What's a popular game series that you just can't understand the hype for?
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Gacha.
For most anything else, I can simply chalk it up as a difference in tastes when I don't like the gameplay, or art style, or whatever. Even those shitty horror games for babies I despise are perhaps fun if you dive into the lore at the right age, who knows. I certainly have obsessed for less than mediocre games.
But no one likes gacha, or at least should like it. It's gambling marketed to kids, preying on the people without impulse control. No "you can spend 2 hours of your life every day on this and save up 2$ in currency" is changing that, in fact that is even worse.
And yet they give hoyoverse a pass for their series, because everything around it is so high quality. Open your fucking eyes! Games are not supposed to punish you for not playing!
But of course, no accusation without confession, I am quite fond of the yugioh simulator, and used to defend it the same way. I try to resolve this double standard by doing what I feel they should do: Never gush about it, only mention it in shame, and always warn people to not pick it up.
Gacha has gotten out of hand. I played one for a year or two a long time ago and don't regret it, but it was far more generous than anything today. It used to be a fun genre to download a game and play for a day or two with all the free stuff, but even that hasn't been true for a while with all the dark patterns they use in these games now.
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Most Bethesda games.
The quality is just so low, the issues so glaring, I can't. It's like reading a fine book riddled with so many typos you give up after 2 pages because you're so distracted.
Okay, to be fair, maybe the latest Skyrim iteration is better! I haven't tried. Wouldn't bet on it, though.
Mods are really the only thing keeping those games afloat. Modders end up doing half the work just to make the games halfway decent.
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“Souls-like” games - memorise attack patterns, the game. Not hard, just tedious.
“Tactics” style games, just don’t see the fun in that sort of game.
Sony’s bread and butter for the last 20 years, the ultra-linear handholding cinematic hold-forward-to-win games. Just watch a direct-to-digital movie if you want to watch a terrible D-grade tier movie.
Persona, Ace Attorney etc type games. Just literally do not see the appeal in these at all.
Ace Attorney is more of an interactive visual novel than a game and should be treated as such more than a normal video game. The appeal is the wonderful cast of characters that you get to know throughout the chapters and trials, and solving the cases for yourself.
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You might like Star Citizen when it comes out.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Star Citizen
when it comes out
Good one.
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I've played a number of Zelda games, including the original and enjoyed pretty much all the ones I've tried.
I've only tried the first of the new God of War games and hated it. I dropped it after 3-4 hours. I was annoyed with how clunky the controls were and it was mainly set arenas for combat with boring hallways with slow running in between
Darksiders is pretty much a mix of Legend of Zelda and God of War.
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Mass Effect and KotOR
Both have absolutely terrible gameplay. Fans tell me the story makes it worth it but if I want a good story I can read a book.
ME1 is playable if you pick a gun focused class. The caster classes are brutal to play. 2 is a bit better for casters, but ammo and cover mechanics get annoying. 3 is pretty good but has the weakest story and the space exploration is the most annoying.
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Assassin’s Creed
I think when I tried it originally I wasn’t into the controls and how they felt. I’m more forgiving these days so I wonder if I’d enjoy the series now? I love a good story.
Black Flag was the 1st I played and the only one I enjoyed. Tried others and they were just 'meh'.
(Why is a decent pirate/sailing game so hard to make? - almost 15 years later and still nothing seems to come close to what Black Flag offers)
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“Souls-like” games - memorise attack patterns, the game. Not hard, just tedious.
Are people memorizing attack patterns? This one comes up a lot and I don't really get it. The boss does a thing and I react, which is how most real time combat games are, I think?
I guess something like Skyrim you mostly just stand there and trade blows.
Memorizing attack patterns IS how you're reacting though. How many of the bosses can you walk in and just wipe the floor with on the first try? You learn that a pull back to the right means you need to dodge left, now; a dash to the right means waiting two seconds, jumping, then dodging towards them; etc., etc.
I know for certain that when I go replay elden ring the only reason I can clear the tree sentinel as soon as I leave the cave is because I know just how to react to the boss' "thing."
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I'd watch a story recap for the first game, then play all of them after that up until black flag. Origins/odyssey/valhalla are good if you are into massive open worlds that can get pretty repetitive and have about a billion side quests and stealth doesn't matter nearly as much unless specifically required for some rare quests. I love them, but the Ezio trilogy was peak AC imho.
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I agree with your critique of souls-likes, but there was something really special about the original Dark Souls that none of its successors really captured. This was before they decided that "ultra-hard" was a good selling point and the attack patterns were far more simple. The atmosphere and difficulty were still there, but they made sense and fit with the rest of the game and its ideas very cohesively.
Not sure if anybody will understand this, but it's like the difference between spicy food that's spicy because it has peppers and spicy food that's spicy because they added a bunch of artificial stuff. Spicier usually means tastier, because it has more of the flavorful peppers. But in the case of, for example, Dark Souls 2 or Elden Ring, it's like they just added a bunch of capsaicin (difficulty) without including any more flavors of the peppers. The difficulty is beyond the degree to which it was artistically meaningful in the original Dark Souls.
I love you for the spice metaphor (which I have to use all the time on friends who gift me hot sauces), but did you really think DS2 was harder than the original? It's my favorite, and it's because of the combat being 'slower' and the open vistas of the world appealed more than the first game. Hell, it introduced bosses that you didn't even need to dodge if you learned which way to move during their windups.
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I really tried, maybe 20-30 hours, but didn't enjoy it much.
Playing as a spellcaster was maybe a mistake.
I recognize it's a quality game though. I might try again with a melee character. Maybe modded?I might try again with a melee character.
Maybe. The sorcery/incantation/various melee is less of a distinction than many make of it. A lot of it ends up feeling the same: you dodge, wait for the opening, hit your 'attack.' If the 'learn to be a badass by learning patience and boss attacks' isn't your thing though, you might never find yourself liking it.
The best elden ring experience is elden ring seamless coop. It makes the game 100000000x better. If you want to play with someone, hit me up. I just got elden ring working again on linux (it had a freezing problem until I reinstalled the OS, probably the nvidia drivers borking out), and am loving it.
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Everyone is going gaga for Peak rn (including my BF) and I don't see the appeal at all other than maybe the social aspect. The game itself looks boring AF.
I also haven't liked many AAA games since graduating high school. All these things that are cultural phenomena like The Last of Us just... Didnt like 'em. I feel like most of the AAA games that blow up in popularity are only applauded for the story and dialogue, because the game itself tends to be generic and mid and does nothing special, unique or interesting at all.
I want to see a shift from focusing on telling a story or trying to be High Art and just make a thing that is fun to play as a game that also isn't loaded with MTX and is only fun to play because it psychologically addicts you.
I had a friend try to get me to get peak, and it broke my heart. There are a ton of those types of games, but because it's multiplayer you have to get others to get into them and I just... couldn't do it. They get popular for a few weeks, then you never play them again. I still haven't gotten my friends to beat chained together with me, and I think that's the bee's knees! I'll stick to the ones I already have and try to push folks to buy those because they're under $5.
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Mass Effect and KotOR
Both have absolutely terrible gameplay. Fans tell me the story makes it worth it but if I want a good story I can read a book.
I'm curious what you thought was terrible about KOTOR's gameplay. It was pretty much D20 star wars (I can't remember if d20 was the ffg or the other company's) with the computer rolling the dice, and D20 games are pretty neat.
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i spent a couple of dozen hours with hollow knight as a fan of the metroidvania genre, but after a while the barriers to continuing were just too many. after a while, any traversal basically requires combat, and the grindy combat just slows the game to a crawl. add to that the corpse run mechanic, and at that point it's just not worth it.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Since you like Metroidvanias, have you tried Ori and the Blind Forest? Personally I found it to be tuned very well for difficulty. I ended up beating it without realizing there was a triple-jump ability you could find.
Unfortunately the sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, wasn't as good in my opinion. They ended up pulling a few mechanics from Hollow Knight, which detracted from the uniqueness of the first game.
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Pokemon. I had a blast playing Emerald, but starting leaf green directly after, I lost all interest in the series. It just felt like being punished to have to start from 0 again and maybe Emerald is just a better game. I'd like to give it a try... if you'd let me play it on my phone or pc, Nintendo! old woman yells at cloud
You might try the custom made roms. I personally loved the fire red version that someone modded to make it so you couldn't just grind out levels to win. The gym bosses used strategies and had tms that countered the easy type bonuses.
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Halo. I've been hearing about how cool and just good the games are. How deep and interesting the lore is.
I was visiting old games I heard good things about but never played. I had finished with the Half Life games and enjoyed them.
Then I decided to get the Master Chief Collection.
Started with Reach. Shooting immediately felt bad. The characters started dying off almost immediately after meeting them. Then the game was finished.
That was... Disappointing.
Well alright. Maybe Reach is a black sheep.
Onto Halo CE. Shooting felt even worse. The open areas were pretty cool, but there were a lot of small frustrations with the game. Story wasn't anything special. Certainly none of that "deep lore".
Well... Halo 2 then? Felt a lot like Halo 1. More story, yes, but it was as if the game assumed I was already invested in the story. About two thirds in I realised I was still waiting for Halo to finally become cool or good.
I stopped playing.
Decided Halo as a whole is very overrated.
Halo was good because it was good when it was released. The concept of 'good story with gunplay' has been massively upgraded by now, AND the story told has been repeated by other games/tales with their own twists so it feels like you've seen it before. Completely agree with you on shooting feeling off. The only reason I would play it in the coop modes is for nostalgia.
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Really? Which one(s) did you play?
The first 2 are actually great games, and we're especially fortunate to even have the 2nd one considering it's insane budget.
I haven't played 3, but it looked like it tried to do things differently and that didn't work.
3 felt so completely different. 2 was my favorite, and I grew to like 3. I can completely understand someone trying to play the original and not liking it. It feels horribly dated now. I also couldn't really get through the fourth.
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Hmm, I really liked most of the GTA series.
- So much fun driving around and shooting stuff up. Great humor as well.
- Even better with nice graphics and lighting effects.
- Just wow, GTA but you are actually in a 3D city.
- Vice City had a great vibe and colorful world.
- S.A. huge world (felt like it at the time) and a great radio soundtrack. So much to see and do.
- Depressing, slow and mostly a chore.. Didn't like this one.
- Alive, funny and beatiful open world. Really great if you skip multiplayer and the later milking of the franchise.
- We'll see...
The Lazlo character was also great on the radio show.. He was kind of the voice of reason until they completely ruined him with an apprarance as sleazebag on GTA V.
Vice City had a great vibe and colorful world.
Vice city is my personal favorite, maybe just because of the helicopter, but the feeling of its setting was sick. The whole mobster schtick really worked, while the later games all felt sort of forced with their criminality.
SA and its multiplayer mods were so freaking cool, though.
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I'm curious what you thought was terrible about KOTOR's gameplay. It was pretty much D20 star wars (I can't remember if d20 was the ffg or the other company's) with the computer rolling the dice, and D20 games are pretty neat.
The "make the decisions and then spend five minutes watching them play out" thing was the main frustration with that one. Maybe it feels intuitive and natural for someone who grew up with tabletop RPGs, but for someone more used to roguelikes and JRPGS it felt like the feedback loop was too long.
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Memorizing attack patterns IS how you're reacting though. How many of the bosses can you walk in and just wipe the floor with on the first try? You learn that a pull back to the right means you need to dodge left, now; a dash to the right means waiting two seconds, jumping, then dodging towards them; etc., etc.
I know for certain that when I go replay elden ring the only reason I can clear the tree sentinel as soon as I leave the cave is because I know just how to react to the boss' "thing."
How many of the bosses can you walk in and just wipe the floor with on the first try
A pretty good amount, though that's confounded by playing lots of similar games over the years. But, like, I see the boss lift his weapon way up and I go "I bet he's going to swing. I should get out of the way." Sure, there is an element to "I've seen this before - I know if I run behind him after the big butt stomp I can hit him easily", but that's hardly unique to fromsoft.
What sort of games don't have enemies that you learn their moves? Like, you play Baldur's Gate 3 and you learn "ok, that wizard has Sleep prepared, I should keep my HP up." Or you play Hades and learn "ok, these guys like to charge but then take a second to recover". This complaint is not unique to souls-likes but I don't know if I've heard it brought against any other game.
