What game have you tried and tried to play, only to be foiled?

As everyone knows, Walking Dead is all the rage in the industry right now. Everyone's dog seems to be talking about how freakin' awesome it is. How cute Clem is. Etc.

I have yet to get past the first freakin' episode though. Not for lack of trying, the game is just so fuckin' broken and has yet to be patched after 4 more months and 4 more content releases (the first of which is what seems to have introduced the game breaking bugs, plentiful that they are, to my installations of the game.) For the longest time, they game just wouldn't start, at all. It'd go through the steam dialogue making you wait for the executable to launch, and then either nothing would happen, or I could the error message of doom that has been so frequent for many users. Eventually, it slowly started to launch, but in a tiny window with all of the settings as low as they'll go, and refusing to go up. So then I'd quit the game and try to relaunch, and boom, dead again. After a while, I got it to launch long enough to try and start actually playing. Guess what? My save was completely gone! Wait, no, all of the files existed in the save folder, they just weren't being read by the game. Awesome!

So here we are about 3 months later, and I've played Episode One about 4 times, kinda hate it (instead of just being slightly entertained in the first playthrough), and I've lost my save after every single one. So finally we're at the last stretch, and I think "hey, maybe it's fixed!" Something happened at the end of the first episode the last time I played to piss me off. I think there was a pre-roll spoiling bits of Episode 2 that ticked me off. Nothing major, but still, what the fuck? I don't need a pre-roll showing what's about to happen, I need a pre-roll showing me what happened last time. So I quit the game, to leave it for another time. Anyway, I finally got around to starting it up again, and it actually started and everything was good. Untilllllllll boom, no fucking save. Not a fucking thing. I went to play, and it pushe me to the episode select screen. I was a bit confused, went to episode two, an it said "Blah blah default choices" and was like WHAT?? and then it pushed me back to the load screen to pick a save, and all three were fucking empty.

I really want to play this game! It sounds awesome, I love zombies, and no one, including the friends I talk to on a regular basis, will shut up about the damned things. But it simply refuses to cause me anything but heartache. I can't even get a rebate from freakin TellTale.

Have you ever had this kind of an issue?

That's a really huge bummer. I installed and played through it in the span of the last two days on the PC via Steam and encountered no problems whatsoever. Have you tried uninstalling and then installing over again outright?

I haven't had any horror stories about games not running, but I do remember the Battlefield 3 Beta actually causing me to reinstall Windows 7 on my laptop, but it was really my fault. I was living in an apartment and wanted to show it to my roommates and I was moving around a lot with my sensitive and heat-prone laptop while playing the game in my apartment living room and eventually a little bit of force against it while it was a little overheated caused it to reset multiple times (I'd get to the Windows 7 boot screen then just by pressing against my laptop it reset itself again) and somehow corrupt everything involved with booting Windows 7 properly. Then it took like a half hour for Windows 7 to boot.

Luckily reinstalling Windows 7 did the trick and I didn't have to worry about half hour load times. This was about a year ago, too. I'm still using the same laptop (it actually still runs Battlefield 3 fine I'm just careful to keep it cool and not move it around so much now) and even the same hard drive but I'm getting it replaced with an SSD since my Linux drive analyzer has been showing signs of wear on the HDD I've been using for almost 3 years now. I'll definitely take better care of my new SSD when it comes.

Titan Quest. I played it years ago when it first came out and loved it. Sadly I got to the forest area and had to quit because my PC at the time couldn't handle it and that zone made it slow down to a literal slideshow. Since then I have tried several times to play the game again but I just don't like it anymore. Every time I just get to Egypt, or almost get there, and quit out of boredom from the game or from making it too easy by trying to use cheats/trainers to speed along the game.

Also, Skyrim. I enjoyed it for the first little bit but after awhile it just got real old. Nothing I did seemed to matter in the story, the story was not interesting, none of the side quests were any fun, none of the characters were interesting, and the combat just got so repetitive that every time a fight started I just rolled my eyes thinking "Here we go again".

@EquitasInvictus: I've tried everything possible. Soon I'm going to finish my complete rebuild of my PC, in the next two weeks, and then I'll be installing a fresh OEM Windows 8 and all of the hardware will be completely different, so hopeflly then it'll work for me. Maybe. Although I've heard that having a 360 controller on at all on W8 release preview causes the game not to boot at all, so hopefully that is fixed because if not it'll just be difficult to convince myself to sit up at the desk and finally get through to the second episode. Especially with more games on my plate than I've had for a while (Halo 4, Blops 2, AC3, Far Cry 3, Sleeping Dogs, Puzzle Agent 2 [FINALLY]).

As a side note, BF3 is kind of one of those games as well for me, my CPU is ancient and even with the modest machine it was in was easily the weakest, oldest part in there, and as a result, BF3 is unplayable regardless of the settings I have it running at. I'm buying the top of the line Quad Core Ivy Bridge in a few days to round out my PC and finally remove my old mobo and 2GB of ram (which will be replaced by 16GB of very excellent RAM) so I'll be playing BF3 within the month hopefully. That was just an issue of getting unlucky with system reqs. Can't wait to play it on my bad ass rig when it's all up and running!

I lost my save to TWD once (my fault) and haven't gotten the desire to play it again. The second playthrough was obnoxious insofar as some of the decisions I made seemed to have no actual meaning. I keep on putting off playing the second ep, simply because playing through the first left such a sour taste in my mouth. Playing through most serious RPGs a second time always leaves me in amazement at how differently things happen. TWD makes me shake my head.

Probably going to keep on trucking. I think the key with TWD is never to replay it and preserve the illusion that you are deciding things.

@crusader8463: I used the offline inventory thing so I could keep rares around for other chars but other than that no cheats. I could see how cheats would destroy the fun in the game very quickly though. It's by far my favorite diablo 2 clone. The expansion is pretty good too. It's too bad the developer went out of business.

For me it's Darksiders. So many false starts on that game. I finally had to just admit to myself I hate the game. I think most of my problem is with the setting, main character, and gfx design. and the story, enemy design, level design. and if that first boss fight is any indication - way boring bosses.

I think I'm tired of RNG loot games, or I'm tired of boring "Diablo, but with ____!" games because I only got about 7 hours into Torchlight 2, I've burnt the fuck out on Dead Island real fast, and I didn't finish Borderlands 2 despite beating the first game multiple times across multiple characters. I haven't bothered with Darksiders 2 because I feel the same will happen, and I don't need to waste HDD space on a five hour trudge into a snorefest.

When I played fighting games competitively, I could never get into MvC3 to save my life. I should love it, since it's a magic series game with dumb gimmicks and bullshit everywhere, plus the assist system, but it never got me. I'd try it for hours at a time at a friend's house, but could never get into it at anything beyond landing Haggar's command grab HC (which ended up with me screaming about scoops at 2 AM).

Planescape Torment. I have made it kind of far but mannnnn that game is so old now.

Fallout 1 and 2 too.

There have some different games that were old and I simply couldn't get into them (and I am by no means a graphics whore so it isn't that!). Fallout is a prime example, I wanted to play that game, but it just never clicked with me...

Might and Magic VII, because it's 60 hours long and requires full screen.

@Animasta said:

Planescape Torment. I have made it kind of far but mannnnn that game is so old now.

Fallout 1 and 2 too.

It took me a few tries to get into Planescape: Torment. Then, finally this year, I decided to really make sure I stuck with it.

It was definitely worth it.

Also, there's also a big bunch of mods you can use. And make sure you put all your points into Wisdom, Intelligence, Charisma!

If it makes you feel any better, I don't think The Walking Dead is nearly as good as many are saying, and you aren't really missing much by not playing all of it.

For me, it was Red Dead Redemption. The first time I played it, I got through about an hour before getting bored and moving on to something else. I tried it again a few months later and popped it back into my 360 and gave it another shot. I loaded my old save and got about an hour further into it, but then - as i was riding a horse through the desert - I somehow fell downward through the environment into a world where purple clouds floated around below me. I was unable to save, load or extricate myself so I shut it down and put the game back on my shelf. About 6 months ago, I decided to give it one more try. This time, I loaded my last save and within 3 minutes the game hard locked on me. I very well may never try it again, which is a shame since it is so highly acclaimed and well-loved.

I think I'm tired of RNG loot games, or I'm tired of boring "Diablo, but with ____!" games because I only got about 7 hours into Torchlight 2, I've burnt the fuck out on Dead Island real fast, and I didn't finish Borderlands 2 despite beating the first game multiple times across multiple characters. I haven't bothered with Darksiders 2 because I feel the same will happen, and I don't need to waste HDD space on a five hour trudge into a snorefest.

When I played fighting games competitively, I could never get into MvC3 to save my life. I should love it, since it's a magic series game with dumb gimmicks and bullshit everywhere, plus the assist system, but it never got me. I'd try it for hours at a time at a friend's house, but could never get into it at anything beyond landing Haggar's command grab HC (which ended up with me screaming about scoops at 2 AM).

Mario Kart 7, haven't played much of it despite spending hours and hours with all the previous games.

I've played the beginning of almost ever Final Fantasy multiple times, never to complete a single one. I've never been held back by technical issues though.

@BisonHero: I've put as much time into Diablo 2 as people have put into WoW, so I more than "liked" Diablo 2. I had a reason to enjoy those games, but I just don't anymore. Now I wonder if I only liked D2 rather than the genre.

Mass Effect. I've tried three different times to get into the series and just can't.

Hitman Absolution. I quite literally CAN'T get into it, because lolambiguouserrormessages. Grrrrr...

Serious answer: Red Dead Redemption. Westerns bore me to tears, but I figured gameplay would trump setting for me. Nope. It kills me that I own this game that I can recognize as amazing and brilliant, and I just can't enjoy it the way I want to.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It's one of those games that I just can't understand what people liked(loved) so much about it. I like the concept and the environment but the game play, the terrible, terrible gameplay, I just can't get past it or understand how so many didn't feel the same way.

@MordeaniisChaos: I just bought the entire first season of The Walking Dead. I've been putting it off because story-driven quick-time events type of games aren't really my bag. I'm hoping I to like it but I won't be entirely surprised if I don't, but I bought it during the Steam Sale for $12.50 so I'm totally prepared to eat it if it doesn't click with me.

STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat. In SoC I can't continue because an NPC won't talk to me, and CoP crashes every 15 minutes. It's really a bummer because I loved every bit that I was actually able to play.

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. I bought it from Steam years ago hearing that it was such a revered game and three separate times I tried to get into it and barely fumbled my way further but would but up against the first major factory area and get frustrated. This was of course tolerating the horrible save system and wonky controls (given what the game demands of you). After a while I said fuck it, put some cheats in and watched all the cutscenes from within the game. Did the same with Abe's Exodus as well if I remember, cutting straight to the cutscenes.

Those first two games in its original form need a major revamping or reimagining to be playable nowadays.

I keep trying to play Dota 2, everyone keeps raving about how amazing it is. As a new player though it's just really hard and also really boring, I dunno... I'll keep trying I guess but at the moment I don't get the hype.

@UitDeToekomst: I don't really think it is that great from what I've seen/heard of it. I don't much like the protagonist (not nearly as utilitarian as I am, so there are often no choices I agree with) and especially in the first Episode there was a lack of polish that I didn't much like> Stuff like being yelled at for lying when I told as much of the truth as the game would let me and never actually lied? Kind of bunk.

And I always thought it was pretty crazy to hear about all of the bugs in that game. I'm not sure I ever experienced much of anything, and I never had a game breaking bug that I can remember. Sadly, I never even saw animal people.

@Grimluck343: That's a real shame. The first game is incredible, holy shit. In my top three games ever easily.

@BisonHero: I never got how people played DIablo 3 for the loot. Sure it adds to the game, but I think the gameplay was just really damned fun. For a game that has engaging and enjoyable mechanics like Diablo 3 or Borderlands, I never had that perspective. I loved the hell out of Diablo 2 but I think it falls into the realm of not being too much more than a cool world, somewhat engaging combat once you get pretty far in, and a loot treadmill.

@MordeaniisChaos: Yeah, the PC version is badly optimized. I had the same problem starting Episode 4 which, after "fixed", affected how my Episode 5 played (Ep 4 couldn't launch --> changed compatibility to WinXP to launch --> suddenlty save file not appearing in game --> had to hack timestamps on save files to make them appear --> resulting in wrong decisions carried over to the final episode). What sucks is that the best workarounds don't come from Telltale themselves but from fellow consumers on the forums. If the number of posts on Telltale's Support forums are any indicator, it's that the console versions of The Walking Dead are the way to go for peace of mind.

Telltale Forums as of today (archived up to July 2012):

• Xbox Support - 564 posts
• PS3 Support - 305 posts
• PC/Mac Support - 2,185 posts

Come to think of it, the PS3 version which appears to be the least problematic is always released before the other versions. Hmmm...

Batman: Arkham City

My girl bought it for me for Christmas last year, but I just couldn't get into it. I really enjoyed the first one, but couldn't get down with the "open world" hub. It just felt inefficient and didn't add to the game in a positive way. I remember Jeff saying something along the same line in a podcast last year, helped to justify my feelings, hahaha

@ProfessorEss said:

Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It's one of those games that I just can't understand what people liked(loved) so much about it. I like the concept and the environment but the game play, the terrible, terrible gameplay, I just can't get past it or understand how so many didn't feel the same way.

The gameplay is literally the only reason I consider Human Revolution one of the best 10 games that came out in the last 10 years.

It's late and I'm too tired to explain, I'll edit the post later, but if you didn't know I am someone who worships gameplay above anything else, and I consider HR to be a gameplay behemoth.

Mass Effect 1 & 2, every system I ever had them for breaks shortly afterward.

My PSP

Everytime I try playing it I'm reminded how much I hate that little analog disc. Can't wait for my vita to arrive. Might actually grab some psp games and actually play them

This is quite self explanatory: Deus Ex: Invisible War. Especially compared to DE 1 & 3, Invisible War is just soo mediocre. Tried to play it just few months ago, but just couldnt bear it.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

No matter how many times I tried to play it, I just found it dull. The story did nothing but remind me of KOTR 2 which I really enjoyed however, it felt like they simply took the Exlie and dropped (him/her) into a fantasy environment. Gameplay was to easy for me I never felt like there was anyone around me that could give me a real fight.

XCOM

I was having no issues and a great time with it. But I reached a point where the enemies are all just slightly over my capabilities and I can't seem to get through a random mission, no matter how many times I restart it, without having my team wiped. I have no money and/or upgrades I can make before I go on the mission, so it's basically a death loop. And if I try to skip the mission for the next payday, too many countries back away from the XCOM program (even though I lost no country so far in my playthrough, but the panic levels are kinda high)

It's starting to dawn on me that I may have to restart the game, but I don't want to give up on my high level assault guy VAN DAMME and his crew of miscreants.

Man, I love (at the moment peppered with mild hate) this game!

Batman: Arkham City

My girl bought it for me for Christmas last year, but I just couldn't get into it. I really enjoyed the first one, but couldn't get down with the "open world" hub. It just felt inefficient and didn't add to the game in a positive way. I remember Jeff saying something along the same line in a podcast last year, helped to justify my feelings, hahaha

@Rafaelfc: The game is essentially a roguelike. Although you will be able to reload and reload and reload on non-ironman play throughs, you will just get yourself in a bad place that you can't get out of. Try reading a faq on early game strategy. Maybe we should encourage the community hear to write one up in blog form or something actually. Seems like that's the hump most people need to get over.

Any fighting game. I have a group of friends who all love fighting games, Blazblue being the big one. I spent countless hours trying to enjoy it but it just never clicked.

Kingdom Hearts - I kept trying it over and over because so many people liked it, but I get 3-4 worlds in and just cannot keep going.

Mass effect 1&2 I have them both and have started them 3 times I'd say but it just doesnt pull me in. It's a shame because apparently they are great games. -Sleeping dogs -Xcom A lot lately actually. Nothing has grabbed me like bioshock did all those years ago

Tried starting Max Payne 3 a month or so ago, after buying it for full price at release, but Steam couldn't connect to its servers to validate the game, so no dice. Guess I should have pirated my copy. Man, I hate DRM.

Well I went through about 7 Xbox 360s after launch in a pretty short span. There was a lot of things being foiled, scratched, blewd up, etc. Sports games always seemed to take the worst of getting scratched up. A lot of the other ones it was more just getting fed up with the crashes.