I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
No Man’s Sky. Close to 300 hours across pc and ps4. I sunk a lot of hours into it when it was relatively new and still very sparse (well before the nexus). I end up playing every 4-5 updates, just to see what they added. Everything is a slog. I have been trying to hatch my living ship for what feels like literal years now. I always seem to be one resource shy of whatever tasks I chose for myself, yet I have billions and billions of spacedollars. I have half-finished bases across the galaxy. I never feel like I accomplish anything in this game, and feel like my time is always wasted playing it. According to steam I haven’t played in over a year.
WoW. I sank hundreds of hours in vanilla. Spent forever getting tier 3 armor completed and most end game content completed and then Burning Crusade was launched. I was so excited that myself and about 15 guildmates road tripped from across the country to meet up and play in person for launch.
I remember crossing the portal and within 15 minutes a common mob dropped an item that was better than one of my tier 3 armor pieces. Pieces I had spent weeks farming for. I was so frustrated that I couldn’t enjoy the next 2 days playing, even with everyone there. I got home, played a few more days, and had already replaced half my armor. I quit WoW cold turkey and since then have only logged in once in all these years.
I wasn’t even that mad that my armor was replaced, I was mad that it was replaced so quickly, and not even at boss fights. It was normal mobs dropping rares.
Destiny 2. Best platform shooter I’ve ever seen. Worst everything else: monetization+FOMO, some really shitty loot tables, locking away paid content/sunsetting.
Kept going back because the core gameplay loop is solid. Kept leaving bc it inevitably got boring quickly.Helldivers 2 is a blast but somehow still so bug-ridden that I’ve quit like 3 separate times.
Breath of the Wild and moreso Tears of the Kingdom.
Not bad games. But not Zelda games.
BoTW did not play into the metroidvania that I felt defined a Zelda game. Plus it lent on the “sim rpg” style of eating, cooking, durability, etc.
Then ToTK just felt like a gimmicky cash grab. Copy paste terrain, “gadget building” straight out of some steam early access game.
Ultimately, both games felt like a hodgepodge of stolen concepts, slapped together. And the adoration that they received just makes me hate them more.
Lego: The Hobbit
I give this answer in every one of these threads to raise awareness. My wife and I used to get a little drunk and play Lego games. It’s a lot of fun, and a decent couch co-op.
We get into the Mountain, start screwing around with Smaug, and he flies off to burn Laketown. Roll credits. Game over. The 3rd movie flopped so hard they never finished the game. They don’t say it’s 2/3 of the story, and at that point it’s way too late to return it.
Fun game, terrible experience.
Elden Ring can’t stand it
As much as I hate to say it, No Mans Sky probably. Has that same problem I get with playing Minecraft. Everything feels too empty and aimless for me.
Rainbow Six Siege.
It was a combination of things. There was definitely hackers, some funky seasons, the grind, and toxic players, but at some point I went to launch and I was dreading playing it and thought maybe I’d feel better if I just uninstalled this? And sure enough, I did feel better.
The first few years it slapped so hard, and then somewhere down the line it felt like a chore playing. Weird
Destiny was exactly like this for me. I really enjoyed the first 20-30hrs. Then it was “just something to do” when one day I realized “this game actually kinda sucks” and I haven’t played since.
Ever since they introduced Jackal then Nøkk the game lost its charm for me, I paid $50 for a semi-realistic FPS, while I turned a blind eye to IQ and Finka (and a few others) I never liked the idea of going invisible and seeing people’s footprints.
I bought the chibis of the original characters, purchased every elite skin offered, that’s how much I enjoyed the game.
Ubisoft lost a customer, and will likely not see me again until I see Linux support for their games.
I also stopped playing shortly after Jackal was released, and prior to quitting I have probably 600 hours in-game. I played from beta day 1 until then. Used to play with Macie Jay in Teamspeak. I actually started playing it again last year during Siege X and although the game is in a pretty good state, modern players just run-and-gun like TDM instead of reinforcing and using tactics and it just isn’t the same
I enjoyed it for a while but realised that it was effectively a subscription as the new operator was always very powerful. Then I switched to solely Linux anyway and haven’t missed it much
As a former r6 player with >1000 hours and a negative review on steam, I can confirm.
Expedition 33. I’m not a huge turn based fan anymore but gave it a shot because of the rave reviews. And initially I liked it a lot actually. It had the UE5 default realistic look I loathe but the combat was fun.
And then it became unfun. Severely so. I started to dread every major combat encounter.
But the reviews were so positive so I pushed thru, I hated playing the game but told myself I’ll see it through to the end, and I did.
I regret that. Having to keep playing despite disliking it probably soured my experience way more than if I had just stopped playing. On the other hand I now have the full picture of the game and know it doesn’t get better and it’s not worth finishing.
The worst combat encounters were the fights where the attack itself is a minute long cutscene, then without warning you get 150ms to time your party perfectly, or you die and restart. Unforgivable.Didn’t hate it, but I just sort of slid off Baldur’s Gate 3.
I love Larian’s other games and even pre-ordered bg3 to play on vacation, but the combat just isn’t as fun as Divinity 2. I kept trying to avoid combat but then I walked into a new area and combat started automatically and I just groaned and turned off the game.
I got to act 2, which isn’t a lot of time, but it felt like it
No Mans Sky. At a certain point it all becomes meaningless.
Among Us.
My friends kept suggesting it for game nights, but the social demands are just not compatible with actually hanging out with your friends.
When everyone’s out and about, doing their tasks and getting murdered, we’re all discouraged from actually talking with one another, for fear of revealing a dead body or whatever. Whenever there’s a meeting going on, sure, we’re “free” to talk again, but there’s not enough time to talk about anything but the game. When you’re dead, and thus finally relieved from the pressures of completing tasks or getting kills… there’s still no chit-chat allowed, because ghosts “can’t” talk.
It’s worse whenever random players are involved; having to coordinate between voice chat with friends, and text chat with randoms, or worse, when the randoms are in a voice chat of their own, coordinating to be assholes.
The moment that finally made me say “I don’t enjoy this game”, was a round with two random players in it: one of them spent the whole round watching security cameras, and the other was blocking the one doorway into the room, both players working with each other and refusing to do their tasks. No way for the lone impostor that round to kill them both. When we started calling them out on this, they flat-out said “we’re going to keep doing this just to spite you”. Timer ran out with unfinished tasks. Crewmates lost.
Social deduction games have never appealed to me and Among Us is possibly my least favorite iteration of any of them. I doubt people would even be talking about it if it didn’t hit big as a streamer game.
I generally don’t mind them, it’s just Among Us’s style that irks me. I actually kinda like them in board game form; Battlestar Galactica’s board game, arguably having the same core premise and a similar setting, is actually one of my all-time favorites. Sticking with video games, Push the Button from the Jackbox series is alright as well.
Maybe the format works better when players aren’t forced to scatter and stay quiet.
Sounds like your friend group should play Eve online
Hey, we’re talking about past time activity, not getting an extra job.
Though it does actually fit in the theme. Can’t remember exactly how many hours i have in it, played it few years and keep getting back to it from time to time.
Bur for the love of god, it’s pretty much secondary job, it’s not really solo friendly game either. It’s almost mandatory to join a corporation or group activities and generally in low sec to make any considerable amount of isk, but that comes with it’s own set of obligations and of course the absolute constant threat of PVP.
Of course it’s possible to stay in high sec and play solo, but that becomes rather insane grind fest or never even leave the station, but you better start loving EXEL.
Oh among is so soooo lacklustre, I feel really bad for people who can’t see that…
I agree with all your points. It’s also grim playing a game where you can just get killed - thus having to spectate - at the start of every match, again, and again, and again.
I can’t think of a single one. I stop playing games I don’t like.
Hollow Knight is an tremendous game, but it is also a terrible game, and while I true ending’ed it, looking back I spent more than half my playtime annoyed and ultimately don’t think the game is good when considered in full.
