Games You Thought You'd Like, But Didn't

Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Games that you got or tried out thinking you would like, but it ended up with Hype Backlash.

Me personally, would be Tom Clancy's HAWX 2 and EVE Online. The first because it just straight-up sucked, the second because it's boring, the interface is too complicated to maintain any sort of "fun", and to me there wasn't really anything that had any sort of staying power.

That is the face of a man who just ate a kitten. Raw.

Mad World. This was said to be the Spiritual Successor to God Hand, but I just didn't feel it.

ALL CREATURE WILL DIE AND ALL THE THINGS WILL BE BROKEN. THAT'S THE LAW OF SAMURAI.

Complaint thread in disguise.

"You want to see how a human dies? At ramming speed." - Emily Wong.

Fallout 2. Yeah, I said it, it needed to be said. I just couldn't get into it. Shame really, I liked the similar Baldur's Gate 2 games.

No, it's not. There is a difference between whining about something and saying which games you couldn't get into and explaining your reasons.

Anyway, I can't think of any of this happening to me, but what did happen is story vs gameplay: I love or want to love a certain game because of the lore and then I play it despite constantly wanting to quit because of gameplay I don't like or find frustrating (I'm looking at you, Morrowind).

edited 19th Jan '12 12:10:48 AM by Anfauglith

Instead, I have learned a horrible truth of existence...some stories have no meaning.

This could become a complaint thread, but let's hope it doesn't.

A big one: Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, since at the time I was an absolute MGS addict. I made a blog entry about this once, so the short version is just, it killed the addiction. The gameplay was too different from what I was used to, and a lot of the changes made things that used to be intuitive now frustrating. And the plot wasn't interesting enough to make up for it.

Back when I was a kid I tried to get into Pokemon Red and Blue, because I liked the anime. But the games bored me. They seemed like they were just mindless grinding. I still don't get this supposed "depth" that Pokemon is supposed to have... seems like its just grind until your Pokemon is high-level and from there, play the elemental rock-paper-scissors game. Not my cuppa java.

Finally, System Shock 2. Came highly recommended, and I was already a huge fan of the first System Shock (and still am). But... this game turned out to be to System Shock what Peace Walker had been to Metal Gear Solid, is the best I can put it.

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Alpha Protocol. Great premise, but the bugs, archaic design and poor gameplay mechanics make it an unplayable chore.

Oh, this is gonna be a good thread.

Silent Hill 3. I expected way too much after SH2, and SH3 ==/== SH2. In fact, let's just say that nothing else in this series has come close to living up to the potential seen in Silent Hill 2 and leave it at that.

I also liked Morrowind a lot at first, but the bugs, the difficulty, and the boring storyline and characters got to me after a while. I like Oblivion more, in that it was more playable, despite having less stuff than Morrowind, which I actually did miss a bit.

I liked it better when Questionable Casting was called WTH Casting Agency

I thought I would have liked Oblivion. I hated it. I forced myself to play it to the end of the main quest and binned it with extreme prejudice. Pity. I loved Morrowind and I fanboy love Skyrim.

Team Fortress 2.

I dunno, multiplayer's not my thing.

I loved Morrowind's storyline...the problem was the weird gameplay and the whole "ok you have to go pick up this artifact, let me show you on this map where it is" followed by drawing a large circle that includes several regions inside.

While I don't enjoy quest markers that much (especially the very precise ones, like Skyrim's) it was ridiculous to have a game with no quest marker while the indications to the place were more vague than Nostramadus' prophecies.

My relationship with that game is strange, though. I fanboy over it but the gameplay was cruel...

edited 19th Jan '12 12:47:52 AM by Anfauglith

Instead, I have learned a horrible truth of existence...some stories have no meaning.

Also: Power Instinct. I love bizarre fighters. This was bizarre, but... I dunno. It just wasn't my cup of tea.

ALL CREATURE WILL DIE AND ALL THE THINGS WILL BE BROKEN. THAT'S THE LAW OF SAMURAI.

Blood Bowl. Idea of Chaos warriors playing rugby is hilarious... But yeah, both game modes are simply too slow.

How do lizards fly?

Psychonauts. I was really liking the plot, characters and the "weirdness" of the game but unfortunately I REALLY disliked the gameplay to the point that I couldn't finish the game.

Also, Sword of the Stars. I really like this kind of games but I just COULDN'T get past the interface and since I played a LOT of buggy games with poor interface that means I REALLY didn't like the interface of the game

:)

I'm going to avoid the urge to complain about Contested Sequels and Acceptable Targets, and just talk about a game I kinda liked, but still ultimately felt let down by.

Tales Of Vesperia. Don't get me wrong, it's a good game. If anyone asked whether or not I recommended they should play it, I would definitely give a yes. But, my problem was that I absolutely loved Tales Of Symphonia and Tales Of The Abyss. But the characters in Vesperia didn't feel as strong. Raven, Lilith and Rita never felt to me like they belonged. Karol, Estel, and Yuri were the only ones who really felt like they had significant character development which actually changed the course of the story. Furthermore, the overall aesop of the story was extremely heavy-handed, compared to what I was used to from Symphonia and Abyss. The latter two had extremely wonderful Grayand Grey Morality questions, and even though some of the villains were unrepentantly evil (such as the main villain of Symphonia), at the same time you could understand that they didn't really have other options. The villains in Vesperia were all strawmen or cookie-cutter megalomaniacs that only existed to make the Family-Unfriendly Aesop seem valid and the hero automaticaly correct by comparison.

And then there was the battle system, which I really wasn't a fan of until you advanced enough to make it fun.

In fact, I think I wrote a blog about it waaaaaay back in the day. Yep. Here it is.

Metroid Other M; I preordered it.

I've pretty much said all I have to say on the game.

Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.

I was really sad that I ended up not liking The Force Unleashed. I loved God Of War, and I wanted to like God Of War In Space, but it just ended up not being good enough for me to warrant playing any more of it.

Both Yu Yu Hakusho games for the PS 2. I'm a fan of the series, so I was dissapointed that Dark Tournament had ridiculously slow-hitting attacks for all characters (hell, even neutral moves were kinda slow).

And then I thought I would like Legends because it was done by Dimps (developer of the awesome DBZ Budokai series), but the gameplay was shallow and the movesets were pretty small...

No regret shall pass over the threshold!

In the late '90s into the year 2000, the only professional wrestling I could watch regularly on TV was WCW. Naturally I was psyched to play a new WCW video game, having already enjoyed Mayhem for the Playstation. It's a shame then that said new WCW game was the universally derided Backstage Assault. Notably, it used the same engine as Mayhem but strangely enough featured on ring.

I was hooked on Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) after playing a magazine demo featuring the enticing opening scene. Let's just say... well, you probably already know.

That's not really giving enough credit actually*

. Although not wholly innovative, I found it well executed for the most part (barring those bizarre filler scenes - the sight of two characters stopping the plot to play basketball in the freezing cold had me somewhat speechless!). If it hadn't been rushed out...

edited 19th Jan '12 9:16:31 AM by TheSollerodFascist

Final Fantasy Tactics.

I am a HUGE FF fan, I even really love the more divisive games of the series. But this one I just found boring.

GOH! JII! RAH!

L.A. Noire. To an extent. That is to say, it was a decent game, but fairly disappointing - I was expecting a full scale sandbox mystery game from the trailers, with a deep storyline but also a fair amount of detective work that isn't entirely story driven.

The game turned out to be pretty bare bones outside of it's storyline - and once you beat the story that's about it, since as you beat what is essentially a puzzle you already know what the answer is. The "Street Crimes" boil down to "run/drive here in this amount of time," there are unlockable cars with are nigh useless as there is nothing to do in free ride mode and in story mode you're encouraged to use your squad car at all times, and there's an enormous city area that is barely used at all.

It's a good first step, but it failed to deliver on a lot that it promised. I really, really like the concept of a sandbox mystery game, but I accept that it's a difficult concept to wrap one's mind around.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

I moreorless liked LA Noire (helped by my interest in '40s-'50s film noir itself) but I too feel that it couldn't decide on what exactly it wanted to be starting from around the beginning of the Vice desk. I've noticed that a lot of people liked the initial concepts only to be disappointed by the time of the Arson desk; personally, I think the Arson desk could've been a great story... had it been a whole game in itself.

Perhaps the story cramming was my preferred option though, considering what ended up being cooked up for "The Quarter Moon Murders".

Granted, I'm aware of how nasty its general production was...

edited 19th Jan '12 11:12:44 AM by TheSollerodFascist

Oblivion, Beyond Good And Evil, Banjo Kazooie (seriously, what's wrong with me?), and the classic Fallouts and Baldur's Gateses.

Also:

• Final Fantasy V
• Final Fantasy VI
• Final Fantasy VII
• Final Fantasy VIII
• Final Fantasy IX
• Final Fantasy XIII

Seriously, I tried them all, got about halfway through each, then got bored. Managed to finish VII and VIII, but I wouldn't say I enjoyed them. I'm worse then my young American cousin, when we brought some Canadian dill chips when we visited her family: "Nom. Yech! <Pause> Nom. Yech! <Pause> Nom."

Fate Extra. It started out fine but got boring extremely quickly. Combine that with the horrible battle system and it's kind of obvious why I'm nowhere near done with it.

I really wanted to like Master of Orion 3. Played it for a good while, kept glossing over flaws as I went, wondering when the a-ha moment of "this is a fun game" would finally kick in. It never really did. I stayed with it out of sheer stubborness, that and not wanting to accept that fact that I wasted forty bucks - if I payed forty bucks for a game, I might as well get some mileage out of it, yeah?

Well, that's when I learned to wait six months for game prices to drop a bit, and for user reviews to rack up, before buying something.

Fallen Earth: I still want to like this game. Since there's no hope for a Fallout MMO anytime in the near future, I might go back to this. Free to play, so there's no worry about losing money over it, which may make me less critical of it.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.