I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
I played this Gameboy advance game as a kid where you adopted a puppy and cared for it and all that and then after a certain amount of time your parents in-game made you get rid of it.
I’ve never felt so fucking betrayed in all my days. I was so mad that I threw the game cartridge out of the car window and my parents weren’t even mad because the ending to the game was so fucked lmao
Cities Skylines 2. I’ve got thousands of hours in the SimCity franchise. Over 500 hours in the original Cities Skylines. CS2 is a fucking mess of a game. It actually ran pretty decently on my PC when it first came out but you could tell it was an incomplete mess right away. The simulation was non-existent. The game looked like dog shit. The only way to get it to run decently was to turn everything down to low and medium. Somehow I squeaked out 75 hours in that first 3 month release window. For a working adult with responsibilities, that’s a lot of time for me now. I install it occasionally and see if it’s any better. It’s not. I did this last week and it actually runs worse on the same PC than it did at launch which is counter to what most people are experiencing.
Mods through the Paradox launcher is a necessary evil for the game to function. I can barely get it to run stable without mods, I don’t think tricking out the game is gonna help the situation. It’s such a sad case of a game killing a whole genre. Especially when it’s my genre. I love city building games and no game has hurt more than Sim City 2013. I didn’t even play SC2013. I watched my favorite franchise die and made probably the smartest decision of my gaming life by saying fuck no to that mess. Fucking Cities Skylines 2 is right there with it, but I made the opposite choice. I gave it a chance and it stings all the time.
What’s even worse is how such a staple of my childhood has turned into an almost impossible task to recreate. I’ll never understand how gaming went from being able to produce 4 generational city building titles in ~10 years to not being able to get one to function at the same level at all in 20. You can count CS1 sure, but even that game was missing something compared to SC4. CS1 is not even close to the same level of SC4. Even now when the game is hard to run on modern hardware.
What’s even more killer is we see other examples of Maxis era staples getting second life in new franchises all the time. Planet Zoo 1 and 2. Transport Fever for Transport Tycoon. Planet Coaster taking it’s place next to Roller Coaster Tycoon. Hell even the Jurassic World Evolution series fills a gap from the old Jurassic Park Genesis game. But the modern city building attempts are all backwards attempts.
They all focus on the wrong thing. Agents. They all want to be able to simulate every living being and everything they do. It never works. It’s why the newest Citystate is such an intriguing project. They’re not doing every individual agent. And the dev finally decided to focus on modernizing the engine to work with fully 3d spaces. There’s a couple contenders out there that are a year or two away. Citystate, Metro 1998 even though that’s more of a throwback. City Masterplan. If just one of these games hit, we’re back in business. Until then I’ve watched my favorite genre die twice. Hopefully the third time is the charm in terms of longevity.
Lego: The Hobbit
I give this answer in every one of these threads to raise awareness. My wife and I used to get a little drunk and play Lego games. It’s a lot of fun, and a decent couch co-op.
We get into the Mountain, start screwing around with Smaug, and he flies off to burn Laketown. Roll credits. Game over. The 3rd movie flopped so hard they never finished the game. They don’t say it’s 2/3 of the story, and at that point it’s way too late to return it.
Fun game, terrible experience.
Blue Prince. After reaching room 46 and realising that the game was just getting started, I immediately gave up. This is probably the game that respects the player’s time the least that I ever played.
It has amazing lore and overall feeling but is ruined by the RNG. It’s somewhat bearable in the first part but becomes extremely annoying when you know what to do but can’t because of unlucky draws or not enough steps left.
Among Us.
My friends kept suggesting it for game nights, but the social demands are just not compatible with actually hanging out with your friends.
When everyone’s out and about, doing their tasks and getting murdered, we’re all discouraged from actually talking with one another, for fear of revealing a dead body or whatever. Whenever there’s a meeting going on, sure, we’re “free” to talk again, but there’s not enough time to talk about anything but the game. When you’re dead, and thus finally relieved from the pressures of completing tasks or getting kills… there’s still no chit-chat allowed, because ghosts “can’t” talk.
It’s worse whenever random players are involved; having to coordinate between voice chat with friends, and text chat with randoms, or worse, when the randoms are in a voice chat of their own, coordinating to be assholes.
The moment that finally made me say “I don’t enjoy this game”, was a round with two random players in it: one of them spent the whole round watching security cameras, and the other was blocking the one doorway into the room, both players working with each other and refusing to do their tasks. No way for the lone impostor that round to kill them both. When we started calling them out on this, they flat-out said “we’re going to keep doing this just to spite you”. Timer ran out with unfinished tasks. Crewmates lost.
Breath of the Wild and moreso Tears of the Kingdom.
Not bad games. But not Zelda games.
BoTW did not play into the metroidvania that I felt defined a Zelda game. Plus it lent on the “sim rpg” style of eating, cooking, durability, etc.
Then ToTK just felt like a gimmicky cash grab. Copy paste terrain, “gadget building” straight out of some steam early access game.
Ultimately, both games felt like a hodgepodge of stolen concepts, slapped together. And the adoration that they received just makes me hate them more.
Solitaire. I found out later that the deck only had 51 cards.
Didn’t hate it, but I just sort of slid off Baldur’s Gate 3.
I love Larian’s other games and even pre-ordered bg3 to play on vacation, but the combat just isn’t as fun as Divinity 2. I kept trying to avoid combat but then I walked into a new area and combat started automatically and I just groaned and turned off the game.
I got to act 2, which isn’t a lot of time, but it felt like it
Every single mobile game.
Hades - I haven’t seen anyone list this one yet. It was the first roguelike/roguelite I ever played and it taught me that I don’t like roguelikes/roguelites. It tried to like it, but it’s just not for me. Luckily, son boy loves it so it’s not a total waste.
As much as I hate to say it, No Mans Sky probably. Has that same problem I get with playing Minecraft. Everything feels too empty and aimless for me.
MC has at least the building part for me thats cool for some time. And the Modding and Server with friends part.
NMS has this boring flat tile building system and also just forgets terrain modification after some time or plants respawn into your buildings so you can even build on the ground…
Multiplayer is wonky and annoing and as far as i know it does not have much modding…
All planets feel the same after a few hours. The existance of medium Asteroids and Gas Giants is completely missing. And you cant build spacestations withoud weird stack up from plannet hacking.
I want to love the game cause like the idea and the ongoing support from the devs but when ever i try it again its just sad.
I get that problem with MC too.
MC I never get that with, though I haven’t really played vanilla Minecraft in years so the sheer amount of stuff to do usually offsets that.
Iv been wanting to back to no mans, iv read good things about the updates, but yeah. Last couple times i found myself wondering what the fuck i am doing.
Like he said, it’s like vanilla minecraft, so you have to make your own goals and your own fun. I spent hours just walking around collecting resources to build the things I decided I want that time. Hours more building my Corvette, Freighter and bases. If that’s not fun to you, that’s ok.
It’s way worse about that than Minecraft, imo. I find Minecraft to be exceptionally boring, but building is at least passably fun (or was before hytale completely blew it out of the water), but it feels like NMS doesn’t even give you a real creative outlet. From what I’ve seen even starfield is better than NMS for creativity, although i haven’t played starfield myself.
Starfield? I would argue it’s much worse than NMS, though I don’t know how the current game is. Back when I played, a couple of months before the first dlc dropped (before the buggy update, even), you were extremely limited in choices for base building. You had like 4 or 5 prefabs of a living quarter which came pre decorated.
Starfield offers good ship customization (and stupidly talent-locks a lot of it), unlike NMS, which only added a tiny bit of that in an update last year I think
Terraria is the Minecraft that’s meant to be played. Actually has dungeon crawling and a world to experience. Minecraft is just 3D Microsoft Paint that decides to chase your cursor with a zombie every so often.
Warframe. 3500 hours in about 5 years.
I watched it develop from just a fun little “be a magic space murderhobo” into a game with some actual story behind it (and some kinda cool cinematic story missions… that went a bit off the rails when they made time canonically non linear)
The unfortunate part for me was the reputation gating and crafting materials grind. Every new update brought another new material and another new hub world with another dozen or so NPC’s to increase your popularity with by running the same missions ad nauseam, just to get another weapon you were going to level up for the Mastery Rank exp and never use again.
I started in the days before Mastery Rank 30 was anywhere near possible, after hitting L1 (30+1) and realising there was no appreciable difference to gameplay I completely lost any reason to play.
I had hopes that there would be something big once you hit the original “max rank”, even if there was intent for the devs to continue adding more after that. I had thought there would be some change in the way the game played, like they would reduce the crafting times from 4 days (a new warframe requires 4 blueprints, a head, systems and torso, all 12h crafts, then a 24 hour craft to stitch them all together, all 4 steps requiring blueprints and materials which are RNG drops from different specific enemies on specific map types/planets/hub world areas gated behind reputation)
The GRIND was unreal. They had to roll back their crafting quantities on Railjack after each individual component, of which there were 6, took 1 million credits and 4 sets of 4 figues worth of materials. I nolifed that game hard enough at the time that I spent an entire week (including wait times for the crafting itself) just to build a ship that was advertised as a ‘dropship for you and your mates to use both in space and as air support on the open world areas’ but that became a “use in very specific missions and one big gamewide event that’s never coming back”
Don’t even get me started on trying to earn platinum (RMT currency to instantly complete a blueprint that’s crafting or buy a new cosmetic/weapon/frame without the crafting steps)
Saying all that, it was a good way to spend time during covid.
No Mans Sky. At a certain point it all becomes meaningless.
I can’t think of a single one. I stop playing games I don’t like.
Expedition 33. I’m not a huge turn based fan anymore but gave it a shot because of the rave reviews. And initially I liked it a lot actually. It had the UE5 default realistic look I loathe but the combat was fun.
And then it became unfun. Severely so. I started to dread every major combat encounter.
But the reviews were so positive so I pushed thru, I hated playing the game but told myself I’ll see it through to the end, and I did.
I regret that. Having to keep playing despite disliking it probably soured my experience way more than if I had just stopped playing. On the other hand I now have the full picture of the game and know it doesn’t get better and it’s not worth finishing.
The worst combat encounters were the fights where the attack itself is a minute long cutscene, then without warning you get 150ms to time your party perfectly, or you die and restart. Unforgivable.Bah
Yes quick time based combat for that group fighting dynamic isn’t a good match. If a game asks you to command a whole group of people, like one after the other, it’s a good idea to make it more of a puzzle or “carefully select the right moves” experience. See: Occidental Heroes
Again, always seems to me that shiny new games which focus on aving great graphics are letting people down 🤔
Initially the parry and dodge mechanics are great. They’re presented like an option for higher skilled players who are used to tight timings to get an advantage in combat while people more accustomed to the traditional “trading blows” style can still enjoy combat that way.
But the game never tells you that perfect parrying and dodging are actually not an option but the required style of combat since taking any damage later on is basically instant death. You’re just not gonna be able to tank a full combo while ignoring the dodge and parry mechanics.
Oh and then the enemies do that Elden Ring delayed attack thing. I like ER but seriously fuck that game for introducing this style of attack pattern. Yeah let me just swing my giant sword but mid-swing take a coffee break… ER wanted to present a challenge to the absolute wizards who play Dark Souls SL1 no-hit, so why did E33 copy that?You can absolutely play without dodge, parry, and even attack triggers. You have to build you character for it obviously. I’m terrible at reaction your stuff and just tanked the whole game. I even learned that the telegraph was easier based on sound but still I’m so slow I just continued to build tanky.
I generally enjoyed the game, But found myself disappointed by the story.
Tap for spoiler
It’s bookends. At the beginning you see what terrible tragedy Lumiere is suffering, and wonder what sacrifice you must achieve to save them.
Ending: Oh, Lumiere is fucked either way, either today or very soon. Now it’s just a question of who you want to torment.
Yeah the story absolutely didn’t grab me. Spent most of the time confused and asking myself lots of questions, then the big twist happens n I’m like yeahnah this ain’t it chief. And the ending ugh.
spoiler
I wanted one outcome in the binary choice and accidentally chose the option which gives me the ending I didn’t want xD
Easily the most controversial comment in here. I don’t think e33 is considered very difficult unless you do the optional content which has ridiculous stuff. I loved the story and characters and think it’s one of the most enjoyable and memorable RPGs of all time.
I found parry difficult to learn (but once it’s down for an attack it’s muscle memory) and I play fighting games where people count frames, where you have to make 300ms reactions out of multiple incoming prompts, and where you have 2 frames parry windows as opposed to E33’s 16 frames (I believe).
The most frustrating thing is that the telegraphing is just not that clear. I actually wish they increased the FOV change so that it’s more apparent when it’s at its maximum.
I’m also a fighting game player and I think that’s why I found it not too difficult compared to what’s required to Parry six frame normals and what not. Fighting game execution is so complicated that I find almost all genres are comparatively easier to handle.
the screen zooms a bit when you’re about to get hit. It helps a lot with learning timing
The telegraphing was a sound more than visual. Learning that made things much more manageable. But I’m terrible at even that so I just made no dodge/parry builds and just tanked it all.
Yeah, the two main cues are a sound (“swoosh” sfx) one and a visual (FOV rubber band) one.
… That’s smart, why didn’t I think of making a tank build, lol.
Because it’s not particularly encouraged by the game. Like you can, they give you the tools, but theres a bunch of stuff you can get earlier with perfect parrying, or is gated behind it entirely, so you feel like you should be doing it.
Personally I found a mod to make the parry and dodge windows a little longer so I could reliably hit them, after which it became much less frustrating.
