Games that you really want to like but you just can't

[Rams969]

There are some games that we may be very interested in because it may had a very strong artstyle, or maybe it has very good ideas or is about some franchise you loved. But then you actually sat down to play it, it just sucked and it was boring even if you were trying your best to get some entertainment out of it, or maybe it wasn't even that bad and you couldn't get into it for some reason.
For me it was Dragon Age origins, I try to get into the game and into the world, but I just don't find it fun and I can immerse myself into the world and the characters. I don't feel anything playing it. Another game, I can't seem to get into is E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy, I love the arstyle, it's universe and it's ideas, but I can seem to have fun playing it, I have started it several times, but I never get far. I probably jut bad and get filter tho
What's yours?

 

[alCannium27]

City builders -- on the surface it seemed like a great fit; I love RTS and I love life sim, city builder is just a mix of the two but without war. The closest I got to a city builder I actually liked was Stronghold 1 and 2, where you gotta optimize the various food and industrial buildings with your peasant population whilst trying to win a war.

Any Mist like point-and-click adventure game; apart from the insane puzzle logics, they just feel, restrictive, like a millions you see but only a few you can touch. You cannot move nor really react -- to tight a box to squeeze through.

Glitchhiker: The Spaces Between: I really loved the first one -- it's atmospheric, minimalistic -- it almost felt... spiritual. A bit Lynchian, therefore pretentious, but I never got the feeling it's just too much for me. This one... I dunno, I played it for 10 minutes and quite. LIke it just got too "modern-dayed". I can't really put my fingers on it, but it's something to do with that train riding part -- the announcer, something about its dialogue really put me off.

 

[spronket]

so-called "map games." I just don't think I have the brain for them. I wish I did so I could enjoy them with friends.

 

[幽邃森林]

For me it was Dragon Age origins, I try to get into the game and into the world, but I just don't find it fun and I can immerse myself into the world and the characters. I don't feel anything playing it.

You're not alone with Dragon Age. The story and characters did nothing for me and I remember disliking the gameplay. I think I was frustrated that my allies' ai would always kill themselves and I wasn't given much control over their actions

One that I am recently struggling with is Fallout New Vegas. I really really want to like the game but the story is not that immersive for me. I don't find the factions interesting and the gameplay becomes a repetitive loop of VATS > click on limbs or head > watch slow-mo gore. The wasteland environment isn't helping either, as there's not much variety for exploration. I still try to play through it just to find if I'm missing something.

 

[alk]

There are tons of large scale games like Stellaris that I would love to get into, but there are so many things that end up stopping me, the most important being that I just don't seem to get into the groove that is required. I don't really want to stress all of the details yet I love the idea of managing it. I just end up staying away altogether

 

[ManglerMan]

I've tried Ocarina of Time at least 3 times by now. Every time it just...doesn't click with me. I loved A Link to the Past and Breath of the Wild a lot, but for some reason I just can't get into this one despite apparently being a strong contender for the Greatest Video Game of All Time.

 

[silktrader]

i love battle brothers. but battle brothers, she does not love me. except if getting dicked over by rng again and again is how she shows her love.

 

[LostintheCycle]

The Witness.
I admire Johnathon Blow, he is an inspiration to me, and I really enjoyed Braid. I also enjoyed The Witness for a few hours, but at some point it turned into tedium and frustration. Slowly trudging along the map to go between the obscure puzzles I'm stuck on, plus the pretentious things that are in there. I believe that games could be art, but I don't think this is the right way.

 

[Juice the Bunglerman]

I really, really wanted to like the Witcher 3. Maybe it was just over hyped for me, or maybe it just didn't click I tried so hard to get into it. In the end I'd take these week long breaks in between playing it and sooner or later just stopped all together. I never really got invested in the story or felt compelled to keep playing I just didn't care for it personally.

 

[stonehead]

My immediate answer is Lobotomy Corporation. It's basically an unofficial SCP management game, which sounds amazing, but when you actually get around to playing it, it's just... not fun. I love SCPs, so the idea of "Sim City but with anomalies" sounded like it would be right up my alley, but it was just tedious. I could forgive the kinda cringe dialog and amateur art just because the theming was so good, but it's hard to sink 80 hours into finishing a game that isn't fun to play.

I could go on and on about specific design decisions, but I doubt anyone cares, so I'll spare you that wall of text.

---

There are tons of large scale games like Stellaris that I would love to get into, but there are so many things that end up stopping me, the most important being that I just don't seem to get into the groove that is required. I don't really want to stress all of the details yet I love the idea of managing it. I just end up staying away altogether

Stellaris does a terrible job explaining to the player how it works too. I love the game, but when you first start, you'll be in a situation where you run out of minerals, so you build more mines, because the game says they make minerals. They don't actually create minerals themselves though, they make jobs that citizens can take that create minerals. Then your minerals don't increase because no new citizens have been born to take the new jobs so you build more mines and so on. Then eventually you get more citizens, but by now you have so many mining jobs available that it's all your planet will do, and now you've run out of food, and the process repeats itself.

---

The Witness.
I admire Johnathon Blow, he is an inspiration to me, and I really enjoyed Braid. I also enjoyed The Witness for a few hours, but at some point it turned into tedium and frustration. Slowly trudging along the map to go between the obscure puzzles I'm stuck on, plus the pretentious things that are in there. I believe that games could be art, but I don't think this is the right way.

I had never heard of this game, but it has the most bland steam page I've ever seen. Every single screenshot is just an image of a forest on an island. No gameplay to be found anywhere.

 

[№56]

I've always liked the idea of getting into hardcore military wargaming - the kind where you're pushing around lots of little counters with NATO symbology and worrying about supply lines and that kind of thing - but every time I actually try playing one I bounce off it after an hour or so. Same goes for flight sims, but in that case the extra hardware you need to really enjoy them has also been a hurdle. I still enjoy reading AARs and watching let's plays for both genres.

The Witness.
I admire Johnathon Blow, he is an inspiration to me, and I really enjoyed Braid. I also enjoyed The Witness for a few hours, but at some point it turned into tedium and frustration. Slowly trudging along the map to go between the obscure puzzles I'm stuck on, plus the pretentious things that are in there. I believe that games could be art, but I don't think this is the right way.

The Witness might be one of the most aesthetically-pleasing games I've ever played (both visually and architecturally) but the puzzles (really just many different variations of the same puzzle) are straight out of one of those puzzle books people put in their bathrooms. I gave up after a few hours for the same reason as you did.

 

[Mеченый Яков]

Everything that has ASCII graphics, i tried them, but the lack of any actual visuals just really doesn't do it for me, that's why i always preffered rimworld over dwarf fortress, or zomboid over CDDA, is not like i haven't played them, i just don't find them enjoyable.

 

[sinaptica]

Signalis.

I'm not saying it's a bad game. It's not, but I felt it reached too much to its 'inspirations', which is tragic because it has enough of its own ideas to carry the game. I'm a bit tired of survival horror games paying 'homage' to Silent Hill.

As much as I like Silent Hill, I would prefer if artists and developers stopped being so inspired by it and started trying to inspire others with their own ideas.

When I finished all I could think about it is how close this game was to be an instant classic and how far from it was at the same time.
Left me feeling quite frustrated.

 

[Mеченый Яков]

I've always liked the idea of getting into hardcore military wargaming

tbh i think enlisting into the actual army sounds more fun than the most hardcore ones, like squad, i was never capable to get into it because it was too taxing for me.

I love games like operation flashpoint and the first arma, also Rising Storm because yeah they are milsims, but they have a ton of arcadey elements that makes it really fun to play.

 

[Antoine]

Old JRPGs are just painfully long, which is a shame because they're often so beautiful. I get that this made more sense for when they were made. You'd buy games one at a time, or one for your kid, and it's played every day a bit after work or school or whatever. 70 hours of high production values and consistency is really good for that. But now when we have so much media freely accessible it makes them hard to go back to. At least emulators have a fast forward button. That helps.

 

[Orlando Smooth]

Tabletop RPGs that make extensive use of miniatures, cards, maps, tokens, etc., etc. I have played D&D and similar games before, and really enjoyed them, and I can absolutely nerd out on the crafty side of things. I'm even fortunate enough to have friends who are into these things enough to be on the preorder list for stuff like Frosthaven. But the set up/tear down time is often completely ridiculous and then I end up feeling like the games are complicated for the sake of being complicated, rather than because it contributes to the story or quality.

There are tons of large scale games like Stellaris that I would love to get into

I was also going to say Stellaris, for very similar reasons to I said above. I've loved Civ for a long time now, so when I heard about a "more complicated Civ, but in space" I was so intrigued. But damn, it's way too time intensive just to learn the game, let alone get even reasonably good at it. I just don't have that kind of time in my life anymore, and if I did I seriously doubt "learning to play a new game, alone" would top the list of things to do.

Old JRPGs are just painfully long, which is a shame because they're often so beautiful.

Yeah, I was quite disappointed when I played the original Final Fantasy about 15 years ago - on an NES, no less. I remember being shocked that it had turned into such a hit IP with dozens of iterations.

 

[Antoine]

Yeah, I was quite disappointed when I played the original Final Fantasy about 15 years ago - on an NES, no less. I remember being shocked that it had turned into such a hit IP with dozens of iterations.

The way to appreciate Final Fantasy now is probably to start at 5, 6, 7, or 8 and play maybe the first act, then keep going if you're really engaged. They front-loaded their A material pretty heavily since that makes a good impression, and the back-ends of these games were often barely finished. I think 7's first act is particularly fantastic to play in one go almost like a complete game. Up to maybe when you leave the city. FF8 I think is the most beautiful, but it's also weird. Dumps tutorials on your head for its weird battle system and stuff.

If I were to remake these games I wouldn't make trilogies out of what were single games. I'd refine them down to their most striking elements into something that's maybe 12 hours at the absolute most. I really liked the Resident Evil 3 remake for turning the thing into a short and relatively easy movie-game. The less responsive, flashier and almost over-animated style of how the remakes play suits that better. And the plot of 3 works well that way. The premise is very cinematic. City is being taken over by zombies. Have to get out. RE2make drags by recreating sewers because they were in the original. Great use of world class production values. Make me crawl through a sewer because I already did that 20 years ago. Genius. With RE3make they had the right idea and rebuilt the game around its new style and production values. From here the right place to go was just making a new game from zero around this new style. Then they instead go and remake 4, the one most idiosyncratically built around the particulars of its mechanics. I hate gamers. I hate Sphere Hunter. Everyone is stupid but me. Go play the good Final Fantasy games for at least maybe an hour each at some point.



This scene still makes me spontaneously sieg heil my screen. It's so perfect. Better in the full context of the game. Which is why it's so painful that it takes 50 hours to see why. But the fact it's 50 hours also makes it more compelling. When the dust settles (arguably it already has) JRPGs will be remembered as a difficult and challenging but rewarding form to engage with. The length is a part of what they are. Square were very good at working within the form. This is not a 2 hour story stretched to 50. This thing was built to be appreciated over 50 hours. It respects your time more than most television, but at the same time the best comparison we can make is to television. Specifically, anime. This might help you get into Final Fantasy. Don't think of them as long and repetitive video games. Think of them as multimedia anime.

 

[elia925-6]

Talos Principle

 

[LostintheCycle]

Everything that has ASCII graphics, i tried them, but the lack of any actual visuals just really doesn't do it for me, that's why i always preffered rimworld over dwarf fortress, or zomboid over CDDA, is not like i haven't played them, i just don't find them enjoyable.

I feel like I'd love playing these games, but having to find the right key to pluck when you want to do something, and the keys are always different in different contexts is too tiring.
One thing Project Zomboid does that CDDA could never do is that violin sting when you stumble on a zombie right behind that door you opened, still makes me jump a little because I turn it up, and then freaking out and swinging wildly, I love that feeling.

The Witness might be one of the most aesthetically-pleasing games I've ever played (both visually and architecturally) but the puzzles (really just many different variations of the same puzzle) are straight out of one of those puzzle books people put in their bathrooms. I gave up after a few hours for the same reason as you did.

Yeah they are easy to start with of course, but then they just turn stupid. The puzzle that did it for me was this one.

I did it so many times, I think I retraced my steps through those four mazes and did it all on paper to try put it together, and then when I tried it, it failed. What is the point of this puzzle? I then decided this was a waste of my time.
However I'm looking forward to seeing the sokoban game he's been working on, which I hope will be more sane.

 

[Rübezahl]

I guess Fire Emblem and other strategy games like it
Used to be a big fan of it but I liked the whole Anime + pairing thing more than the actual gameplay