What universally beloved videogame you just can't enjoy?

The game is popular but isn't universally beloved, even the fans hate it, but they got the monopoly in football games

Just like any sport game, I only enjoy FIFA in small doses.

Sports games are literally the definition of "playing the same game over and over again". I can only ever do maybe a handful of games in a "season" before I start just simming and focusing solely on the management side of things. And even that doesn't last more than a season. I don't think there's any sports game where I've run more than one or two seasons.

Sensible Soccer was the last football game I was able to get into.

On the Amiga, not the shitty remake.

the only sports games I ever enjoyed were snes NHL 98 and mario hoops

I'll go ahead and say this also includes all "Souls-like" games for me.

Combat seems clunky, buggy, and unnecessarily difficult. I don't have a ton of time to play games, so when I do, I want it to be relaxing.

Very well said. I played with a buddy for like 50 hours before I admitted I just wasn't having fun.

I agree. On top of that, I get motion sick really easily, so I can play a lot of FPS games for about 15 minutes max.

First person shooters are just dumbed down point and click games.

It is like they just removed the entire puzzle element, so you can play brainless.

I broke through the exact same situation you had and finished the game beyond what most Hollow Knight players will achieve just so I can legitimately criticise this game that so many people apparently love.

You’ve picked out the exact same mechanic that I also criticise. It wastes the players time and is anti-fun.

I’d also add that the map mechanic is also terrible.

My fun factor increased 10x when I found a hollow knight map online to use that had key locations marked. Ironically it was a very soft touch map that just gave general guidance without too many spoilers and this improved my experience of the game.

They came from a different era. If you didn't grow up taking long road trips with a Gameboy pocket/color for your only distraction then you probably don't get the nostalgia rush that most pmon fans do.

It's weird, because Pokémon didn't invent turn-based RPG's, nor did they even invent the pocket monster genre because Dragon Warrior Monster arguably had a better game than Pokémon out around the same time - with more monsters, breeding, and a better storyline.

But Red/Blue and Gold/Silver were great games of their time. Very basic, but great, mostly because of the world built around them. If you didn't appreciate Pokémon, it's probably easy to see why you'd find it dull.

If you look at the first game from a historic perspective

The first game basically was an open world RPG with 151 unique characters with each their strengths and weaknesses, and their own attacks, and all could be customised. Running on a handheld that previously could only play Tetris.

It was a freaking coding masterpiece.

But I agree the gameplay loop hasn't upgraded the way it should. It didn't evolve with the medium and stuck too much to its roots.

Although the grinding in the newer games has been minimised. You can play through the games without grinding once.

Trust me, breath of the wild is boring as shit. Very directionless.

What about Wind waker?

Covid did wonders for that game. It came out right before the lockdown, and people suddenly had free time and a reason to escape to a happy place.

Fucking chore simulator. My roommates couldn't be assed to do their actual chores, but every morning during covid they'd get up and make sure their fucking farms had whatever the shit they needed.

I bought it for the same reasons and also hated it. It just felt empty and boring. I then had to bite my tongue so hard when those friends would start gushing about their latest Animal Crossing thing.

I haven't been able to go back to Factorio after playing Satisfactory.

Picked up Satisfactory just a few days ago and I am pretty bored tbh. Does it get better?

At first I liked it because it was good for people like me who like games but are really not good at them, but yeah, it's way overdone now.

It's weird because I always think of it as the Sands of Time combat system.

Deep Rock Galactic has nailed the formula with seasons as ways of adding things with using them as FOMO. Missed skins and loot from previous seasons used to just get recycled into the RNG loot. Now they added a system to toggle and play missions as if you were a in a previous season and earn the old loot.

For the love of your sanity please don't go anywhere near the modern platformers like Super Meat Boy or Celeste.

I have a specific opinion about the older mario games; they expected a much more narrow game literacy than new games do, so the people who played them already had a little bit of transferable ability from other games. Nowadays, not just are precise skills less required because the games are designed to be easier, but the player base is starting the games with less skill due to their previous game being totally different.

Buttons go smash.

If someone hands me a controller I'll button mash away because I'm just here to hang out, but I don't really like the game either. Ditto Mario Cart

That's... an interesting one. Uniquely frustrating from what sort of perspective? Like, do other fighting games work for you but platform fighters don't? Or are fighting games in general just not your thing?

I’ve gotten into one of those games over the past few months for the first time and I’m still not even sure why. It’s so transparent what they’re doing, trying to milk users for money with artificially ridiculous drop rates for characters and gear, and just constant grinding to get anything. I’ve stayed F2P the whole time, but it’s kinda aggravating seeing stuff essentially locked behind a paywall. And the prices are absolutely ridiculous, I can’t imagine what kind of idiots would actually buy anything at their arbitrarily inflated rates for fake, digital crap. Yet I keep playing.

fuck why did you have to remind of the double albedo thing. Which one survived?! He was missing the mark for a bit!! arggg....

First board? Not sure what that means... the tutorial? On the nautiloid? You are missing out on so much

I felt this way too, but my husband guilted me into sticking with it and I'm super glad he did, we had SO much fun playing split screen. I'm the type of person who has to look at the controller to see which one triangle is to give you some idea of my adeptness.

Same. Played it through using cheats just to get through the story. Bioshock Infinte was a pleasure though.

I put 1.2k hours into it during lockdown. Not enjoying Destiny 2 is probably the best thing that's ever happened to your wallet tbh

Ditto. Dull as dishwater

There are mod packs that add a lot of content and progression. As much as I like Minecraft, vanilla gets boring fast. Check out curseforge if you want to check it out.

This was me with Space Engineers.

Fucking loved that game until I got to the moon. I was doing 10-hour sessions I loved it so much.

I played a scenario where I start in a planet, and there’s a space station orbiting the planet, and whenever I’m ready I can go to the space station and hit a button and then it’s basically zombie defense except it’s robotic drones.

Well, I started on the surface and my first thing was I had no water to make hydrogen and there were mountains on the horizon with ice caps on them so the first like 50 hours of gameplay was me building a rover and finding a path around a canyon to those mountains.

Finally I had a source of ice, hence hydrogen, hence fuel to get off the surface and into space.

After a few attempts I got a flying craft into space. Bare bones basics on it: survival kit, basic refinery so I could make repairs to my ship, and I started exploring outer space.

I tried the station with the defense thing and died instantly. So I decided I’d build up my ship, get more weapons, and try again.

So I cruised around, my ship grew, got more and more features including tons of turrets. I went and did another run at the drones and got through like 10 waves instead of 2. Then I decided to go check out the moon. This was a long journey (30 minutes at max speed as the crow flies) and I stopped many times along the way to expand my ship, so it was actually days of journeying to the moon.

Then I got to the moon, and landed, and it was cool and then … flop. All my motivation and fascination died all at once.

Apparently it’s quite common with Space Engineers. I really wish there was some major sequence of goals.

The drones goal isn’t beatable, I don’t think. And it’s the only goal like that. The reason it isn’t bearable is there’s infinite waves. I think.

What would even make it cooler is a series of challenges that you have to pass. At locations, each with their own difficulty level.

I mean there’s contracts where you can get money to trade like 50 steel plates for some space bucks.

I tried multiplayer servers but none of the worlds persist. Either the servers themselves are persistent - but the world is wiped every 6 hours - or the servers themselves are just rented servers that are up for a few days then gone.

I wasn’t able to find any public servers with long-term persistent worlds using the in-game browser.

I get the complaint, it feels like it could be so tactical and strategic but often you get fucked by bad luck. But that's kinda rogue likes for you I guess. Wonder if there was a way to design it differently.

I'm having that problem with slay the spire currently. I've spent 50 hours trying to beat it with the witch character, and keep getting fucked by the RNG. FTL I've beat with every ship/variation on normal, but it takes a lot of Memorization or looking up events to make sure you're not screwing yourself. Into the Breach is way less RNG.

Me too, until I found a random thing on the way, when a bandit attacked me only to give me a better sword then I was watching fish in a river spotting a weird shadow realising it wad a flying dragon which I managed to kill somehow near a town. Beaten up went up to the tavern where they told me about weird things happening in the castle nearby so I went to see WhatsUp and they were crying on about a weird claw part of my main quest, I was about to quit tired from all that when my character took it out and completed the quest as soon as it began.

Then I stole everything in the castle and couldn't run back to the store fast enough aaaaand... It was 500+ hours already

Me too . Also don't really enjoy most Bethesda games . I tried fallout 3 and found most of the combat was walking backwards and shooting the enemy a hundred times.

Final Fantasy hasn't been like that for a long long time. They make ARPGs now. Check out gameplay from ffxvi or the vii remake, it's high paced action.

See, I don't like FF games since they changed to action games and stopped being jrpgs.

See, I like that because I'm shit at action games.

It took me a long time to warm to them.

The more armour you wear in the main Souls game, the slower and clunkier you are. It's kind of a gotcha, in that you instinctively think more armour will help, and it does the exact opposite because you get hit more often. There's a lot of shit that isn't really explained at all. Some people like that, but the Wiki is there if you don't.

Parrying was all but impossible for me, I just went with sword and shield for most of it, switching to the massive zweihander for the DLC.

Dark Souls 2 is the worst of them, I'd skip that if you ever try again. Way too many enemies in every area.

I also just dint have the time to get good at them. I get maybe 2-3 hours a week to game on average these days. I'm not going to dump a year into getting my ass kicked for a single game.

I tried Dark Souls and quit pretty early because I couldn't pause. I don't care about doing inventory or anything like that, but I'd like to be able to just stop things if I need to go check on the door or something. The outside world doesn't stop just because I'm gaming.

When I tried playing it there were a couple quests near the beginning where you get to choose someones fate. Nether answer is a good one and I felt bad whichever I picked. I stopped playing at that point.

I didn't really like the witcher 3. Found the combat wasn't that great and I spent most of my time walking around talking to people or trying to repair my weapons . I didn't get very far into the game though so I'm not sure how much that changes later in the game . I did like the card game Gwent though .

What was your last FF? They are action games now.

I had a terrible time with DAO until I read one thing that helped improve the whole game:

‘Get Wynne’

Once you unlock her character you will actually be able to progress at a reasonable rate without incredible headache allowing you to enjoy more of the story.

Warhammer or Gears of War?

I can only think of one TPS currently released (another on the way) in the Warhammer series. It's more known for strategy and tactics games.

I never was a console player so I only got around to playing the original Halo a couple of years back. It was a decent shooter, but nowhere near as great as I imagined. IMO the original Half Life does everything much better and it came out three years earlier.

I'm curious about Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but I kinda expect the same kind of disappointment.

Its not an accurate representation of a farm, just to make that clear. It's a very much romanticised little village - and there's plenty of indoors, if that's what you like. Eg, your house, which you can upgrade and decorate, the villagers houses and shops, the mines. That said, I wouldn't have described it as 'cozy', I would say more 'chill'.

It's not cozy for me because I suck at time management. I heard there's a mod that disables the penalty for getting home late though

As someone who both dislikes westerns and liked the first Red Dead Redemption, everything I've heard about RDR2 makes me think I would not like it at all.

It sounds like they took a great game and injected it with mindless busy-body gameplay mechanics. I've barely ever heard people talk about the story, which doesn't really help sell a game that's a sequel to a story focused game.

Resident evil is my favourite franchise so I can't agree. The og controls are there due technical limitations but work well and are much more responsive than other survival horror games of the era

https://store.steampowered.com/app/562860/Ion_Fury/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1592280/Selaco/

Eh, just wasn't made for you. Not everyone needs to listen to death metal either.

I can just close the game and never play it again

True and healthy!

while I enjoy actual good games.

blatant copium

Look I think there are valid complaints to be made about the Dark Souls franchise, but criticizing them for not giving you waypoints says more about you than it does the games themselves. The lack of any sort of hand holding was by far the most interesting thing for me when I first played Dark Souls and is the thing that got me hooked. The tension in exploring a new area, having no idea what to expect and being so scared you're going to die is a wonderful feeling, especially when you overcome it and survive to the next bonfire.

You're making me want to write a boomeresque comment about how kids want video games to hold their hands. Don't you have a sense of adventure? Is exploration and mystery not interesting to you?

I'd like to make a counterpoint here, but first I want to acknowledge that you are 100% entitled to your opinion and maybe souls-like games are just not for you. It's a shame that people are kicking downvotes your way because this is in no way a new or controversial opinion, but like you said, the community can sometimes take their love of the game/series too far and blame the consumer for not liking the same stuff they like, which isn't fair and just makes the souls community looks like clowns.

Anyway, my counterpoint is that I don't feel like these games are as difficult as people make them out to be. IMO, older games were just as hard, if not harder to complete even when playing optimally. In the framework of just about every Souls-like game, you have tools that you can use to almost completely trivialize the toughest encounters if you want. DS1 can be beaten by a complete amateur if you do the gravelord speedrun (which doesn't require any real speedrunning tricks and there are many youtube tutorials that you can follow along with, takes about 10-15 minutes from character creation) and get the gravelord greatsword which can inflict Toxic on all the bosses, so you can just hit them a few times and run away for the rest of the fight, waiting for the poison to finish them off. That's just one example. Just about every installment of FromSoftware's Souls' series has some overpowered cheese that you can research to essentially trivialize the game. Some people might argue that you're not beating the game in the "intended way" if you take such shortcuts, but I disagree. Any way you make it to the end is the right way.

For a lot of people, part of the fun of a game like Dark Souls is the adventure, the discovery, and yes, pounding your head against a tough boss trying to beat it over and over. If you're the type of gamer who gets easily frustrated to the point where you feel like quitting when encountering a challenge that feels unfun or unfair, I can see it not being an enjoyable experience. The thing that keeps most people coming back is the dopamine hit that they get when they do finally overcome that challenge and they are rewarded with more stuff to explore, new items to pick up, and so on. I think if there were any argument to be made against making the game easier for yourself by exploiting broken game mechanics (or with an easy/story mode added or modded in), it's that you probably won't be super invested in the outcome and get bored easily. Without the challenge aspect, the Souls games are very much a bare bones experience. It's essentially a generic fantasy RPG with a story hidden behind item descriptions and cryptic NPC interactions. That doesn't exactly make for the most compelling gameplay, so there's no trail of breadcrumbs to keep the gamer uninterested in the challenge going. There's a sort of intrinsic value in these games that can't be quantified, because everybody gets something different out of it.

The games usually have an easier mode that is still not easy. In DS 3 playing the Knight and using the shield heavily works pretty well and make a lot of bosses trivial.

But yeah, it's not for everyone, grinding timings and level information can be really frustrating so if the satisfaction of beating a level is not enough there'd be no point.

I share your sentiment; but you need to remember that SM1&3 were both originally NES games, and even the All Stars remakes are largely hampered by the original consoles limitations.

That’s why both SMW and Yoshi’s Island are such better experiences overall, they didn’t have to emulate those same limitations in order to preserve an original playstyle.

No rock and stone? sad granite noises

I can understand your feeling. I first bought Witcher 3 in 2016 or so and didn't touch it for years. Picked it up 2 years ago again and loved it. It's not he best combat, not the best complex game but the story really hooked me. Mind you, it does take a couple of hours for it to get going. And the secondary quests (side quests) are some of the most memorable I've ever played.

God dam walking simulator.

The side quests are cool. I can see the appeal. But yeah, I never felt excited to actually play it (or any Witcher game).

I bet the books are a riot though

I get it, I played Warframe a fair bit and the beginning is pretty one note. The game really opens up at some point but it's very far from the beginning. Not very friendly to newbs and it is a very very grindy game.

I played that for a while and I hated it too lol

Master, there is a man speaking blasphemy in the temple LOL

Man I really want to like Hearthstone but just can't get into it.

Isn't that the point of the post?

Dave the Diver.

I felt so lucky to realize that I wasn't going to like that game at all within the refund window.

Playing Dave now, it feels a bit repetitive but the story is nice. I'm going to stop the second I finish the main story though.

I really liked the visuals, especially at the start, and there's some really nice beats, but the story fall completely apart as soon as the tears to alternate realities are introduced and given that the story ends up completely relying on that... yeah. I agree 100%.

Nostalgia is a helluva drug for that one. Shit was unreal when it came out

It wasn't that great even when it was released.

It's okay, that's how I feel about the monster hunter games. Just couldn't get into them. I also found the weird dimorphism that the monster hunter armor had off putting. I wanted my woman character to have real armor, not a bikini. I get some people like that, but it wasn't for me.

The gameplay wasn't as fun as I anticipated, and I can't place my finger on why. It's weird.. I WANT to like those games but just don't find them enjoyable.

Sometimes we just just don't vibe with a game. It happens!

Oof, I'm mostly the opposite these days. Multiplayer games either have too much toxicity from randos, or they're stuffed with progression systems that actively make me hate the game even if the gameplay itself is good.

Still like coop games like Darktide every once in a while.

Ditto here - I get bored super fast when gaming alone but put me on a server with others and I can easily play for hours

I can't get into single player games either. Interacting with NPCs just doesn't do it for me and to me they're a tedious way to get a narrative. I hate having to grind to get to the next plot-point only to get stuck behind a boss and by the time it's beaten, I've forgotten the plot. If I'm going to entertain myself alone, I'd rather watch a movie or show, read a book, or work on a project than play through a single player campaign.

Sounds like me, I love deep multiplayer games. Dota and tf2 are my biggest loves. I generally just get bored of single player games.

The witcher 3 I got about 5 minutes into before giving up.

That being said, I absolutely loved Baldurs Gate 3, so maybe that's worth checking out!

Props to you for even trying. I took one look at a Sekiro game review and noped the fuck outta there.

I thought this game blew chunks. I'm an old gamer and it was jist God of War on ps2 on God Mode, but way less fun and cool. Low health + constant parry, but boring story and relentless tedium. If this was any other studio it would have been long forgotten already. I don't think being unwilling to deal with a developers core concept of using frustration as an action gameplay element as "a skill issue". Making the enemies respawn both when you die AND when you reload or save isn't a reflection of fighting skill, it comes down to being unwilling to tolerate irritating, tedious game design.

I’d question whether hollow knight is really a skill issue on your part.

I’ve done the ‘path of pain’ and I still don’t understand why people love the game so much.

It has solid combat, true, but some of the fundamental game mechanics (like save points and the map system) are designed to pad the game time and frustrate the player. Its poor design and the fact they weren’t called out on it is disappointing.

Making a save point 40 seconds from a difficult boss fight doesn’t make me or any player git gud. It’s needlessly frustrating.

As someone whose friends got me into destiny 2 on launch... even if you played through the story it was meh at best.

I played through the base game and the first major expansion, but the whole gameplay loop just got so boring so fast.

Sekiro.

DaS/ElR give you so many options and so many moving parts that you can make the game a lot easier if you know what you are doing. You gotta find a build and playstyle that work for you. People say there is no easy mode, but there is. It's not easy-easy but it is definitely easi-ER than trying to brute-force it without thought.

I consider the easy mode of DaS to be playing with magic. Your health pool basically doesn't exist and if anything touches you, you just melt. But you also deal a ton of damage, so you just get naked and tumble around pretending you're playing a bullet hell game and you just can't get touched. This is the build that works for me.

With Sekiro, on the other hand, there is a lot less you can mess around with. It's just you, your pattern memorisation, and your reflexes versus the world.

The standalone Gwent version started sucking the moment all the competitive gamers got their hands on it. Then it was all about optimising the game to death, all the decks got streamlined. I came back to the game after a longer break and it was almost completely different, and my favourite faction had been so drastically altered that I couldn't get back into it.

Same and same. There was a moment in PUBG's first moments that I found it fun because it felt like ridiculous gameplay in a good way. But lost it's appeal like everything else.

Which ones? All of them? I found BotW boring and massively overated but Ocarina of time & Majoras mask are fun and engaging games. OG Zelda and link to the past are also fun games.

I'm actually going through it right now. I'm sorry you find it boring. It's so good.

Try New Vegas baby

Wasteland 2 and 3 will activate the same brain ridges as the original Fallouts. I actually would recommend starting with 3 if you don't think you can commit to playing both games, as it has the most polished presentation, and you get all the relevant backstory quickly enough not to need to play the other games. WL3's structure is all about supporting different, mutually incompatible factions, which can feel like Fallout New Vegas.

I'm currently playing Colony Ship, which is an independent game that makes no secret of being inspired by Fallout. It is very mechanically dense. Clearly it is intended to be played by a variety of character builds. I haven't finished it, but it seems promising so far.

Underrail is another game that takes a lot of inspiration from the old Fallout titles, with a lot of social stratification and mystery about the world in the game and mechanically a lot of different build types.

Right there with ya. Oh, I tried so hard. Walking and junk collection simulators in a depressing, ugly setting. The humorous bits are way too infrequent to make up for the litany of misery.

I can only play Minecraft with other people, and really even then I'm really not all that into it, for me it's just a good excuse to hang out over voice chat.

Honestly it's not much different then fishing come to think of it...

Terraria is a much better game in a group, even just another player that knows what's going on. Otherwise it's completely confusing and I didn't enjoy it until you played with someone else.

Minecraft suffers from the same problem, plus development hell. Mods greatly improve the game in my opinion, but without people to play with it is rather boring. I like building but I don't build on a grand scale. I love creative mode and gathering resources to fuel the creativity of others.

Vanilla is a lot better now, but it still lacks a lot of depth. They have done a lot of work on the nether.

What kills Civilization for me is the phase in which I just wait for production or other stat to fill up and there's nothing interesting to do for couple turns.

Civilization Revolution is kind of black sheep of the Civ family, because it's "dumbed down" and "not a true civilization game", but IMO it has much better pacing.

Small pedantic note - Halo CE was originally the official abbreviation for Halo Custom Edition, which was launched on PC shortly before Halo 2, leading to quite a bit of Halo Combat Evolved being referenced as Halo CE.

I get that one is obscure, and the other popular, but drives me mad none the less.

Once the flood appear the game does get worse. The level you have to run forward and backwards, and the library are long and confusing.

One of my favourite games but these are valid complaints.