Games you quickly gave up on, and why

@facelessvixen said:

did you just take a shot at...everyone? haha

Sekiro: I've said it elsewhere, but I had an awesome time with this game up until Lady Butterfly / Snake Eyes / Lone Swordsman / Seven Spears / Ashina Elite were all lined up in front of me and I couldn't knock any of them down; I'd fought Lady Butterfly to the point I could get her to 1/3 health in her final form in two minutes or less and then would just fall apart over and over again. I did finally beat the Lone Swordsman in the cave, took that W and uninstalled the game free of guilt.

Celeste: This one's a bit relative, I suppose, since this is over halfway through the game but once I reached the mirror realm I realized the puzzles were getting a bit too complex for me. Actually, this is where I'll just dump a long list of games I got anywhere from 1 to 3 hours in and realized, man, I'm an utter dummy for somebody who mostly played PC adventure games as a kid:

The Witness, The Swapper, FEZ, The Fall, This War of Mine

Tropico 5: Was a PS+ game anyway, and I'll just chalk this up to the game not being very optimized for a controller. If I remember right, I didn't even get through the tutorial.

Spelunky: Maybe it was playing so much Rogue Legacy at the time I finally downloaded it, maybe it was the months of half-watching Patrick and Dave Lang play it, but I just didn't connect with this game at all and almost immediately felt like I'd been there, done that.

Roundabout: I'll admit, I bought this almost entirely because it was made by a Friend of the Site. I appreciate its spirit but I don't recall having any fun with it at all.

NBA 2K19: As someone who used to play a full 82 game season of basketball at least every year from NBA 2K5 through NBA 2K16, it's been a real struggle watching this series shift so aggressively towards MyCareer and MyTeam over the past three years. Compared to MLB The Show's Diamond Dynasty, MyTeam (and all other Ultimate Team modes, IMO) is an utter dumpster fire and I've never cared about building a character, the player locked basketball just doesn't feel like basketball to me. Unfortunately, because there hasn't been much focus on the regular schmegular gameplay or the GM mode, the former feels more and more like a twenty year old relic that can't keep up with the modern game and the latter is riddled with bugs and oversights that are similarly inherited from games old enough to be NBA 2K19's dad. The game was on sale for $3.99 after the playoffs and I thought I might be burning out on MLB as a podcast game just a bit, but even at $4 my former favorite video game franchise got about two full games of basketball out of me before I uninstalled it.

Bloodborne: Just wanted to conclude with one that went the opposite of Sekiro. I did download, barely get out of the opening area, and uninstall this game twice initially. But then I played God of War, and the whole time it just felt like I was playing the FromSoft games I'd watched so much of on Giant Bomb streams, not to mention people were constantly comparing it to Bloodborne, if only abstractly. So I decided to give the game one more go, and that third time I was hooked. So hooked that even though it took me nearly an entire evening, over six hours, to even realize I needed to reach a boss to begin earning XP and leveling up (and so I'd just wasted six hours trying to Get Good in that first thoroughfare of Yharnam) I wasn't discouraged and played the game super heavily through March and the Return to Yharnam community event. Unfortunately, that's when MLB The Show 18 released and I all but dropped the game completely hovering somewhere around the One Reborn (my save is right outside the room with three hunters, one of them dead) but at that point I was so hooked on the world I binged Aegon of Astoria's Let's Talk Lore series to complete the game vicariously; even without finishing it, I'd gladly say it's one of my favorite games of all time, and thus another reason Sekiro wound up being such a bummer for me.

GTA post Vice City. Rock Star just seems to be more and more focused on 'cinematic' missions with one solution in mind and I just keep failing when I try to take an interesting open world solution. I want a chase scene where I flattened their tires before starting the cut scene more than their scripted chase. More systems means more tutorials and I never make it to the point where it opens up.

To The Moon, the puzzles felt tacked on and the two technician characters felt like they fell out of an Invader Zim fanfic. I bounced off almost immediately and never went back.

Outer Wilds. Everybody was raving about it on release, and I just don't really understand the hype. I keep thinking I should go back and give it another try because it's frustrating me that I can't pinpoint exactly what I didn't like. Unfortunately, I think it just didn't click.

@j-mack: Agree with this on Rockstar games. They create these magnificent, sprawling, beautiful open worlds that you can barely interact with. You just follow the icons on your map and then to find missions that might as well be on rails. I wish they would have RPG-style quest logs instead. The only part I really enjoy is wandering aimlessly and getting in trouble.

I fell off surprisingly fast from Spider-Man (PS4) despite initially loving it. It is a pretty great game, but I really wish the web-swinging required more finesse. So much of it is automatic. I wish you would slam into buildings George-of-the-Jungle style when you mess up. Then I could feel like I'm improving my skills. Still, I might come back to this one.

I fell off from Splatoon 2 after only a few hours. The single-player missions were tedious and I did not enjoy multiplayer matches at all. I think (?) that you could not switch weapons mid-match which made it very dull for me. I didn't get much sense of accomplishment for putting down paint because of course it would quickly change back - nothing as momentous as getting the flag in a CTF mode, or even as satisfying as a headshot. I don't quite get the appeal of this game, but I'll reserve judgement because people seem to love it.

I've never put a "real" effort into those souls games, but I did try Bloodborne when it was on PS Plus. After getting destroyed by the first boss, the dog thing on the bridge, I realized that this wasn't something I felt like doing and let it rest.

Likewise, I gave up on Hollow Knight after a few hours because I kept dying and I thought the corpse run mechanic didn't fit the game that well. I could see myself coming back to it at some point, though.

@wollywoo: "I fell off surprisingly fast from Spider-Man (PS4) despite initially loving it. It is a pretty great game, but I really wish the web-swinging required more finesse. So much of it is automatic. I wish you would slam into buildings George-of-the-Jungle style when you mess up. Then I could feel like I'm improving my skills."

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yeah this was my problem with Uncharted, gave up on that when i realised the game is just automated platforming plus shooting thousands of goons. i'm of classic Tomb Raider vintage: manual climbing = sense of achievement with goon-enemies kept to a minimum.

I just booted up Hellblade a few nights ago, and the opening sequence in the boat with the whispering was triggering my misophonia so badly I had to quit out immediately.

Just Cause 3...I like to freely explore open world games asap to get a feel for everything, and JC3 fails as it feels underdeveloped and loose (no feeling of vertigo when jumping of cliffs etc) and worst of all there's no manual save. I spent almost an hour getting to and then exploring the main island, then as you do died at some point...the game restarted at the last mission checkpoint right back in the southern island. Rage-uninstalled haha!

GTA5 and AC:Origins for example not only feel better mechanically, their worlds are more impressive - they make you feel part of it, necessary for proper immersion.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider, i didn't even make it through the demo:

- overly-empathetic feelsy voice acting (especially from the annoying sidekick) tells me what to feel rather than lets me soak in an atmosphere. Fallout 4 had the same issue.

- platforming too automated, no sense of tense danger.

- pointless crafting.

- boring story introduction.

- cut-scenes every few seconds.

- despite the great graphics i didn't get a sense of wanting to explore.

I'm happier playing PS1-era Tomb Raider, frankly...they felt more like games.

One that really got me was Outlast 2. I was fairly excited for it, but the first stealth encounter felt like absolute trash, and it totally put me off playing any further. I wonder if they ever patched that, or if I was the crazy one for thinking it was completely broken.

Horizon: Zero Dawn. I've tried multiple times and every time I get to the point where I assume the game is about to actually open up. Then I open the map, stare at all the icons and just end up turning it off. I've yet to uninstall it because I was so hyped for it before it came out though. I'm still holding out hope that it will click eventually....

@noboners: interesting take. i bought it a few weeks ago due to the hype, at least the price was good. haven't played it yet, hopefully when i do i'll end up mentioning it in the positivity thread rather than this one!

@shagge: To be fair, the game isn't a lot about stealth. It's basically the very first part that you have to stealth and then it's mostly about insanely intense running from enemies, and it ramps up. One of the most intense gaming experiences I've played honestly. The stealth wasn't bad, but it can get annoying since you may want to stay in some of the grass longer than necessary as you don't want to die. I think you may have just quit too early because you'll find that it's not that bad in those sections to bypass, and take off from there as mostly just a running away simulator if you will. I bought the game on base PS4, then again when I got an Xbox One X. They updated it with an easier difficulty which eliminates enemy placement, so some of the running away sequences or the need for stealth was gone, but that's really not very good. I totally recommend playing the game on the hardest. Honestly, it's one of my favorite games of 2017, but I found it hard to want to complete again.

@ntm: Yeah, I fully intend to go back to it one day, that encounter just left a terrible taste in my mouth. Didn't help that the stealth in the first game was the exact opposite (hilariously easy, totally unnecessary once you realize you can just run by most enemies anyway), so I didn't trust the second game's design and figured they overcompensated in the other direction.

@jadegl: I had the same experience with GTA 4, which paired with the universal praise (at the time) convinced me that I just didn't liked 3rd person open world games... then I played Assassins Creed 2 and Saints Row 4 and realize that wasn't the problem. I just didn't liked bad 3rd person open world games.

They are a commitment, though. Even when I enjoyed them at the time, playing something like Assassins Creed Odyssey now feels like a daunting endeavour.

While I didn't "quickly" give up on it, Invisible, Inc. is a game I bounced off of hard when I beat the beginner difficulty. I was so stoked for that game and, despite it not being what I thought it was, I mostly enjoyed it right up until the end...when the credits rolled and I was left thinking, "What the fuck? That's it? That's where this fucking thing ends? Fuck. This. Game."

I couldn't believe the game actually ended after those 72 hours, after just 6-7 missions plus the final mission. Right up until those credits, I thought that 72 hour period was just the prologue, that once you got Incognita installed in the new mainframe, the game would open up and I'd be spending hours recruiting new members and leveling them up, acquiring new equipment, unlocking new abilities, and just generally rebuilding the agency in preparation for a truly epic showdown. NOPE. I was so fucking disgusted. I've never asked for a refund, but if I could've gotten one for that game then I would've asked for it without hesitation.

No Man's Sky. When I picked it up last year, it was because of the big new update that came out that added base building. Popped that sucker into the PS4 and 5 hours later, I was lost on the starting planet inside of a giant cave that i could not escape. Now that the Beyond Launch Trailer dropped, I want to give it another chance, but the Division 2 is still calling my name everyday! That update looks sweet though, so I may pick it up and convince my wife to play it with me.

It feels like a lot of people are pointing to what are otherwise considered to be well-regarded games. So, with that in mind, I would say mine is Hyper Light Drifter. I've started and stopped playing that game several times but could never manage to get far; I just didn't like it enough. Some say the music is great, and maybe it is by itself, but in the game, it puts me to sleep. The gameplay is fine but doesn't hold my attention. I got to the first boss I think, and then after that, I didn't get far so it's safe to say that I didn't discover 95 percent of that game. Perhaps I should try it again at some point; it's been a while.

Two others would be Celeste and Super Meat Boy. I don't hate them, nor was it the challenge they might pose that put me off (if anything, those are aspects that I'd enjoy), but overall many aspects of those games didn't grab me so I stopped pretty soon after I started them. They're not bad, they just didn't hold my attention is all.

[two weeks later...]

Basically, including myself before learning more about the game, playing it for myself, and either remembering Tenchu and seeing that it was linked to From Soft, or hearing/seeing more people talk about Tenchu as Sekiro came closer to release. That, and a The Completionist video about Sekiro featuring VaatiVidya; the two talking about the game in comparison to the Souls games and not saying a single fucking word about Tenchu.

I think the last game I did this to was Tekken 7. I know I hate Tekken, so I didn't try it for a long time, but it went on a really good price and everyone had said such glowing things. The mechanics of Tekken just don't make sense to me. I literally couldn't beat some of the earliest story missions. Probably made it like ~45 minutes before returning it.

The other one that comes to mind is For Honor, and that's another one where I quit mostly because there wasn't much to do if I wasn't good at it and I didn't really want to get good.

Dustforce. People were praising the heck out of that game, but one minute in I decided that it felt terrible and never came back.