Ever feel bad about not being able to get into a game?

You guys are playing Baldur's Gate wrong. I played them very recently and I found them to be a refreshing experience. Sure things like the pathfinding may be dated but the rest of the game isn't. The tactical principles behind the combat are not dated. The writing and dialogue isn't dated. Well, the dialogue and choices are dated compared to today's because now they are so dumbed down. The pre-rendered graphics still look good. The plethora of exploration and content isn't dated. Really the only flaw is the pathfinding and the game being designed for 640x480 monitors.

Pokemon but mainly because everyone around me was so hyped over that game. I was 11 when red and blue came out in '98 and at the time I realized it was a subpar strategy game wrapped in the most bland RPG I'd played at the time. Even when I was the target demographic for the game I didn't find it compelling and I think I missed out on a huge franchise that had a lot of potential.

A lot of modern AAA games - and that isn't to say they're bad games. This rant will make me sound old, and in some ways I do feel sort of grandpa-like on games. It feels like the current gen of gaming lost a bunch of medium sized development companies and mainstream games homogenized into a less risky business. Everything ended up feeling safe and (mostly) unexperimental. In turn I haven't felt blown away by most big developers lately. Ham-fisted RPG elements smashed on top of FPSes that all have identical control schemes with very little variation in gameplay, EA Sports Yearly Roster Update, and street racing simulators sent me running in to the arms of underfunded indie developers because at least the technologically outdated stuff they're churning out doesn't all feel like the exact same derivative tripe AAA developers are churning out. It's sort of like how I grew bored of Hollywood's gigantic explosion action flicks and tensionless "horror" movies. Sadly I don't see this getting better until indie developers get their hands on the same tools major developers use since until then the gaming population at large will most ignore them. Again, I'm not saying these games are bad, I'm saying I feel like I've grown out of modern gaming which is sort of disappointing and it feels bad playing games that I find absolutely boring because that's what you do when hanging out with friends.

Last of Us. I've tried a few times. I still own it. I tell myself I'll get to it. But my heart just isn't in it.

Also, Bully. But that has more to do with how shitty the 360 port played before it was patched up. And at this point the game just doesn't hold up so well.

Why is that a bad thing? Surely, knowing how to control a game before you pick it up would be a positive trait.

I just forced myself to finish Shadow of the Colossus in the HD collection after starting and stopping borrowed PS2 copies for years. Visually terrific, aurally great, story is... there, and gameplay just oh god it's so boring. It's a showpiece for sure and was probably first to do "climb this huge thing in a beautiful 3D world" well but that's all it is for me. I actually liked Ico for some reason. You can all feel free to burn me at the stake now.

It isn't inherently, but it means someone somewhere has settled on that being the right way for games to play - which would have been fine, but once everyone everywhere settles for it than that means a little bit of creative space is gone. It's mostly a "games are art" argument, but it is what it is.

Yup...many of my friends play Tera...but i haven't played it..so when they switched to RO2..i immediately played with them!!wuhu!!

Valkyria Chronicles. People give it a lot of love and stuff, but it didn't do a thing for me. $15 well spent, I guess?

Not bad but rather confused like I often can't understand why a vast majority of people will like a game that I'm obviously not finding the least bit enjoyable. Games like Halo, Skyrim, Bastion to name a few community favorites. Just cannot get into them no matter how much I tried. Makes me feel weird sometimes.

I couldn't get into Grand Theft Auto IV at all and I kinda felt bad about it. So bad that I played it for another 10+ hours just to see if it gets better, and I hated almost every moment.

I'm getting the same feeling with Bioshock Infinite right now. I really want to finish it just for the story, but every time I play it I just want to replay Bioshock instead. I am planning to finish it anyway, just so I can learn something from the experience maybe. At least it's not as slow as GTA IV.

So, with games that I'm not enjoying (Antichamber got to that point for me as well), I'll just watch or read a guide to quickly get through it and see what there is to see. Saves me a ton of time, and I still get to at least see the game. Works well enough for me.

The Witcher 2, maybe because I didn't play the first game - but the gameplay didn't really click with me either.

Dark Souls, I wouldn't say I couldn't get into it as much as I got stuck and refuse to look up help online - so it is more my own fault than anything.

Bastion, I just didn't really enjoy any of the aspects of this game.

I have about 150 games in my steam library, about 100 of those i haven't touched. Do I feel bad? No, not really, I'll get around to it eventually. Sometimes humble bundles and seasonal sales are hard to resist.

I used to feel bad with unplayed Xbox games, I guess the digital games are there forever and aren't going anywhere

I felt bad about pining hard for Eternal Sonata and then only getting 45 minutes into it before finding I was extremely incompatible with everything, a great sense of dull about-average everything overwhelmed me and blocked me off.

Which is interesting, because I turned out to be compatible with everything Atelier Ayesha.

There's a good bunch of games like that. Latest big example would probably be Skyrim. I played it for 10+ hours (I guess that's still my money's worth, when compared to other modern games...) and had good times even just roaming around, but when I read other people having played it for 100+ hours or so, I sure feel like I've missed the hook of it. Another one could be Saint's Row The Third, which I played for a few hours or so, having decent fun, but didn't feel like coming back to at all, after the second time I played it.

OG Baldurs Gate is so fucking hard it is kind of nuts. I just started playing it and man if you get forget to auto-save and run in to the wrong assassins you are fucked unless you get some great rolls.

I am just out of the mines, and totally save scummed my way through it. Quick save was my friend.

I actually felt this way about a browser game, loneliness, there was an extra credits episode about it and they talked about how it was a great way to combine narrative and gameplay and how your actions actually shaped the story. I played through it and I mostly just felt bored but considering how the video and the comments were so positive I felt like I really missed something.

I don't think there's any "should" or "should not" enjoy a game. Just because a game is well-received doesn't change the fact that the quality of any one game is ultimately subjective. I'm usually unhappy when I'm not enjoying any game, regardless of how well it's been received, but I think we all have to accept at a point that quality isn't written in stone and that any diversity in tastes that we have are a good thing.

I'm pretty sure you were supposed to save scum those games. I mean, they mapped Quick Save to "q." They knew you'd be using it. Having never played actual D&D, it does seem weird to me, considering (I assume) in D&D you kinda have to just take your losses. I played a few games of Baldur's Gate trying to let my followers die, then revive them at temples or using the genie bottle, but I always get to a point where my entire party is wiped, so I'm always like "well... I'm not fucking starting over... so what's the point in playing like this if I don't go all the way?" And then I start "save scumming," not letting any followers die. The D&D games will always be unfortunate in that regard, I guess. There are just too many things to account for, that only a human DM can really dish out.

I always really regretted how FF12 just never grabbed me the way I wanted it to, despite it doing so many things I love on paper, there was always one little thing or another that prevented me from liking it as much as I wanted to.

I do feel bad about buying a game and then not finishing it. Kind of like i bought it for nothing

Throw in Morrowind for me too. I'm sure I'd love it if I had infinite time and infinite patience, but as it stands I never reached the part where it gets fun.

Also Baldur's Gate gets a lot better once you reach the city proper. Still, it wouldn't hurt to have a walkthrough on hand. It's not nearly as refined a game as the rest of its Infinity Engine contemporaries.

I tried to like Resident Evil 5. I played it for about 2 hours and I just couldn't like it. The controls felt awkward, didn't like the setting, didn't care for the characters, the menus felt very archaic and it felt like a much older game than it actually was.

I went back to it some time later with the Gold Edition, stated it again and within a few minutes realised I couldn't this. I couldn't play it .

Morrowind comes to mind - I played it on the Xbox but I just couldn't get into it. Was it my imagination but, was hitting things in that game difficult or something. A lot of the swings I was doing never felt like they connected... and for that I could never get into it. That or I'm just a horrible player and you can forget all that.

As for feel bad, most of the time - nope. There's so many games out there to enjoy that not liking one isn't anything to worry about. The one I do feel bad for though, is Nier. A friend of mine who adores the game really recommended it and lent it to me to play. After him playing Persona 4 on my recommendation (and he loved it) I felt I should finish it to ... just do my due diligence. But the only thing I'm playing for is Story... But I can't get into it in the same way they did.

Dishonored, I heard so much good stuff and everyone was so excited about it. I got about 4-5 hours in and had to force myself to get that far. It was just no fun at all to me. I loved the concept but the gameplay just didn't click at all with me.

Persona 3, I get to about 20 hours and then just stop. Not sure why, I think it has to do with the style compared to Persona 4 which I adore.

At some point, you're just going to have to admit that you didn't enjoy those games. I understand it can feel frustrating to play a game and not understand why everyone else thinks it's a good game. What's important is that even if a certain game doesn't click with you, you try to understand why others might believe that the game is great. In the end, it will help you figure out which kinds of games you do and don't enjoy personally, independent of the consensus.

Battlefield. I loved 1942 and 2, but couldn't get into the Bad Company series or BF3. I'd like to give BF4 a chance sometime, because I really, really liked 1942 and 2 and would love to play that sort of game again.