Games you really wanted to like, but just found you couldn't.

In the spirit of Stu's thread about games you thought were horrible, but tried again later and found you liked them, I am going down the opposite track - games you bought truly expecting to like, and you didn't.  You really wanted to like it, but you can't.

I personally have many games that fit that criteria, but those that really stand out for me are Fallout 3, GTA (any), Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Unchartered, Halo, Borderlands and Elder Scrolls.  I have repeatedly tried to get into all of these games, I was willing myself to like them, but in the end I was just flat out bored by them.  I could not understand the attraction of them after playing.

Fallout 3 was really ugly and my first attempt had me giving up before I got out of the bunker.  Eventually I went back after encouragement from others and got out into the real game, thinking perhaps that will win me over and it didn't.  

GTA is a game I really thought I would have fun with and I like the idea, but I got bored so very quickly by what I found to be an utterly pointless experience.  Take GTA IV for example, I hated the characters, who were horribly ugly and the shooting and driving were tedious, as was stealing cars or attacking people.  I am done trying to like it.

Mass Effect was a concept I really liked, but the reality of playing it didn't match it.  I have all 3 and only tried #3 again very recently, still willing myself to like it.  I didn't.  The one thing that really stands out for me about these games that isn't for me is all the text and options.  I really don't care that I have all these possible outcomes, I was bored choosing and reading.

Assassin's Creed has a really interesting story, but the reality of playing it was far less interesting.  I stopped buying them at III.  The gameplay grew old very quickly.  I hated the stealth and running away just felt like I was repeating myself for no good reason.  I am not going back.

I thought I would like Unchartered with everything I heard about it.  I thought I would get the story and the humour.  I didn't.  I didn't think the game was much to look at and I stopped caring really quickly.

I love good sci-fi and everything about Halo should be what I enjoy, but after attempting the first 3, it wasn't.  It is a FPS, so it shouldn't have come as I surprise to me, but I can love a FPS as Bioshock proved to me.  Not only am I done with Halo, but I am done with the Xbox console full stop.

Borderlands was a crushing blow to me, as I loved the look of the game and it really sounded appealing.  I tried, I really tried, but I found every last bit of it boring, especially the characters.  It all felt so pointless no matter how hard I tried.

Lastly, Elder Scrolls.  I have them all and I keep believing that one day this game will just click with me, but they haven't.  Apart from the ugliness of the games, I think it is the open world that is the problem for me.  I just feel like I am wasting time playing it no matter how much I want to like them.  

So, what games do you want to like, but can't?

I think we have polar opposite tastes in games, because the reasons you gave for disliking those games are reasons that I love them.

Having said that, I don't blame you for bowing out on the Assassin's Creed games - AC3 was such a turd of a game. I do think you should try ACIV though, as it addresses your concerns about the game feeling stale. It's a very different beast.

As for me, I really wanted to like Animal Crossing. I think I'm a real goal-oriented gamer, and Animal Crossing is sort of the antithesis of that. To others it's relaxing - to me, it's boring. 'Tis a shame, because I really love the music in it and people rave about it.

JayMoyles wrote:

As for me, I really wanted to like Animal Crossing. I think I'm a real goal-oriented gamer, and Animal Crossing is sort of the antithesis of that. To others it's relaxing - to me, it's boring. 'Tis a shame, because I really love the music in it and people rave about it.

I really love Animal Crossing and find it satisfies my OCD tendencies, plus it is so relaxing. But if someone asked me to recommend it, I couldn't, as I think it is too niche to tell someone to try it. I can easily see why people wouldn't like it. Much like Harvest Moon in that respect.

The aforementioned Animal Crossing is a great example. For a while - seventy-odd hours, to be imprecise - it was the best thing since sliced bread. However, when it became apparent that it wasn't really going anywhere, it got traded in. I'm very glad that I played it, and I would have to say that I liked it, but I didn't love it.

Others on the list with less interesting tales attached include Inazuma Eleven Strikers, Mario Strikers Charged, Sonic Rush and the original Ocarina Of Time (although I made my peace with it by playing through the 3DS remake).

ZeroJones wrote:

Sonic Rush

I'm going to get my Adminship revoked for the following choices, so here goes:

Okami

Lord knows, I wanted to love this game. I even bought it on Wii after not getting on with it on PS2, but if anything the Wii version made things worse. It just felt like a dumber, watered-down Zelda to me, and I'm not much of a Zelda fan to begin with. But my biggest gripe was the battle system. Why demand such precision from an input method that's flaky enough out in the game world? I would've much preferred them to have gone all-out with the brush ideas in the game world and left random battles out completely. They destroyed the sense of wonder and exploration, and they made traversing the world map a total chore.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Has anyone but me ever looked at this game without their 1998 goggles on? Wind Waker was the first 3D Zelda I'd played, and I really enjoyed what I'd played of it. Everyone said (and still says) this is the best thing EVAR so I went in full of hope, picking the original N64 cartridge up. What I saw was a fugly, empty game with a nonexistent motive to carry on. And people moaned about Twilight Princess' empty Hyrule Field? There's ansolutely naff all besides a big empty square of heath in this game. Yes, the Forest Temple was ace, but one good dungeon does not a good experience make. Sorry Miyamoto, but the N64 just couldn't do your vision justice. If Wind Waker had been the first 3D Zelda, my mind would've been truly blown.

I've tried and better tried to love this game, too. I have it on N64, GameCube, VC and 3DS.

Advance Wars

D'awwww! Look at dose cute gwaphics. AARGH! She bites! I like a game that forces you to think; I don't like a game that makes me feel like a total dunce. Advance Wars is one of those games. I hated this one so much that I actually took it back to the store.

I totally understand why others love this one, but it ain't for me.

I actually completely understand Jay's and Stu's points (not played any of the games OS mentions).  

I fell out of love with ACNL for the lack of goals: before I lost the game, it felt more like a drug that I had to take a hit of every day than a game.  And I felt exactly the same way about Advance Wars as Stu, although I'm no cerebral gamer: I save my higher brain functions for work and study.  AW doesn't let me do that.

Okami I found pretty, deep and enjoyable enough to overlook its daft Wiimote controls.  As for OoT, the original has aged badly, and Hyrule Field is an incredibly dull hub.  The 3DS version does fix the first problem, though, and there's then enough good stuff going on in the world to let me overlook the second.


As for me personally, any shooter.  Goldeneye and Resi 4, for example.  

I'd heard such wonderful things about Earthbound, but in the end, the creaking old systems sucked out the fun I got from the characters and the dialogue.  Even then, though, it felt a little too self-consciously quirky in places.  I much prefer Mother 3.

I wanted to like Mario & Luigi: Dream Team Bros., because I'd liked or loved every other game in the series.  But it was just too slow and dull, and when I lost my save file (like with ACNL), I couldn't muster up the energy to repeat my tortoise-like progress.

Finally, as is well documented, Cave Story.  I gave this so many tries, really I did; but the clumsy platforming, ugly world, and unforgiving difficulty for insufficient reward made me hate the game more the more I played of it.

Ohh man Oldschool

Mass Effect Trilogy (the best game ever) is a RPG and knowing what Bioware make you should had a rough idea what to expect.

On Halo & Bioshock, Halo is such a fast paced proper FPS where Bioshock is more & slow methodical FPRPG type thing both of these are also in my top games.

On Uncharted did play number 2 as 1 is good but 2 is fantastic & did look gorgeous for PS3 hoping 4 does the same for the PS4 in terms of graphics.

Borderlands I think you need to play CO-OP really and it's a shooter which doesn't seem your cup of tea along with what seems like big western made games.

But myself is

Fallout 3 I loved Morrowind & Oblivion and I like shooters, so thought this would be great I bought the collectors edition and had the weekend of to play it. And I found the game so boring and dull, so after 10hrs I gave up and have never gone back.

Half Life 1 & 2 I was late to party for both I played HL on PS2 then again on Dreamcast and I just didn't get it, then 2 I played as part of the orange box. It felt so old like going to the car and you see a steering wheel moving but no hands on the wheel and it just took me out of the game.

There is likely more but those seem to be the stand out's.

Metroid Prime, I know I mentioned it in the previous thread but it qualifies for this as well. I tried it when I was a teen on the cube, didn't get in to it. After reading all the hype behind Prime 3 I rented it when I had a Wii, thought it would be a match made in heaven, again didn't like it. Then I bought the entire trilogy because everything about the games should appeal to me. To its credit it got me to the snow area in the first game, but again ended up losing me.

The other big one is Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth. I loved, nay, LOVED Valkyrie Profile 2 Silmeria on the ps2, it was something that came at the right time of my gaming life. So imagine my delight when square enix ported the original to the psp and after being out of print I found a copy on playasia, snapped it up asap. Played it once, it didn't press my buttons and I ended up playing something else. Came back in recent times and gave it another shot, a really big shot that saw me get to the last few chapters. But again it left me cold, and all I could wonder is why a game with the connections this had was leaving me so cold. I wanted to love this game, I wanted to be bats about it, but I can't be anything besides apathic to it. Well, besides its arrange soundtrack, love me that valkyrie profile ost and the arrange soundtrack was amazing.

masofdas wrote:

Ohh man Oldschool

Mass Effect Trilogy (the best game ever) is a RPG and knowing what Bioware make you should had a rough idea what to expect.

On Halo & Bioshock, Halo is such a fast paced proper FPS where Bioshock is more & slow methodical FPRPG type thing both of these are also in my top games.

On Uncharted did play number 2 as 1 is good but 2 is fantastic & did look gorgeous for PS3 hoping 4 does the same for the PS4 in terms of graphics.  

Borderlands I think you need to play CO-OP really and it's a shooter which doesn't seem your cup of tea along with what seems like big western made games.  

I knew what to expect with Mass Effect in that I played KotOR (both), games I also wanted to love but didn't, but I thought I would learn to love how they make their games; I didn't. The text is just so tedious and to be honest, the story didn't grab me at all. Not even co-op could bring me back to Borderlands as I hated it that much, and I have played games I disliked but had some fun with local co-op, Gears of War for example. No matter how good the co-op is, I actually don't care for playing games with other people - with GoW, my daughter was so much better than me, her fun at my crappiness would only last so long.

Hey Stu, I really, really love Advance Wars, a lot. Both DS games have over 1500 hours clocked between them and I have played the heck out of the Wii U VC GBA game, on top of playing the heck out of it originally. By making you feel like a dunce, do you mean that it talks down to you? I am not sure what you mean.

Stu_the_great wrote:

ZeroJones wrote:

Sonic Rush

I'm going to get my Adminship revoked for the following choices, so here goes:

Okami

...

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

...

Advance Wars

Some of Sonic Rush is totally awesome: it really harks back to the Mega Drive originals in the best way. However, Altitude Limit is an awful world, and some of the bosses are real let-downs. I'm on the F-Zone as we speak.

To me, Okami is irretrievably beautiful and I was a big fan of its Diet Zelda outlook, even the weird combat. However, the controls were abysmal. I crashed my Wii playing it when I had to repeat a Susano brush-stroke section about twenty times.

Long agreed with you about Ocarina Of Time: the graphics were disastrous in parts, even playing it for the first time. Link felt like a mannequin whose expressions had been printed out and glued on to his face. However, the 3DS version repaired an awful lot of that, and I even - whisper it! - enjoyed it.

Never played the original Advance Wars. At any rate, adminship unrevoked.

I dunno Sut, I don't like that Ocarina-bashing
But I don't know if my 1998 glasses are removable; the early 3D era has not aged well. I can't ever say that I don't love that game to death though.

Mine would be Rayman Legends. After NSMBU really feeling like Too Much Mario, I thought I'd give this a go after the rave reviews. "It's Rayman! And he doesn't suck!" But I never got on with A) the universe (I don't know who that dream guy is, or which ones are lums and which ones are teensies*), and b) Having the run and punch buttons the Wrong Way Round.


*I once heard a podcast featuring Mikel Reparaz, formerly of GamesRadar; he visited Ubisoft Montpellier's headquarters, during the production of Rayman Origins. The staff just assume that everyone in the world is 100% familiar with all Rayman lore, and blast out proper nouns left right and centre.

Going to also say that I really enjoyed OoT on the N64 and that's without any rose tinted specs as I came to it super late in the 2000's

Agree with Metroid Prime. I owned it when it came out and just couldn't get on with it - got to Phendrana Drifts and then left it alone. However, I have downloaded the Trilogy on Wii-U and I'm going to give it another chance. I did the same with Ocarina of Time, which I dismissed when I had an N64, but sunk a good 60 hours in to it in 2012. I think there are some games I start to appreciate more when I get older.

Metal Gear Solid series. I'm a huge fan of Splinter Cell games, but don't like anything about the MGS games. There's too many cut-scenes, the actual gameplay feels like Dynamite Cop, and the story is glorified manga. I played MGS2 on PS2, then Twin Snakes on Gamecube, and did enjoy the first disc of Twin Snakes, but had no desire to continue. It just didn't connect with me, like other cut-scene heavy games have (Shenmue, Heavy Rain).

Beyond Good & Evil. I really wanted to enjoy this, but I played it a few years after it was released, and went in expecting to be constantly blown away. What I found was a bog-standard third-person adventure.

I was glancing through some old reviews and I found one that really fits this topic - Sonic.  Now I do love Sonic, I really do, unfortunately it seems that Sonic fell out of love with me and has been treating me poorly for years now.  I used to buy a Sonic game with enthusiasm, but that all changed with Sonic Riders, in this case, on the Xbox.  This is what I thought of it when I tried it again in 2013, keeping in mind, when I bought it, despite its reviews, it was Sonic and I so wanted to like it:

Genre: Racing/Extreme
Metacritic Average: 56% [Positive 12%, Mixed 70%, Negative 18%, High 82%, Low 20%]

I remember this as the Sonic game that jumped the shark for me. I hated it so much, that Sonic dropped down my list of franchises I would buy early, to one I would buy cheap, if at all. To be fair, it had been deteriorating for a while, but this was so bad, it was the one that broke the camel’s back. Now all these years later, I played it again, with great trepidation. The result? I still think it is crap. I didn’t quite hate it as much as I remember, but still, I don’t like it. It starts out great with some wonderful cartoon work, then the graphics on the cutscene are terrific for the time, but then I proceeded to play the game. In-game graphics are actually really good, but the whole hover skateboard racing is horrible. I don’t find the controls responsive at all, but that could be just me, but I doubt it.

Score: Disliked

Desire to play more? - I was happy to stop. I doubt I will ever play it again. Still, it was way better than Doom 3.

The_Jaster wrote:

Going to also say that I really enjoyed OoT on the N64 and that's without any rose tinted specs as I came to it super late in the 2000's

Thanks Jaster - I don't why, but seeing you write this lifts a big psychological weight off my shoulders!

No problem, there seems to be a weird attitude around OoT these days though, sure it's aged a bit (or rather Nintendo smoothed out the rough edges with future Zelda games) but I still believe it deserves to be up there in the greatest of all time lists that you see.

It's the cool thing to hate on OoT these days - the ire will switch to another Zelda game soon enough.

I hated it from the start, so I guess that makes me an OoT Hate Hipster? Never got on with the 3DS version either. :S

Pokémon. I loved the show as a kid. I played the game and hated it.

Okami. I've tried it twice (Wii and PS3) and just ended up getting extremely bored fairly early on both times.

Every Mario platformer except SM64. I don't know why, but I just don't enjoy Mario platformers. I absolutely loved SM64, though.

This is a boring, smug answer but I don't really have any games like this. Even those series where I don't find them as amazing as everyone else does, I can normally find some enjoyment. For example, I couldn't care less about the story and missions in GTA but I enjoy mucking about in such a reactive world.

I guess if there's anything it would be most JRPG I try as they tend to become a slog but every now and then there's a Xenoblade-shaped diamond in the rough.

Jimbob wrote:

Mine would be Rayman Legends. After NSMBU really feeling like Too Much Mario, I thought I'd give this a go after the rave reviews. "It's Rayman! And he doesn't suck!" But I never got on with A) the universe (I don't know who that dream guy is, or which ones are lums and which ones are teensies*), and b) Having the run and punch buttons the Wrong Way Round™.

Missed this initially.  I never got on with the universe either, finding both the aesthetics and music awful; but I didn't go a bundle on the level designs either.  I thought it was my problem, but then I loved RLegends, so it's obviously the game's problem.  (folds arms)

EDIT: Apparently I thought you were talking about Origins? Disliking Legends is just plain daft!

There's quite a few SEGA games that I'd say I tried to like but ultimately couldn't, but the main one is undoubtedly:



That demo that appeared on the eShop a few months before it came out had me thinking that this was going to be SEGA's greatest hit since Crazy Taxi (aka The Best Game Ever). But it wasn't to be: the finished game was a bit too bitty for my liking, wrapped up in a tale that was pretty boring and with challenges that were at either end of the quality scale, Perhaps most importantly, I didn't think that the tunes were close to being as good as the ones in games it tried to emulate, like Layton. I think that's the story here: it just wasn't as good as the games it took inspiration from.

Danger's comin', looming large, so who's gonna take a stand?
One hundred rangers are taking charge: the line is drawn in the sand.
Knuckles crack in two hundred very different ways,
But each and every one has the same thing to say-ay:
"When's the level over?"



I was so so sure that, for those in the know, this would make a Wii U worth owning in its first year.  Alas.  Its list of problems included an unhelpful camera, unlikeable stereotype characters, a difficulty curve with frequent singularities, Wonder Pink, and the overly long levels mentioned above.  The control scheme, while fiddly, might have been worth persevering with had it not been for everything else that was wrong with the game.  I repeat: alas.

If you have read the Half-Decade then you know which game I'm going to say



I went into it with it being hyped to me even the New 3DS version but then I played it, I got 4hrs in but all 4hrs felt like a chore and didn't not want to continue to get to bit's that Balla & Althrun recommend as that's about 20hrs in and I would much sooner play a game's I enjoy for that time.

spyro the dragon the eternal night
animal crossing wild world
Phoenix Wright ace attorney
Etrian Odyssey IV
pokemon mystery dungeon blue rescue team