I'll start. pokemon. doesn't matter if the game's old or new I just can't get into how it plays. idk the gameplay just gets old to me pretty quickly, palworld is an upgrade in every way tbh

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[–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

Pokemon. I was in highschool when it came out and had no time for it followed by being too poor and busy trying to survive directly after it. With no nostalgia for it, there seems to be no reason to try it. I gave pokemon go like 20 minutes and I was over it (though I did play dragonquest walk for around a year)

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  • [–] 49 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    The Witcher. I really want to like it. It seems like the kind of game I would love and I recognize that it’s an objectively well made game. However, I’ve bounced off it at least 4 times after getting 1-4 hours in.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    Same actually, I got Witcher 3 as part of a console bundle and played it for a short period, not sure exactly how long but I got to the first of I'm sure many fights with a dragon. Found it really unintuitive, by the time I got frustrated enough to bother doing a web search I'd lost interest. Tried a couple of times after and just got the cbf's every time.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    My personal theory is that a lot of the love for The Witcher 3 in particular stems from the fact that very early on it has a sex scene with full nudity, with a female character who is supernaturally hot according to the lore. There's several women Geralt can seduce, and I suspect a lot of people who mostly play hentai games were in shock to play something with more exciting gameplay than match-3 grids or a jigsaw puzzle.

    The Witcher 3 doesn't seem like a bad game, but I'm similar to you in that I've bounced off it a couple times after a few hours. There's nothing particularly bad about it, but nothing that really grabbed me and made me want to keep playing more either. I still plan on giving it another shot eventually.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago*

    Name any sports title ( NHL, NFL, NBA, MBA, etcetera )that isn't a zany, over the top SuperTuxKart or Cartoon Network Racing style kart racer and I'm out.

    Same goes for any PVP shooter games such as Call of Duty, TF2 Counter Strike, etcetera. Anymore I really find no interest in them because I don't feel like breaking things over some 6 month old who can squad wipe me, all while getting their diaper changed and slinging slurs my way.

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  • [–] 78 points 1 year ago (24 children)

    Souls games.

    I really want to like them too, but they seemingly aren't compatible with how I play games. I need to be able to put a game down for a couple of weeks and not feel like I'm back at square one because the specific muscle memory for that game has gone.

    Just kinda kills the fun when the game is effectively telling me to get good, when I don't actually have the amount of free time IRL necessary to do that.

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  • [–] 44 points 1 year ago* (13 children)

    for me it feels like they don't respect me as an adult. i need to be able to pause and save games. sometimes i get phone calls. sometimes the power goes out. sometimes i spill my drink. but no, it's all just "get gud".

    also i just can't handle the aesthetics .

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago* (11 children)

    Could you talk a little more about the aesthetics thing? I have no intention to pick a fight with you or tell you that your opinion is wrong, I'm just curious because I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that about them before

    Also yes the no pausing thing is very frustrating

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  • [–] 31 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    everything is dark and gray and meaty and slimy and gory and bloody and disgusting and sad and lonely and unpersonal and depressing and hopeless and evil and hateful and murderous and dead and off and...

    even screenshots fucking wreck my mental health.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    There are some stunningly beautiful scenes too though. I get what you mean regardless, its a grimdark setting for sure.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

    yeah let me just wade through this ocean of death so i can see a dying sun set over a dead world.

    things may be beautiful in isolation but the context is what gives them meaning, and the meaning in most fromsoft worlds (and things inspired by them) is "look at how awful everything is here; it's your fault if it doesn't get better".
    "haunting" is a better word than "stunning" there.

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  • [+] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    You clearly lack the context of the world and story of the main souls games beyond only what is on the cover.

    ...yes? i don't know how much more clearly i can spell out that what's on the cover is preventing me from playing the games.

    You are very much in the wrong and deeply at that, over what the meaning of the worlds of from soft games.

    until this sentence i was completely certain that you were agreeing with me

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    Omg I feel seen. Yeah I might not be fully unappreciative of the aesthetic, but shit can be dark and grim in real life as it is and it feels edgy and emo to go all gore gothic all the time. Every videogame trailer that starts with "shit's horrible around here" is an instant "next". Also I've always had a problem with eternal unliveable dungeons that make no architectural sense. Even though it is fantasy, it makes it far more childish, which matters if they're trying to take themselves seriously.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Is it particularly more your fault that things don't better in Souls games than in any other game in which you are meant to save the world? I think the only difference is that in the Souls ones and others like them, the world is already horrible and needs repaired in some way rather than on the verge of becoming horrible

    Interestingly Elden Ring went for quite a different direction. The world is, unquestionably, still an enormous mess that would be horrendous to live in, but they've left in far more of the beauty. I particularly like how every so often you hear hostile NPCs playing music or singing if they haven't spotted you yet, and how there's a little puzzle side quest about a painter; people are still making art in this ongoing apocalypse. One important allied NPC even actually openly makes an argument that the world is worth preserving if it looks like you're going for the "destroy everything" ending

    Of course the atmosphere and gameplay are still heavy going, both in the Souls trilogy and Elden Ring. I get why that wouldn't be for everyone. It's like playable Cormac McCarthy stories, except you can punch your way out of most of the misery if you get it right

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I feel similar. After having tons of people tell me for years I need to get into them, I finally played Bloodborne, which multiple people have told me is their favorite.

    I pushed through it on my own first. I actually didn't die quite as much as I expected, though I definitely had to spend time watching YouTube videos and reading 3 different fan-made wiki's to figure everything out. I managed to finish it, but I didn't think it was worth it and would not have finished it if not for wanting to be able to talk about it with my friends.

    Then I did another playthrough with a friend doing co-op. When it worked (ugh) it was a way better experience. Partly because of my previous experience - I had a better feel for how to build my character, I remembered most of the environments and enemy placement, and still had that muscle memory from my first run. Partly because it's better as a cooperative experience. Having an ally makes the world feel less desolate. Having another player to take aggro so you can heal is huge- some bosses almost feel like they were designed for multiplayer. And it's fun just cracking jokes and hanging out, making fun of how ridiculous some of the stuff is.

    I still don't have the love for it that other people do though. I agree 100% on the aesthetic: everything in Bloodborne is just dark and wet and looks the same. FromSoft makes a LOT of game design decisions that are different from most other developers in terms of what they prioritize. Which is fine, but there are aspects of design where they clearly cut corners and the fanbae seems to laud it as a desirable artistic choice. I shouldn't need to spend hours watching YouTube and researching fan sites to learn how to play the game, and I would argue I shouldn't have to do that to appreciate the story. They simply do not respect my time.

    The multiplayer barely works. It's restricted to bosses and the areas leading up to them, and costs Insight (a valuable and kind-of finite resource) to use. Simply connecting is a tedious pain. You can only play either completely online or offline, so if you want to play with a friend you have to accept your whole world cluttered with annoying and distracting messages from random players and the specters where other players died. And that also opens you up to having hostile players gank you. Like... Why can't my friend and I just pair up and play through the whole game together without inviting the rest of the internet too? Why does it cost Insight? Why are the caps for stats never communicated to the player? Why does the Hunter's Axe do primarily Blunt damage while the KirkHAMMER does almost no Blunt damage, and for that matter why aren't the damage types explained anywhere? I'm still not sure why some gems increase Attack, others increase Physical Attack, and others increase Blunt or Thrust, plus there are hidden damage types.

    The game feels like it was designed to really get good on your second playthrough and beyond. Especially NG+, although even starting a fresh file again is much better than the first playthrough. Kinda reminds me of how some MMO fans like to say "it gets good after the first 100 hours". For most developers, the player onboarding experience is one of the most important parts to be developed, but FromSoft basically skills over that and outsources it to their community of hardcore fans.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Yeah. Heard so much about Elden Ring, and watched the kids play it, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

    After about 45 minutes of wandering aimlessly and nearly as many deaths, I decided I wasn't having a good time.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That has been my experience with it too. It's probably more fun with good gear, but i just see hours on the couch in my future that I don't want to spend.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago*

    The gear would not have saved you. The game gets substantially more difficult as you progress, even accounting for your character getting stronger, and if you don't do a decent job of levelling up appropriate skills that will compound the issue. The starter gear for most of the classes is actually perfectly viable all the way to the end of the game for most players too, it's not notably weak at all

    I love Elden Ring, but I can absolutely respect why it wouldn't be for everyone. No sense in playing it if you're not enjoying it, the point is still to have a good and/or interesting time

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  • I finally had the Get Good moment where everything clicks recently, its very real. Now im on Nightreign like its crack.

    Level your Vigor, people. Farm that little village with the soldiers and get a few levels into your health bar. And boom! Now you don't die bc you missed a dodge. There's good starting gear there too.

    Once you "get it", suddenly Elden Ring becomes like the coolest DnD game ever from an old-school perspective. Honestly, its not much different from Zelda - if you can play that, you can play Elden Ring i think.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    The beauty of Elden ring is that you can explore without actually killing much. Eventually you'll find some cool weapons or smithing stones to upgrade your current weapon and some runes to get a couple of levels (putting points on vigor helps a lot early on)

    And then the game starts feeling less rough.

    But I can definitely understand why it's not for everyone.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    Soulslikes are fucking boring. I did that beat my head against the too-hard boss fight 289348923x when I was a kid because that was the only option and I had all the time in the world. Neither of those is still true.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Monster Hunter. Probably tried like 4 of those games since Tri and people keep recommending them to me, saying the newest one will surely be the one to convince me. But I found them all to be a boring grind.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    Yeah, I have a friend who develops video games and has given some good recommendations who kept trying to convince me to play the series. I've dipped in a couple times and just walked away unimpressed.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I did enjoy World though it involved a lot of interacting with bad UI and walking to a monster. Can't really complain about grind, as you don't have to fight the same monster too much. The story cutscenes and missions were painfully bad.

    What I did like was fighting one big enemy rather that hordes of small ones, having to be close and it being risky, exotic weapon movesets. It is great that you can and do use the environment to your advantage all the time.

    I would like to see a game that does the fighting big enemies in terrain but with more physics based attacks. The hitbox-based combat where you can put your hammer inside the beast and then swing feels silly.

    I didn't like the equipment upgrades much as they only get interesting late in the game and all weapons of the same base type are essentially the same.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Assassin's Creed.

    Love the historical gameplay. But I cannot stand being interrupted by the modern day parts. Even if they are small. They feel so disrespectful with my time that I've always been unable to play those games. I forced my way through AC2 but I have never replayed it, despite loving the actual gameplay, just for the modern day boredom.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    There's gotta be a mod for that, right?

    Up until whatever came after Black Flag I was a die hard AC fan. Midnight releases and everything. And I'll admit, the modern day sections are bad and jarring and completely unnecessary. At some point you're a game developer wandering around an office and it's obvious they had no idea what to do with those sections, because at that point the modern day story had been told. There was a brief cameo from some of the people you would remember from earlier games but it never got to the level of intrigue from 1-3.

    Though an assassin's creed game set in like modern day Manhattan could be fun. Watchdogs got kinda close to that before going completely off the rails.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Honestly, Black Flag is the only AC game I ever come back to. I enjoyed 1 and 2, and 3 was ok, but BF was the pinnacle of the series (only partially because of the ship combat).

    I'd love a game that's just the pirate ship parts, that was easily the best part. Setting up supply lines, capturing ships and sinking hunters. Good times.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    Just about any multiplayer game. I generally don't like playing with randos (why would I want to listen to a 12 yo squeal in my ear that they fucked my mother in a pitch only dogs can hear?), and most of my friends don't play games I'm interested in.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    I cannot do balders gate 3, or any rpg of that style. I suspect it's to do with trying to roleplay a character while simultaneously viewing them in that top-down third person perspective. I can do X-COM, strategy, I can do roleplay in third person, but that particular combination just kills it for me. It's bizarre.

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (16 children)

    Pokemon - having to watch animations and not being able to speed anything up killed my interest

    Skyrim - tried a melee run recently and the combat feels like you’re whacking air

    The legend of Zelda - played Tears and the story and puzzles were a bit too kid friendly

    Doom - I really tried to like it but I felt like I didn’t get anything out of it. It doesn’t scratch that itch I get out of FromSoft’s Souls games where I want to learn a boss’s patterns and die to it a million times.

    In general I don’t think I can do story games anymore

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The legend of Zelda - played Tears and the story and puzzles were a bit too kid friendly

    It's actually a kid friendly franchise, all of it. The only surprisingly mature themed zelda game is Majora's Mask, it deal with death and loses and hopelessness way more than BOTW is comfortably touch, and it's made in a year.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Twilight Princess is worth mentioning too. It was rated Teen, and had this scene (no gore or sex or anything, just weird surreal horror).

    Zelda is such a diverse franchise it really depends on the game. I love Twilight Princess and Majora's Mask, but didn't like BotW or Windwaker at all. It's almost like 2 or 3 different franchises crammed into one.

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  • Up until Breath of the Wild, maybe Skyward Sword, the Zelda series didn't shy away from being a bit fucked up. There's an entire torture-themed dungeon in Ocarina of Time. Majora's Mask is an exploration of impending doom, Twilight Princess features a botched execution. These games used to have characters in actual danger, scary enemies, confronting themes...Breath of the Wild is post apocalyptic and everyone is just happy clappy.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Pokemon - having to watch animations and not being able to speed anything up killed my interest

    That's why I play on emulator most of the time, especially for games I've already beaten

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Couldn't agree more with Skyrim, Oblivion was the same when I tried that too I just can't stand it. Easily some of the most over rated games IMO.

    Also agree with Zelda but I think the same about all of the Nintendo IPs, they are just boring and the fan base makes me dislike them even more!

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Same for me, but starting with Morrowind. The leveling system was too weird, compared to other RPGs of that time. I remember I missclicked, fallen out of the window of some tower, got an Acrobatics skill improved and a level up.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    i think you can disable the animations in the console games for pokemon, unless they changed it for the new games.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    They removed the options to skip battle animations for the newer games. There’s an option that removes cutscenes, but that doesn’t affect anything in battles like the ten minute long terastallizations.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    In general I don’t think I can do story games anymore

    Wow, that's the complete wrong take if you ask me! It sounds like your problems with these games are mostly in the gameplay, not the story? Have you ever played Outer Wilds or The Talos Principle? Unique puzzle games with a great story.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I’ve played both of those, and I really enjoyed Talos 2 since it mostly just fed you lore while you were trying to do a puzzle, but don’t ask me what the story was because I couldn’t tell ya.

    I didn’t mean I couldn’t connect with the story in just those games, but in games in general. So when I talk about a game, I don’t really put much weight into my thoughts on the story, just the mechanics.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Capitalism: I refuse to develop my sociopathy to the level required to participate.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    God of War. I played 1,2, and 3 and they were all pretty much the same. I think a lot of the hype was from marketing and edge lords who were thrilled to have so much blood and some low-poly tits on the PS2. Once you get past the spectacle, the combat is a slog of mashing the Square button until the game decides to stop spawning HP sponges for you to hit. The puzzles are tedious and annoying. The platforming they try to force in just doesn't work with the physics and controls. The music is bland and generic "epic symphony" stuff that may as well just be from a stock music library, with no Greek influence at all. The story is a generic and modern story with a thin vineer of Greek mythology. Kratos is less of a character and more of a reason to move the game along to the various locations. I know it's not a completely fair comparison, but Hades used Greek instruments to create greek-influenced and interesting music that I still find myself humming and drumming to years later. Hades also did a way better job of using actual Greek mythology to create a narrative that would actually fit in that cannon.

    I remember playing Knack 1&2 and thinking "wow, this is like if the old God of War games were fun". Knack is far from perfect of course, but is largely a similar series that cares more about being fun than being mature.

    I'm playing through the 2018 God of War now. Completely different, and honestly a few hours in I'm still not sure why they chose to make this a God of War game staring Kratos instead of just making it a fresh IP. Maybe more lore reasons will be revealed, but so far it seems it was just to capitalize on the brand for marketing reasons. The music is still not a strength, but it's better. The environments are better. The combat is still pretty boring with way too many boring enemies with way too much health, but it's better. This is the first game where I'm starting to get tired of the same UI and over-the-shoulder perspective that other Sony games have used lately (Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Horizon, Spiderman). GoW, like most of those games, has an unnecessarily complicated itemization and leveling system that just bogs the game down, and feels almost inspired by MMO's or gacha mobile games.

    It does a great job of characterization, with plenty of small, subtle, beautifully written moments that grant insight into personalities. The boy is annoying, but I can see that's the point so I mostly don't mind. It's really annoying how the game won't shut up- there's always someone saying something, and if you even just stop moving for a second someone pipes up to remind you of what you should be doing. It doesn't have space to breath. The puzzles are better than the prior games- they are an acceptable tool for pacing but aren't great by themselves. The story seems a lot better, with much more attention given to original Norse mythology.

    With Uncharted I could push last the mediocre puzzles and bullet sponge enemies because the cutscenes were really good and the stories were fun. For Ratchet and Clank I can ignore how the humor has gotten worse and more juvenile over time because it's still fun to platform, dodge, cycle through weapons, and kill tons of enemies. For Horizon Zero Dawn... Actually I don't have many complaints, that was a solid title. For GoW (2018) there's just nothing pulling me back to it.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Yeah, stick with GoW. It's one of my favourite games of last gen just for the story telling.

    Post game there's some vicious challenges that took all my ability just to beat them on normal.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I'm not going to spoil anything but them making the 2018 god of war a god of war game absolutely does have story reasons. And I didn't even play the earlier games till after so it's not so much "tied" to the story of the earlier games, but it uses them as a back drop.

    That's where I'll end it, but both of the new God of War games are some of my favorite games of all time. Continue playing them, they just continually get better.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    RE and Silent Hill and Fatal Frame and Alien Isolation. I just can't get over the horror aspect.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago*

    I've failed at getting into any Battle Royale, Survival, or Extraction type game so far.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    I found both Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect completely unplayable.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (7 children)

    Curious to know why.

    Mass effect for me feels like it's generic scifi, so I can't get into it and appreciate the writing but KOTR has a star wars flair at least.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Personal opinion here obviously: Mass effect, or at least the first one, was actually surprisingly well written and internally consistent. Kind of like a star trek lite. There was interspecies tension, people expressing feelings on the state of the universe, but also enough moustache twirling to keep it interesting as well. It struck a good balance between that and a decent looter shooter/RPG combo, at least for my tastes.

    The later games lost a lot of that and overly relied on what the first game setup up without expanding much on it, but that first game was just chefs kiss.

    Not saying you're wrong or anything, more just this is what I personally get out of it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Interesting.

    Let me rephrase: I always believed it had good writing, but lacked interesting enough scifi concepts for me. In my opinion good writing trumps all, but having a interesting hook always makes writing more accessible.

    I had already seen the same save the world and interspecies stuff by the time I was concious enough to play mass effect. (I am not that young, but I think mass effect came out in 2007.)

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    That's entirely fair. I think it suffers a lot from most of the interesting stuff getting hidden in the codex. I totally get your experience though, I've had a few games that have been good, but I've seen the concept done enough for it but to hook me in.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It's the gameplay, the mechanics.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    ME is a relatively bland shooter IMO.

    On KotOR you may be missing the point. It barely has any gameplay. Combat is pretty easy and over quickly. The point of anything in that game is storytelling and fun quests, the mechanics are just good enough to not get in your way too much.

    One thing to note is that many people agree that Taris sucks because it is mostly linear and the fun quests only start when the game opens up. Taris may be necessary to set up the plot, though.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    The first ME is really awkward to play if you choose the caster focused classes. Especially so if you played on console or with a controller. If you played the more fun focused classes it was a decent shooter.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

    I can think of lots of series that I don't like, just because I'm not into the genre. I think that everyone has genres that they don't like.

    I think a more-interesting question is about popular series that I don't like within a genre that I do like.

    I didn't like Frostpunk, despite liking city-builders. Felt like the decisions were largely mechanical, didn't involve a lot of analysis and tweaking levers.

    I didn't like Sudden Strike 4, despite liking lots of real time tactics games, like Close Combat. It felt really simplified.

    I didn't like Pacific Drive, despite liking survival games. It has time limits, and I often dislike time limits in games.

    I didn't like Outer Wilds, despite liking a lot of space games. Didn't like the cartoony style, the low-tech vibe, felt like it wasn't respectful of player time.

    I didn't like Elden Ring, though I like a number of swords and sorcery games. Just felt simple, repetitive and uninteresting.

    EDIT: A couple of honorable mentions that I don't hate, but which were disappointing:

    Borderlands. The gunplay can be all right, and the flow of new guns and having to adapt to them is interesting. But every Borderlands game I play, the always-respawning enemies are a turnoff. Feels like the world is immutable. Also don't like the mindless farming of every container with glowing green dots. And for a combat-oriented game, it doesn't make me mix up my tactics much based on whatever I'm facing. While I finish the game, I always wind up feeling like I'm not having nearly as much fun as I should be having.

    Choice of Games. I like text-based games, but a lot of games published by this company, even otherwise well-written ones, have adopted a convention of making one win by playing consistently to certain characteristics of a character, so one tries to just figure out at every choice what option will maximize that characteristic. That's extremely uninteresting gameplay, even if the story is nice and the text well-written. I feel like the same authors would have done better just writing choose-your-own-adventure type games if they weren't focused on the stats. I also really dislike the lack of an undo, to the point that I've put some work into a Choicescript-to-Sugarcube converter.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    I'm not sure I'd count Outer Wilds as a space game (assuming you mean something in the vein of Elite Dangerous), despite it objectively including a lot of space travel. It's a detective game, the point is to unravel a mystery

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    maybe they're confusing it with Outer Worlds?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago*

    I'd be very surprised if "cartoony style" and "low-tech vibe" is not describing Wilds. I assume the bit about respecting of time is something to do with the various timed events in each loop like Ash Twin. I don't agree with them in the slightest, but I assume that's what it is

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Frostpunk

    I get it. I like city builders too and the idea of a game that's constantly threatening your city with crisis seemed interesting, but every run seems to be the same.

    Outer Wilds

    Alright, you and I are gonna fight now.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Some of those can be explained by bad expectations.

    Frostpunk is not a city builder, more like a puzzle game.

    Outer wilds is not a space game, it's a time loop mystery.

    Fantasy sword and sorcery is hardly the most important side of souls games. They're technical performance games.

    They all technically include those elements you like, but were more about something else.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The Bethesda (and related) RPGs. The core gameplay loop just feels so shallow in both, meaning most of your time is spent wandering with nothing meaningful to do, or in spammy, often janky combat. The parts that are interesting, the character builds and the lore, aren't super involved in most of the game. You spend so little time building characters, and most of the lore is in written logs and books.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    While I like Bethesda games quite a bit, I do agree on the in-game lorebook stuff. I can't see the appeal of the stuff. It's a collection of extremely short, in my opinion not-very-impressive stories. I just can't see someone sitting there and reading them and enjoying the things


    if I'm going to read fantasy, I'd far rather spend the time on an actual novel. Yet I've seen people obsess online about how much they like the in-game lorebooks.

    I've wondered before whether maybe people who are talking about how much they like them haven't gone out and read full-length fantasy books, and so they're getting a tiny taste of reading fantasy fiction and they like that, but it's the only fantasy that they've read.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I wouldn't say the problem is with their length or simplicity. I'm sure I could enjoy a short anthology in one of these universes. The bigger problem is the fact that its embedded into a game, effectively breaking the pacing and flow of both the written text and the game. Ideally, this would at least allow you to use environmental and visual storytelling alongside the text, but this is rarely done well enough to justify all the downsides, so you end up with the worst of both worlds.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    RDR2. Played, but didn’t beat the first one. Some other game pulled me away from it. Tried the sequel and was disappointed by the gunplay.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Tried Minecraft multiple times. Can't stand the game. Weird part is that I absolutely love both Terraria and Vintage Story.

    I found a huge surface vein of olivine in a peridotite cliff face earlier while searching for bauxite, only to realize that I was about 50 blocks to the east of the Resonance Archives entrance, which my world put in a damn near inaccessible valley between K2 and Everest.

    If I can find some bauxite I have a ton of iron to make some steel and between that and my huge harvest of flax and honey, I will have honey sulfur poltices, and the eidolon should be a cakewalk.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Dark Souls and any of its copycats. Grinding a boss for hours on end just to learn it's patterns is not how I like to spend my free time. Aside from that: why is that whole genre so bleak? Apart from maybe "Another Crab's Treasure" they're all dark and gray/brown and unrelentingly depressing. Does the gameplay lend itself to that particular aesthetic? Or is everyone just copying Dark Souls that hard?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    For me, soulslikes are pretty weird. I've loved the art direction and gameplay of Dark Souls and especially Elden Ring, and I get why people like them and I appreciate what they're trying to do, but something in them doesn't click the addiction button. It's not even the core gameplay that is the problem - I get flattened by some enemy and I'm like "oh I'll get you one day". But I booted up Elden Ring last time months ago. I'll be done with the game in 10 years I guess. It'll happen though!

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