Do you often right off a game from early impressions and later regret it when you eventually play it more?

Sometimes.

"Hey, guys, this Dark Souls thing is really brown and grey, didn't we just spend an entire generation complaining about this, why is this game getting away with it, why is this so slow and clunky, that guy wearing a concrete truck at the bottom of this tower is impossible, I think I'm going to go play something else." (as an aside, Load Our Last Souls convinced me to try Dark Souls again and I played 2 first).

This isn't the only time. Minecraft looked boring, Deus Ex Human Revolution was too slow and the shooting wasn't fun, Mass Effect's gameplay was total garbage (actually it still is, bland RPG elements included, but the story's great!), and this Castlevania Aria of Sorrow thing seems like bad Metroid. Those are first impressions and have turned turned completely around on all of them. I'm sure I could think of some others if I dug through my library.

Anyway, this is why I've tried Monster Hunter World two or three times. There are things about it I feel like I'd enjoy, but I just... can't. The moment-to-moment stuff in MHW is just boring and button-mashy and long and loud and ugh... but also these environments look great and crafting gear without obscene microtransactions sounds awesome and taking down huge bosses after an epic battle sounds cool! Same with Dragon's Dogma. I feel like there's some hurdle that if I just crossed it, I'd love these games, but I have yet to know where it is so maybe they're just not for me. Or maybe they are. I don't know.

@justin258: I was hoping most answers would fall in the I don't know really camp like you. Cause honestly, sometimes you don't know since your basing your decision off limited knowledge in comparison to...you know...knowing. Knowing the entire game and if the experience was good for ya. Maybe that last boss flips your entire decision, Some people when it came to mass effect loved it then hated it for that reason. Or you could play the game for 15 minutes, like me, (Dark souls 2) ride it off that its impossible after the second boss. Play the first one, nuge your way through it. Now become a fan that beat all of them and plays it for fun not cause I hate myself as the internet has you believe ha. It's tuff putting a finger on when you do know thou and pass on a game, no regrets. That's why I think the recent surge of free-to-play and give-away subscription games make it easier to just bounce off games vs when you went out of your way, brought a physical copy, and got bored in the first 5 minutes. You put real money and time into it, so it pushes you to at least play for a sitting. Akin to those people who walk out of movies in the first 15 minutes vs people who stay no matter how bad it gets or stays and sees the turn, as the main plot recontextualizes all the things that people thought were bad in the first 15 minutes. There's always a give and take, and I personally, never quite know where I stand sometimes.

PS: Free games can also help as those sleeping on a game cause word of mouth that the game's not perfect, will give it a try when free with lowered expectations, leading to underground fans such as the recent free days gone on ps4. Just a bunch of people shocked that the game is fine for how down on it the public was during its release. Still not a good game, just that people don't care that it's not good anymore. weird.

I mean, I guess that can sum of my impressions of the entire the Call of Duty franchise until I finally played Infinite Warfare this year. I wouldn't say that I "regret" on not getting any of the games when they were new, though, since competitive multiplayer isn't my thing.

I don't do it often but I did bounce off of Shadow of the Colossus pretty early. 3rd Colossus I believe. Couldn't figure out what to do. Went at it yeeaaaaarrs later and decided to see a guide on it. Turns out I did not realize the environment could be used against the big guys and that changed everything for me. Now I know why people love it.

Case by case basis fits how I approach most games.

In general if I can't enjoy a game due to terrible outdated accessibility, I will put it down and not recommend it. If screen shake/head-bob can't be turned off, or if there's no double/triple coding to make up for poor colour blindness options etc I will get nothing from the game apart from frustration, or worse, pain and nausea.

Accessibility options aside, if a game needs more than a handful of hours to become familiar or interesting, then I likely won't bother. I'm an adult with multiple hobbies, roles in life, relationships, and more, so there's simply not enough time in the day to engage with things which may be long winded (it's also one of the reasons I avoid TV shows, especially nowadays). I do miss good games that way. I will never play another Monster Hunter game, a series which I loved in my teens, because I feel off that series in the early 2010s and have forgotten most elements of the gameplay cycles. There are many other games which offer more for less focus and commitment, but it is still a little melancholy to miss out on such things.

On the other hand, it was only a year ago where I tried Bloodborne for the first time and my rusty Dark Souls skills helped me get into that super fast with very little frustration. Not an easy game, but understanding the design philosophy (despite it's frankly awful accessibility approach and shite camera, which is not the same as difficulty) made it a joy to go through, complete, and revisit in New Game+ mode. I probably put a few dozen hours into it in total but never struggled outside of some areas where the camera made it irritating. Something none of the From games ever fixed going forward, either, unfortunately.

It's where I find the idea of rental games important. Nowadays rentals don't exist (at least where I live), but I still have a fondness for things which can be played quickly and offer something without needing to occupy my life for a long period. Sure, I may never pick it up again, but that weekend where I played Uncharted/Saw/Knack/Hidden Agenda games were fun enough. Will any rental game truly surpass Jackie Chan Stuntmaster on the Playstation (/humour)? Probably not, but still, there's distinct value in linear and approachable titles.

The only other titles I will likely hang up on are games which try too hard to be cinematic and drawn out for what they are. The game lengths could be 12 hours or 100, but they don't quite have a grasp on what they are.

Y'know, the cinematic which can not decipher the difference in art mediums, how games are more like (but still distinctly different from) plays in most blocking regards, rather than film or TV shows. It's why Uncharted 4 feels so crap compared to the prior games in the series. Why? It's not just the ill fitting gameplay additions and extra levels of awkward dialogue with a poorly written in brother character. It's because novels, films, music, poetry, and other artforms have a grasp on what/who they are and can achieve or experiment with in their restrictions, whereas games can mistake their basis as a young interactive medium to be more than they are. I'm not expecting Czech new wave levels of interesting, influential, and valuable, that's much too demanding, but I expect more than the ego driven immaturity/first uncertain thoughts mistaken for something truly deep and developed, see: the fun shooty bang bang but absolutely void otherwise of Bioshock 1 and Infinite, games so directly inspired by the visual elements of German expressionism without a percent of the genre's messages, value of themes, or understanding of itself. On that point, Bioshock is a weird series where the 2nd game was actually very good, but seen as less than the other much lesser games, despite being a much better game in every single regard. It fit the medium while putting across so much more in terms of theme and it's inspirations. It did something great, but that's the fun of opinions and art, innit?

I try not to right anything off too hastily. Whether write or wrong, a first impression can't be the only way to judge something. Of course, it's almost a wright of passage that everyone will have something they just can't bring themselves to give a chance after a poor first impression. Sometimes it does help to rite one's thoughts down to sort through why something may not be clicking, but often it's best to just move on rather than force yourself to try and give something a chance that just isn't doing it for you.

That pretty much is playing Metal Gear Solid V Phantom Pain for about 20 fun hours, then that excitement started to wear off by the 21st. I ended up playing it for about 70 hours in total and still consider it the best Ninja Commando Simulator for the last decade, but that last 50 hours went nowhere!

It would be pretty unusual.

In general I'm pretty tolerant of mediocre things, plus I'm a lifelong JRPG fan so whatever slow start you think your game has I've seen worse a dozen times. So given that if there is a scenario where I bounce directly off of something immediately it would take a hell of a lot for me to go back and pick it up again.

Very rarely does an opinion from the GB crew or other folks in games influence me not to play a game I was interested in (pretty much only in cases where universal opinion is that the game is absolutely terrible or broken).

However, I will say that first impressions from the crew and others frequently inspire me to try out games that were otherwise not on my radar.

I've only had this happen once and it was Final Fantasy 14. Played it to lvl 30 and found it boring and dropped it. Finally, after hearing many people say 'you just have to stick with it to the first expansion', I gave it another go. I wanted to see if there was something to what I was hearing, and *shrug* i've found they were right. The combat and story get pretty engaging after spending hours and hours getting through the initial story.

Is it worth it? That's hard to say. I couldn't recommend it to anyone because of how much of a slog the opening is, but i'm now thoroughly enjoying it and am very excited about the upcoming expansion.