What games did you try to get into (or back into) this year but couldn't? Will you try again?

Looking over this year in gaming I played a lot of games and I played a lot of the current games. I did miss arguably the biggest titles, Elden Ring, God of War: Ragnarok, and Horizon Forbidden West but I want to play all three I just didn't find the time. But there were other games that I did try to play but couldn't get into. Some like Metal Hellsinger I didn't like. Some like Sifu I did like but just couldn't find the right time to devote to (and that came during a time when I was having frequent migraines and oh boy that is not a game to play with slowed reaction speeds.)

I tried to get back into Nier (the first one) and though I was enjoying myself and LOVING the music I bounced off it again because I know I will need like 10-20 hours of game time to devote to play it the way I want to so I need to get back into it when I have the time to give. I was surprised at how well I remembered everything going on so I think that one should be good to go early next year (though there are a ton of games coming out early too.)

So what games did you bounce off of this year? Do you intend to go back to them? Why or why not?

I'm usually a pretty good judge of games I think I'm going to like but when I got a PS5, I had to get the HFW bundle. This was one I wouldn't normally buy. I gave it a shot but I bounced off that pretty quickly. I was intrigued by the story but found the combat pretty repetitive and boring. I just kept saying to myself, this would be so much easier and more fun with a gun lol. Not sure if I'll go back to it but I also hate leaving games unfinished.

Tunic and Stray were two games that I really wanted to like pre-release but did not enjoy once I got my hands on them, and highly doubt I'll ever go back to them.

With Tunic, I'm just not a fan of the "Breaking the fourth wall, this game isn't what it seems" genre and didn't enjoy that a lot of its puzzles just involved withholding basic gameplay elements from you until you found a collectable.

I think someone on the Minn Max podcast said something similar to this in their GOTY discussions, but for me, Stray didn't feel like a game that was wholly unique to being a cat. It felt like a video game designed to be the same as every other action-adventure video game, the character just happens to be a cat in this one.

Splatoon 3 is one I might keep trying to go back to. That whole series has always been something I want to like more than I actually do. But something about it just never really clicks with me. This one is the one I put the most time into by far, but after about a week or two of it, I just feel look there's nothing more for me to get out of its online modes. Maybe I'll finish out the campaign though.

As far as games I tried to go back to this year, I did try to go back to Lovely Planet. It's cool. Has great weirdo vibes. But I've just accepted that I don't have the skills needed to play it, and I will never be able to play it to completion.

I decided to try to see if Metal Gear Survive was actually bad or if I just judged the genre shift too harshly the last time that I played it. I put 5 hours into it and I just couldn't care enough to keep going. It's not a great game but also I am so tired of survival crafting games in general that I'm pretty sure I'm never going to play another survival crafting game again. I'm aware that this isn't a good representative of the genre, but it is, however, an encapsulation of how spread thin the genre has become.

@brian_: All of those resonate for me.

I got pretty deep into Tunic and want to finish it. I liked it more than you did but it did irritate me with some of its choices and the meta nature of the gameplay and narrative.

I finished Stray as part of my "let's finish some 2022 games" stuff but it took me 3 separate "periods" of picking away at it, which is a lot for a 5 hour game, and while its extremely pretty and atmospheric it's also not at all a cat simulator and has middling gameplay. I'm kind of glad I played it because I did enjoy seeing all the set pieces and a few of the puzzles but I think it was very overrated. Not a bad game but pretty average.

My thoughts on Splatoon are the same as yours. I keep wanting to like it and just get into the flow with it but I can't. I put like 7 hours into Splatoon 3 and I didn't hate that time but I have no real desire to go back. Something about the short frantic games, the way you can get killed out of nowhere, and yet how swingy it can be at the end just doesn't work for me. Salmon Run is better and I put more time into that but in the end there are a lot of better horde mode shooters.

I would add Mario Strikers: Battle League to this as well. That game is okay in many ways but its total lack of single player and the disrupted flow from the powerups and super shots (without the frantic craziness of truly over the top sports games) just don't make it a ton of fun to play. It's not terrible terrible but I only really played it a little and I definitely wish I hadn't bought it.

Tried to get back into Horizon before Forbidden West came out. Between not really enjoying the combat and the audio logs talking about the "Apocashitstorm" I really couldn't find anything to hook me in. Just found myself being irritated by both gameplay and narrative fronts.

Got Fallout 76 for free, played it a little this year but will most likely try it properly next year. Though whether or not that is a good idea I suspect not.

Tunic is the big one that I want to go back to, it was very intriguing on its face but some of the design choices were off-putting. I actually finished most of the games I started this year, surprisingly enough. Any of the other big games I can think of that I didn't finish were just because they are on the longer side, but I am still actively playing them (see: Soul Hackers 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 3).

This was basically the exact same experience I had with Stray. I started playing it when it came out since I already had the PS+ plus that let me play it for free, and I didn't finish it until a few months later. It really shouldn't have taken me multiple sittings months apart to finish such a short game, but it just didn't grab me that hard. As you said, it was worth seeing in the end I think, mainly for the lighting and environment/character design, which I thought was quite good. But I think the "oh you play as a cat" gimmick really pushed it into getting way more talked up and overrated.

I played roughly 50 hours of Elden Ring earlier this year and had a great time, but fell off for whatever reason. I started a new game a few days ago and after 10-ish hours I don't know if I have it in me to complete it. It's just too big and the idea of playing only one game for the next couple of months is not appealing to me right now

I started Final Fantasy VII: Remake on my PS4 when it launched and dropped off after learning that Intergrade wasn't gonna be available for me. So I got a new PC and bought it on Steam. I hope to complete it and see what all the hubbub is about and I've SOMEHOW been able to avoid spoilers on the ending so far but I know that I've been tempting fate the longer I procrastinate.

I tried to come back to play Cyberpunk 2077, but this game appears to be a bit too disturbing for my tastes as I cannot seem to handle M-rated games in general plus I'm not a massive fan of RPGs in general, even though I love the 1980's futuristic feel.

Oh, for the Super Smash Bros franchise, I have chosen not to come back to this franchise again and I'm not looking forward to seeing the PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royal sequel (If it's announced) because I'm not a fan of fighting games meanwhile Guilty Gear and BlazBlue are the only two fighting games that I like.

Edit: Halo and Team Fortress are the only two M-rated video game franchises that I can enjoy.

nioh 2 is my current millstone. i'll finish it, eventually.

That's mine as well. I'm making very slow progress through it.

God of War Ragnarok - heart broken by it. Really loved the first one.

Maybe it all comes together later but so far this one just feels like a more bloated version of the original with even more filler between the set pieces and story moments I enjoyed.

Elden Ring. Just not my cup of tea, although I did enjoy the 10 hours or so I spent with it. I just find the combat frustrating in a not-fun way. I feel like I died a lot from not being sure about my weapons' slow wind-up time or exactly where the enemy hitboxes were. Whereas in challenging 2D games like Hollow Knight, Metroid Dread or Super Meat Boy, I always know exactly what I did wrong. I'm also not at all interested in min-maxing or figuring out all the obscure cheesing techniques.

@bigsocrates: I went back to cyberpunk and restarted from my launch save. I got fairly far. It's modded to hell and back, lots of positives with that and it's fun with good enough character stuff and story. It was never that fun to play, but my "what if I tried my making a hacking/stealth/mono-wire build like Lucy in edgerunners"(yes that show fucking got me good) is now just overpowered and combat doesn't really exist. All I really need to go back and do is just...follow up on the major side quests and keep chugging through the story while 1shotting goons with quick hacks etc. It made it less fun to play than before, but since witcher 2 and 3 cdpr for me has never had the most FUN games, just atleast in the case of the witcher phenomenal worlds and writing for me.

I tried to go back to Tales of Arise last year. I still want to now but, the combat...doesn't feel good to me. I gave up on Berseria. I've never really played any other tales aside from Destiny on the ps1. Berseria just...the limits of artes based on the little diamonds and how easy it was to be low on them as well as just, combat I couldn't understand and never felt good to play, made me quit even when I did enjoy my misfit party -a lot-. Arise plays better and I enjoyed the party here too, but the combat again...Against normal enemies I could understand it well enough, but every time you fight a boss and the entire like stun/stagger/break whatever it was called, it's been awhile, mechanic doesn't exist and they don't react to hits at all and just nail with you huge attacks while you do 1-2 hits and then just avoid because the MAIN battle mechanic for stringing together characters into chaining attacks is turned into only specific instances on bosses made me...hate playing it. I don't understand tales games. Here's a million abilities, I don't understand what's good and when to use or switch the abilities and in the case of Arise the most fun I did have getting stuff going and chaining stuff isn't how every boss fight works. I'm 20 something hours in, I'd like to finish it buuuut....

Sakuna of Rice and Ruin. I had a lot of fun and my only complaint was that you will feel super under leveled which makes fights impossible because of the seasons and farming. It makes the farming and rice matter, but sometimes it sucks to be like "oh, I do 1% damage to this enemy per hit, guess I'll just wait for the ingame year to pass and harvest to be over". I stopped playing cause of online shit but should go back.

The Ascent. I started after finishing necromunda for that same grimey cyberpunk style. It's....really really neat to look at and listen to, but it's not that fun to play. It just feels like a really basic twin stick shooter and after several hours almost none of the rpg stuff matters and it's just kind of boring aiming and shooting over and over. I tried to go back once, it felt boring. I doubt I'll do much else with it but who knows.

Lol, this turned into another ___ game is overrated and i didn't like it/dropped it/bored by it, post real quick. Understand the question thou, but it tends to spill more negative when you look back on things you stopped playing. Many just stop and get hooked on something else easier to turn on enjoy and turn off like vampire survivors this year. Personally, to stay on the positive side, I look forward to going back and playing some longer games. I keep touching a few and most games need like 1-5 hours these days to get their hooks in me, that moment in a rpg where your out and about, like your cast and the story is brimming with intrigue and openness and you got control over where to go and tons of time. Doesn't often happen for many as they age ha.

But yeah, jumping back into gamepass free games would be my answer. There are so many, and before you know it, a new one comes out. Even focusing on short 8-20 hour ones is time-consuming but fun. I find if i don't think so hard about time, I enjoy the game more, or at least set out 1 hour to relax and just enjoy the game. Hope to finish a bunch of the newest free ones there.

@brittinius: I'm actually in a similar boat (came back about 40-42 hours in)... I didn't start a new game, I just picked up my original game. Still plodding through it, but there is a part of me that's feeling like it's an uphill struggle, particularly as I've just hit the Radahn fight (which, at least in the first couple of attempts, feels ROUGH and requires me to grind some to strengthen). ER and Midnight Suns are the two main 2022 I've got left to try and play through for my podcast's GOTY, but I'm not sure how much progress I'll make in either :(

The two 2022 games I fell off the hardest were Chinatown Detective Agency and RPG Time: The Legend of Wright. RPG Time looks incredible, but is very slow to get going :(

As more of a going forward thought, I'm going to try to play FF15 this year. I fell off this game the first time around. I have been told that if I just mainline the game, it's pretty enjoyable, or at least better. Once I wrap up Lightning Returns (which has been a lot of fun!), this will be the only main numbered FF that I have not finished (not counting MMOs, because do they ever finish?)

I'm trying to get back into FPS. I really like third-person action/shooters (Division, Gears, Fortnite, etc.) but the first-person perspective for whatever reason just doesn't do it for me anymore. I can't seem to get past the lack of situational awareness. I've got a few well-regarded single-player FPS campaigns lined up in my backlog I plan to try (Titanfall 2, DOOM (2016), DOOM Eternal and the recent Deus Ex games). Hopefully these catch my interest.

Fire Emblem Three Houses. My save was post time skip and going straight into an all beasts/dragons paralogue chapter is not fun at all. No idea what's going on with the story as well and they're no good summary videos on line.

Just gonna buy Fire Emblem Engage in a few weeks time to scratch that itch instead.

I started Arkham Knight when Kevin Conroy died, but only did the first handful of missions. Plan to get back to it once I finally finish Control, but I keep getting distracted by Star Wars Squadrons because I want to play that before the Epic Games giveaway player bump wears off.

First world problems, I tell ya.

Unpacking: I'll allow that this was purchased as part of a last minute hope I might actually convince myself to not hang out at the bar after work and binge some smaller games before writing a game of the year list...but here lies January, half-dead and Norco, Weird West (the top-down, Fallout guys one), Midnight Fight Express and Inscryption in the "Now that the last set of 365 days has been tossed for a new set, who cares?!" pile of arbitrary reasons to keep it moving. Of these games, I'll definitely get back to Norco (I was just in New Orleans for the second time in under two years because I simply love it!) and can see Midnight Fight Express being a good time-to-time time killer, but I choose Unpacking to spotlight this collection because as I've said somewhere else on this forum I am an incredibly disorganized person. As a result, playing the game normally makes me irrationally irritated at this fictional girl's preferred placement for her things - I looked up a solution image for the first room after a miserable 45 minutes and nearly threw my iMac out the window - but turning off those requirements just made Unpacking, well, interactive unpacking. Using a mouse with a DualSense. It's unpacking but worse. No thanks.

Maneater: I will write that game of the year blog eventually, though, and I like to also log my thoughts on what else I played that year, so I won't go so far on anything else but I really disliked how much solid landmass exists between objectives. (Ed. note: you didn't follow through on this promise to yourself and the forum, Nodima, once more. Restrain those fingers you dweeb!) I was charmed for an hour or two, and having seen more fully upgraded shark antics from Dan's Youtube channel I get the appeal on its face, this game simply starts too slow and restrictive. Was very happy for the Playstation brand to get on the Netflix-for-games train 'cause I'd have been real sad to've spent money on this one.

Blade Runner: I have such deeply held nostalgia for this game that, despite all the negative reviews and photographic evidence they were entirely justified in their disappointed tone, the game went on sale and I gave these shucksters some of my cash. I think some of the graphical complaints might be a little overblown, but my mistake was made obvious stupidly quick for something that should've been even more obvious to me as I hovered over the purchase button: this game plays like trash on a controller. Having played Civilization IV and V for hours and hours (and hours) on my 2011 MacBook and my 2008 iMac before shifting to hours and hours (and hours) of Civilization VI on PS4/5, and also having not owned a proper gaming computer since an ill-fated 5-year sabbatical from Mac Life in my early teens (Windows XP, get wrecked!), I'm not as easily reminded of how poorly suited to controllers some PC games are...even though I probably should be. Hello, Tropico 5, Crusader Kings III, Planet Coaster and more! Mayhaps I'm just a fool...

WWE 2K22: Granted, some of this was influenced by it being a 2-hour trial via Playstation Plus and the tutorial being at least a half hour long, but this game has way too many systems to wrap your mind around in just an hour. Now that it's available in full on Playstation Plus I may give it another shot, because I still vividly remember watching Jeff and Jan Quick Look this and thinking that a lot of the stuff Jeff was complaining about looked pretty nice, actually. But I also don't follow wrestling at all and, having had my hands on it for even that briefest of moments, might have already started to see where Jeff was coming from.

Death Stranding Director's Cut: This is a game I put nearly 70 hours into on PS4, so this was mostly just a very early wintertime excuse to see a pretty game look prettier on PS5. Maybe if I'd have just started a new game I'd have spent more time with it (odd thing to think considering my favorite version of this game is playing as a longhaul trucker rather than hiker) but this wasn't a case of bouncing off the game. I just needed the hard drive space back.

Control: To see Control be a prettier pretty game! And goddamn is this game pretty! Unfortunately, without the pull of "what the fuck is going on?" I found myself uninterested in playing for more than a half hour or so at a time, partially because I felt that for all its middle chapter intrigue the overarching plot of Control left me deeply wanting something less dumb. Like Death Stranding, not a "bounce off", but felt it worth mentioning because the difference in performance from PS4 ot PS5 is dumby thicc. Add Ghost of Tsushima to this category, appended to this entry rather than the previous because I will definitely replay these two before whatever sequel eventually drops.

Kena Bridge of Spirits: Last for this section of "I love this game, don't get me wrong" entries, when New Game + dropped I belatedly lept back into the arms of my 2021's Game of the Year (yes, you read that right!) only to realize they'd done the hip new thing where the game not only adds new enemies to NG+ but new attacks to the old enemies. When I play a NG+, for the most part I'm seeking to do the thing where I get to have all the late game fun while experiencing the story and various progression checks in comically breezy fashion. I quickly swapped from NG+ to plain old NG while replaying God of War '18 prior to Ragnarok precisely because it also does this. Without a sequel to get beyond hyped for, I sadly don't think I'll see even the first mini-boss again any time soon.

Demon's Souls: Objectively, I get it, but about 15 hours in I'm stuck at a point where it's been too long to remember what I want to do but also not that interested in starting over (even if I'd likely get to where I'm at much faster through muscle memory). Also, it kind of feels like a baby game compared to Bloodborne or Elden Ring? Like, the Tower Knight is for toddlers? *Kanye shrug*

Final Fantasy XII: Zodiac Age: I could have a lot to say about this game, but I've already said a lot about the others. As succinctly as I can put it: the original game introduced me to the concept of a podcast game (though it was "album listening" game as a hip teenager rather than washed gentleman) and I realize I must've mostly loved it for that reason. Nearly as importantly, the game looked truly ridiculous on the precipice of the PS2 handing off to the PS3, but this remaster makes the game look boring, ugly, weird, off putting and/or kinda nice and sometimes somehow all five at once!

Crusader Kings III: I alluded to it above, and if you've seen literally six seconds of footage of this game you understand why Sony and Paradox Interactive have done console gamers such a favor offering up a three hour trial: the tutorial takes about two hours to complete on a DualSense, and the exact moment the training wheels are taken off the bike gets wobbly as fuck. I think I made it five minutes before I realized without at least a mouse, the PS5 port is a noble if equally dubiously villainous effort. Noble in that they did it, evil in that anyone who spends money on this version is either their own worst enemy or unprepared to want their money back soon.

Steelrising: Another "damn, this new trend of games dropping free trials" winner, the aesthetic and concept is patently absurd, and as a console gamer/Sony Third Person Character Action Game Aesthetic addict it's rare I get to see character animation that's so distinctly...Dave Snider's Eastern Bloc Game of the Year-y. Unfortunately, this game plays like junk. Sorry, Steelrising apologists.

I jumped back into Returnal in a major way and have basically mainlined the game. Looking forward to getting to the end but also I don't really want to stop playing. It's an amazing game!

Elden Ring

I must preface by saying that I tried twice (once on launch and once with the latest update), but the game never ran on me. White screen at the start and straight to windows. I read forums and the solutions they gave me varied from reinstalling it to format the PC and start over fresh. Needless to say, I never went for it and ended up asking for a refund.

I might try again in a few years, when it is heavily discounted on some sale.

@rorie: play it on an exercise bike. There is 40lbs less of me thanks to Returnal being the perfect amount of distraction from cardio. Makes a great hour of good health.

@judaspete: I also went to arkham knight because of Kevin Conroy passing and gotham knights coming out and me not wanting anything to do with it mostly, and the digital foundry video section where they compare the art and city of arkham knight a much older game to gotham knights and it completely trounces gotham knights. I beat it and I was extremely impressed. Asylum was amazing for 2009, jaw on the floor "I didn't know license games could be this good". I didn't care for city too much because the city was boring and everything that mattered was in the interior, then the pc kerfuffle for Knight and I just never got to it.

There is too many car battles, but in general I loved the car cause all I could see was all the scenes from batman begins/the dark knight and it was mesmerizing. There's so much given to batman, a little too much, but fear multi take downs and all the gadgets and moves felt fun. I feel bad I waited so long.

I picked up Persona 4 Golden for my Steam Deck and I have found the dungeons and combat so gratingly dull that I haven't been able to keep my head in the game. The story seems really rad but basically any time I need to quest I fall off the game again. I'd love to find a way to love this game.

I've played every version of Demon's Souls and gave the remake a shot. Every time I've bounced off the game in the prison area and this time was no different. I did get further but to be honest I don't think the world or story do enough to hook me, so I just stop even if I'm not stuck due to the difficulty or whatever.

However I did buy the ps4 release of Valkyrie Profile and got the best ending. That felt pretty special since I bought the original game back in 1999 as well as the PSP version. I had restarted the game several times but always dropped it after the first dungeon, since the time management and directionless story always felt overwhelming (and the fighting and platforming quickly becomes a slog as well). The only reason I got back to it is the interesting concept and the music (I even bought the physical OST). The re-release added a rewind feature and quicksave, and let me tell you I would NEVER have bothered beating it this time either were it not for those. The platforming is terrible and frustrating, and the difficulty is ridiculous if you aim for the best ending. Honestly, were I not intent on actually beating it this time, the repetitive fights and overlong special attack animations would have made me drop it as well. A fast-forward feature would have been greatly appreciated.

So tldr I finally beat Valkyrie Profile which felt good but the game itself is an interesting hot mess which has been greatly surpassed by Indivisible (gameplay-wise at least).

I've played a few Monster Hunter games and had a good time with them. I just wish the combat felt more natural to play - if it felt more natural to play, I'd play them forever, but even the combat in MHW feels janky as hell to me.

I tried God of War: Ragnarok but because of lack of time I couldn't finish it. So I'll try to do it this year.

I went into Dragon's Dogma and having a grand olde time.

Until i stumbled on this quest that's sort of a murder mystery and has you traveling to multiple spots in a certain time-span.

I became aware that it was possible to get 2 keys instead of 1, but wasn't entirely sure what the benefit was... but once i know such things, i won't leave until i end up with 2 keys.

Sadly it turned out that an auto-save can ruin your opportunity to get the 2nd key, and a load game option will keep bringing you back to that dead end save. Note that Dragon's Dogma doesn't let you choose a certain save.. You either load the last save, or you go back to the 'previous checkpoint', which is quite a nebulous word. Apparently it means when the last cutscene occurred or something.

So i grit my teeth and went to the last checkpoint, and got all the way back to the 2nd key encounter... only for the dead end auto-save to occur again right before i could get the 2nd key. I think i tried 3x without success, said fuck it and used the 1 key, and realized that the 2nd key didn't offer anything after all.

No biggie.. we're done with that.. so i continue this murder mystery quest, which lasts several days. (by this time multiple ingame days and multiple real life days :D ) I probably did some sidequest in the meantime. But eventually i ended up at a similar point where an auto-save screwed me over and had to go back to the 'previous checkpoint'. And .. yeah it turned out that even after multiple ingame days, and multiple sidequests, you still get transported back all the way to the start of the main-quest. At that point i was like.. Ugh... i'll go play something else instead.

I can't say i disliked my time with Dragon's Dogma, but the save-system can seriously stall your progress if you're the kind of person that tries to see as much as possible of the game in 1 go. I'll keep it installed and hopefully i eventually forget what happened and can go back to the game without feeling jaded. But at the same time, i feel like it's inevitable i will butt heads with this save system again and again in a 100+ hour game.