I’ll start. pokemon. doesn’t matter if the game’s old or new I just can’t get into how it plays. idk the gameplay just gets old to me pretty quickly, palworld is an upgrade in every way tbh
Final Fantasy. JRPGs just aren’t my thing
GTA. It just seems really boring to me, I dunno. A lot of shoot em up and not so much substance. To be honest I feel like that for a lot of open world games. It may be wide as an ocean but it’s deep as a puddle. That’s not ALWAYS bad but I generally would prefer a more linearly running game that’s a lot deeper.
I think I/we were too old to get into pokemon. I tried 3 games, and got bored about 4 fights in. I’m sure back when that was the peak of gaming, it was amazing. But now after modern games, turn based gameplay is just not for me too
Except Baldurs Gate 3, that’s an awesome way of doing turn-based combat
RDR2. Played, but didn’t beat the first one. Some other game pulled me away from it. Tried the sequel and was disappointed by the gunplay.
Same, didn’t enjoy playing someone I didn’t like in a world I wasn’t interested in. Good game, not my preferred setting
I wanted so bad to enjoy this game, but I felt like it did not return the sentiment. The biggest challenge was trying to get Arthur to do what I actually wanted him to do.
I did finish it but man do the missions get stale after the halfway point. It’s just shooting and that is it.
It’s a cool world and all but it feels more like a movie that’s too long than a video game. Not a lot of meaningful interaction with the world apart from shooting things.
Yeah I really liked the story tbh but just the mission repetitiveness killed it.
I mean I finished the game but the replayability for me is nonexistent.
Dark Souls and any of its copycats. Grinding a boss for hours on end just to learn it’s patterns is not how I like to spend my free time. Aside from that: why is that whole genre so bleak? Apart from maybe “Another Crab’s Treasure” they’re all dark and gray/brown and unrelentingly depressing. Does the gameplay lend itself to that particular aesthetic? Or is everyone just copying Dark Souls that hard?
For me, soulslikes are pretty weird. I’ve loved the art direction and gameplay of Dark Souls and especially Elden Ring, and I get why people like them and I appreciate what they’re trying to do, but something in them doesn’t click the addiction button. It’s not even the core gameplay that is the problem - I get flattened by some enemy and I’m like “oh I’ll get you one day”. But I booted up Elden Ring last time months ago. I’ll be done with the game in 10 years I guess. It’ll happen though!
I can understand, but heartily disagree! For me, the firey hope in the face of a dark bleak world inspires me, and the way the games tend to have you earn your victories makes victory so, so much sweeter.
That decayed aestethic is immemsely popular and it works fine in making you feel like a survivor.
That said, i like jolly things and grimdark stories, and I tend to like the bizarre. Maybe grimdark games lack the bizarre and the occasional bit of fun. I personally say this is the byprpduct of the success of a specific subgenre of games in the 2020’s.
Plenty of Soulslikes that don’t have that bleak look to them. I think many of them do because the genre takes place in apocalyptic settings.
I tried factorio a while ago but couldn’t get into it.
I got completely addicted for about a week and a half and then dropped it and never thought about it again. The core gameplay loop is crack, but it’s also very shallow and I can never think of a good reason to come back to it.
it’s also very shallow
You take that back!
In all seriousness, if you’re talking about something like the fact that all machines are functionally doing the same thing, that’s kinda fair, but there’s a lot of complexity in all the options available, made even greater with DLC and mods. Just the logistics of getting items to the right places have many different approaches with various upsides and downsides, and I love all the emergent mechanics that come from belts having two sides and splitters handling two belts.
It’s not a game for everyone, but calling Factorio shallow seems really odd. If anything, I feel like it allows you to explore its mechanics deeply, instead of having a breadth of shallow mechanics that don’t leave anything to be discovered.
Ok yeah that was poorly phrased. It’s shallower than it appears on first impressions, or at least was for me.
The belt management is the best part IMO and kept me playing for a lot longer than I would have otherwise. I loved ripping up the floorboards and doing it newer and better and bigger and … Oh god I’ve made a mess again, time to start over!
It is undeniably a very fun game… but for me it was a bit like binging a netflix debut, and it didn’t stick enough to make me want to come back for “season 2”.
I’ll say that I’m also not a huge roguelike fan and while it isn’t a roguelike, I got that same feeling I get after spending a few hours in Enter the Gungeon.
Haven’t tried DLCs so can’t comment, but the gameplay is built for extension so I can imagine they’re pretty damn good.
Are you a Satisfactory fan? I have that in the library and it looked more like my kind of thing (except that I much prefer the look and feel of Factorio)
I haven’t properly tried satisfactory, I tried the demo back when that first came out, was asked to run around collecting leaves to put into a power generator for half an hour, and bricked my game trying to put it into borderless or something… And then I switched to Linux, the game was epic exclusive despite promises otherwise, and I passed.
I got the impression it’s got a tedious early game, having a prebuilt map might make replaying less fun, and it sadly seems to have a very point-to-point, purpose-specific-device approach to logistics. I also like the performance of Factorio, it’s really lightweight on the GPU, and well optimized for CPU (though with the entire map and tons of individual entities loaded at all times there’s only so much you can do), which I imagine isn’t as great for the modern 3D game Satisfactory is.
I don’t want to rant too much about it, but I think the splitter taking in and outputting two belts in Factorio is brilliant. There’s only a few types of logistics, but they are versatile and nuanced. Being able to belt items onto the side of an underground belt lets you filter out belts by side, the mechanics of belt sides and how they interact with inserters let you create compact designs or maximize throughput if you spend time on it. There’s no dedicated buffer machine, no separate splitters and mergers, all the neat things you can build come together out of component parts in an organic way.
I will also mention that I like to try to plan ahead specifically to avoid starting over, but when rebuilding is necessary (and when laying a rail network) robots are a must-have.
On the topic of the DLC… If you’re not drawn into the base game, might be best to pass on it, but they did a good job giving each planet some interesting unique challenges, including organic items that spoil after a certain amount of time. There’s plenty of straight content expansion mods, big and popular ones, but they mixed up the gameplay quite a bit in Space Age.
All in all… Yeah, different people, different tastes. I’m currently doing a second playthrough of Space Age with friends, but one of them might’ve been felled by Gleba. If you want some more unsolicited gaming takes, I can recommend Mindustry and Outer Wilds ;D
Anything Bethesda sadly. I want to like them, something about the control and movement is just so janky it’s not fun.
Weirdly, I love them. They’re absolutely shallow main story wise but they do exploring and looting right which is the point of open world (for me!). The Witcher 3 or Red Dead Redemption 2 for example are great games, but I didn’t enjoy them nearly as much as the arguably bad Fallout 3.
The games are appealing, I just despise something about the controls.
Interestingly I love the controls. They feel very direct to me.
I thought Fallout 4 was okay but I agree Bethesda clunk is hard to get used to
I find the games very appealing. I would love to love New Vegas but every time I try it just feels… off.
I always thought it was because they tried for an “anatomical” perspective and it never worked. Like I think the goal was supposed to be you could look down at your own character model but it was never really inplimented, leaving a janky forward and back motion to the vertical tilt. It’s just enough to make some people a little motion sick.
It’s like the controller is reacting to your inputs after they are pressed, rather than your inputs reacting as you press them. It’s a very very small difference, but it just feels clunky.
Fallout 4 is a surprisingly good colony builder though. Shame that’s literally the only thing it has going for it haha
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Capitalism: I refuse to develop my sociopathy to the level required to participate.
Come on,the second game was decent!
Victoria 2 scratches the itch pretty well for me.
Monster Hunter, Persona, Dark Souls, Witcher.
I did get a good 30-40hrs out of Elden ring but felt I saw what I needed to from the genre and moved on.
Persona
Terraria
Are you into minecraft? I’m working on the theory that people are into one or the other of those but not both
Yes, I am into Minecraft
Gotcha. I’m the opposite: hundreds of hours in terraria but can’t get into MC
Final fantasy or any jrpg really
Soooooooo long and boring
Almost all of them. The only real thing that I played with pure joy was Minecraft, Cities Skylines, Planet Coaster and Sims series. I think its pretty clear what games do I like.
Anything with story/ending I find them unbearably boring and tedious. I’ll play Cities Skylines for hours though.
Those games are awesome, if you enjoy strategy games, I think you’d love the full catalog by Paradox Interactive
Souls games.
I really want to like them too, but they seemingly aren’t compatible with how I play games. I need to be able to put a game down for a couple of weeks and not feel like I’m back at square one because the specific muscle memory for that game has gone.
Just kinda kills the fun when the game is effectively telling me to get good, when I don’t actually have the amount of free time IRL necessary to do that.
Soulslikes are fucking boring. I did that beat my head against the too-hard boss fight 289348923x when I was a kid because that was the only option and I had all the time in the world. Neither of those is still true.
for me it feels like they don’t respect me as an adult. i need to be able to pause and save games. sometimes i get phone calls. sometimes the power goes out. sometimes i spill my drink. but no, it’s all just “get gud”.
also i just can’t handle the aesthetics .
Souls games autosave constantly, you can quit out at any time and reload to where you were. The only exception being that if you quit out during a boss fight you’ll have to restart.
Could you talk a little more about the aesthetics thing? I have no intention to pick a fight with you or tell you that your opinion is wrong, I’m just curious because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that about them before
Also yes the no pausing thing is very frustrating
everything is dark and gray and meaty and slimy and gory and bloody and disgusting and sad and lonely and unpersonal and depressing and hopeless and evil and hateful and murderous and dead and off and…
even screenshots fucking wreck my mental health.
Try “Death Door”. It is as hard but fun to play.
bro the difficulty is yet another reason why i don’t want to get into it. you really think i’m in a mental state to be beaten to a bloody pulp after a rant like that? i gave up on tunic because the combat was too hard.
it is my firm belief that soulslikes have ruined metroidvanias because they now apparently all need to beat you to death for attempting to enjoy them.
Death’s Door isn’t nearly as difficult as the Souls games; it just felt like a solid metroidvania. I don’t enjoy beating my head against high difficulty curves these days and it felt very approachable and fun to me. I even went back after my first playthrough and did the achievement where you only use the weaker umbrella weapon.
There are some stunningly beautiful scenes too though. I get what you mean regardless, its a grimdark setting for sure.
yeah let me just wade through this ocean of death so i can see a dying sun set over a dead world.
things may be beautiful in isolation but the context is what gives them meaning, and the meaning in most fromsoft worlds (and things inspired by them) is “look at how awful everything is here; it’s your fault if it doesn’t get better”.
“haunting” is a better word than “stunning” there.The intended meaning of most of from soft games is perseverance in spite of objective futility and the failure of society.
The world has died, society has failed, the powerful both good and bad have failed. No one, no matter their intentions can change the world for everyone around them let alone themselves by themselves. The good can not make the world better and the bad can not make it worse.
To inact change requires people to sacrifice and push forward. Even if it means their doom, even if it’s pointless. For no good ever comes from half measures, from hiding away, or from denying that which is around them because it is unpleasant.
For only with perseverance and the lasting memory and hope of change being taken up be each successor can true change be made.
And even still, to fight to hold that change still, and deny the next generation their right to enact change is just as futile and harmful as not trying at all.
This not including the additional horrors and commentary from their armored core games or spin offs such as Bloodborne. Even those series still have this under lying messaging.
While you arnt wrong on the aesthetics and what they give off on a surface level. You clearly lack the context of the world and story of the main souls games beyond only what is on the cover. You are very much in the wrong and deeply at that, over what the meaning of the worlds of from soft games.
Haunting IS a better word to describe it then stunning tho.
For as “nuanced” as people like to claim the from soft games are. They are very very blunt with their messaging, even if the stories they tell are terribly convoluted.
You clearly lack the context of the world and story of the main souls games beyond only what is on the cover.
…yes? i don’t know how much more clearly i can spell out that what’s on the cover is preventing me from playing the games.
You are very much in the wrong and deeply at that, over what the meaning of the worlds of from soft games.
until this sentence i was completely certain that you were agreeing with me
Omg I feel seen. Yeah I might not be fully unappreciative of the aesthetic, but shit can be dark and grim in real life as it is and it feels edgy and emo to go all gore gothic all the time. Every videogame trailer that starts with “shit’s horrible around here” is an instant “next”. Also I’ve always had a problem with eternal unliveable dungeons that make no architectural sense. Even though it is fantasy, it makes it far more childish, which matters if they’re trying to take themselves seriously.
I disagree with you completely on this but I really enjoy your point of view here
i’m glad.
It’s okay if grimdark doesn’t appeal to you. I like stories about people doing the right thing in a hostile setting,
that was my point yes
Is it particularly more your fault that things don’t better in Souls games than in any other game in which you are meant to save the world? I think the only difference is that in the Souls ones and others like them, the world is already horrible and needs repaired in some way rather than on the verge of becoming horrible
Interestingly Elden Ring went for quite a different direction. The world is, unquestionably, still an enormous mess that would be horrendous to live in, but they’ve left in far more of the beauty. I particularly like how every so often you hear hostile NPCs playing music or singing if they haven’t spotted you yet, and how there’s a little puzzle side quest about a painter; people are still making art in this ongoing apocalypse. One important allied NPC even actually openly makes an argument that the world is worth preserving if it looks like you’re going for the “destroy everything” ending
Of course the atmosphere and gameplay are still heavy going, both in the Souls trilogy and Elden Ring. I get why that wouldn’t be for everyone. It’s like playable Cormac McCarthy stories, except you can punch your way out of most of the misery if you get it right
idk i can barely look at the games without feeling awful, im just going off of the opinion of others
Yeah. Heard so much about Elden Ring, and watched the kids play it, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
After about 45 minutes of wandering aimlessly and nearly as many deaths, I decided I wasn’t having a good time.
The beauty of Elden ring is that you can explore without actually killing much. Eventually you’ll find some cool weapons or smithing stones to upgrade your current weapon and some runes to get a couple of levels (putting points on vigor helps a lot early on)
And then the game starts feeling less rough.
But I can definitely understand why it’s not for everyone.
I finally had the Get Good moment where everything clicks recently, its very real. Now im on Nightreign like its crack.
Level your Vigor, people. Farm that little village with the soldiers and get a few levels into your health bar. And boom! Now you don’t die bc you missed a dodge. There’s good starting gear there too.
Once you “get it”, suddenly Elden Ring becomes like the coolest DnD game ever from an old-school perspective. Honestly, its not much different from Zelda - if you can play that, you can play Elden Ring i think.
That has been my experience with it too. It’s probably more fun with good gear, but i just see hours on the couch in my future that I don’t want to spend.
The gear would not have saved you. The game gets substantially more difficult as you progress, even accounting for your character getting stronger, and if you don’t do a decent job of levelling up appropriate skills that will compound the issue. The starter gear for most of the classes is actually perfectly viable all the way to the end of the game for most players too, it’s not notably weak at all
I love Elden Ring, but I can absolutely respect why it wouldn’t be for everyone. No sense in playing it if you’re not enjoying it, the point is still to have a good and/or interesting time
I feel similar. After having tons of people tell me for years I need to get into them, I finally played Bloodborne, which multiple people have told me is their favorite.
I pushed through it on my own first. I actually didn’t die quite as much as I expected, though I definitely had to spend time watching YouTube videos and reading 3 different fan-made wiki’s to figure everything out. I managed to finish it, but I didn’t think it was worth it and would not have finished it if not for wanting to be able to talk about it with my friends.
Then I did another playthrough with a friend doing co-op. When it worked (ugh) it was a way better experience. Partly because of my previous experience - I had a better feel for how to build my character, I remembered most of the environments and enemy placement, and still had that muscle memory from my first run. Partly because it’s better as a cooperative experience. Having an ally makes the world feel less desolate. Having another player to take aggro so you can heal is huge- some bosses almost feel like they were designed for multiplayer. And it’s fun just cracking jokes and hanging out, making fun of how ridiculous some of the stuff is.
I still don’t have the love for it that other people do though. I agree 100% on the aesthetic: everything in Bloodborne is just dark and wet and looks the same. FromSoft makes a LOT of game design decisions that are different from most other developers in terms of what they prioritize. Which is fine, but there are aspects of design where they clearly cut corners and the fanbae seems to laud it as a desirable artistic choice. I shouldn’t need to spend hours watching YouTube and researching fan sites to learn how to play the game, and I would argue I shouldn’t have to do that to appreciate the story. They simply do not respect my time.
The multiplayer barely works. It’s restricted to bosses and the areas leading up to them, and costs Insight (a valuable and kind-of finite resource) to use. Simply connecting is a tedious pain. You can only play either completely online or offline, so if you want to play with a friend you have to accept your whole world cluttered with annoying and distracting messages from random players and the specters where other players died. And that also opens you up to having hostile players gank you. Like… Why can’t my friend and I just pair up and play through the whole game together without inviting the rest of the internet too? Why does it cost Insight? Why are the caps for stats never communicated to the player? Why does the Hunter’s Axe do primarily Blunt damage while the KirkHAMMER does almost no Blunt damage, and for that matter why aren’t the damage types explained anywhere? I’m still not sure why some gems increase Attack, others increase Physical Attack, and others increase Blunt or Thrust, plus there are hidden damage types.
The game feels like it was designed to really get good on your second playthrough and beyond. Especially NG+, although even starting a fresh file again is much better than the first playthrough. Kinda reminds me of how some MMO fans like to say “it gets good after the first 100 hours”. For most developers, the player onboarding experience is one of the most important parts to be developed, but FromSoft basically skills over that and outsources it to their community of hardcore fans.
The only real way to play full co op is using the Seemless Co-op Mod. Also disables other players jumping in to kill you. You would have to play on PC though.
Try Jedi Fallen Order. It’s got a lot of the ingredients, but a lot shallower learning curve.
Same for me!
Bioshock. I tried the first game and liked the story and atmosphere, but got bored of the gameplay every time I’ve tried it
I love the first BioShock but couldn’t get into the other two because it didn’t feel like they took the gameplay anywhere new.
