With the recent news about GTA and another installment in the Red Dead series, I began to recall my experiences with the most previous games of both franchises. Unlike most people, these memories are not very fond. I had similar experiences in both GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption, and it consisted of me forcing myself to trudge through both experiences. During the early hours of RDR I found the experience very tedious and not that enjoyable, despite the fact that I loved the western motif. I was going to stop playing until I noticed the review scores.
Normally I do not allow reviews to influence my opinion, but the Red Dead reviews were so overwhelmingly positive that I assumed that I must have missed something or that the game must have gotten better. So I made myself go back and continue the play-through. I continued through the annoyingly constant on-rails missions as well as the many mini-games like herding (one of the most aggravating mini-games ever, but the rest were decent enough) and pushed through until I finally beat the game and I still do not see the appeal. No matter how hard I tried I just could not convince myself it was an enjoyable game.
GTA was slightly different because I did have fun playing through the story, but it was still just sort of sub-par in my experience; this is why I was astounded when websites were throwing perfect scores at it left and right. I could not believe the amount of praise it was receiving, and I did not go back to the story. I still dabbled in the multiplayer and once in awhile would do whatever I wanted but I did not spend much more time in the game.
I do not see the appeal that other people apparently find in these titles. In all honesty I found L.A. Noire to be better than either of them. I am obviously in the severe minority, but while the worlds are very fleshed out I did not have fun during the time I spent in them. GTA is a cool sandbox to run around and wreak havoc in but to me it is not much different from how I spent my time in San Andreas. Similarly, RDR was alright if you went around and did whatever you want but the story was not enough to keep me interested at all.
tl;dr I do not love these games as much as everyone else.
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