"Great" games that just never did it for you

Retr0gamer

FF Tactics is a different beast to Fire Emblem and also much,much tougher. I can imagine the difficulty put a lot of people off that game.

Grimebox

I'm surprised the amount of people that mention Half-Life 2. I would completely agree that it was above average at best

wnolan1992

Downlinz wrote: »

Like others have said in this and every other thread of this nature GTA IV is the most obvious one that comes to mind. I think serious questions need to be asked around the integrity of the perfect score many reviewers gave it because I don't know anyone who'd defend them.

I would.

Big Knox

Downlinz wrote: »

Like others have said in this and every other thread of this nature GTA IV is the most obvious one that comes to mind. I think serious questions need to be asked around the integrity of the perfect score many reviewers gave it because I don't know anyone who'd defend them.

Elsewhere, there's plenty of current gen western games that I've never really understood the fans acclaims for. Mass Effect is a typical "not my kind of series" but Arkham City is strange since I really enjoyed Asylum and didn't get why people viewed the sequel as superior or even close to the originals quality. I thought a lot of the decisions were step backwards for it, especially the open world with plenty of questionable DLC decisions that seemed like they were cutting content to resell. Combat had a sense of Deja Vu too.
For older games Half-Life and Final Fantasy Tactics are "classics" I never really had any sort of base attraction to even though I liked Deus Ex and Fire Emblem at around the same time.

Completely agree about Arkham City, found the original the much better game and got very bored of the second relatively quick and never finished it.

Downlinz

Retr0gamer wrote: »

FF Tactics is a different beast to Fire Emblem and also much,much tougher. I can imagine the difficulty put a lot of people off that game.

It was more the slow pace that was offputting. I felt like it was something I could have gotten into if I got over that early hump.

Genghiz Cohen

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Mario. Tried it as a kid and just couldn't get into it. I've no idea what the fuss is about.

The Mario franchise is incredibly varied. I wouldn't write it all off because of one game.

Some of the legendary titles would be
Super Mario Bros
Super Mario World
Super Mario 64
And Super Mario Galaxy

Retr0gamer

Downlinz wrote: »

It was more the slow pace that was offputting. I felt like it was something I could have gotten into if I got over that early hump.

It's slow alright, but you need that time to think. It's honestly one of the hardest games I've ever finished. Unless you mean the Advance games. They were terrible.

GTR63

Big Knox wrote: »

Completely agree about Arkham City, found the original the much better game and got very bored of the second relatively quick and never finished it.

They gave too much too soon in City, a Waaaay bigger open world and all your gadgets from Asylum bar the line launch iirc. Still like it mind, but i'd watch Batman do the dishes if Kevin Conroy did the voiceover

The_Valeyard

Dragon Age: Origins -just could not get into it. I tried, just......no.

AtomicHorror

Downlinz wrote: »

Like others have said in this and every other thread of this nature GTA IV is the most obvious one that comes to mind. I think serious questions need to be asked around the integrity of the perfect score many reviewers gave it because I don't know anyone who'd defend them.

Agreed. I loved GTA III and Vice City was one of my all time favourites (liked SA less), but GTA IV was just a mystery. On paper it was all exactly what it should be, but it just didn't connect somehow. Maybe a modern remake of Vice City would work but I doubt it. Dubious about GTA V.

sarumite

Bioshock immediately springs to mind. I have tried it a few times as it has everything I should like, but I just couldnt get to grips with.

GTAIV (though I think GTA in general) I usually make it to the second island, though I have never managed to come near to completing a GTA game (I have played all GTA games except the original).

The first five hours of Obivion. I honestly couldn't see what people were talking about. I have played the first five hours 3 times and it was only on the third attempt that I got into it. I ended up lovng the game, though I understand why some here didn't like.

Deus X at the moment....though still going to stick in and try getting into it.

Baked.noodle

Not much love for GTAIV. Having girlfriends and generally way to much driving, yet again, to the mission over and over again, and again... Hiiiimmmmmmm. I did enjoy throwing the cars around in first person though, and the best crack in the game was going mental, gunning down (without auto aim) everybody and knocking up the heat. But what a boring place Liberty City is! The City itself was a bubble of endless, well city. What a step back from SA. Give me dessert, and mountains, small towns and the strip. Way to much nihilistic drivel that passes for.., well passes. You couldn't go loco in the loco and loosing the cops meant driving very fast in the same direction till you magically drove out of the big police circle on your GPS. How about ditching your car for another, what a novel idea. Put me in charge, and I'll drive the loco right over your head if you don't program FUN.

Potatoeman

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Agreed. I loved GTA III and Vice City was one of my all time favourites (liked SA less), but GTA IV was just a mystery. On paper it was all exactly what it should be, but it just didn't connect somehow. Maybe a modern remake of Vice City would work but I doubt it. Dubious about GTA V.

I think it was the size of the map Vice city was just right also no radar on the harriers made using them a pain and they would kill the **** of you in the chopper (in SA).

For me its any cover based shooter. Gears of war and Specs ops the line. I did enjoy mass effect but I thought it was completely over rated.

I loved RTS games when I was younger but now they just don't hold my attention.

Other people mentioned HL2 which was ok but I think it strayed to much from a traditional fps, I played Far Cry 2 after and loved it. Straight forward bang bang and an open map.

Oblivion was a strong starter but the oblivion realm was just so repetitive I stopped playing .

ancapailldorcha

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

The Mario franchise is incredibly varied. I wouldn't write it all off because of one game.

That's a fair point. I remember being a kid and everyone was into it and I just saw a boring platformer. I think it's a combination of that and the fact that Nintendo seem to be rehashing the same old franchises each generation. I've no trouble at all believing there's some amazing titles there but seeing them recycle the same characters over and over again is a real put off for me.

Chris_Heilong

All GTA games, tomb raiders, Mortal Kombats(except the new one), I must have started Half life 2 five different times but its so ugly looking and progression is boring so I end up uninstalling it again, Borderlands 2 is completely pointless, Minecraft is completely pointless, Even though I really like cars 'Forza' and GT is boring as hell.

Best game I have played in a while was Hotline miami, Catherine and the Walking dead.

Genghiz Cohen

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

That's a fair point. I remember being a kid and everyone was into it and I just saw a boring platformer. I think it's a combination of that and the fact that Nintendo seem to be rehashing the same old franchises each generation. I've no trouble at all believing there's some amazing titles there but seeing them recycle the same characters over and over again is a real put off for me.

I think it's really only the characters and setting that are getting rehashed.
You could nearly compare it to Final Fantasy.

Retr0gamer

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

I think it's really only the characters and setting that are getting rehashed.
You could nearly compare it to Final Fantasy.

FF is really just an RPG franchise. Mario crosses over multiple genres. You really can't just write off every mario game.

RoyalMarine

Never got into GTA or FF series. Just not my style.

Was also a nay sayer to the Fifa range.

C14N

Oh boy here we go :pac: The thread has acutally been surprisingly civil so far although I've noticed a lot of people saying things like "I played it for 2 hours and then just gave up" which I think is a bad way to write off a game so let me just preface by saying that everything from here is something I have completed:

Call of Duty. COD4 to an extent. It was pretty good but not the barrel of amazing I was expecting based on the hype. To a much greater extent, Modern Warfare 2 which is honestly one of the worst games I think I have ever played. I sat through the entire thing, mostly because I kept hoping there would be a moment that would turn the game around but it never came.

Grand. Theft. Auto. Four. Can't stress that one enough. It's been blasted through the thread but I just want to say that I was baffled at the high scores when it came out and I was baffled again when I came back to it later and finished it. Disjointed story, sub-par combat, childish writing and "satire", badly placed checkpoints, repetitive mission and inconsistent logic just being the things I can think of without even taking a break from typing. It was the first GTA I fully played and I now have very little interest in GTA 5.

Mass Effects 2 and 3. Loved the first, had a great sense of exploration and learning about the world. Was disappointed with the second because of the reduced sense of scale and then the third felt like a bit of a slog. Kept playing for the story though which stayed pretty good. I didn't even have a problem with the ending of ME3 but I hope that's the end of the series.

Uncharted. The entire series. I all pretty much blurred together for me, I never figured out why 2 was the apparent highlight of not just the series but the PS3 in general. It wasn't bad, just average, didn't bring anything new to the plate at all apart from a degree of character shift between game and cutscene that became more apparent as the series went on.

Assassin's Creed 3. 1 was fine, really liked 2, started going gradually downhill after that and this is the game that just caused me to lose all interest in the series. I really have no intention of playing Black Flag at the moment.

Crysis 2. Bleh, just a boring old game. Offered nothing that the first didn't but took away the team-based dialogue and plot that were actually good. Voice acting was pretty weak and had far too many "climactic" moments so that they really didn't matter any more.

Some other games I didn't finish but didn't think much of based on what I have played:
Battlefield 3 (the Dennis Leary to Call of Duty's Bill Hicks)
Halo 1 (it's pretty annoying when your bullets could land anywhere inside a large ring)
Pokemon (Diamond in my case, the only one I've played. Didn't get much out of turn based combat before, and nothing changed)
Tomb Raider (the new one, very disappointing game so far)
Half Life 1 (felt like a large slog up to where I just quit which was about 5 or 6 hours in)
Infamous 1 (borrowed off a friend, couldn't get past the annoying moral choice system, the horrible production values and the depressingly empty city that wasn't easy or fun to move around in. Thankfully, the second one was a big improvment imo)

Starscream25

Zelda ocarina of time, probably should of given it more time.

DarkJager

Bioshock Infinite: A complete borefest, picked it up after hearing all the great reviews about it and regretted it within 30 minutes of starting. An absolute chore of a game that didn't deserve anywhere near the praise heaped on it.

There have been other "great" games I probably didn't get as well as I should have but at least I got some fun out of them. Bioshock Infinite didn't have even 1 minute in it where I thought "this isn't so bad".

ancapailldorcha

Retr0gamer wrote: »

FF is really just an RPG franchise. Mario crosses over multiple genres. You really can't just write off every mario game.

I'm willing to believe there are really good Mario games. I've gotten immense enjoyment out of Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. What I don't get it when my housemate gets excieted about a new Mario game which is just more of the same. I'm not rubbishing the games (well, I suppose I am a wee bit), all I'm saying is that I've never understood the fuss. I appreciate what the franchise did to essentially save the industry, it's just something I'm not going to be too bothered about.

C14N

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I'm willing to believe there are really good Mario games. I've gotten immense enjoyment out of Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. What I don't get it when my housemate gets excieted about a new Mario game which is just more of the same. I'm not rubbishing the games (well, I suppose I am a wee bit), all I'm saying is that I've never understood the fuss. I appreciate what the franchise did to essentially save the industry, it's just something I'm not going to be too bothered about.

Generally, the canon games (in 2D: Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World, in 3D: Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2) are very well-made games with superb level design and are really fun to play. What I will say though is that the volume of spin-off games is pretty annoying. We don't need any more than one "New Super" game and we could do with all the various sports games being their own franchises. Given how much games have grown, it would be nice if they made some effort with the story too. It's so basic that it's practically self-parody now but even that joke is getting old.

Retr0gamer

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I appreciate what the franchise did to essentially save the industry, it's just something I'm not going to be too bothered about.

It actually didn't. Bloody americans writing history to suit themselves. The videogame market crashed in the US. It was going from strength to strength in EU, Japan and the rest of the world.

If Nintendo didn't step in to fill the void in America another games company would have. Investor's jumped ship too early on the videogame market in the US at the first sign of trouble (traditionally the toy market has always been a boom and bust market for the next big thing). They didn't realise that the market crashed due to management mistakes by Atari and failed to notice there was still a massive demand for games.

I love mario but you're giving it too much credit there

snausages

Starscream25 wrote: »

Zelda ocarina of time, probably should of given it more time.

I tried this once on an emulator. I think I prefer 2D Zelda. I don't mind blocky 3D as such but I feel like something gets lost when LoZ goes 3D. It doesn't feel right.

Maybe this is how people in the US/Japan felt when FFVII came out.

rosie16

metal gear solid, gta, cod

Retr0gamer

snausages wrote: »

I tried this once on an emulator. I think I prefer 2D Zelda. I don't mind blocky 3D as such but I feel like something gets lost when LoZ goes 3D. It doesn't feel right.

You're kind of doing it a disservice playing it on an emulator. N64 emulation is dreadful and most games look terrible on them.

Admittedly Ocarina of time is hard to get into now. It looks quite old and also has a ropey game engine held together by the coders optimism. If you ever go back to it it's worth giving it a good go, it takes a while to click.

I do however much prefer 2D zelda as well.

It might be a FFVII effect, it looks awful now especially in comparison to the stunning sprite work of what followed before but at the time it looked amazing. Get past that though and both are great games.

C14N

I only played Ocarina of Time after I finished Wind Waker (it came included in the pack) and I have to say that I found the blocky visuals very hard to get past at first. I'm glad I gave it a chance though because even with how old it looks, it turned out to be one of my favourites of all time. Didn't really start to seem that good until you finish the first dungeon and leave the forest though. Also, having started Zelda in 3D, I can honestly say I found it hard to switch to 2D I tried the original and Minish Cap but never really got into either of them.

kaimera

Any of the MGS - never took a fancy to them at all.

WoW etc either.

tonydude

Could never get into the Uncharted and Infamous series , I never saw the draw to them, I played Uncharted 1/2 and Vita, it was a struggle to get through em. As for Infamous I just didn't like it, too repetitive. Another series I wish I could get into is Ico , I just cant get through the first half hour of it, too boring. The online aspect of COD felt dull since MW2 so that's lost on me also.