recent: tears of the kingdom, or as i like to call it botw 1.2, its the same thing all over again just with one or two added gimicks, the open world is dead, npcs are boring and nintendo just got away with it like that
not so recent: i cant stand persona 5, joker and his entourage are annoying teenagers, the time management is a horrible gameplay addition and the artstyle is just a visual overstimulation
with that being said,~~ plz dont kill me~~
This will be an extremely hot take for some: Almost all recent online games are complete garbage that solely exist to make profit and create addicted user bases and they hurt what videogames truly are, a revolutionary and interactive form of art.
This is why I can basically only play old games or indies. Games shouldn’t feel like work or require me to pay tons of money. I play games to have fun, which I guess is a radical idea now.
Honestly, Stardew Valley for me. I’ve tried it a couple times and it just didn’t work for me. I wanted to like it, and I like the idea of it, but in practice, I hated the time management aspect and not being able to just run around and do as much as I wanted in a day (I haven’t played on PC with mods; I know there’s at least one or two that let you change that). I also hated the fishing. 🙃
The game is kind of a chore at first when you have to manually water your crops. Once you’re more established and have sprinklers you can really put a lot of the farming on autopilot.
As someone who loves stardew (I have 1000+ hours in it) I can see what you mean. I hope you’ll find mods you like, but maybe it’s just better to try other games like sun haven? Never played it myself but I read it eliminates exactly this time managing thing stardew has. And yeah, the fishing is hard. I heard “The fishing in Stardew is the souls-like in farming Minigames” a lot and I think it’s true.
I can see why the time mechanic is there but I agree it can be a negative point to the game. You’re not the first person I see complaining about this.
I liked the game enough but needing to get a rare fish that can only be fished at certain season, certain time period and only when raining to complete quests was annoying, as was needing to get out of the dungeon while I was having a good run because of time. It would have been better if there were alternative means to get the fish, like buying from the fisherman, and the option to camp in the dungeon.
I actually feel like Harvest Moon was more chill and relaxing. Stardew Valley stressed me out because I felt like if I didn’t manage my time properly I was doing it wrong which felt weird given the game’s message about leaving the demanding stressful work life of the city behind.
Monster Hunter. It’s just so painfully slow and boring. Combat just feels clunky.
I recently tried to play MH: Rise and bounced so hard. They really need to consider how to ease new players to the genre into the game. The first hour included so much exposition, paragraphs of text, and detailed menu tutorials before I really had any context for why anything is important. I know that the games have always been this way, but it felt lazy.
Got through all of that to play with a friend cuz we played the beta together and thought it would be promising
We were so disappointed we spent less time playing together than we did the initial text/cutscenes.
I feel like World unintentionally offered a better experience with the Defender set. I guess it was brought in to help people “fast forward” to Iceborne content. But I was appreciating it even just for playing through the main game. I would use Defender weapons, with no Defender armor, dealing far more damage than I should have at that point in the game, and monsters still took a good 15 minutes; about as long as I would ever want a fight like that to take without getting seriously bored.
If I ever return to try Rise, I’m a bit worried that it will feel grueling.
Out of curiosity, which one(s) did you try?
MH World was the first and only one I’ve tried.
Oh. World is a bit faster compared to old school MH. But if you ever want to give the series another try, Rise is faster and flashier.
In general I recommend trying the games with a friend or a guide. The games themselves are not good at helping players “get” them.
Red Dead Redemption 2. Everyone goes on about how awesome it is, but I just found the story and gameplay really slow and dull.
RDR2 suffers heavily from the same problem as GTAV’s single player mode: it’s a movie posing as a video game and both aspects suffer for it.
RDR2 would have been great if it was just the part where you wander around tracking critters and collecting flowers and playing cowboy dress-up, but the game really doesn’t want you to do that. Not to belabor the point, but between how unpredictable the connection between “interact with item/character X” and “start mission with character Y” can be and the game’s tendency to fail missions the second you go off-script, RDR2 often felt like it was directed by someone who actively resented the concept of player agency.
You articulated my issue with it perfectly. In theory it was this amazing open world with tons of player freedom, but the minute you engage with the actual story at all you have no choice in anything. There was one quest where I HAD to rescue Micah and kill a butt load of people which really annoyed me given I was going for a white hat run.
There‘s this great video essay that basically agrees with you. Rockstar want to create these cinematic narrative experiences but that does not mash well with their concept of an open world.
Same here. It was so frustrating trying to play it.
Here’s a pretty awesome looking intricate and interesting world. No, you can go over there. Or there. Or do that
Rockstar has been moving that way in general for years. They get so focused on the immersive and sim stuff, they forget that they made their name on over-the-top chaotic fun. Everything from GTA4 onward suffers for it, other than RDR1 that struck a decent balance between the approaches.
My friends love it, but two hours in, I just feel worn.
Then I just drop it and never look back.
Can’t get it to stick.
My main grip with this game is how slow ans cranky everything feels. I miss the arcade feel of RDR1.
I still mostly enjoyed it, but I do agree that it’s way overhyped. The game has a ton of great and fun moments, but it also has so much filler that causes the sense of progression to really grind to a halt.
It’s a game that IMO would have benefited from leaving some parts on the cutting room floor, but otherwise it’s not a bad game.
Didn’t see anyone else mention it, so I’ll say MMOs. Pretty much all of them. WoW, FFXIV, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars one (can’t remember the name). I really like the idea of MMOs, having a huge shared world that feels alive, tons of lore, epic quests, but I just find the gameplay loop so boring. They just feel like endless busywork to me.
Honestly, Animal Crossing (new & old). What’s sad is it really is a fun game if you have a good attention span and no depression. I have a hard time keeping basic routines so logging into a game regularly was really challenging for me. By the time I’m reminded of the game it’d be weeks or months since I touched it. In the old game this meant everything you worked on has been undone and you have roaches. The newer one is better about overgrowing weeds and I haven’t got roaches yet, but the neighbors notice your disappearance and have some things to say about it. Last time I logged on one of the characters was so personally slighted by my disappearance I just logged out after the conversation. I haven’t logged on since. When I can keep up with it, it’s fun and cute. When I can’t I’m made to feel guilty for hurting the feelings of an unsympathetic AI. At least my friends in real life understand depression and it’s ability to steal my motivation. I do miss Sherb tho.
Monster Hunter. I don’t understand any of it. I tried rise and generations and I just… I just don’t get it.
You should try world if you can. Rise has too much systems bloat in my opinion. World was my first monster hunter and I have over 200 hours and I am still not done. Rise added so much stuff with palicos and palamutes that I couldn’t be bothered to do. It tipped the scales just a bit too much towards systems bloat in my opinion. I haven’t played generations but from my understanding, it isn’t as modernised as the current iterations of monster hunter so that may be causing you some friction.
There’s one opinion that I’ve been afraid to say out loud forever because people are so passionate about it… Disco Elysium. I love rpgs and I love choice-based, narrative-driven games. But there were two main things which drove me crazy:
- I really didn’t like the writing. Honestly it felt like some fresh English lit major suddenly discovered big words and angst and went crazy with it. It was really cringy to me.
- I didn’t like the false paradigm of choices in terms of world views and beliefs, when the game very clearly sets them all up to suck. With a strong preference for communism. Like when you try to be measured and moderate the game actively negs you for being weak. Why give me the choice when you’re just going to punish me for it? And what if I have some anti-capitalist beliefs but don’t want to kill the landlords? It was just so extreme and off-putting.
I’m with you on this one. I got moderately stuck at one point pretty early on in the game (I’m not sure, but I think my save was probably bugged). Anyway, I put the game down and never touched it again. Didn’t feel like I had lost anything at all.
I’ve had a hard time finishing the game because of #2. DE is such a weird blend of “the devs thought of everything” and “all conversations are railroaded into insanity”. What at first felt like a game allowing the player to explore and develop political views in an alternate universe is actually more of a hamfisted, cynical parody of all possible idealogies. I think the moment I got South Park vibes (not from the writing, but from the " everyone is stupid " vibe) is when I was doomed to never finish it. That said, I actually love so much about the game, I want to enjoy and finish it. I just find it so tiring.
I agree. People were raving about this game and it was just a complete miss with me.
For one thing it was marketed as an RPG but really it felt more like some kind of point and click adventure which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing but the writing style just didn’t click with me anyways. And, yeah, a lot of the choices in the game are just false anyways. After a few different starts experimenting with the different choices you just get railroaded into the same thing no matter what.
Souls games.
I like difficult games but I just don’t enjoy the gameplay of Souls games. They feel sluggish and repetitive.
Please give sekiro a try if you ever get a chance. It’s like dark souls but for people like us that want good fun gameplay instead of constant bs :D
Have you tried Nioh/Wolong? While I really like the Souls games for the exploration and world design I much prefer the faster and more complex combat of the Nioh games.
I love Nioh, great game! Haven’t tried Wolong yet.
Same for me. I enjoy the Nioh games, but don’t like the Dark soul games
I tried Nioh, I think last I remember I came up against a boss that could instantly kill me in a single attack, at the end of a gauntlet of enemies. It wasn’t even that far into the game, so I just dropped it since it was clearly the exact kind of bullshit difficulty that Dark Souls is known for.
I played Elden Ring for 2 hours and then refunded it. I don’t like that combat style at all.
honestly most competitive multiplayer games like league (stretching the definition of everyone loves I know). I just have a hard time learning the game when I feel like I’m dragging the team down
I love competitive MP, but I totally know what you mean. CS:GO is what I play with my friends and bottom fragging just stresses me out. Gimme old school Quake duals or duos, or 1v1 fighting games and I’m happy even when I’m losing.
I just got done with Subnautica. Man, either I just had shit luck, or that game does NOT respect your time. It’s infuriating to me when I know exactly what I need to do to progress, but I’m blocked by not being able to find a single damn rock out in a giant ocean. I dug the story, but man I was glad to be done with it.
I enjoyed some parts of it, but I’m the same way. I was often scouting the world for that one piece of that one vehicle option so I could continue playing the actual game. Ended up spending as much time reading online guides and maps as actually playing.
For me botw was that game. I didn’t like the gameplay and many aspects of the game design. In contrast, I’m enjoying totk a lot more. It improved on a few aspects I didn’t like and the gameplay feels closer to what I want in a Zelda game. Overall I’d still prefer them to go in a different direction with the series though.
But in general, I’m not a fan of a lot of currently popular elements. I don’t need big, open worlds with a lot to do, that just gives me FOMO. I don’t want to build and manage stuff, and make a lot of decisions in my adventure game, I just want a good story and fun traversal and combat. And I don’t need 50+h of gameplay, I don’t have that much time and I usually start burning out after the 20h mark anyway.
I still can’t make it through any of The Witcher games. Smooth and satisfying gameplay is super important for me to enjoy a game, and The Witcher has always felt slow, clunky, unintuitive, and super menu-heavy. I’m sure the story is great! But I just can’t get past its gameplay.
I’m playing mainly western RPG’s like that, but I also couldn’t get into The Witcher. The gameplay is fine actually (I played way more clunky games with lots of enjoyment). But somehow Gerald just never clicked with me, causing me never to feel really connected to my character and to what’s happening.
It’s sad because I can notice how good the games are, but I just really cannot get into it.
I tried to play Witcher 3 and the combination of strange camera angles and very “tradional rpg” style icons put me off (the later is a really sad thing to be bugged by but whatever)
However, I now have a PS5 and i believe the PS5 update has huge improvements including to camera angles etc, so I may give it another go.
I adore Witcher 3. That said I’ve always said controlling Geralt feels like driving a boat. God help you for the very few instances that you do platforming.
They added a different control style sometimes after release, didn’t they? I can’t recall the specific difference, but I think I used it for my playthroughs and it was less boat-y.
Yeah, pretty quickly. Maybe a month? I remember playing it basically at launch, and deciding I was going to return it, but stopped when they said they were working on an alternative control scheme.
It was actually worse than it is now.
Didn’t return it, but much like others in this thread, never got it to stick. Doesn’t feel good to play.
Same here. I really want to like The Witcher 3, but after trying to play it for 10 hours without feeling any enjoyment, I just gave up.
It took me 3 attempts at starting The Witcher before I eventually got through it. I had just came off of Dark Souls 3 combat, so the combat in Witcher was especially clunky feeling. Eventually I moved into a new home, had nothing else to do, and proceeded to do nothing but play the game for 50 hours until I beat the game lol. I would say the story is worth it, but I agree that its kinda tough to get into.
Honestly most online games. I just prefer to game alone than with strangers or even friends. And while there are exceptions to the next point, I am well aware. But I also don’t feel like spending my free time having rando’s on the internet hate me for not being some awesome e-sporter, or be called a hacker when it does go well, as often seems to be how it goes. Like, I don’t get why people would spend their free time on something that just tends to make everything so negative. I have more fun things to do in my free time than get complained at… Honestly, the few online games I do like, you can play alone, and I mainly do, like ESO.
But one of the most loved games that I hate the most is GTA V. Especially the online mode. It’s so full of hackers it’s nearly impossible to do anything. Heck, I couldn’t even go buy a new outfit because some stupid guy was spawning shopping cards above everyones head causing the store to close and me to loose my whole selection of stuff I wanted to buy… Just why…
I also keep getting confused with the controlls somehow. Wanna get in your friends car picking you up? End up jumping on it’s roof or kicking it instead… It’s not that I can’t game. My hand-eye cordination might suck but that’s not even the issue here. I somehow just keep mixing everything up, while I’m fine with other games.
This should be in unpopular opinion lol. For me it is control. The combat feel tiring after 2 to 3 hours and the story didn’t caught on for me.
Same here! Lame story and the combat felt terrible.
How is the story lame? It’s one of the most original stories I’ve ever seen in a videogame.
If you’ve never watched Warehouse 13 or read the SCP website, I guess.
Control first hours were boring for me too, but got fun once they started throwing in more abilities like being able to jump into the air and do a ground slam near the end game. I wish they had introduced abilities a lot sooner, since beginning where it just telekinesis and shooting got repetitive fast.
I liked the gameplay for Control but the story never caught on for me either.
Interesting. I agree that the gameplay was meh, but the story and universe it takes place in really intrigued me. I was sucked in from the moment the checkpoint at the front of the building had a sign that said “no rubber ducks”. The dead letters dept had a lot of entertaining reading imo.
