Not every game we spent our hard-earned money on guarantees to click with us. Whether because of gameplay, presentation, or pre-release expectations, we stop playing. Sometimes we return for a second chance, and sometimes we find something special we missed the first time.
So here are seven games that required another try to finally *click* with me.
Origins required two failed attempts to grab me. I started with a human male as a warrior, meaning up-close combat with sword and shield. The problem was reaching the enemy meant running towards the foe and shuffling into position, which wasn't any fun. I tried again, this time as a rogue, but so early in the game, the two classes seemed effectively interchangeable.
Finally, ready to stop playing forever, I went in the other direction: elven female as a mage. Combat as a mage doesn't require any shuffling. Instead, she launched attacks from afar. With that frustration over, I played through about half of my epic adventure, until the point where I had to return Origins to Blockbuster. I immediately traveled to the closest Meijer and purchased my own copy and finished the game soon after.
To this day, I haven't gotten anywhere close to finishing Origins with a melee character. As far as I'm concerned, it's magic or bust.
I understand the dislike for Shadow Dragon. The visuals are ugly, the script is minimal, and it lacks the colorful support conversations. In almost every aspect, it's inferior to Fire Emblem on GBA. Then I played the original 1990 game, which Shadow Dragon is a remake of.
I found a fairly playable SRPG lacking so much of the user-friendly changes Fire Emblem has made over the nearly two decades since.
My perspective of Shadow Dragon has since changed. It's still my least favorite of the "modern" Fire Emblem games, but I no longer look at it as outdated. It's stripped down to the basic mechanics that have stuck with the series from the beginning, but updated for 2009. Where I previously despised the simplicity, I now appreciate it.
My enjoyment with Freedom Wars fluctuates with the missions, but even when I'm having fun, it's hard to ignore the misgivings. It's easy to bolt for the large robot trampling the ground, but they're not easy to defeat. It requires a change in mindset, one that fans of Monster Hunter (a series I have repeatedly tried and failed to get into) are probably quite familiar with.
So there was a point where I almost stopped playing, but fortunately, as a download, I could play it whenever I brought my Vita. That allowed me to pull through and gain a better understanding of what Freedom Wars demanded from me. If I bought the physical cartridge, I guarantee I wouldn't be anywhere as far, nor would I appreciate it as much.
I never disliked the original Halo, but without multiplayer, the game loses a huge element of what made it so popular. The single-player mode is fun, but almost half of the levels are repeats of earlier levels. And while the Flood was a great surprise, they didn't do much more than charge the player.
What changed for me was the realization that the experience I was having with Halo was vastly different from what a room full of magazine editors were having. That clearly explained that difference in excitement.
This one shouldn't come as a surprise. Skyward Sword starts slow and takes forever to go somewhere excited, and even then it's constrained by linear environments. That doesn't even touch upon the Wii Motion+ controls, which seems to lose its calibration a tad too often. So I don't blame anyone for dropping Skyward Sword since I definitely did. It gives a horrible first impression that's hard to move past.
But I did move past, probably over a year (at least) after release, and found a surprisingly enjoyable little adventure. Those issues I mentioned above don't go away, either.
I submit that Mass Effect is a deeply flawed game. The graphics suffer from pop-in and the inventory system is a mess, but the worse is simply marrying RPG mechanics to a third-person shooter created combat that just wasn't very fun.
After renting Mass Effect, I found a copy for $20 at Target and bought it. I can't explain why I bought a game that I had all but lost interest in, but I'm glad I did. Several months later, when I finally got around to replaying Mass Effect, something *clicked*. Mass Effect 2 released several months later and became one of my favorite games ever, so thank goodness I have Mass Effect another chance.
For anyone who read gaming magazines prior to November 2001, Metal Gear Solid 2 was a constant topic of discussion, even after creator Hideo Kojima "vanished" to finish the game. It was difficult to ignore the hype that surrounded MGS2, but at the time, I didn't own a PlayStation 2. I couldn't play the game.
After MGS2 was re-released as Substance on Xbox, I rented it. Later on, I rented the PS2 version and the stealth gameplay finally clicked. If I had to lay the blame anywhere, it's because I couldn't wrap my head around the somewhat frustrating controls. I mean, didn't shooting in first-person require holding two buttons and pressing a third?
Since then, I've grown into quite the Metal Gear fan, playing every major release outside of Peace Walker, and I'm currently going through The Phantom Pain.
