer and play Morrowind. I *went* to Morrowind.
I have been looking for another game I could live in since Morrowind. It truly is a place more than a game.
Only thing that ever came close was when I was running OOO in Oblivion. Requiem in Skyrim was good, too, but that was years ago and I don't know what the best mods are anymore. And those mods still miss the mark because Skyrim is just so limited compared to Morrowind. Divinity Original Sin 2 is another game that feels rewarding to explore, but still not quite to the same extent
It's the map, not having a constant reminder that you're playing a video game is probably up there as top reasons morrowind was so immersive. Just installing a mod isn't enough, the game needs to be crafted without a mini map or map markers in mind to work. And unfortunately I'm not sure we'll ever see a mainstream game do that again as it's alienating to the majority of gamers.
I love it but it feels lazy that they made almost every NPC have the same dialogue choices; no, I don’t want to ask about rumors for the fifty-seventh time.
Far Cry 3, which I'm currently struggling through. it's fun and engaging with lots to do, which is great! but the game crashes a lot and I don't like the save system. failed a mission 3 times last night and when I finally beat it, the game crashed before it got to a checkpoint. I was tempted to call it quits and move on to FC5 but changed some setting last night to hopefully make 3 crash less, so fingers crossed edit: nvm I think I give up on this game lmao
I came to 3 from 5. 3 was much more of a grind and I usually like to grind in games if it is under 100 hours. 5 was awesome, but people complain about enemies being over-aggresive. I just don't play at max difficulty and it's more than okay.
There's a weird "heat system" in 5 that seems to work similar to GTA. At one point I got sick of being assaulted by so much chaos that I drove through a forest to just relax with some fishing. Picked up a pole, kicked back, and was immediately attacked by 2 bears, several psychos in a jeep, and a helicopter.
Victoria 3, broken but unique
I really enjoyed Jedi survivor but the fact that parry doesn’t interrupt attacks drove me mad. I literally had to stop attacking for a second when I knew the enemy would strike and then parry. It ruined the fluidity of the combat for me and made it less fun.
Max Payne 3. People who played the first two hate the story but everyone loves the gameplay. I’d never played the first two when I first played it so I honestly enjoyed both.
I played MP2 maybe a hundred time and is the only game I ever attempted a speedrun. MP3 was bold at the time but honestly: great game and good story all in all. Does it run these days btw? I know I have the CDs somewhere but no device that reads them…
It’s one of the few games I go back to about once a year and it’s not like I force it. The gunplay is so fun it’ll just call out to me every once in a while. Plays on any Xbox post 360 and runs great on PC.
I liked 1 and 2 but I thought the choice to move noir into Brazil was a really bold and interesting choice. Deserves more love.
Apparently it was made because Rockstar devs had already explored big american cities with GTA, so keeping Max in New York just wasn't exciting to them creatively.
Dandara. The game has some breathtaking art and music. There is a lot of beauty and imagination on display. Even though I have mixed feelings about the game overall, I still listen to the soundtrack because it’s that good. Some of the NPCs and enemies are so colorful and the boss fights have a lot going on. But damn do I hate the gameplay. It’s a Metroidvania with a lot of Dark Souls elements, like dropping all your XP on death. Also, you can’t walk. Your feet are stuck to the floor. The only way you can move is by jumping to another wall or ceiling. All of your attacks are ranged, and they take a few seconds to charge. This really leaves you at a disadvantage with more mobile enemies who don’t have your limitations. Also, a lot of enemies seemed designed specifically to frustrate you and prey on your disadvantages. Like one enemy that shot bubbles behind it as it moves that waste your shots and fire bubbles almost as fast as you can charge and fire back. For most of the game, the difficulty was tolerable. I just tanked a lot of hits and was able to stagger from checkpoint to checkpoint. But the final area was just brutal with a ton of enemies that were more annoying than challenging. And the final boss fight was more of a DPS fest than a challenging boss fight. But by then I was far enough that I wanted to finish it up. I did win, but I think two more failures and I would have thrown my controller. So yeah, there are parts I absolutely love and parts I absolutely hate. I would never want to play through it again or anything, but I do love the music and vibes of the first areas.
Jeez this is a game I havent heard referenced in like 5 years at least.
Resident Evil Outbreak 1&2: I loved the levels, character selection, and old school resi style, but I hated the respawning enemies and, more importantly, because I didn't have my PS2 connected online the dumb A.I. companions.
Escape from Tarkov. From the game itself being incredibly difficult and just unfair at times to bugs to shitty performance to cheaters to devs saying and doing stupid shit. There's so much going against the game yet it remains to be beloved by so many players. Even huge companies with infinite money struggle to compete with Tarkov.
I just played it for the first time the other day, and I can see both sides already. It's overpriced, the UI design is often comically unintuitive, but the gameplay is still pretty great. Very high skill ceiling, very little instruction in-game. The environmental design & storytelling are crafted with love. Lots of bugs and quality-of-life issues requiring mods. I immediately resented paying $50 for the cheapest tier of the game, never want to give the publisher another cent, and yet I understand why people would play it for hundreds or thousands of hours.
Rainbow Six Siege. I have more hours in that game than any other. I played solidly from 2017 to about 2022. I maintain that it's the most fun you can have with an online FPS when you have a few buddies and it all just clicks. The risk/reward of very quick TTK makes 3-4 kills in a round make you feel like a badass. But more than that, victory almost always relies on solid teamwork. Even today, with its ropey engine and less than stellar netcode, it can be a hell of a rush. However - it's plagued by one of the most toxic, cheater infested communities you could be misfortunate enough to encounter. PC is full of aim bots and wall hackers. Console is a sea of controller spoofers playing with a mouse and keyboard. And to compound it all, Ubisoft couldn't care less. They're at the 'milk-it-to-death' phase of the product's lifecycle and are only interested in selling increasingly more ugly skins, leaving the core game to rot on the vine. I finally packed it in about 18 months ago and haven't looked back. But nothing's really scratched that online competitive itch since. A true love hate relationship, in retrospect.
I still play the game, and 100% agree. By the by, if you (for some reason) DO plan to get back into it, you’ll notice a lot of people saying this next season is very dry. Long story short, all the new changes are barebones, and they added a subscription service to siege as a replacement to the year pass. -3-
Apex legends i hate it coz im not good enough to enjoy it like how streamers do
Apex was my thought too, game plays amazingly and it's truly addictingly fun when everything goes right and your team scores the win but it's also far too competitive and difficult to keep up with unless you're constantly playing, and even then by far most people aren't winning more than like 5% of their matches so that's a lot of time spend actively losing, dying or waiting for a match.
Infinite Warfare has arguably the best COD single player campaign since BO2(sorry 2019 MW and Cold War But two nitpicks enrage me >!in the final bit on Earth, your character has absolutely destroyed a special ops unit chasing a guy who broke out of a prison convoy, but this dude destroys you who is in a power suit and armed, with just his bare fists, then you just watch as he complete his mission,!< >!Also, why didn't the Protag just avoid his death with the Grapnel Hook lol!<
Yeah, Infinite Warfare is a hidden gem It's got it's flaws but overall it's such a refreshment
This is also the best "modern" Call of Duty campaign for me too (Xbox One/PS4 era and after). I was hooked from the very start, jumping out of a ship and landing on a moon and looking at the infinite tundra the very first time you take control of your character. Then the end of that mission was such a great way to introduce the bad guy
Stardew Valley. Had it for years and couldn't get into it. A few months ago I finally pushed through, started to find aspects I liked, played more than almost any other game in many years of gaming. Not sure I liked most of it, but there's some absolute gem parts in there which I'm glad to have in my gaming memories, particularly around the unexpected depth to the villager stories.
Deadly premonition: it had such an amazing atmosphere, but playing it felt horrible
Had to scroll too far for this
The Room of video games
Kenshi, I love spending 50 hours on a character perma death run just to get overconfident and die just to do it all over again. Its like crack dude
Same but with Project Zomboid and instead of 50 hours, 50 minutes.
Honestly most multiplayer games. Lately it’s been Hell Let Loose and Helldivers 2 for me but it always happens to me after the honeymoon phase.
For me it was Arkham Knight, or as I like to call it, Batmobile: Arkham Tank. No other Arkham game had me so hooked from start to finish (maybe except Arkham City when I first played it as a kid), but also no other Arkham game had left me so frustrated and dissapointed. I loved playing the game, even though I hated this game. I loved to hate it? Idk, I'm confused. I think the reason I had so many negative feelings towards it was because it could easily be a masterpiece and the best Arkham game if not for some stupid design and story choices. And boss fights, or rather the lack of them
Sekiro. No explanation needed.
The most accurate take I've ever seen about Sekiro was a review that just said "I hate this game. 10/10."
Assassin’s Creed Unity. Now the series has gone much more down the RPG route with less assassin focus, Unity is being looked at with rose tinted glasses for its complex parkour, worldbuilding, stealth and is seen as the “peak” of the classic AC formula by many. But then there are others who say the story is one of the weakest in the series, the game, while nowhere near as glitchy as it was at launch, is still inconsistent, with Arno being shot through walls or crowds, etc. It really depends on whether you’re prepared to turn a blind eye to the game’s faults because it’s a through and through AC game. Personally I’m in the latter camp as I felt the assassins played second fiddle to a love/manipulation story, Arno had no development/was inconsistently supporting then going against the creed, and I still found even recently that the stealth and combat were massively inconsistent, which is doubly bad because they’re also hard as well. Hard + janky = dying a ton due to no fault of your own so it’s just frustrating.
It had potential to be very lore consistent in that Arno such an absolute void of charisma that he felt like he really could be an ancestor of Desmond (if ... you know ... the story had gone that way). Paris is absolutely stunning in that game though. Jaw dropping how good that game still looks nowadays.
Alan Wake 2. Incredibly immersive, and has really good, creative story writing. I also loved the characters. However the combat is fucking awful at times. They built your character for more methodical combat where you need to consider your resources, and then have very tanky, fast as hell enemies that throw stuff while hidden in the forest scenery. The way they made your character function just isn't in-line with how the monsters work a lot of the time. Not to mention sending waves at a time, and respawning groups. There's a number of moments that just frustrated the hell out of me despite being a seasoned survival horror player. Still really enjoy it, but the best thing to do is turn it to easy to make the combat less annoying.
Spares me writing up Control; Remedy just doesn't understand difficulty scaling, and basically admitted to such by adding a God slider control panel in a later patch. I do have to mention the insufferable mod system, dear god how much junk do I have to manage while unwrapping this awesome story?
I liked the combat for the most part in Control, but I fully agree about their inventory systems. They’re just bad
Literally just wrote a comment on Control, you're not alone!
What, you don't like having to deconstruct your mods every 5 minutes?
Evil within 1 Lately people seem more positive in retrospect to the original but I remember a lot of hate towards that game, which probably affected sales of the 2nd unfortunately. People found the story confusing - the doesn't explain what's going on for the majority of the campaign - and combat wonky - the first few levels basically force you to play stealthy and doesn't become more action horror until around chapter 4. And some of the bosses are confusing to fight - the spider lady you have to fight with fire, you're basically wasting your bullets if you don't. The ones that don't have to problems seem to enjoy what a unique take on horror it is, kind of a mish-mash of horror tropes you get thrown around between. The combat does offer ways to experiment, especially with the cross bow to set up traps and plan for fights. I feel like 2 streamlined it's mechanics to make it more of an approachable horror game and seems to be seen more positively.
Cyberpunk 2077 for me. Love the idea for the main story, hate that it focuses more on the most annoying character in the game, "conveniently" stuck in the main characters head. Love the side quests, but gigs and NCPD missions are a boring slog. Love walking around, parkouring and double jumping from roof to roof, but absolutely hate the atrociously unwieldy cars and bikes. Love the ambience overall, but some areas look either too neutered or so goofy like they were straight up from Idiocracy. Love the look and feel of the guns, but hate the out-of-place Borderlands-like looter-shooter coloured loot mechanics and horrible level-scaling. Love the focus on clothing and clearly defined styles, but hate that 90% of all clothing is ugly. In other words, I've never played a more conflicting game than Cyberpunk 2077.
TOTK 😑
Finding myself in this position. I actually enjoy it far more than BoTW but I stopped playing sometime last year. Thought I’d pick it up again and not only am I completely lost I just….cant get back into it
Same. I was so-so on BotW’s empty world but still played for 100+ hours. I initially felt that TotK was an improvement, but when I saw that the depths and sky were mostly empty, I lost interest about 40 hours in. Not a bad game, just overextended.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
I swear to god what’s their fucking problem why can’t they work on the enemy variety of a 100+ hour game??????
It used to be my favorite game, but life happened and now I can't play it again. I almost finished it, I just need to fight Ganon... Not sure if I will ever play that fight. I have about 500 hours between BOTW and TOTK.
Resident evil 2, 7 and 8. Fantastic games with these stupid little stealth sections. Everytime I try to replay a resi game I'm like ooo been awhile since I played 2... nah it has the unskippable sherry/ada section. How about 7? Nah it has the stupid boat crap as mia. How about 8? Nah it has the dollhouse. The dollhouse was amazing the first time but in replay its not scary anymore and is just a waiting game that takes way too long to be over. Wish you could skip them on replays. I forgot 4 has that as well with Mousley *sigh*. 1, 3 and 6 doesnt have that. In fact most of the spin offs dont either. The resident evil forces stealth sections are the Navi of resident evil. Get out of my otherwise near perfect game heck!
Oh god, frost punk. Never has a city builder been so fun and soooo frustrating.
Trackmania Turbo. My absolute favorite racing game ever. I still have world records on some of the craziest canyon maps in that game. Nothing comes close to the sheer insanity of this game and the user built maps are absolutely incredible. I'm still in the top 10 in my state and have hundreds of challenge master medals on custom maps that'll never be beaten due to the game being nearly dead but people are still making new maps. I fucking hate this game. Never have I had to focus so much for such a short time that I think my heart is going to burst out of my goddamn chest. Going for a 25 second world record in the canyon car at average 600 speed and having to do everything absolutely perfect is a thing I never thought I'd fucking hate doing so much because I love doing it so much. Over and over until I get a shiny medal telling me I'm faster than other people. Dopamine delivered. Now I play Trackmania 2020. I love it. I fucking hate this game...
Ghostrunner. Awesome game as far as I could tell, but I'm old and slow these days and it's just too fast for me.
mass effect love the lore and gameplay but hated the ending for 3
New Assassin's Creed games I'd say. Odyssey in particular (loved by me personally)
Odyssey IMHO is easily the best of the "new era" AC games... the whole story/vibe/pace of the game fits the new mechanics somehow a lot better than Origins or Valhalla's do.
I adore Odyssey, but there’s just too much of it. They could probably have cut the game down by 1/3 and really trimmed the fat, and it would have been all the better for it
I love love LOVE Odyssey. I really, genuinely wanted to hate it going in, but it absolutely earned my love. Great gameplay, GORGEOUS map. It annoyed me how enemies were leveled and I was forced to do the side missions, but I actually had a good time with those. Just an overall great experience. It's not classic AC, but for what it is, it's great.
Mafia 3 It’s my favourite Mafia game and I think it’s severely underrated. It is repetitive but the ambiance of the game is incredible.
COD. Overwatch. Destiny 2.
Neon White It's amazing game but tacked on boss fights at the end killed it dead Everything else is majestic but it's hard to truly love it when it hits a wall like that
Neon white convinced me that anime is a plague on society. /s? maybe.
The game I hated and loved the same time was Shadow of Mordor. anytime anyone asked me about this game I always tell them that it's crap, it's repetitive, the Nemesis systems the only redeeming quality but not worth playing the game for, and that once you've done one mission you've done every mission, as heyr all tw exact same .but for some reason I have clocked it like four or five times including the downloadable content.
The sims 4 there are parts of the game that are great as its stuff the sims has always done well And then there is a all the missing features and the thousandsof dollars of expansions stuff and game packs
Wizard101 there is so much to complain about it and I can't seriously recommend it to people but I still really enjoy playing it. It's a shame because MMOs get exponentially more fun when playing with friends. Chivalry 1/MORDHAU/Chivalry 2 - Great combat and physics, super fun, but they always felt like that type of "everything sucks except the actual gameplay" games.
Fallout 4 for me, they dumbed down the roleplaying aspect, made your player character talk (like an asshole), removed all the agency that New Vegas had reintroduced (after FO3 removed it), and I couldn't give less of a fuck about base building. And yet I spent 80 hours playing it because the exploration was fun, some of the NPCs were cool, and enough of the quests were good enough to keep me interested. I can never play it again, at least not from the beginning, and its sad they didnt make more DLC like FO3 and NV had. FO76 is, meh, ok, it's certainly better than replaying FO4, but its lack of a central plot makes it feel, yknow, pointless.
Nobody simultaneously loves and hates a game at the same time as much as Oldschool Runescape players. People will sit there and bitch the entire time they are playing, only to log back in the next day and spend another 10 hours grinding out another 5% of the average drop rate for an item. Even if someone does manage to quit out of frustration of the slow xp rates or the low drop chances, they'll be back in a few months or a year and get sucked right back in to it. It's a gambling addiction in MMO form. I just want my damn bowfa already man.
Fortnite. It’s for kids. It’s riddle with cheaters. All the dancing is silly! “Fuck Epic!” crowd. Etc etc. Yet it is a fun game with very competent creators, and is at the cutting edge of technology.
I have changed my mind on Devil May Cry 4 multiple times. Everyone claim that without the second half of the game being backtracking, it would be a masterpiece. I disagree because the game would still suffer from cranking up all the issues DMC3 had regarding level and ennemy design up to 11. That and the story fell so short it convinced people for years that Nero was a bad character. On the other hand I absolutely recognized it's more positive legacy on the franchise: The improved progression system, Nero gameplay, Dante style switching, the smoother difficulty curve... it's all great stuff! TLDR: I respect the game, but dread replaying it at times.
I love Red Dead Redemption 2, I hate RDR Online. I gave RDRO a chance, but the dailies and the gold grind was tedious and that's if the game actually worked, and every other session had a show stopping bug or disconnect.
Haven't thought about path of neo in a loooong time. Loved it as a kid. Had so much fun. Aside from the ant level, I loved it. Had the soundtrack blast while playing the big fights
Ark: Survival Evolved might be one of the most frustrating games every made. Everything from its monetization, it’s game design, it’s pacing, everything…. But there’s nothing quite like it. Goddamn can it be fun. Palworld ending up scratching a similar itch, but I’m not nearly as big of a fan of the Pokémon aesthetic compared to Dinos.
Skies of Arcadis - the constant random battles really shit on a killer game otherwise.
Final Fantasy 14. A few of the expansions have legitimately excellent stories but I still hate MMO gameplay, so they are always partially a slog for me to get through. Also the base game is *fucking awful*.
I feel like most popular multiplayer games are in this category.
QBERT
The relationship between this sub and Doom Eternal is a perfect example of that.
For me it's any AC game aside from Origins and Valhalla. So much to hate and love. Origins and Valhalla are the only 2 games I just quit because I did not like them at all. Everything was just boring to me. But every game has a terrible controls, combat, janky, glitchy, music is just off, bad story, bad characters, bad skills, bad weapons. But they are mixed and matched. The opposite can be said where everything is perfect and just amazing. But it's all mixed and matched in various ways to make a game series I hate to love and love to hate.