Getting a newfound appreciation for a game you previously hated

With all the various sales going on with Black Friday and all, I couldn't help myself and decided to pick up Burnout Paradise. It wasn't my favourite Burnout game, but at such a low price I thought "might as well". When I first played the game back in 2008, I found it annoying to constantly check the map during a race or time trial event, which was a common complaint amongst some Burnout fans. Yet, upon playing it now in 2022, this issue isn't as big of a problem as I remember. This is likely down to the fact that I'm relying more on the game to tell me when to make a turn, and the result is that I'm actually quite enjoying Paradise far more than I was expecting. A similar thing happened to me with both Ico and Demon's Souls (and I really hated Demon's Souls at first), which just goes to show you how a few years can drastically change your outlook on something.

So to you, person reading this, have you gone back to a game you once disliked only to be pleasantly surprised?

I bought Eschalon book 1 as one of my earliest Steam purchases. It was my first CRPG, and I just couldn't get on with it. I liked what it was trying to do, but I hated how obtuse the systems were and how punishingly hard it was. I put it down for years. When I picked it up again, I hadn't exactly played any other CRPGs, but I'd had a lot of time to think about things like "save-scumming" and whether I thought such a thing would cheapen my experience. It turns out save-scumming is practically necessary for many CRPG first-time playthroughs, and now it's one of my favourite genres. Eschalon book 1 is a pretty good CRPG too.

Guess this was more of a "genre I learned to love" than it was about the game.

For me it was a technical issue, i tried the demo of Resident Evil 6 on Xbox 360 and the input delay made it feel dreadful to play, when the PC version came around i decided to try it again and it was transformative, an absolute joy to play and one of my favourite entries in the franchise. I have a similar issue with the Uncharted series and The Last of Us, input delay ruined those games for me and since i don't own the newer consoles i don't know what they're like when they're actually functioning correctly.

The first "dungeon" in Resonance of Fate is a pretty difficult start to the game and put me off playing it twice, but i liked its concept so much i eventually pushed through it a third time and after that had a great time.

Unfortunately i couldn't get into Burnout Paradise after 4 attempts over the years, i kept trying since i love driving games and Jeff adores it but i feel like i've experienced everything it has to offer after an hour.

@cikame: Like you with Burnout Paradise, I've had my fair share of games I couldn't get into no matter how many times I tried. The Battle Royale genre as a whole actually is one that just has too much downtime for me to fully enjoy, despite my trying the many games that have spawned from it.

I think that the real problem here is that there are just too many new and interesting games coming out nowadays for me to ever attempt returning to one I even mildly disliked, let alone hated. Also, as I'm sure is the case for many people on this site, I own a ton of games that I've never played at all. Either way, if I'm desperate for something new, I'd rather try a thing I've never played before than one I already tried and disliked.

After playing the demo for Driver: San Francisco (2011), I decided to skip the full release. Being a fan of the series, the tonal shift was jarring. Basically, the dreary characters of the past were suddenly replaced with sparkling TV personalities with quippy lines.

Probably a year or more passes, and I ended up watching a full playthrough. Turns out there's a reason for the tonal shift, and the demo simply couldn't do the full game justice.

There's not much depth or nuance in the story, and the mechanics haven't changed all that much from previous titles, but it's a solid B-game.

My most personally infamous example is Final Fantasy VII. I came to most of the golden era JRPGs late, through emulators and “best writing in video games” lists, so the Final Fantasy name didn’t mean much to me at the time. It wasn’t until Final Fantasy VIII’s advertisements started hitting and looking cool as hell that I’d rent, and later buy, a JRPG that did anything more remarkable than look a hell of a lot like Dragon Ball (though, spoiler alert, Chrono Trigger was charming for many other reasons).

As I became mildly obsessed with PS1 and SNES JRPGs for the next five or six years (I played FF8 alone at least 13 and as many as possibly 18 times, from “level 1” to level 100 runs and back again - this is unimaginable to me now) my one white whale was Final Fantasy VII. I just couldn’t get over playing the opening mako reactor scene at a friend’s house one day, exclaiming “that’s it?” and then insisting we get back to a real game like Pokémon Stadium instead. You won’t believe what my Alakhazam’s been up to, dude.

But I loved Final Fantasy VIII. And VI. And IX. And X. I’d been in the private beta for XI. XII was a magnificent time waster (and is also, now, an example of hating a game I once loved!) and IV a beautiful hint of all that was to come. So of course I OWNED Final Fantasy VII. Shouldn’t I actually play it?

The summer between high school and college I set out to do exactly that, and exactly that I did, lustily. Back then any given JRPG would usually take me several months to complete balanced against weekly rentals of other games, but I put all my time and effort into this one and boy was I rewarded. What a fun game! Could it possibly…be better than my beloved FFVIII? No, blasphemy! And yet…

Unfortunately, as an avowed member of the “one save to rule them all Abby Russell memorial club” I made the grave mistake of using a save point near the bottom of the crater, just before the endgame boss rush I should’ve seen coming a mile away (at the very least a crater’s depth away) and with virtually no health items to spare (I was, perhaps, a little under leveled in my ravenous pursuit of the story) I just couldn’t survive what came next no matter how badly I wanted it. I ALSO, more distressingly, couldn’t survive fighting my way back OUT of the crater, either. So I’ve still never beaten FFVII. I’ll probably never play it again, though I love what Remake’s done with the place.

Back in the day i played a lot of Tomb Raider, because it came with the PC my dad received through his work.

I did think it looked fairly good and it seemed quite big of a game too, but i just couldn't get on board with the platforming controls. I was constantly lining up my jumps by tapping the directional controls over and over, or jumping super high when i was just trying to grab a ledge right above me. It was frustrating.

Luckily there's this Tomb Raider Anniversary thingy available, which is a remake of the original but with more modern controls. And suddenly i was able to appreciate the game and see it all the way through.

I was also quite dissapointed with State of Emergency back in the day because i straight up didn't know it was an arcade game with a timer, but imagined it would be more like GTA in a smaller environment. Bit harsh to spend your monthly allowance on a game that plops you in the same supermarket over and over again i felt. But i can now look at the gameplay on it's own merits and think it's probably a decent timewaster to boot up here and there.

Bloodborne. Absolutely hated the the first area and had a 2-year 'break' before returning and actually pushing through the whole game + DLC. I love the From Software atmosphere and creature design. But I still can't really call myself a big fan of the Souls games. I've returned to Demon's Souls with every re-release and the remake, but always drop it after a few areas. The remake lasted until the prison area at least. I actively hate Dark Souls and don't think its positives alleviate how annoying it is to play from the start.

But I spent 150 hours on doing basically everything save PvP (why bother?) in Elden Ring, and Sekiro is one of my favorite games of all time (got the Plat). I will still never play any of them again because I never replay games unless they are really short and neat experiences. I do appreciate what FS are doing, even if the games aren't always for me.

@nodima: One of my gaming sins is that I've never completed a single Final Fantasy game. I've always meant to go back and finish the original FFVII since that's the only one I have played. Though if I'm being honest, I really want to try Final Fantasy VI when I get the time.

While I'm sure there are others, the closest game I can think of right now is Days Gone. I played it on my base PS4 and it was sluggish, as the frame rate would constantly dip below 30fps even though the game had an unlocked frame rate. Then I got a PS5 and heard from Digital Foundry how many of the unlocked PS4 games now ran at a smooth 60fps, including Days Gone and how it feels like a better game. So I gave it another shot, and I was surprised how quickly I got into it and way enjoying myself. Suddenly, tasked that seemed annoying like getting gas for the motorcycle was no longer an issue, or clearing out the zombie nest in different towns. In fact, doing so became fun along with the other side quest. It's the first game I played that made it clear how much performance matter in terms of immersion and overall enjoyment when it comes to the gameplay.

Now think of the recently released Gotham Knights and its horrible performance issues. Think of how much better that game would've been had it been better optimized and released like it should've been. I say this, because I believe this game could be my next example if the so-called big patch fixes everything, even though I haven't played it yet.

Hmm . . . Dissidia NT comes to mind.

They released a demo/beta/whatever on PS4 and I was hooked on it for the entire duration . . . until the last day, that is. Once the novelty of HD-online-Dissidia wore off, I realized that stripping away so many mechanics from the PSP games to get it to work in the first place actually DID bother me. I went from planning on getting the game at launch to souring on it completely. Fast forward a year or so. The game hits 15 bucks on Amazon and I decide to give it a legitimate shot by taking it for what it is and not for what I wanted it to be. Dissidia NT is not Dissidia 3 (013?), but it is a pretty fun 3v3 deathmatch thing where cool characters fight in cool arenas while cool shit is happening around them while cool music plays. The game was limping along by that point and the match queues were getting bananas (we're talking 5-30 minutes) but I did manage to do a 180 on the game and wring quite a bit of fun out of it before it truly died.

Reading AV_Gamer's post made me think of at least one game, though I can't say I hated it previously.

Red Dead Redemption kinda performed like ass on PS3 (at launch anyway, not sure if it ever got any better) and I'm sure that played at least a part in me giving up on it pretty fast. Tackled it again before RDR2 came out on Xbone X through backwards compatibility and though it didn't run at 60FPS, a steady 30 and 4K still made the experience a lot better.