Starfield. I love some Bethesda games, and I don't hate the game, it's just not worth the price. It would be way more tolerable at $40. I got about 40-45 hours into it, and I don't know if I'm ever going to complete it. I feel like I've seen everything the game offers and there doesn't seem to be anything new coming along in terms of mechanics or story.
I got 40hours in and it was tolerable with the ship building but questing was uninspired loading screens suck and the progression tree was a massive turn off. You'd think they'd take a few cues from fallout nv
I'm not usually into base/ship building, but I'm glad it is there for those that are into it. I can't imagine how poorly the game would have been received without it though. Skill tree is bullshit. Can't modify weapons or armor because I'm not high enough level, even after 40 hours. I can't modify a damn scope? WTH?
They took quite a few cues from NV if you compare it side by side with NV and Skyrim. There's a lot more Roleplaying in Starfield than Skyrim, for example, it's just extremely dull world-wise in Starfield.
I mostly hated that the skill trees are still mostly % increases. Cyberpunk retooled their entire skill tree because of that.
It's a type of gameplay progression that just isn't that fun - but Bethesda loves it.
Yeah, glad I didn't buy this. Thought it was hated on a bit too much though.
I enjoyed the combat more than most RPGs and some of the hand crafted environments were nice. Found the ship building quite fun too.
Combat is fun, but not anything special. I feel like the quests aren't fun enough to bother dealing with all of the non-fun parts of the game, e.g. travel.
Same boat.
I don't exactly hate the game, but the planet-hopping has segmented it too much and exploring a thousand empty terrains each with 3-4 generic caves/camps grows old quick. I don't know if the main story would have picked up speed any time soon (I retrieved 3 or 4 of the thingies they collect), but I haven't launched the game for a few weeks now.
Diablo IV. What a disappointment that turned out to be.
My wife and I were massive fans of D3, so buying D4 was a no-brainer. We liked the campaign, and we (begrudgingly) completed the first season. We didn't finish the second season, and only played about 2 hours of the third season. Unless they do something drastic in future seasons I don't see this becoming the hit for us that D3 was. They have time to make it better, but it will probably be shelved for a couple years for us.
That was my most recent regret of a buy.
For those of you who are enjoying Diablo 4, good on you. I sadly could not. There are too many things that I've been shown a better way on thanks to other arpgs that is rather spend time on than one which seems intent to have me spend significantly more time on for less. It felt awful to pick up entire inventories of loot and have absolutely none of it be worth while for my character. Literally hours of running from thing to thing to not hit a single upgrade.
Which other ones would you recommend? I've played a few (PoE, which wasn't for me, Grim Dawn, which was more fun). I went back to D2 after getting bored with D4.
I've really enjoyed the depth and customization available in path of exile. It's so strange to me that in diablo that equipment is either a good roll or completely useless and there's no fixing it. In path of exile, I just need to find a decent base normal item (white rarity) and I can work it into something worthwhile.
If that's not your cup of tea for whatever reason, I've heard good things about the last epoch, though I haven't played myself.
As for path of exile.. A lot of people assume you need as a beginner to follow some kind of guide or a step by step thing. I've found that as long as you don't neglect defense in that massive skill tree, you'll do just fine while doing your own thing. Doing that and keeping your various resistances up are the keys to success.
Maybe it's one of those games I need to bounce off of two or three times before it clicks for me. The skills from gems confused me, but maybe I'm just judging it too soon?
I was also trying to play it on my Steam Deck, and had some difficulty getting that to feel right, so maybe that's a factor too.
Is it just acclimation to a new concept that is similar in some ways to putting gems/runes in your gear from Diablo?
I remember taking a moment to understand that the skills are all from gems, but afterwards It's pretty nice to be able to swap out skills as you play, trying new stuff to see if you like it before you really go all in on something. This most recent league(season) I found a skill I didn't know about before and it has worked wonderfully with everything else I'm working with. Once you're a bit over halfway through the campaign the game drops an npc that has nearly all the gems for sale, so you can really spend a lot of time trying out stuff to see what you like.
As for the controller version of the game, I like some things (I found it way easier to use potions), but others were a bit more frustrating, especially the inventory management and item collection... Which is a rather large part of the game.
Have you checked out Last Epoch yet? Fantastic ARPG even for being in Early Access (which I don't usually invest into), though the 1.0 release is at the end of this month.
I can't recommend it enough!
I have a vague memory of trying this a year or two(?) ago but gave up trying again after I couldn’t get my account to transfer to steam, which I guess is required now. I’ll definitely be trying it again once I figure that out though.
Definitely reach out to their support if it's still giving you issues, I'd imagine a lot of people are coming back for 1.0 so it could very well be something they're able to easily/quickly fix now.
You weren't stoked about the gloves that give you +2% critical strike damage against pirates on alternating Tuesdays with skills whose names contain three or more vowels either, huh?
The amount of fluff stats was simply amazing.
80 f'ing bucks! The most I've ever paid for a videogame! To play this snorefest. must be half a year now and I'm still bummed...
Interesting.
My partner and I played a lot of Diablo 3 and for the winter break, I bit the bullet and bought D4, feeling a bit uneasy as many people online were disappointed.
The obligation to be always online, coupled with the slow servers did not help to ease the uneasy feeling, but after playing for a while, I must say that besides for that online crap, the game feels much more like a rpg than D3.
The world is much more open, and you don’t have to just follow the main quest as there are many side quests spread around.
I get that many people play for the online seasons and to perfect their setup, and I can’t speak for this experience, but if you approach the game as a casual loot action rpg with a big world to dicover, to me it is a much better game than D3.
This was my experience, up until my stats turned into a series of interconnected boardgames. I got a bit lost in the sauce at that point and quit. Up until then I was having an okay time, though.
The mechanics and bosses are an upgrade from 3, but the scaling ruins everything that made the game an RPG. You don't get more powerful when you level up because everything around you gets stronger.
I mean did nobody with any power at that company realize that it's not satisfying for your spells to do less damage, or that your armor getting less effective every time you leveled up was a bad thing?
/rant
Same. A friend and I were excited to play together like we did in D3, but we barely managed to finish the campaign. It's on the shelf for now unless/until we hear the team turned things around.
I don't have a lot of hope now they're second-siblings in the Microsoft family.
I knew it'd be shit but I bought it anyways. Idk what is wrong with me. Why did I have to give them money
Baldurs Gate 3
There’s nothing wrong with the game, I just don’t find it fun to play. Somehow got 48 hours out of it, but never made it to the end of act one. The gameplay just wasn’t something I terribly enjoyed.
I don’t necessarily regret the purchase as supporting smaller, decent studios is a good plan, but it’s still a game I’m not going to get a lot of use out of
Right there with you. I had like 25 hours in the game and realized I just spent most of that time save scumming a single battle over and over. I tried another 15 hours and it felt like that's all I was doing. I felt I was under leveled, I rerolled a new character on the easiest difficulty but was still finding myself doing the same shit and battles weren't getting easier.
I'm sure there's a great game there, but I don't have the time for it.
You summed up my experience perfectly, down to the OP build on the easiest difficulty. I just didn’t have that much fun with it
Waited all year until it was on sale as I thought it might not be my cup of tea, tried not to let my prejudice get the better of me but felt it was such a drag I had to put it down.
It was recommended to me as I like Zelda but it couldn't be further from the things I like about it: innovation, fluid gameplay, freedom, puzzles, multiple ways to tackle enemies.
I don't think it's the difficulty as I play lots of roguelike and bullet hell games. My main gripe is the clunkiness of the combat to the point it's unfair. Like you don't really stand a chance through reactions alone, you have to learn the patterns and hitboxes of enemies so that you know in advance when to react.
Also I kept hearing how good the graphics are but I think they're kinda average although the actual art style is quite nice.
Any suggestions on how I might enjoy it would be much appreciated as I haven't got very far.
Whoever thought you might like Elden Ring because you like Zelda is not a true friend. There's really not much similar with the gameplay loop.
You're right that the gameplay is more about learning and recognizing patterns of enemies and adjusting to them so if that doesn't appeal to you you're probably not going to like it. With that being said though, your first soulslike is always the hardest and if you stick with it they are very rewarding to play once you know what to expect.
Cheers, probably just not for me then.
It sounds like you probably had the wrong expectations of what the game was going in. These games can be frustrating under the best of circumstances, but are very much "tough but fair."
If you choose to give it another shot, look up a build. The weapon scaling system is a little obtuse and if you're pumping levels ups into str and using a dex weapon you'll do no damage. Whatever you do, put a lot of points into Vigor. Get it to 40 at least after you have the stats to equip your weapon to increase your health because defense is mostly cosmetic in these games. Other than that, you get i-frames on your roll and the game rewards aggressive play so learn to roll into attacks and not away if you're not using a shield.
I expected it to be difficult with a possibility of not enjoying it but seemed pretty popular so thought I'd give it a go.
Will give your suggestions a shot but I find everything about it obtuse to be honest. To me good game design lowers you gently into mastering the controls and ramping up difficulty, not just chucking you in at the deep end with confusing menus so it's on the player to look everything up.
Dropping you into the deep end and expecting you to find your own way is kind of a hallmark of the series. Almost every game starts with a basic overview of the controls and then a difficult boss you are expected to lose to. Even the controls overview is entirely skipable because they are in the form of messages on the ground. In a way this teaches you about how you interact with the world because the storytelling is almost entirely environmental. Going against this would upset a massive fanbase because this is a very well established series at this point.
At a certain point in the story, you can respec all your stats. If you mess up or want to change anything - this happens after the second major story boss. The only thing that you truly need to know about to be successful is weapon scaling. All weapons scale based on a specific stat, ranging from E-S with E being the weakest scaling and A/S being strong scaling. The number on the left when you're in your equip menu is the base weapon damage based on its level (normal weapons can be level 1-25 and special weapons 1-10. You unlock the ability to upgrade weapons pretty early in the story) and the number on the right is the additional damage you'll have added based on a combination of the weapon's scaling and your own stats. You can be quite successful just by understanding these two mechanics because they will make up a good portion of your damage.
Since you mentioned Zelda originally, there is a reason this meme exists:
After I died for the 327th time within the first few hours of playing, I ditched it. Haven't been back since. The gameplay is really cumbersome, blocking and dodging are hit or miss, and I've been jumping and rolling around all day like some unmedicated ADHD kid on speed trying to get one hit in that causes minimal damage, while every enemy counterattack goes near critical.
I'm not against a step learning curve or anything, but Elden Ring was a major frustration.
I mean this in a constructive way: you're literally playing it wrong. Elden Ring is a Souls game, which (in terms of gameplay) is the complete opposite of a hack & slash button masher. There's almost no animation cancelling, so once you press a button, you're committed to the outcome and have to wait for it to finish. So if you miss a heavy swing with a giant 25 kg greataxe, you'll be wide open for the enemies to smash you. The game requires self-control to make every input matter.
Once you acclimate though, I think the combat feels very good. It's responsive (once you accept the fact that you can't cancel actions), flexible, and the hitboxes are way more accurate than most games.
But don't think you have to master it all at once. The enemies are tough, but you don't have to fight fair. Sneak and backstab if you can, soften them up with arrows or ranged spells, debuff them with throwables, summon some spirit ash helpers, use the environment to land attacks from the high ground, stack up poison and bleed effects, use a shield to block-counter, use your weapon abilities to help break enemy poise, etc etc. You can create entire builds around any of these but of course there's power in combinations.
Souls games are honestly just pretty rhythm games. The queues are obscured and the timing can be quite silly, but it’s the same core gameplay.
clunkiness of the combat to the point it's unfair. Like you don't really stand a chance through reactions alone, you have to learn the patterns and hitboxes of enemies so that you know in advance when to react.
Nice to see it hasn't changed since Dark Souls. Thought I might have been missing out.
I think it sounds to me like it just isn't your thing. What you're describing as a frustration is what I love about Elden Ring, you have to figure out every enemy and learn their patterns in order to succeed so every enemy is like it's own little puzzle to solve. There's no secret to avoid that part of the game besides maybe building INT and just avoiding fights which does not sound fun tbh
This. I think people who enjoy it see every enemy as a puzzle. Even developing your character is a bit of a puzzle, figuring out what stats suit the weapons you like and the play style you're aiming for. Conversely, Zelda is incredibly simple and boring to me. Most of the fights are boop boss on the head 3 times, or throw their own bombs back at them 3 times. The only Zelda I enjoyed was the first one.
I don't think the bosses are meant to be the puzzles in Zelda, the non-fighting parts of the dungeons are. I'm not really a fan of Zelda games though so I'm not fighting their corner here.
I don't find Elden Ring puzzling, but maybe I haven't played enough. From what I've seen so far it's more trial and error and than figuring stuff out, which I find boring.
Skill trees in general I think are bit of a cop out in most action games, let alone having to decipher them. I'll reach for 4X games like Stellaris or Civ if I want to sit and think about how stats affect outcomes.
Yeah boss battles are usually pretty easy in Zelda, as you say, 3 hits and done most of the time. They're traditionally about getting the player to master the technique or item you've just unlocked. Have you tried running straight to Ganon if BotW or tackling The Depths in TotK though? I don't think either of those tasks could be considered simple.
Surprised you only like the first one, the games are constantly innovating in terms of gameplay and design, but the first is a pretty standard affair. A lot of the time the simplicity is what enables the fun, fluid gameplay as with most games Nintendo put out.
If I want a challenge I'll play online shooters or pretty much any roguelike where when I die I don't come away feeling it was unfair. Tbh I think I just don't enjoy modern action RPGs in general rather than it being a specific Elden Ring criticism. I find they try to cater to lots of mechanics that other games implement better but fully aware that's an unpopular opinion.
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I have not tried those things in BotW and TotK. I got to the water temple in Ocarina of Time and got bored, which I heard was common - sincerely tried to beat it because my childhood friends love the game and were excited for me to get through it. Played 10 mins of Majora's mask and BotW. Watched a bunch of videos of BotW and the new game of people doing cool stuff with bombs and gliders. Just not for me I guess, but I totally see the appeal of them.
I can definitely see your point about modern action RPGs catering to lots of mechanics that other games do better and the genre is saturated now with different souls-likes that lack any kind of innovation but I guess they are safe to make due to their popularity.
Main point in enjoying soulslikes is the approach. Modern action RPGs are very fast paced, very direct in their approach "hit A - enemy dies - get dopamine".
To make it work, slow down. Treat every enemy as a real threat, not filler between bosses. Pretending they are all real players and not bots might help. Keep your distance, bait out several attacks, see how they behave, carefully close in and make your move. Don't get greedy on the offence and only attack when the enemy opens and then break the distance again.
Also as others mentioned, game makes you commit to any actions you take. When you attack the enemy, take responsibility of every button press. If you start mashing, the game punishes you fast and hard.
I don't have the best reaction speeds, but I was able to steamroll most of the bosses under 10 tries, so the game is definitely not the "die until you memorize the moveset" type. If you play patiently and carefully build up your character it is definitely possible to tackle most threats on first sight.
Edit: Also, if you're on PC I don't mind giving you a hand sometime and playing together a little
Yeah think you're right, I like fast-paced games where I can enter flow state quicker and I never was one for grinding up a skill tree in order to progress unless the grinding itself is fun/fluid.
I prefer actively attacking enemies with a bit of running away and dodging where required as opposed to patiently dodging waiting for an opening to attack.
Thanks for the offer, I would have taken you up on that, unfortunately I have it on Xbox, not PC.
I'm a diehard FromSotware fan but even I was a little let down by it. I got a lot more enjoyment from co-op and PvP so I ended up finishing the actual game after 300+ hours lmao
I've beat all the other Souls games so dying hundreds of times didn't bother me... But for some reason I didn't feel compelled at all to actually progress in the game
Like you don't really stand a chance through reactions alone, you have to learn the patterns and hitboxes of enemies so that you know in advance when to react.
Yep, Elden Ring (and all soulslike games) are basically just guitar hero with a shitty interface. And way more grinding.
It's not actually challenging just memorization. Elden Ring is basically like speedrunners being able to play Mario with their eyes closed.
Weirdly I like Guitar Hero, but think that's mainly down to enjoying the songs and playing with friends. Scraping through Cliffs of Dover on expert was enough Eden Ring for me lol.
Starfield was definitely one of my worst purchases in a long, long time. Full price for nothing.
Yikes. I got it through Game Pass and still wanted my money back
I played it at a friend's, and I made them apologize.
I have the hope that it will be improved and expanded upon going forward, as well as the possibility of mods.
I get that most planets don't have to be interesting, but if the planet isn't going to be interesting, fucking just tell me that instead of putting a hundred "points of interest" on it. The fact that every planet has a bunch of random pirate bases on it and a dozen random caves with nothing in them is just ...ugh. If it only put markers on things that were actually interesting, that would be a huge step in the right direction.
I bought Lethal Company because it looked like fun. Then realized I don't have enough friends to play it with.
Bought it as well, but have friends.... it's super shallow. We played it maybe 4 hours, basically past the point I can't refund it.
Eh, it's fun enough for the price, we got a few fun evenings out of it
Same. I'll play with you 😄
Palworld
I was expecting factorio but with union busting knock-off Pokemon . I got a really generic open-world survival craft with normal knock-off Pokemon.
Yeah it is over-hyped. I enjoy it, but you do have to keep in mind that it is early access. Hopefully it will continue to get better.
Yeah I've been telling people I think it's fun, but if they haven't jumped on by now due to hype, they might want to wait until the game is less buggy and more complete. I imagine it's gonna stay in early access for a long time.
Given how they've left their last two games... probably not.
Same here.
When starting out without having seen all that much of the game beforehand, I saw a great potential for just that expectation you and I shared. The game keeps you jumping from one task to another, managing your initially growing base(s) to produce new necessities, catch new/more pals, explore the map and ...well, that's basically it, so far.
The gameplay loop so far is pretty barebones and the countless bugs, especially regarding basebuilding and -managing, grew all the more frustrating as I was forced to realize that there simply is no goal or endgame besides catching all the pals, exploring the whole empty map and maybe spend countless hours optimizing it all by breeding the best attributes in your pals, i.e. holding F and waiting.
A lot of that is hopefully simply a symptom of it being early-access though, I expect to have a better time in a few months when the hype died down and the game has matured a bit more.
Modding hopefully will be a feature in the future. I’d love to have factorio with Pokémon slaves
I tried it out bc it was so popular but it felt sooooooo boring to play.
I think it's a fun game. But it certainly is overhyped as fuck.
I luckily refunded it lol
Temtem.
Had the potential to be the RPG Pokemon could be if it just entered this generation's technical level. Instead, it became a shitty grindy money-grab that has been killed by the devs.
I thought about getting it for switch so I could finally check it out only to realize it was online only.
Humble bundle had a bundle of all the Mega Man games for 20 bucks.
I instantly regretted it once I loaded it up and I thought to myself, I could've just got roms for these and a better emulator than the one it came with... The emulator doesn't even let you fuckin adjust the audio levels.
Something is just fucking wrong with the Mega Man collections. I can't quite put my finger on it, but they just don't feel right.
I don't really have any recent ones, but I think my most recent one would be Doom Eternal. That's not saying that it's a bad game, I can understand why people like it. I'm just not a fan of how it plays compared to the original Dooms or even Doom 2016. My biggest complaint is really about how little ammo you can carry for each weapon. I don't like being forced to switch weapons all the time or else glory kill every other enemy. I wasn't a fan of glory kills in Doom 2016 because I felt like they interrupted the pacing in an otherwise fast-paced game, but I put up with them because you could ignore them if you wanted to. You can't really ignore them (or the chainsaw kills) in Doom Eternal though, otherwise you'll find yourself regularly running low on ammo. I guess at least the chainsaw has more utility in Doom Eternal than it did in the original games (on harder difficulties it's hard to justify the chainsaw on anything except low-tier enemies), but I never finished the game because of the ammo restrictions.
Another game I have regrets about is The Sims 4. I knew I was getting into a dlc-pit but it didn't bother me too much because I tend to subscribe to the "Paradox Method" - buy what you like, pirate the rest - when it comes to games with lots of DLC. Additionally, when I pick up a game and really enjoy it, I don't have problems dropping money on dlc because I tend to play it for hundreds or even thousands of hours. However what I wasn't expecting was that I'd end up pirating the entire game anyway because updates almost always break mods and there's no way to disable updates (Origin let you do it, but neither steam nor the new EA games app lets you disable updates). So what was the point of buying anything if I was going to have to pirate the game to stop updates from randomly breaking shit?
Edit: some games I don't have buyer's remorse for are Cruelty Squad, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, and Factorio. Those could easily be 2x the price and still be worth it imo.
I loved Doom 2016. Eternal was such a letdown for me. Completely different games.
For me it was how seriously Eternal took itself. Doom 2016 had a story but Doom guy didn't care and was just there to kill demons. It was a running joke how little he gave a shit. Then suddenly in Eternal he can talk, was some kind of Chosen one and there's this grandiose story with Heaven etc and it's all way too up itself. I just want to shoot Demons. That's it. Don't try and make it more than it needs to be.
Funnily enough, I felt the opposite.
It was the opposite for me, too :D
In Doom 2016, the protagonist gave me those "been there, done that, saw it all before" vibes towards humanity's attempt to use hell energy. He swats anyone away who advises him to wait, be moderate or let them try something else first and simply does his thing. I just don't get what's up with the protagonist in Doom Eternal. It feels like some design-by-committee fake badass who does inconsistent things, he suddenly got that "Fort Grayskull" (or is it the "Power Rangers Fortress"?) place and does whatever the Vega AI says. It feels so whack.
It's called 'The Fortress of Doom', which is a... choice. Fort Grayskull sounds much better, tbf.
Only time Doomguy talks in Eternal is during a flashback, and one word at the end of the second DLC. During the flashback he only says how he must kill more demons.
Funnily enough, I felt the opposite. 2016 seemed more grounded and serious to me while still having some laughs and eye rolls, while Eternal had a lot more arcadey stuff where it felt like the devs either didn't know how to integrate it more seamlessly into the universe or were just doing whatever they thought would be cool rather than what would serve a good story. I think I would have been alright with either version of Doom, but I feel like there is a disconnect between the two newest entries that is just a bit harder to look over.
Yeah, it's that disconnect. You're right. Feels like the games were made by two different studios or something.
My biggest complaint is really about how little ammo you can carry for each weapon. I don't like being forced to switch weapons all the time or else glory kill every other enemy.
I do like what they were going for but I totally agree, I don't want to constantly feel like I'm suffocating (low/out of ammo) when I'm trying to tear through nightmare-level hoards of enemies. Just let me rip and tear!!
I'm a hardcore Quake and Half-Life player so constantly switching weapons and using my full arsenal at once comes naturally to me, but I was still struggling the whole way through the game.
Starfield. I want to like it - and there are some things I really do like about it - but it’s just not a very good game. The menus and inventory management is atrocious, which is unforgivable when you have to spend so much time on those screens. The enemies are bullet sponges. It’s not fun dumping a magazine into a guy, reloading and doing it again while the guy just walks right into it like you’re spraying him with a garden hose. I’m ok with there not being a map on remote planets, but it makes no sense that there wouldn’t be one in a city. It’s the kind of stuff you’d overlook if it was an indie early access game, but it doesn’t fly when it’s a $70 game from a major studio. I can’t imagine what they were doing all those years the game was in development because it’s not reflected in the product.
Maybe everyone responsible for the Elder Scrolls and Fall Out games have all retired or been fired and now their devs are people whose main strengths were being great at leet code.
Diablo 4, hands down. My best friend and I have been playing co-op games together for many years, and we were convinced that D4 would be the next 200+ hour co-op event of the year. So I bought myself the 100 dollar collectors edition and he, the same one since his birthday was near launch.
Yep, after 2 weeks we both admitted it just wasn't a good game, and neither of us wanted to play anymore. What a massive disappointment.
Could not possibly agree more. Bought for $90CAD, put in like 20 hours. Didn't enjoy it but kept pressing on hoping it would improve. My morale broke after I finished the sandy place in the west, and then stopped playing.
That's the nail in the coffin for Blizzard games for me.
Try last epoch. Got it last week, it's really scratching that Diablo itch without being as complex as path of exile. It's not as visually polished as Diablo and the story is average at best, but the builds are more interesting, a loooooot more qol stuff and it plays just as well. I have very high hopes for the future of this game.
Full launch is next week too.
Idk if you've played since launch, but they've added some semblance of an end game and some QoL since then as well.
It's still not a full game imo, but I have a week or so of fun per season. Its definitely been a disappointment overall though.
One thing I absolutely hated was the Open World, it was non-stop jammed packed full of monsters, just spawning non-stop. And they are always around your level, so you never feel like you're progressing in power. It was just such a shitty way to handle the world, you can never clear out an area, never go back to an earlier area and flex your new power. Also, monsters spawning constantly was jarring, but the first time I saw a grizzly bear climb straight out of the ground, not a den, just the ground.... lazy bullshit.
There are so many things that were just trash about that game, the stats on gear, it was impossible to figure out which pieces would be actual upgrades. The skill trees looked fun but feel so empty and hollow, ugh, I'm irritated all over again about that purchase.
So unless you've corrected all of that stuff plus a ton more, I probably won't ever play it again.
Itemization is scheduled for change next season, around April I believe, the current incarnation does leave something to be desired.
I agree about the open world scaling as well, it takes away a lot of the power fantasy until late game when you just bulldoze shit 50 levels above you anyways.
I like to zoom zoom so I can't say I ever felt that the open world was packed; compared to dungeons (after the fix) and the new vaults, the open world seems so sparce tbh. And since I'm zooming I never really noticed mobs spawning either.
The game absolutely needs tons of tweaking and content be a full fledged arpg, maybe around season 20 or so it'll be there lmao.
KSP2 or Kerbal Space Program 2. It was early access, I knew that, but it was such a broken mess that I somehow managed to put a lander on the mun, returned it to Kerbin and have never looked back. Rockets that were five parts long wobbling like a stick of candy gum, no re-entry heat and 5 fps on machine that ran KSP1 with volumetric clouds perfectly. Nope. That's not even alpha.
As of December they added re-entry heat and allegedly improved wobbling in the "For Science" update by the way.
But I'm still watching and waiting for it to improve before buying. Reviews for it have been higher lately, but I don't really trust the reviews when the devs set the bar so low. Everyone's too desperate for it to finally be worth playing. It still doesn't even sound as feature-complete as KSP1.
I was a little weary about it when I saw it having the same issues that ksp1 had at some point. You would think that one of the first things they would get right would be the physics, since they spent years getting it working in ksp1. I suspect that new company is just thinking this is a green field game, and are going to hit the same problems ksp1 had.
Agreed, but mostly because they haven't actually improved anything from KSP1. It's still the same wobble, and they solved it in the same way (with auto-strut). The only feature I want from ksp2 is base-building with proper collision mechanics that don't make my base leap 50 meters into the air and explode, but it seems like the ksp2 isn't capable of that.
It's literally ksp1, but slightly prettier, with far fewer features, and way more expensive. You can get 90% of ksp2 with nodded ksp1, and it'll run much better.
Yeah, it did suck. It is much much better now though. I genuinely enjoy it at the moment.
Stray.
Don't get me wrong, it's a cute game, and I love the combination of cute and cyberpunk. But the game is really on rails, and the puzzles are just not super engaging. And it's really short, which makes sense, because it's on rails. I just wanted it to be more.
I was glad when it was done that's for sure. Like being on a tedious kiddie ride
Firewatch was a recent purchase for me which I mildly regret.
As a walking simulator it's wholly dependent on the quality of its story, and the quality just isn't there. It starts strong but the ending is rushed and without a coherent resolution. It does so much work to set up multiple dramatic mysteries and then haphazardly solves half of them out of nowhere and forgets the rest in the final scramble to finish.
Nice graphics. Great voice acting. Neat concept. Needed more time to cook and left me feeling like I wasted my time getting invested in the story.
A recent release? Diablo 4 I guess. I don't really regret it since I knew what I was in for. I bought it to play with my best friend, and we had fun together until he got bored and frustrated. My hopes were high but my expectations were minimal and it still barely managed to meet them.
Yes, I couldn't agree more. The first half of Firewatch is great, until you realize they've run out of budget and they're wrapping up the story already
Oh, I played that recently, too. I didn't have any high expectations for Firewatch, but liked the idea that it's a "true story" sent in by a player.
But the ending, well... it was like an "but then nothing happened" ending where the story teller artificially made up some wild climax in the mindset of the "satanic panic" hysteria that gripped the late 80s/90s. Still, if I see it as an indie game, it's okay.
It sucks because there's a lot about the ending (I'll be as spoiler free as possible) but the ending basically being "And then nothing happened" is kind of the point. It's meant to be bittersweet, because the story is about escapism but that ultimately you have to come back to reality eventually. The ending does the big lead up of oh man there's a big fantasy and heres the happy ever after. but throughout the whole game it repeats over and over that things aren't as magic and wild as you want it to be, that sometimes there's a simple, boring, and sometimes sad explanation, and at the end of the day reality is the only thing that stays.
Firewatch is definitely more of a "reflecting philosophy" game than a straight up "gamer story" game.
I was actually arguing from the opposite side and thought that the game's climax was too much :)
If it would have ended with that "present" left outside the tower door, that would have been a great ending and left me wondering what actually was going on or if there was anything going on at all.
But the whole
::: spoiler spoiler
coven of horned cultists conducting some sort of ritual and chasing you for no good reason
:::
destroyed the magic and made me assume that the story teller just made up a silly, over-the-top ending in the context of the "satanic panic" some 30-40 years ago.
Firewatch has been on the periphery of my attention for a while. I've heard generally good things about it, but it didn't actually pique my interest until Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
::: spoiler spoiler
swapped it in to replace Minecraft in the alternate games ending.
:::
I figured if it was good enough for the Stanley Parable devs to feel it was worth referencing, it must have been an indie gem that I was sleeping on. I was wrong.
I feel like I got all I could get out of it by watching some videos on Firewatch.
Yeah, I'm with you. I still enjoyed it overall, so no remorse of buying and playing it. But the ending did feel like a mild letdown.
Command Modern Operations.
I love EVE for being spreadsheets in space. I love Masters of Orion. I loved Harpoon. I thought I knew a lot about military hardware (certainly more than my friends, and enough to be annoying at parties). I have a PhD, so I'd like to think I'm pretty smart...
But this game broke me. The 450page manual destroyed me. I have 120 hours in this game, 3 whole working weeks and at least as twice as much reading guides and watching letsplays, and I understand absolutely fuck all about it. I feel like retard every time I start it and didn't take into account some insanely niche details about missile turning rates or how I should just know the radar crosssection of an F15 increases threefold when it climbs and turns right.
This game has won. I give up.
The last game I had buyer's remorse for was Mass Effect Andromeda. It just didn't feel like a Mass Effect game.
Andromeda felt like a new Star Trek series to me. At first, it’s all weird but they’re saying familiar things. As time goes on, I grew to accept it for what it was and had a good time. But it absolutely wasn’t no goddamn Shepard shooter.
I love them both like they’re separate children of mine.
I felt strangely at home in it though. The more those outposts improved, the more I liked walking around in the temp structures watching the respective planet outside and it just felt, dunno, cozy.
I think MEA's problem was mostly that it billed itself as a mass effect game. It feels to me to be more dragon age in space. If it had gone its own way instead of trying to tie itself to the main trilogy, it might have been better received.
I tried to get into it after completing the OG trilogy again but I just couldn’t. It looked a little familiar but just felt too different.
I might give it another go, see if it’ll work better standing on its own.
Latest one for me is Disco Elysium. Didn’t really like its form of story telling. Played it for about 6-8 hours without feeling that the plot had made any meaningful progression.
The trailer was also misleading, selling it more as some form of detective thriller. Most of the dialogue is about stuff unrelated to the ongoing investigation.
I also didn’t like how some actions could randomly kill you. Oh, got a bad dice roll? Too bad, you must reread the dialogue of the past few minutes again. In the end I actively saved the game over and over again to avoid losing any progress.
I absolutely love DE but I agree the trailer is a bit misleading and dialogue isn't typically about the case. That said some of the best writing I have seen in a game full stop.
I also died immediately though on my first attempted "playthrough". Damn you tie....
Punch me, but: "Doom Eternal."
I thought it was a guaranteed hit, but it turned out to be a really bad arena shooter where you make colorful resources shoot out of enemies and are forced to run into the middle of enemy groups, exposing yourself to attacks from all sides that don't count because you're repeating 5 kill QTEs ad nauseam - the only tactic the game allows.
Doom was great. Doom Eternal took the most obvious elements of the first and turned them up to 11 and threw out all the pacing, atmosphere, and subtle touches that made the first one work.
Doom Eternal sucks ass, I'm so glad I tried it on game pass instead of buying the damn thing.
Diablo 4
Starfield.
I sailed the seas on this one. Maybe when it's got all its DLCs and is on sale for $30.
The DLC's aren't going to fix the problems with that game. But in true Bethesda fashion, mods might.
Squid 44, I bought it before the name change and easy anti cheat. I now can't play on Linux 😕 not a recent purchase but recently went to try it out
This one might controversial, but Baldur’s Gate 3 for ps5.
I had plenty of technical issues, like my Karlach questline being glitched out because of some of mission, which was the worst since she was my main companion. I also had to start over earlier as well when I didn’t know that I would get locked out of quests for simply going to a the next area, I didn’t know that was “act 2”.
I finished divinity os 2 in august and I didn’t really find this game all different other than the crazy production value jump. Which I don’t want to underplay, it’s much much better and ver very good for a crpg.
the community is very circlejerk-y, when I mentioned in one of the threads about being locked out from doing other act 1 quests because I jumped to act 2 accidentally, they just said that it’s a “skill issue”. Also, the big reason I bought this game was because I kept hearing “I don’t usually like crpgs, but this game is a must play” so I was a victim of hype, that’s on me.
Edit: to add, I rarely ever buy new games. I just buy my Monster Hunter, some Nintendo games and From Software games.
Also BG3 for me. I didn't experience any bugs, I just realized the combat is absolutely not my thing. And I dislike the combat to the point of avoiding the game, which makes me sad because I really like everything except the combat a lot.
I'm in the same boat, I find the combat both boring and frustrating, the worst possible combination. It's absolutely loaded with RNG. People said this was the crpg for people who don't like crpgs, but I can say that is not the case.
As someone who has never played DND, BG3 is like I imagine a lot of it. Constant dice rolling and combining attacks in ways that work. It's way too tedious for me when I want to play.
It’s for DND lovers.
I love d&d and hated the combat in BG3. They made it all flashy and loud, but lost everything that makes D&D combat fun for me.
It's pretty good for telling you things will be locked off, but very bad at telling you what will be locked off. I nearly didn't go to the creche at all, because the warnings made me think that was Act 2 through that doorway.
Co-op was an absolute bug-fest. Performance was appalling on PS5, crashes all over the place, and worse, players are likely to miss out on any real links with companions because of how reputation is dished out. It's an interesting mode to have, but it's objectively a worse experience than single player.
And yet despite all that, it's still probably the best game of last year. And last year had a lot of good games.
I learned my lesson. I’m used to some crpg and knowing that I would get locked out of quests if I do certain things, but it makes sense contextually. Here I just didn’t get why Halsin would be dead, but later I learned about “time-sensitive” quests and just to be safe I started doing everything before leaving the acts.
Yeah, there was a lot of misinformation about the "time sensitive quests" that lead to me trying not to take too many long rests. Long rests are essential for companion progression because they only do their stuff at night, and only one at a time at that.
I think there's only one in the game that's dependent on rests (someone in a cave with poison), and it gives you a warning before it happens. The rest of it is failed by leaving the area, and I think the only one that's easy to fail (no warnings given at all) is the inn fire in act 1.
Same. No bugs, but it just didn't live up to the hype for me. I dropped it just after starting chapter 2.
I got bored, honestly. The combat was a slog and I hated save-scumming to overcome poor design decisions that made gameplay unnecessarily complicated. I just wanted Baldur's Gate back, instead I got DOS with a D&D wrapper. And I didn't like DOS at all.
I've played through a few times. Before you leave Act I, there is an explicit warning that doing so will close out story-based quests that are incomplete. Having said that, it only closes out the main story quests for the most part; I've gone back to do side quests frequently. Act I doesn't truly lock until you've unlocked the end of Act II.
That seems consistent with actual tabletop D&D; ignoring a time sensitive quest may net negative results.
Palworld, I played an hour or two and thought it was fun at the time. But just haven't gone back, leveling felt like a chore instead of a grind
felt like a chore instead of a grind
Those terms are synonymous... 🤨
When grinding feels like a chores then you know how grindy it is.
Having sex is a grind, but it's only a chore for the ones that don't enjoy it.
So not really synonymous.
I think the distinction is that chores feel like you have to do it and hate it. A grind is inevitable in all games. But you are excited to do it for the outcome.
Palworld is best experienced in multiplayer imo. Single player is boring, but when you’ve got friends around it becomes a social event and it’s more fun to work through a lot of things and go adventuring together
I remember opening the Sears catalog and seeing what must be the sequel to Super Mario World. I shovelled driveways and busted open my piggy bank - it was a full price Nintendo game and I had to have it.
I started my subscription to Nintendo Power after that...
Oh I feel your pain.
I was in a video rental store, saw "Mario is Missing", and like you assumed it was a sequel to "Super Mario World".
Got home to play it and was just flabbergasted. I don't think I played for more than an hour before complaining to my parents. Luckily they're nice people and they had more errands to run that day. So back out we go, back to the video store we end up, time for me to pick a new game to rent.
Oh, "Mario's Time Machine", now that's a Mario sequel guaranteed to be fun.
Mario and I were not on good terms for a long while after that.
(For those not in the know, "Mario is Missing" in an educational Mario game about geography, think Carmen Sandeigo but not fun. "Mario's Time Machine" is basically the same game, but time.)
My god that game was terrible.
Dwarf fortress. It makes me want to forgo sleep in favor of weed lol
D4, Starfield, Cities Skylines 2, and Mortal Combat 1. D4 and Starfield are self explanatory. CS2 is my biggest disappointment in years. Paradox killed whatever good will it had left by forcing the demise of CO. Under no circumstances should CS2 released this year. There's no mods. It doesn't function in any meaningful way. It's a performance nightmare. CS1 danced on the grave of SimCity and committed all the same sins a decade later. Don't listen to anybody that says the game has potential. They're sitting on 2000+ assets they can't release because they can't import buildings into their own city building game post release. That's how bad it is. Cities Skylines 2 was dead on arrival and it took the community 4 months to realize it.
MC1 isn't worthy of the K. It's just a slog. I don't know how much they fixed it but that doesn't break the fact that cameos are a major turnoff. Or that it has the worse progression system of recent MK games. Or that it's sitting on potentially one of the biggest rosters MK ever had but culled itself in half by reserving half the characters for cameos. Tekken 8 and SF6 have lapped MK hard this generation. Hell even Strive and DBFZ have taken steps to stay more relevant than MK1.
And you know what the kicker is? I bought all these games at the same time. I've been playing the clip of Totalbicsuit singing we don't pre-order games a lot lately.
Diablo 4. No doubt Diablo 4. Guess I never hated something as much as I hate buying Diablo 4
I got Super Mario Bros. Wonder day one and it made me realize I don't like Mario nearly as much as I thought I did. And I already knew I liked Mario less than most people. It kinda made me realize the only games in the series I truly loved were Super Mario World and Bowser's Fury. If you include the alternate character spinoffs you can add Yoshi's Island to the list.
It's definitely the best 2D Mario since NSMB DS, there's nothing wrong with it and it's the most creative 2D Mario since World...but it still fails to stick in my mind the way Kirby games, Sonic games, Mega Man games, and more do. It was fun but it didn't wow me and I thought it was too easy (am I crazy or are 2D Mario games easier than Kirby games?) I'm glad I played it but I wish I picked it up sometime in the upcoming period when the Switch is completely removed from being current but not old enough to be retro.
What I've noticed about myself is that I'd pick a Sonic game that's considered "decent" or "debatable" over a comparable Mario game that people consider a GOTY candidate easily. with very few exceptions. And while Wonder vs. Superstars is an exception, it's only because of how godawful Superstars' bosses are.
Oh, also, if you're into 3D platformers SM64 ROM hacks are more alive (and accessible) than ever. Serene Fusion in particular is very good. Dog Collab can be hit or miss with some levels, but the hits are really strong hits. They both have a wide range of easy to very difficult stars.
There's a ROM manager called Parallel Launcher that integrates with a site called romhacking.com, so you can literally click 1 button and have the whole hack set up for you (after PL is installed and you give it a SM64 ROM of course). No messing with different emulators or messing with compatibility settings, just one and done.
It was fun but it didn't wow me and I thought it was too easy
I totally agree. With the exception of BotW (except for the final fight...), I can't even remember the last time I bought a Nintendo game that actually challenged me. I guess kids these days are less willing to play games that challenge them.
If you want a good 2D platformer I highly recommend looking at Celeste or Pizza Tower. They're two very different games, but hands down the best platformers I've ever played in my life. (Very cheap, too). Celeste is the most mechanically interesting / challenging of the two. But every screen is a checkpoint, so when you die the penalty is losing like, 30 seconds max. It's a very chill yet challenging game.
And Pizza Tower has pretty typical mechanics (it's Wario Land but way more refined) but the art and sound design is incredible. It made me nostalgic for old cartoons like Ren & Stimpy and Courage the Cowardly Dog. The characters, sounds, and music are all so expressive I can't put it into words, you'll just have to look at the Steam page to see what I mean. It's also worth noting that there's no lives or health, so it's very chill. You're just playing for points like in old-school SMB. (Unfortunately it's not on Switch or any Nintendo products like Celeste)
Both games can be very easy or very difficult depending on what you want to achieve. The levels themselves aren't too crazy but they both have collectables and secrets that really ramp up the difficulty if you want to get them all. Celeste also has "B sides" for each chapter, which are bonus chapters where they crank the difficulty up to 11.
Elden Ring. The game is just too obnoxiously hard. I don't mind difficulty, I finished Doom Eternal and all its DLC on nightmare. But Elden Ring seemingly makes very little effort to teach me its mechanics, whereas Doom Eternal's mechanics felt pretty intuitive after just a little bit of trial and error.
As far as FromSoft games go, I had a much better time with Sekrio. That game had a good tutorial, and that ghost dude who would help you practice the more difficult aspects of the combat.
I feel like Elden Ring takes more of the Dark Souls aspects here. With that I mean that they just drop you in to explore and figure it out yourself. I understand your point though, it can feel ridiculous to go head first blindly in to a boss arena not knowing what to expect, but the satisfaction of figuring it out and beating it is something else.
Still though, this is not everyone's cup of tea. I enjoyed the game, but never finished it. And I don't think I ever will.
Check out the Elden Ring Seamless Co-op Mod if you're interested in playing with a friend or 3. It's a faaaar better experience and was exactly what I wanted in the game to balance the challenge.
Fromsoft generally teaches you things by killing you with it. That's a style decision that I personally enjoy (usually....) but it's not for everyone. Then once you master the thing, they hit you with another new thing and kill you with it, so on and so forth until the end of the game.
Doom (and don't take this as a complaint, I loved the game), is a game that wants you to beat it. It gives you tools and information up front and generally speaking, presents you a path of least resistance that you can take for optimal slaying. The Doomslayer isn't intended to die, he is an engine of destruction. Elden Ring and by extension earlier Souls games, don't do that. Those games want you to die and learn from it. The Tarnished, the Chosen Undead, all of them, canonically in lore die over and over and over in pursuit of their goals, and you as the player are expected to act that out. It's a fundamentally different approach to gameplay style and intent. Elden Ring provides you the tools to succeed, but they aren't laid out in front of you. You'll have to explore and experiment and die a few times to understand what you're working with.
Sekiro in particular was a little bit of a departure from this with its popup explanations for tutorials, and that was taken into Elden Ring to get even as much explanation as we got in that game. It's still cryptic, more so than Sekiro I think, but cryptic is Fromsoft's style, for better or worse, and this is the refinement of that.
I do, genuinely, recommend the game. It takes some getting used to and has a learning curve, but if you understand the language the game is speaking to you it becomes a little less frustrating. I've learned to love that language from as far back as Dark Souls 1, but if you learn to love Elden Ring first it will translate well backward in time if you'd like to try the earlier games.
Recently purchased? Fallout 76. God, it could’ve been great.
Recent? None right now, but I also rarely buy games nowadays.
If we’re able to go outside of recent times, I’m still pretty salty about buying fuckin RPG Maker 2 & 3 on the PS2 without having a way to connect my PS2 to the internet.
The last time I had video game buyer’s remorse was getting RAGE on launch day.
What a technically interesting, but utterly underwhelming game.
The enemy movement animations in that game were quite good from what I remember.
The game had a lot of great tech and visuals behind it, but it had so many fatal flaws that just sunk the experience.
Jedi Survivor. It's not a bad game, I just suck at it. Can't get past the first boss on easy mode. Getting old is annoying. I struggle with a lot of PC games now.
It might not just be a skill issue for that game. The PC version has serious performance issues from what I hear.
I just started it on PS5 and even then the combat has been pretty clunky. I beat Elden Ring where fights usually felt difficult but fair. So far Jedi Survivor just feels frustrating with ignored button inputs and animations that last too long.
Thanks telling me. Maybe I won't retire just yet.
I'm a dumbass who bought it on steam deck and can't get it to work, but I waited for the 55% off and was feeling cocky because I played the original on SD and have played other non deck supported games with no issues. Whoops haha
I just can't do that style of game. That and Gof of War, the puzzle based small open world games. They're too infuriating for me. I only get so many hours to play, I want to play the story - not spend 3 hours on a puzzle and then die 13 times with a boss.
I really like God of War, but I'm shitty at it. I was able to get through the main storyline on easy, and I accomplished some of the side objectives. But there's no way in hell I'm fighting all of those Valkyrie. I managed two or three of them, then noped out.
I have the same problem with fallen order. Even on the lowest difficulty the combat feels horrible, which is likely a skill issue, but still isn’t terribly fun
Squad. Looking for a more serious FPS game other than the popular shooters like CoD or Battlefield. Got a rec for it, so why not. Went to buy it and it’s $50. Well, the reviews looked mostly ok, and so did the screenshots… so I bit.
Man, the game plays like it’s 10-15 years old. Slow, clunky and the graphics leave room for improvement. Very dated. I don’t think I’d mind this game for the $15-25 range, but not $50. I returned it. I think probably the second game ever I returned.
If by "more serious" you mean more mechanically complex than "point and click", I recommend trying arena shooters if you're willing to get your booty cheeks slapped into the dirt for a bit while learning to play. Quake Champions is free and has the best GFX, but it has hero shooter aspects that a lot of people don't like. Quake Live is a paid (but cheap) alternative with no bullshit. (And I'd recommend the original Quake if it weren't so dead...still might be fun with friends, though.)
Half-Life 1's multiplayer is my favorite and it recently got a 25th anniversary update, but tbh it's still a chaotic and broken mess lol. But if you're into that, I highly recommend it.
I would recommend Counter-Strike as a more straightforward yet still mechanically complex FPS, but they recently removed a LOT of content. Lots of game modes and maps are missing, but if you're in it for the competitive experience you might still like it.
Speaking of Counter Strike I saw a line saying Arms Race was back but I haven't had time to reinstall and rejoice. I uninstalled specifically because it got removed so I'll be giving it another shot this week.
Mafia. The story is good, but you are basically watching a movie with driving and shooting in-between cut scenes. The player has zero choice or influence over the game.
Which one? If you mean the first one, then it's because it is basically a person telling the story, and you as a player is reenacting it. It's basically a movie you can somewhat play.
It's also old as fuck lol. Personally loved it, as a proud Czech.
then it’s because it is basically a person telling the story, and you as a player is reenacting it.
So is 2, isn't it?
Yep. It didn't bother me except when the handsome guy (Henry Tomasino)
set Joe and Tommy up on what was clearly a crap deal. It might have been better if he was trying to kill me off so he could take my job, but no, Tomasino was just stupid.
Having Joe Barbaro accompany me on every mission was a good set up for the ending.
There's a moment that really worked for me, Tomasino asks if Tommy can kill people on command, and he noted he killed a whole lot for President Roosevelt in Sicily. Tomasino says (I paraphrase) Yeah, but those were enemy. These are civilians. Tommy doesn't respond.
I was specially referring to "the definitive edition", which is a remake of the first game which was released in 2020.
Idk if this counts as recent but breath of the wild. Idk the last time I spent $60 on a game, let alone the $100 I spent on botw + DLC, because "how can literally everyone be wrong about this game".
The combat was fun for a decent amount of time but at a certain point I asked myself "wtf am I doing". I didn't care about the story because it was awful and the voice acting was embarrassing. Exploring the world felt incredibly shallow, with the most exciting thing to randomly run into being recycled mini bosses that rewarded me with weapons that I didn't need. Any challenge the combat or exploration presented could be bypassed by grinding for potions.
By far the most bafflingly over hyped game I've ever played.
Most disappointing Zelda I’ve ever played. Sadly this is the formula going forward for Zelda so the new ones are gonna be a hell no from me.
I loved the puzzle dungeons of the previous games. The shrines feel like just puzzles, with no real dungeon.
It was an awesome formula. I guess the people who invented it died off and the idiots that followed just didn’t understand what made Zelda great to begin with. It’s sad to see
Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus
I thought it was gonna be like an XCom or Divinity Original Sin kinda combat game.
Maybe it is? I don’t think so, but the UI and controls are so bad that I never really figured out how to play, and there’s no tutorial, so I can’t say for sure what kind of game it actually is.
All I figured out in my 2ish hours is that it’s not a game for me.
If you're looking for XCOM 40k, check out Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters. It unabashedly mimics XCOM and throws in the spaceship management from Battletech. I would say it's not quite as good as XCOM 2, but it's still pretty good. Bonus points if you're into 40k.
Thanks, I’ll check that one out!
Yeah I’m a little curious about the Warhammer 40k world, but not interested in getting into another tabletop game, so I figured a video game might be fun
I really liked the Horizon games, so I bit thinking it’d be more like the others but in VR.
Gameplay is much different. It looks cool, but if the gameplay is balls it doesn’t matter how good it looks.
All the other games I got make me sick to my stomach. VR is a niche and an acquired taste.
My gf got it for me for Christmas and it hurts my soul to have only used it a couple times since, but there's so few games and I can't wear it for more that 30 minutes without my face sweating, shoulders aching and the screen is so small, where is the full field of view wtf is the point of a tiny screen strapped to your face?
Red Dead Redemption 2 only because I bought it for full price a month ago.
Don't. Rdr2 is one of the few games I honestly felt like they deserved more for. So much detail, so well done. Of course get a deal where you can, but don't worry about paying full price.
Oh it's an amazing game it just never goes on a real sale. The game made me cry during the entire "final" mission. Absolutely worth every cent.
It's under $20 right now on steam. Is that not a real sale?
Ready or not
Gameplay is pretty fun with the homies
But for a $40USD game some maps are powerpoint slide shows on high in hardware 20-30fps on the house map.
For refrence
Pc specs
I5-10400
6700xt
32gb of ddr4
Game makes if feel like im playing on a toaster oven
Hogwarts Legacy on Switch. I should have known better, but my local Walmart had it on sale for $29.99 a few weeks ago and I bought on impulse after reading a few posts about how it's gotten better after updates. I've had glitches galore. Mad pop-in, falling through geometry, crashes, and two save game corruptions, all in the most up-to-date version available. If this is better, I can't imagine how broken it was at launch. I feel like I got $5 of content out of this. If the glitches were at least amusing, I might be ok with it, but the save corruption is just unacceptable.
cyberpunk for obvious reasons. they have improved it but its still nowhere near what they said it would be in the game. not that recent but im still salty about this one.
I love cyberpunk, but it’s not the game that was advertised. With modding and phantom liberty I’ve done ~4 full playthroughs of the game and enjoyed every one of them though. So if you haven’t modded the heck out of it, it might be worth trying.
I'm not mad about Cyberpunk but I did buy it on sale. It's pretty decent overall now.
For my response to OP's question, I regret buying Overwatch and Destiny 2. But those aren't very recent
oof overwatch hurts.
i bought it not long before they released overwatch 2, and the community really makes me feel like i wasted money.
I'm sorry to say you definitely did but it wasn't through any real fault of your own. We got real bamboozled by Overwatch, it was incredibly disappointing.
It’s a great game for $30, but at full price+dlc it can get a bit pricey
Escape from Tarkov
Maybe I just didn't spend enough time researching how to actually play the game but it didn't live up to the hype.
Honorable mentions: Squad and The Division 2
Forza Motorsport. Years and years of development for a bug ridden mess that’s shockingly light on content.
Between this and Starfall my expectations for anything coming from Microsoft game studios has plummeted.
I don’t know how Microsoft fumbled so badly with FM7. GT7 has been doing great, PC Simracing is the biggest it’s ever been (outside of covid bubble peak). The market is there to the point they could have been a major player, but the game is basically DOA and I can’t figure out where it went wrong.
Enshrouded. I'm on a 5600X and a 6800XT and no matter the settings or reported FPS I feel like I'm running on 30-40fps. Also for some reason the distant LODs look like garbage, nothing like the gameplay I've seen in review videos.
Devs confirmed it was a bug with the camera but they did not know what caused it. Engine is entirely in-house so hopefully they fix it soon.
The only thing I managed to care about so far was building a nice cave home with a huge great hall and ruining the scenery by building a giant Peter Griffin pixel art outside.
None. I agonise over every purchase for weeks.
Update on this, devs have "kinda" found a fix but need to do large scale testing. They have said that they will release a separate beta branch on steam to opt-in to if you want to try the fixed fps issues.
Monster Hunter.
Start the game with 2 hours of unskippable tutorials, endless dialogue and the explanation of a million game systems that should not come into play until later.
Then you're set out into the wilderness to track a monster, and all you do is pick up mucus... Eventually found the monster and hit it a bunch, then it ran away... and I chased it around for 10 more minutes.
Said what the fuck is this, and just uninstalled and never looked back.
Monhun has infamously bad onboarding...probably the worst this side of Dwarf Fortress. Fantastic series once you get into it, though. The scary thing is...the new games are way better about it than they used to be.
I played 100 hours of World and I honestly didn't enjoy a minute of it. I have no idea what people like about the series, and I especially dislike the comparisons to Dark Souls. It's nothing like souls.
I feel like every MH game I've tried to get into I play a few dozen hours and just lose interest, same as most Soulsbourne games.
Different weapon classes with significantly deeper movesets than is ever explained, have to be tactical about when to move/attack, "boss fights" rely on reading the enemy's moves and reacting appropriately.
The moods and details are black and white different but I get the comparison.
...Why on earth would you put 100 hours into a game you don't like?
Sounds like MH World. Other MH games had much less upfront material but people always complained about the lack of tutorials and guidance, hence World's approach.
Somewhat old? Civilization III. I ordered it like 5 years ago and was trying to scratch the itch left by Call to Power II, but the multiplayer is flaky at best on LAN and the tech tree just isn't interesting to me. Later entries also have the "tech tree doesn't interest me" thing and also don't scratch the Call to Power itch (they don't have the wacky future tech like hover tanks and eco-warfare) but they also look a lot more visually interesting at least.
I miss when stacking was a thing in Civ. Sure it was relatively unbalanced, but that's part of the fun in my experience.
/end grandpa rant
By stacking do you mean combining units to form a single stronger unit? If so, Civ 6 has that, albeit only up to three units.
By stacking, I mean adding the units together on a single tile into armies so the units all fight together. Civ VI does have this, but in a very limited capacity (as you mentioned, up to 3 units). Older games had many more stacking possibilities (Civ III actually had infinite unit stacking, which was cataclysmically crazy lol, but I think Call to Power II really struck a good number with a max of 12 units in a tile)
Civ 3 and 4 would be so much more tolerable if the stacks were limited to something like 12. I haven't been able to go back to those games since 5 changed it up, the stacks of death are too much for me
I want my money back for battlebit remastered. It took about six hours to realize "wait, this game is half baked" last summer. Steam did not accept my refund request just one hour outside of their standard trial window (which they've always been extremely cool about before), i'm guessing because a bunch of people didn't like it all at once. I tried it again just a month or so ago, a bunch of stuff is still wonky, and the logarithmic decrease in players (even after a spike from winter sale) since its peak last june reflects this. Seems to me they put all their effort into skin and map "content" than actually fixing bugs or improving systems and mechanics.
This is the cycle most new FPS games have done the last few years. Nothing outside of CoD, Apex and Fortnite seem to stick. The Finals, Battlebit, Splitgate all had massive initial players, then drop off significantly once it’s no longer the newest, greatest thing and go back to the established games.
Skins and Maps are easy money to attempt to keep development going, as these games are often released before they’re ready and due to the financial situation of the developers.
What happened to splitgate? I thought it was pretty good, at least it was 100% ready for launch with interesting concepts. I dropped it because I realized I couldn't compete with the kids these days... getting older and my hands and fingers don't work as quickly as they used to, I frankly suck at aiming now. I'm disappointed to see its 300 player count now, I assumed it would do well with its concept and execution being so good simultaneously. What did I miss?
I’m not 100% sure exactly what happened, but my best guess is that it just got stale quickly. The twitch streamers and kids who hop from game to game played for a few weeks, then when they got bored it just started dropping off in popularity, eventually leading to the death spiral.
I know at least for myself I just didn’t enjoy the gameplay loop as much as I did Apex legends, so I just went back to what I was familiar with and sunk another couple thousand hours in.
What happened to splitgate?
It went the way of every other arena shooter, like Quake... The skill ceiling is so high that it hit a critical point where the number of more experienced / higher skilled players outweighed the new / lower skilled players. New players come in, get annihilated, they can't figure out how to improve because the skill gap is so big, then they leave. Very few new players make it past that hurdle, and the players who persist get better and better, and the skill gap gets wider and wider...
Believe it or not, most arena shooter players are pretty old (relative to videogame demographics at least lol). I'm in my mid twenties and I've NEVER met someone my age who plays them, except one in their late twenties. All of my friends and people I talk to on arena shooters are over 30, and I've even met a married couple who were in their 50s.
To be fair battlebit fucked the game up. People left because they started making the game like CoD which is opposite of what most people were looking for in the game. Battlebit drove people away. It wasn’t because it wasn’t new anymore.
That and lots and LOTS of cheaters. Blaming it all on ADHD folks is disingenuous.
AC Valhalla.
I played though all the other ones but that one felt so soulless and bland. I expected it to not be great but nothing this bad.
Then again I finally realized recently that I don't actually enjoy open world games (with some exceptions).
IMO the open world was a bad shift for the AC games, I haven't enjoyed one since Unity. Hoping Mirage is solid, but they lost my trust so I won't pay full price either
AC has kinda been open world the whole time it's when they expanded it then changed every mechanic of the game. It became less about being a stealth assassin and more about brute strength. Large out in the open combat instead of death from the shadows.
The settlers 2 history edition after I discovered that there is also an community remake (Settlers 2 RTTR) which is just overall better and actually fixed some decades old bugs, which the official re-release apprently didn't bother with. But that's Ubisoft for you.
I know this isnt what you asked, but the last seven or so games that I have purchased have been EXCELLENT and that is super rare for me! Elden ring (on release, I dont buy a lot of games), Armored Core 6, Nioh 1, Nioh 2, Baldurs Gate 3, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Dead Space Remake.
I was so sad when I beat AC6 because it was so short ;-;
Just s rank every mission and then get sad all over again
Back 4 blood. They added so much nonsense to it, I just want to slash my way through waves of zombies with fun weapons, not to manage a card deck and play in a very specific way to be able to advance in the campaign.
Faefarm. Not that it is a terrible game, it just wasn't worth paying full price for. I was in a bad spot and needed a cozy comfort game, and it was great for that. But there just wasn't enough there for me to justify the 60$ price tag. Wish I had just waited for a sale.
With you on that one.
Lawn Mowing Simulator
The deluxe remaster game of the year edition really fixed most of the original flaws with LMS. It's truly masterclass now.
The Front
Lethal Company
That weird followup to breath of the wild. Game was just annoying playing as the other characters. I think I maybe put 15 minutes into before I cut my losses.
That’s a Zelda reskin of another game. It’s not really in the Zelda canon, kind of like Link’s appearance in soul caliber. It was just meant to wring an extra buck from Zelda fans.
Squad. People said that I would like it because I like Arma 3, but with no AI scenarios, editor or singleplayer for that matter, I just didn't like it. It felt too sweaty as opposed to Arma where I can take my time or have a casual game of Wasteland. Plus it feels like there isn't a casual gamemode in Squad like Arma KOTH which is basically just giant tdm with some squad and support mechanics.
That Avatar game.
I thought it was an Assassin's Creed game with an Avatar skin, but it's a Far Cry game with an Avatar skin.
Same. I platinumed both of the horizon games and thought even being ubisoft it was getting good reviews so I went for it. Absolute bore fest. Pretty world, and traversing it felt good. But none of the actual gameplay was any fun.
Nothing. Alan Wake and Cyberpunk are both incredible. Next will be Alan Wake 2 and then Death Stranding.
Oh yes. Alan Wake was such a surprise, like 1980s Stephen King. All those well-connected hints and mysteries. I have yet to play Alan Wake 2, but I loved the first part.
And it looks so good as a remaster. The animations are all great, so with the updated textures and lighting it looks and plays like a brand new game.
Fair warning, AW2 leans a lot more into horror than the first did. If you've played the resident evil 2 remake, it's kinda like that.
Latest patch gives a horror/jump scare toggle.
Vermintide 2
Just not my kind of gameplay.
I rarely bought game lately, so it's gonna be game from 2020 to now.
Grim Dawn: it's really a subpar diablo clone and it's boring, enemy either dies immediately or it's spongy as heck. Played to the point where i have to get to some manor but thus far the gameplay feels bland, and looking at the skill tree it doesn't offer much new thing. Not enjoying this one
Black Mesa: Not remorse per se, but i got bored of it and turn my attention to something else.
Call of Juarez Gunslinger: again, not remorse, i got bored of it.
Elder Scrolls Online: i have no idea what i expect from it, and i'm disappointed anyway. I thought it will play like the other ES but it's really just an MMO. Bought it with other game on sales but by the time i play it it's already off the refund time.
Forza Horizon 4: it's pretty good actually, but i feels like it just wasn't a good kb&m game. I can't turn well in curved road when in high speed while the bot turn just fine. It's one of those game that's meant for race wheel. This and asseto corsa have the same issue, and i was led to believe i can play just fine with kb&m but that wasn't the case at my end.
Space Pirate and Zombie 2: it's boring.
Incredible that you got bored with this list, it's literally some of my favorites.
One thing though, you should play horizon with a controller. It's not good with a wheel. And racing games haven't been good on m+kb in ages. You may have a chance if you hook up steering to the mouse, but all the Forza games are really meant to be played with controller.
If i would have bought watch dogs legion for full price I would have buyers remorse for sure. But I picked it up for 8 bucks and had a few hours of fun with it. So most of this thread is more about price for fun than anything I guess.
Danganronpa V3.
It's not bad but I could have just watched a playthrough because the "game" is so linear and the logic is so easy (even on "mean" difficulty) that there's no way to fail unless I was lobotomized.
It's a fun anime though. I should just watch the two seasons of the actual anime of it.
I think they do this on purpose, both Dangaronpa and Zero Escape had controversial endings to the series. I feel the V3 ending was a middle finger to the fans of the serie.
Is that why I've not actually seen much about it? lol
I got it because I watched Game grumps play the first 2 and wanted more.
::: CW: Unpopular opinion, incoming:
Tears of the Kingdom
:::
Remnant2. It wasn't bad exactly, but it didn't click for me. Not worth the $40. Maybe it's more fun with friends. But it just seemed kind of.. meh. Maybe I'd there were double the monsters or something
Darktide. One of the biggest complaints about Vermintide 2 is that it is too god damn grindy, so what did Fatshark do with it's next game? Make it so much worse.
I want to do build crafting, I want to try new weapons, but to experience the endgame means hitting the slots again and again hoping to get a weapon I can build on. It ruins what could otherwise be a good game, and I just can't do it anymore.
The Planet Crafter. Which is actually a terrific game, but I don't really have enough graphics card to play it properly. I have it at the lowest detail settings and the game still grinds to a near-halt when I'm in some parts of the map. Parts that I need to be in to advance. It doesn't crash, but I get something like one frame per five minutes. Maybe I should have waited until it was out of early access but I was impatient and the early game has been so much fun.
Where The Water Tastes Like Wine. Got tired of hearing the game's mouth before even getting to anything resembling a main gameplay loop, chose to exit, and it started another long winded speech, which I Alt+F4'd out of. I learned of this game via youtube recommendations of its soundtrack, liked some of the songs, game went on my wishlist. Got a Steam notification it was on sale, hit buy. Was busy with other shit for awhile, when I got around to playing and UTTTERLY FUCKING HATING it for thoroughly refusing to respect my time, the Steam refund period had lapsed. Did you know there's a "remove from library" feature where you can just...unown a game. I've used it precisely once.
BATTLETECH. I was thinking "Hmm, I've enjoyed this franchise for awhile but never actually played the tabletop game, and I live in an oubliette so I'm the only person within 100 miles that's even HEARD of the game, so maybe this will let me experience that gameplay. I died of old age three times in a row just waiting for the opening cinematic to finish. It's in the style of "slide the camera slowly across hand-drawn art while a voice actor monologues" things. It ran like constipation, somehow. Like it felt like the computer was struggling to handle what should have been simple video playback. The story is apparently about YET ANOTHER non-canonical pointless little periphery nation to be served by YET ANOTHER pointless little lance-strength mercenary company. The main menu appears and gave me a choice between 'Story Mission" and "Campaign" which...those are synonyms. Then we FINALLY after four generations have come and gone we get in-engine, and the tutorial mission is the last goddamn straw. They vomit story and gameplay control tutorials at you simultaneously, so you're hit with a voice saying "The duchess knows she can count on you.", a prompt at the bottom of the screen that says "Press T to use your weapons" and a text box on the left edge of the screen that says 'The duchess understands that it's dangerous being in a Battletech game, but she knows you'll do the best you can."
Brotato.
I mean, it's cheap, so not a huge regret, but I really thought I would like it, but only ended up playing it twice .
Young Souls. I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to couch co-op games if we find one we can both enjoy.
And this one was good, but it was basically unplayable on the Switch (or, at least, constantly crashed mine). Finally got to the very end (where there's no saving from the start of the end cutscene until the finale) and it crashed before the final battle. Restarted, got through several minutes of cutscenes, got a little farther but crashed again, this time in the final battle. Tried one more time and it crashed again in a different spot. Promptly deleted the game.
So I guess we'll never finish that one.
All of them. I should be studying and working
has assignments due in
*plays palworld for 120 hours in 2 weeks
Helldivers 2. I just found it boring. I'm waiting still for my refund, I only haf about 1.5 hours in it. But only 45 minutes of gameplay. I managed to only get a few matches and they were very dry.
I just bought this and installed it and was going to play it after the kiddo went to bed. I'm a little bit worried that it's not going to be something I'm interested in.p
It's an amazing game. I can understand why it wouldn't be for everyone though.
I'm enjoying it, I also loved the first one so my expectations were perfectly set for it (the same exact game but 3rd person shooter instead of top down dual stick shooter)
It's a cool concept, but just seems short of what I expected. Seems the majority of good stuff is much much further down the line in it. I'd say Deep Rock is better option for this kind of game. Doing missions and fighting hoards of bugs.
I'm glad I didn't but that new Enshrouded. I was really excited for it. I'm so picky about new games and thought this could be one. But the first moments I saw some playthrough today, and I saw the crappy graphics, I was out. I don't even want to see anyone play it. Yuck.
Why in 2024 do they release these "hot" games with jaggy graphics, low quality graphics, cartoony and low color graphics?
Nostalgia first and formost imo. There's a big enough crowd of gamers who miss the days when games were more about gameplay as a pinnacle characteristic of video games. So if game devs don't have to have the latest and greatest visuals, but focus more on the story, gameplay, and characters, they have a game market.
Atomic Heart. I was excited to learn that Mick Gordon participated in the music and I got hooked by the aesthetic of the intro sequence, but the drawn-out underground lab mission series of fetch quests completely killed my enjoyment. I'd only gotten to three out of four macguffins before I gave up.
The insufferable talking glove didn't help either.
Starfield. I love some Bethesda games, and I don't hate the game, it's just not worth the price. It would be way more tolerable at $40. I got about 40-45 hours into it, and I don't know if I'm ever going to complete it. I feel like I've seen everything the game offers and there doesn't seem to be anything new coming along in terms of mechanics or story.
I got 40hours in and it was tolerable with the ship building but questing was uninspired loading screens suck and the progression tree was a massive turn off. You'd think they'd take a few cues from fallout nv
I'm not usually into base/ship building, but I'm glad it is there for those that are into it. I can't imagine how poorly the game would have been received without it though. Skill tree is bullshit. Can't modify weapons or armor because I'm not high enough level, even after 40 hours. I can't modify a damn scope? WTH?
They took quite a few cues from NV if you compare it side by side with NV and Skyrim. There's a lot more Roleplaying in Starfield than Skyrim, for example, it's just extremely dull world-wise in Starfield.
I mostly hated that the skill trees are still mostly % increases. Cyberpunk retooled their entire skill tree because of that.
It's a type of gameplay progression that just isn't that fun - but Bethesda loves it.
Yeah, glad I didn't buy this. Thought it was hated on a bit too much though.
I enjoyed the combat more than most RPGs and some of the hand crafted environments were nice. Found the ship building quite fun too.
Combat is fun, but not anything special. I feel like the quests aren't fun enough to bother dealing with all of the non-fun parts of the game, e.g. travel.
Same boat.
I don't exactly hate the game, but the planet-hopping has segmented it too much and exploring a thousand empty terrains each with 3-4 generic caves/camps grows old quick. I don't know if the main story would have picked up speed any time soon (I retrieved 3 or 4 of the thingies they collect), but I haven't launched the game for a few weeks now.
Diablo IV. What a disappointment that turned out to be.
My wife and I were massive fans of D3, so buying D4 was a no-brainer. We liked the campaign, and we (begrudgingly) completed the first season. We didn't finish the second season, and only played about 2 hours of the third season. Unless they do something drastic in future seasons I don't see this becoming the hit for us that D3 was. They have time to make it better, but it will probably be shelved for a couple years for us.
That was my most recent regret of a buy.
For those of you who are enjoying Diablo 4, good on you. I sadly could not. There are too many things that I've been shown a better way on thanks to other arpgs that is rather spend time on than one which seems intent to have me spend significantly more time on for less. It felt awful to pick up entire inventories of loot and have absolutely none of it be worth while for my character. Literally hours of running from thing to thing to not hit a single upgrade.
Which other ones would you recommend? I've played a few (PoE, which wasn't for me, Grim Dawn, which was more fun). I went back to D2 after getting bored with D4.
I've really enjoyed the depth and customization available in path of exile. It's so strange to me that in diablo that equipment is either a good roll or completely useless and there's no fixing it. In path of exile, I just need to find a decent base normal item (white rarity) and I can work it into something worthwhile.
If that's not your cup of tea for whatever reason, I've heard good things about the last epoch, though I haven't played myself.
As for path of exile.. A lot of people assume you need as a beginner to follow some kind of guide or a step by step thing. I've found that as long as you don't neglect defense in that massive skill tree, you'll do just fine while doing your own thing. Doing that and keeping your various resistances up are the keys to success.
Maybe it's one of those games I need to bounce off of two or three times before it clicks for me. The skills from gems confused me, but maybe I'm just judging it too soon?
I was also trying to play it on my Steam Deck, and had some difficulty getting that to feel right, so maybe that's a factor too.
Is it just acclimation to a new concept that is similar in some ways to putting gems/runes in your gear from Diablo?
I remember taking a moment to understand that the skills are all from gems, but afterwards It's pretty nice to be able to swap out skills as you play, trying new stuff to see if you like it before you really go all in on something. This most recent league(season) I found a skill I didn't know about before and it has worked wonderfully with everything else I'm working with. Once you're a bit over halfway through the campaign the game drops an npc that has nearly all the gems for sale, so you can really spend a lot of time trying out stuff to see what you like.
As for the controller version of the game, I like some things (I found it way easier to use potions), but others were a bit more frustrating, especially the inventory management and item collection... Which is a rather large part of the game.
Have you checked out Last Epoch yet? Fantastic ARPG even for being in Early Access (which I don't usually invest into), though the 1.0 release is at the end of this month.
I can't recommend it enough!
I have a vague memory of trying this a year or two(?) ago but gave up trying again after I couldn’t get my account to transfer to steam, which I guess is required now. I’ll definitely be trying it again once I figure that out though.
Definitely reach out to their support if it's still giving you issues, I'd imagine a lot of people are coming back for 1.0 so it could very well be something they're able to easily/quickly fix now.
You weren't stoked about the gloves that give you +2% critical strike damage against pirates on alternating Tuesdays with skills whose names contain three or more vowels either, huh?
The amount of fluff stats was simply amazing.
80 f'ing bucks! The most I've ever paid for a videogame! To play this snorefest. must be half a year now and I'm still bummed...
Interesting.
My partner and I played a lot of Diablo 3 and for the winter break, I bit the bullet and bought D4, feeling a bit uneasy as many people online were disappointed.
The obligation to be always online, coupled with the slow servers did not help to ease the uneasy feeling, but after playing for a while, I must say that besides for that online crap, the game feels much more like a rpg than D3.
The world is much more open, and you don’t have to just follow the main quest as there are many side quests spread around.
I get that many people play for the online seasons and to perfect their setup, and I can’t speak for this experience, but if you approach the game as a casual loot action rpg with a big world to dicover, to me it is a much better game than D3.
This was my experience, up until my stats turned into a series of interconnected boardgames. I got a bit lost in the sauce at that point and quit. Up until then I was having an okay time, though.
The mechanics and bosses are an upgrade from 3, but the scaling ruins everything that made the game an RPG. You don't get more powerful when you level up because everything around you gets stronger.
I mean did nobody with any power at that company realize that it's not satisfying for your spells to do less damage, or that your armor getting less effective every time you leveled up was a bad thing?
/rant
Same. A friend and I were excited to play together like we did in D3, but we barely managed to finish the campaign. It's on the shelf for now unless/until we hear the team turned things around.
I don't have a lot of hope now they're second-siblings in the Microsoft family.
I knew it'd be shit but I bought it anyways. Idk what is wrong with me. Why did I have to give them money
Baldurs Gate 3
There’s nothing wrong with the game, I just don’t find it fun to play. Somehow got 48 hours out of it, but never made it to the end of act one. The gameplay just wasn’t something I terribly enjoyed.
I don’t necessarily regret the purchase as supporting smaller, decent studios is a good plan, but it’s still a game I’m not going to get a lot of use out of
Right there with you. I had like 25 hours in the game and realized I just spent most of that time save scumming a single battle over and over. I tried another 15 hours and it felt like that's all I was doing. I felt I was under leveled, I rerolled a new character on the easiest difficulty but was still finding myself doing the same shit and battles weren't getting easier.
I'm sure there's a great game there, but I don't have the time for it.
You summed up my experience perfectly, down to the OP build on the easiest difficulty. I just didn’t have that much fun with it
Diablo 4.
I played like 10 hours, then realized it was really fucking boring. It felt soulless. Uninteresting.
The infinitely scaling enemies was the dumbest fucking shit Ive encountered in a LONG ass time.
Im lv1 and a shipwrecked mugger can kill me
time warp 30 hours of gameplay
Im lv50, Im dripping in rare loot, I just kicked a greater demons balls through the roof of his mouth oh and a shipwrecked mugger can still kill me.
Absolutely agree. Worst 70 euros I spent in quite some time.
I actually dozed off at my computer playing D4, something about the mindlessness of it just lulls me to sleep.
Animal Crossing is my favorite sleepy time game, but Diablo gets me nodding off like it's downtown Kensington
Elden Ring.
Waited all year until it was on sale as I thought it might not be my cup of tea, tried not to let my prejudice get the better of me but felt it was such a drag I had to put it down.
It was recommended to me as I like Zelda but it couldn't be further from the things I like about it: innovation, fluid gameplay, freedom, puzzles, multiple ways to tackle enemies.
I don't think it's the difficulty as I play lots of roguelike and bullet hell games. My main gripe is the clunkiness of the combat to the point it's unfair. Like you don't really stand a chance through reactions alone, you have to learn the patterns and hitboxes of enemies so that you know in advance when to react.
Also I kept hearing how good the graphics are but I think they're kinda average although the actual art style is quite nice.
Any suggestions on how I might enjoy it would be much appreciated as I haven't got very far.
Whoever thought you might like Elden Ring because you like Zelda is not a true friend. There's really not much similar with the gameplay loop.
You're right that the gameplay is more about learning and recognizing patterns of enemies and adjusting to them so if that doesn't appeal to you you're probably not going to like it. With that being said though, your first soulslike is always the hardest and if you stick with it they are very rewarding to play once you know what to expect.
Cheers, probably just not for me then.
It sounds like you probably had the wrong expectations of what the game was going in. These games can be frustrating under the best of circumstances, but are very much "tough but fair."
If you choose to give it another shot, look up a build. The weapon scaling system is a little obtuse and if you're pumping levels ups into str and using a dex weapon you'll do no damage. Whatever you do, put a lot of points into Vigor. Get it to 40 at least after you have the stats to equip your weapon to increase your health because defense is mostly cosmetic in these games. Other than that, you get i-frames on your roll and the game rewards aggressive play so learn to roll into attacks and not away if you're not using a shield.
I expected it to be difficult with a possibility of not enjoying it but seemed pretty popular so thought I'd give it a go.
Will give your suggestions a shot but I find everything about it obtuse to be honest. To me good game design lowers you gently into mastering the controls and ramping up difficulty, not just chucking you in at the deep end with confusing menus so it's on the player to look everything up.
Dropping you into the deep end and expecting you to find your own way is kind of a hallmark of the series. Almost every game starts with a basic overview of the controls and then a difficult boss you are expected to lose to. Even the controls overview is entirely skipable because they are in the form of messages on the ground. In a way this teaches you about how you interact with the world because the storytelling is almost entirely environmental. Going against this would upset a massive fanbase because this is a very well established series at this point.
At a certain point in the story, you can respec all your stats. If you mess up or want to change anything - this happens after the second major story boss. The only thing that you truly need to know about to be successful is weapon scaling. All weapons scale based on a specific stat, ranging from E-S with E being the weakest scaling and A/S being strong scaling. The number on the left when you're in your equip menu is the base weapon damage based on its level (normal weapons can be level 1-25 and special weapons 1-10. You unlock the ability to upgrade weapons pretty early in the story) and the number on the right is the additional damage you'll have added based on a combination of the weapon's scaling and your own stats. You can be quite successful just by understanding these two mechanics because they will make up a good portion of your damage.
Since you mentioned Zelda originally, there is a reason this meme exists:
After I died for the 327th time within the first few hours of playing, I ditched it. Haven't been back since. The gameplay is really cumbersome, blocking and dodging are hit or miss, and I've been jumping and rolling around all day like some unmedicated ADHD kid on speed trying to get one hit in that causes minimal damage, while every enemy counterattack goes near critical.
I'm not against a step learning curve or anything, but Elden Ring was a major frustration.
I mean this in a constructive way: you're literally playing it wrong. Elden Ring is a Souls game, which (in terms of gameplay) is the complete opposite of a hack & slash button masher. There's almost no animation cancelling, so once you press a button, you're committed to the outcome and have to wait for it to finish. So if you miss a heavy swing with a giant 25 kg greataxe, you'll be wide open for the enemies to smash you. The game requires self-control to make every input matter.
Once you acclimate though, I think the combat feels very good. It's responsive (once you accept the fact that you can't cancel actions), flexible, and the hitboxes are way more accurate than most games.
But don't think you have to master it all at once. The enemies are tough, but you don't have to fight fair. Sneak and backstab if you can, soften them up with arrows or ranged spells, debuff them with throwables, summon some spirit ash helpers, use the environment to land attacks from the high ground, stack up poison and bleed effects, use a shield to block-counter, use your weapon abilities to help break enemy poise, etc etc. You can create entire builds around any of these but of course there's power in combinations.
Souls games are honestly just pretty rhythm games. The queues are obscured and the timing can be quite silly, but it’s the same core gameplay.
Nice to see it hasn't changed since Dark Souls. Thought I might have been missing out.
I think it sounds to me like it just isn't your thing. What you're describing as a frustration is what I love about Elden Ring, you have to figure out every enemy and learn their patterns in order to succeed so every enemy is like it's own little puzzle to solve. There's no secret to avoid that part of the game besides maybe building INT and just avoiding fights which does not sound fun tbh
This. I think people who enjoy it see every enemy as a puzzle. Even developing your character is a bit of a puzzle, figuring out what stats suit the weapons you like and the play style you're aiming for. Conversely, Zelda is incredibly simple and boring to me. Most of the fights are boop boss on the head 3 times, or throw their own bombs back at them 3 times. The only Zelda I enjoyed was the first one.
I don't think the bosses are meant to be the puzzles in Zelda, the non-fighting parts of the dungeons are. I'm not really a fan of Zelda games though so I'm not fighting their corner here.
I don't find Elden Ring puzzling, but maybe I haven't played enough. From what I've seen so far it's more trial and error and than figuring stuff out, which I find boring.
Skill trees in general I think are bit of a cop out in most action games, let alone having to decipher them. I'll reach for 4X games like Stellaris or Civ if I want to sit and think about how stats affect outcomes.
Yeah boss battles are usually pretty easy in Zelda, as you say, 3 hits and done most of the time. They're traditionally about getting the player to master the technique or item you've just unlocked. Have you tried running straight to Ganon if BotW or tackling The Depths in TotK though? I don't think either of those tasks could be considered simple.
Surprised you only like the first one, the games are constantly innovating in terms of gameplay and design, but the first is a pretty standard affair. A lot of the time the simplicity is what enables the fun, fluid gameplay as with most games Nintendo put out.
If I want a challenge I'll play online shooters or pretty much any roguelike where when I die I don't come away feeling it was unfair. Tbh I think I just don't enjoy modern action RPGs in general rather than it being a specific Elden Ring criticism. I find they try to cater to lots of mechanics that other games implement better but fully aware that's an unpopular opinion.
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I have not tried those things in BotW and TotK. I got to the water temple in Ocarina of Time and got bored, which I heard was common - sincerely tried to beat it because my childhood friends love the game and were excited for me to get through it. Played 10 mins of Majora's mask and BotW. Watched a bunch of videos of BotW and the new game of people doing cool stuff with bombs and gliders. Just not for me I guess, but I totally see the appeal of them.
I can definitely see your point about modern action RPGs catering to lots of mechanics that other games do better and the genre is saturated now with different souls-likes that lack any kind of innovation but I guess they are safe to make due to their popularity.
Main point in enjoying soulslikes is the approach. Modern action RPGs are very fast paced, very direct in their approach "hit A - enemy dies - get dopamine".
To make it work, slow down. Treat every enemy as a real threat, not filler between bosses. Pretending they are all real players and not bots might help. Keep your distance, bait out several attacks, see how they behave, carefully close in and make your move. Don't get greedy on the offence and only attack when the enemy opens and then break the distance again.
Also as others mentioned, game makes you commit to any actions you take. When you attack the enemy, take responsibility of every button press. If you start mashing, the game punishes you fast and hard.
I don't have the best reaction speeds, but I was able to steamroll most of the bosses under 10 tries, so the game is definitely not the "die until you memorize the moveset" type. If you play patiently and carefully build up your character it is definitely possible to tackle most threats on first sight.
Edit: Also, if you're on PC I don't mind giving you a hand sometime and playing together a little
Yeah think you're right, I like fast-paced games where I can enter flow state quicker and I never was one for grinding up a skill tree in order to progress unless the grinding itself is fun/fluid.
I prefer actively attacking enemies with a bit of running away and dodging where required as opposed to patiently dodging waiting for an opening to attack.
Thanks for the offer, I would have taken you up on that, unfortunately I have it on Xbox, not PC.
I'm a diehard FromSotware fan but even I was a little let down by it. I got a lot more enjoyment from co-op and PvP so I ended up finishing the actual game after 300+ hours lmao
I've beat all the other Souls games so dying hundreds of times didn't bother me... But for some reason I didn't feel compelled at all to actually progress in the game
Yep, Elden Ring (and all soulslike games) are basically just guitar hero with a shitty interface. And way more grinding.
It's not actually challenging just memorization. Elden Ring is basically like speedrunners being able to play Mario with their eyes closed.
Weirdly I like Guitar Hero, but think that's mainly down to enjoying the songs and playing with friends. Scraping through Cliffs of Dover on expert was enough Eden Ring for me lol.
Starfield was definitely one of my worst purchases in a long, long time. Full price for nothing.
Yikes. I got it through Game Pass and still wanted my money back
I played it at a friend's, and I made them apologize.
I have the hope that it will be improved and expanded upon going forward, as well as the possibility of mods.
I get that most planets don't have to be interesting, but if the planet isn't going to be interesting, fucking just tell me that instead of putting a hundred "points of interest" on it. The fact that every planet has a bunch of random pirate bases on it and a dozen random caves with nothing in them is just ...ugh. If it only put markers on things that were actually interesting, that would be a huge step in the right direction.
I bought Lethal Company because it looked like fun. Then realized I don't have enough friends to play it with.
Bought it as well, but have friends.... it's super shallow. We played it maybe 4 hours, basically past the point I can't refund it.
Eh, it's fun enough for the price, we got a few fun evenings out of it
Same. I'll play with you 😄
Palworld
I was expecting factorio but with union busting knock-off Pokemon . I got a really generic open-world survival craft with normal knock-off Pokemon.
Yeah it is over-hyped. I enjoy it, but you do have to keep in mind that it is early access. Hopefully it will continue to get better.
Yeah I've been telling people I think it's fun, but if they haven't jumped on by now due to hype, they might want to wait until the game is less buggy and more complete. I imagine it's gonna stay in early access for a long time.
Given how they've left their last two games... probably not.
Same here.
When starting out without having seen all that much of the game beforehand, I saw a great potential for just that expectation you and I shared. The game keeps you jumping from one task to another, managing your initially growing base(s) to produce new necessities, catch new/more pals, explore the map and ...well, that's basically it, so far.
The gameplay loop so far is pretty barebones and the countless bugs, especially regarding basebuilding and -managing, grew all the more frustrating as I was forced to realize that there simply is no goal or endgame besides catching all the pals, exploring the whole empty map and maybe spend countless hours optimizing it all by breeding the best attributes in your pals, i.e. holding F and waiting.
A lot of that is hopefully simply a symptom of it being early-access though, I expect to have a better time in a few months when the hype died down and the game has matured a bit more.
Modding hopefully will be a feature in the future. I’d love to have factorio with Pokémon slaves
I tried it out bc it was so popular but it felt sooooooo boring to play.
I think it's a fun game. But it certainly is overhyped as fuck.
I luckily refunded it lol
Temtem.
Had the potential to be the RPG Pokemon could be if it just entered this generation's technical level. Instead, it became a shitty grindy money-grab that has been killed by the devs.
I thought about getting it for switch so I could finally check it out only to realize it was online only.
Humble bundle had a bundle of all the Mega Man games for 20 bucks.
I instantly regretted it once I loaded it up and I thought to myself, I could've just got roms for these and a better emulator than the one it came with... The emulator doesn't even let you fuckin adjust the audio levels.
Something is just fucking wrong with the Mega Man collections. I can't quite put my finger on it, but they just don't feel right.
I don't really have any recent ones, but I think my most recent one would be Doom Eternal. That's not saying that it's a bad game, I can understand why people like it. I'm just not a fan of how it plays compared to the original Dooms or even Doom 2016. My biggest complaint is really about how little ammo you can carry for each weapon. I don't like being forced to switch weapons all the time or else glory kill every other enemy. I wasn't a fan of glory kills in Doom 2016 because I felt like they interrupted the pacing in an otherwise fast-paced game, but I put up with them because you could ignore them if you wanted to. You can't really ignore them (or the chainsaw kills) in Doom Eternal though, otherwise you'll find yourself regularly running low on ammo. I guess at least the chainsaw has more utility in Doom Eternal than it did in the original games (on harder difficulties it's hard to justify the chainsaw on anything except low-tier enemies), but I never finished the game because of the ammo restrictions.
Another game I have regrets about is The Sims 4. I knew I was getting into a dlc-pit but it didn't bother me too much because I tend to subscribe to the "Paradox Method" - buy what you like, pirate the rest - when it comes to games with lots of DLC. Additionally, when I pick up a game and really enjoy it, I don't have problems dropping money on dlc because I tend to play it for hundreds or even thousands of hours. However what I wasn't expecting was that I'd end up pirating the entire game anyway because updates almost always break mods and there's no way to disable updates (Origin let you do it, but neither steam nor the new EA games app lets you disable updates). So what was the point of buying anything if I was going to have to pirate the game to stop updates from randomly breaking shit?
Edit: some games I don't have buyer's remorse for are Cruelty Squad, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, and Factorio. Those could easily be 2x the price and still be worth it imo.
I loved Doom 2016. Eternal was such a letdown for me. Completely different games.
For me it was how seriously Eternal took itself. Doom 2016 had a story but Doom guy didn't care and was just there to kill demons. It was a running joke how little he gave a shit. Then suddenly in Eternal he can talk, was some kind of Chosen one and there's this grandiose story with Heaven etc and it's all way too up itself. I just want to shoot Demons. That's it. Don't try and make it more than it needs to be.
It was the opposite for me, too :D
In Doom 2016, the protagonist gave me those "been there, done that, saw it all before" vibes towards humanity's attempt to use hell energy. He swats anyone away who advises him to wait, be moderate or let them try something else first and simply does his thing. I just don't get what's up with the protagonist in Doom Eternal. It feels like some design-by-committee fake badass who does inconsistent things, he suddenly got that "Fort Grayskull" (or is it the "Power Rangers Fortress"?) place and does whatever the Vega AI says. It feels so whack.
It's called 'The Fortress of Doom', which is a... choice. Fort Grayskull sounds much better, tbf.
Only time Doomguy talks in Eternal is during a flashback, and one word at the end of the second DLC. During the flashback he only says how he must kill more demons.
Funnily enough, I felt the opposite. 2016 seemed more grounded and serious to me while still having some laughs and eye rolls, while Eternal had a lot more arcadey stuff where it felt like the devs either didn't know how to integrate it more seamlessly into the universe or were just doing whatever they thought would be cool rather than what would serve a good story. I think I would have been alright with either version of Doom, but I feel like there is a disconnect between the two newest entries that is just a bit harder to look over.
Yeah, it's that disconnect. You're right. Feels like the games were made by two different studios or something.
I do like what they were going for but I totally agree, I don't want to constantly feel like I'm suffocating (low/out of ammo) when I'm trying to tear through nightmare-level hoards of enemies. Just let me rip and tear!!
I'm a hardcore Quake and Half-Life player so constantly switching weapons and using my full arsenal at once comes naturally to me, but I was still struggling the whole way through the game.
Starfield. I want to like it - and there are some things I really do like about it - but it’s just not a very good game. The menus and inventory management is atrocious, which is unforgivable when you have to spend so much time on those screens. The enemies are bullet sponges. It’s not fun dumping a magazine into a guy, reloading and doing it again while the guy just walks right into it like you’re spraying him with a garden hose. I’m ok with there not being a map on remote planets, but it makes no sense that there wouldn’t be one in a city. It’s the kind of stuff you’d overlook if it was an indie early access game, but it doesn’t fly when it’s a $70 game from a major studio. I can’t imagine what they were doing all those years the game was in development because it’s not reflected in the product.
Maybe everyone responsible for the Elder Scrolls and Fall Out games have all retired or been fired and now their devs are people whose main strengths were being great at leet code.
Diablo 4, hands down. My best friend and I have been playing co-op games together for many years, and we were convinced that D4 would be the next 200+ hour co-op event of the year. So I bought myself the 100 dollar collectors edition and he, the same one since his birthday was near launch.
Yep, after 2 weeks we both admitted it just wasn't a good game, and neither of us wanted to play anymore. What a massive disappointment.
Could not possibly agree more. Bought for $90CAD, put in like 20 hours. Didn't enjoy it but kept pressing on hoping it would improve. My morale broke after I finished the sandy place in the west, and then stopped playing.
That's the nail in the coffin for Blizzard games for me.
Try last epoch. Got it last week, it's really scratching that Diablo itch without being as complex as path of exile. It's not as visually polished as Diablo and the story is average at best, but the builds are more interesting, a loooooot more qol stuff and it plays just as well. I have very high hopes for the future of this game.
Full launch is next week too.
Idk if you've played since launch, but they've added some semblance of an end game and some QoL since then as well.
It's still not a full game imo, but I have a week or so of fun per season. Its definitely been a disappointment overall though.
One thing I absolutely hated was the Open World, it was non-stop jammed packed full of monsters, just spawning non-stop. And they are always around your level, so you never feel like you're progressing in power. It was just such a shitty way to handle the world, you can never clear out an area, never go back to an earlier area and flex your new power. Also, monsters spawning constantly was jarring, but the first time I saw a grizzly bear climb straight out of the ground, not a den, just the ground.... lazy bullshit.
There are so many things that were just trash about that game, the stats on gear, it was impossible to figure out which pieces would be actual upgrades. The skill trees looked fun but feel so empty and hollow, ugh, I'm irritated all over again about that purchase.
So unless you've corrected all of that stuff plus a ton more, I probably won't ever play it again.
Itemization is scheduled for change next season, around April I believe, the current incarnation does leave something to be desired.
I agree about the open world scaling as well, it takes away a lot of the power fantasy until late game when you just bulldoze shit 50 levels above you anyways.
I like to zoom zoom so I can't say I ever felt that the open world was packed; compared to dungeons (after the fix) and the new vaults, the open world seems so sparce tbh. And since I'm zooming I never really noticed mobs spawning either.
The game absolutely needs tons of tweaking and content be a full fledged arpg, maybe around season 20 or so it'll be there lmao.
KSP2 or Kerbal Space Program 2. It was early access, I knew that, but it was such a broken mess that I somehow managed to put a lander on the mun, returned it to Kerbin and have never looked back. Rockets that were five parts long wobbling like a stick of candy gum, no re-entry heat and 5 fps on machine that ran KSP1 with volumetric clouds perfectly. Nope. That's not even alpha.
As of December they added re-entry heat and allegedly improved wobbling in the "For Science" update by the way.
But I'm still watching and waiting for it to improve before buying. Reviews for it have been higher lately, but I don't really trust the reviews when the devs set the bar so low. Everyone's too desperate for it to finally be worth playing. It still doesn't even sound as feature-complete as KSP1.
I was a little weary about it when I saw it having the same issues that ksp1 had at some point. You would think that one of the first things they would get right would be the physics, since they spent years getting it working in ksp1. I suspect that new company is just thinking this is a green field game, and are going to hit the same problems ksp1 had.
Agreed, but mostly because they haven't actually improved anything from KSP1. It's still the same wobble, and they solved it in the same way (with auto-strut). The only feature I want from ksp2 is base-building with proper collision mechanics that don't make my base leap 50 meters into the air and explode, but it seems like the ksp2 isn't capable of that.
It's literally ksp1, but slightly prettier, with far fewer features, and way more expensive. You can get 90% of ksp2 with nodded ksp1, and it'll run much better.
Yeah, it did suck. It is much much better now though. I genuinely enjoy it at the moment.
Stray.
Don't get me wrong, it's a cute game, and I love the combination of cute and cyberpunk. But the game is really on rails, and the puzzles are just not super engaging. And it's really short, which makes sense, because it's on rails. I just wanted it to be more.
I was glad when it was done that's for sure. Like being on a tedious kiddie ride
Firewatch was a recent purchase for me which I mildly regret.
As a walking simulator it's wholly dependent on the quality of its story, and the quality just isn't there. It starts strong but the ending is rushed and without a coherent resolution. It does so much work to set up multiple dramatic mysteries and then haphazardly solves half of them out of nowhere and forgets the rest in the final scramble to finish.
Nice graphics. Great voice acting. Neat concept. Needed more time to cook and left me feeling like I wasted my time getting invested in the story.
A recent release? Diablo 4 I guess. I don't really regret it since I knew what I was in for. I bought it to play with my best friend, and we had fun together until he got bored and frustrated. My hopes were high but my expectations were minimal and it still barely managed to meet them.
Yes, I couldn't agree more. The first half of Firewatch is great, until you realize they've run out of budget and they're wrapping up the story already
Oh, I played that recently, too. I didn't have any high expectations for Firewatch, but liked the idea that it's a "true story" sent in by a player.
But the ending, well... it was like an "but then nothing happened" ending where the story teller artificially made up some wild climax in the mindset of the "satanic panic" hysteria that gripped the late 80s/90s. Still, if I see it as an indie game, it's okay.
It sucks because there's a lot about the ending (I'll be as spoiler free as possible) but the ending basically being "And then nothing happened" is kind of the point. It's meant to be bittersweet, because the story is about escapism but that ultimately you have to come back to reality eventually. The ending does the big lead up of oh man there's a big fantasy and heres the happy ever after. but throughout the whole game it repeats over and over that things aren't as magic and wild as you want it to be, that sometimes there's a simple, boring, and sometimes sad explanation, and at the end of the day reality is the only thing that stays.
Firewatch is definitely more of a "reflecting philosophy" game than a straight up "gamer story" game.
I was actually arguing from the opposite side and thought that the game's climax was too much :)
If it would have ended with that "present" left outside the tower door, that would have been a great ending and left me wondering what actually was going on or if there was anything going on at all.
But the whole ::: spoiler spoiler coven of horned cultists conducting some sort of ritual and chasing you for no good reason ::: destroyed the magic and made me assume that the story teller just made up a silly, over-the-top ending in the context of the "satanic panic" some 30-40 years ago.
Firewatch has been on the periphery of my attention for a while. I've heard generally good things about it, but it didn't actually pique my interest until Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe ::: spoiler spoiler swapped it in to replace Minecraft in the alternate games ending. :::
I figured if it was good enough for the Stanley Parable devs to feel it was worth referencing, it must have been an indie gem that I was sleeping on. I was wrong.
I feel like I got all I could get out of it by watching some videos on Firewatch.
Yeah, I'm with you. I still enjoyed it overall, so no remorse of buying and playing it. But the ending did feel like a mild letdown.
Command Modern Operations.
I love EVE for being spreadsheets in space. I love Masters of Orion. I loved Harpoon. I thought I knew a lot about military hardware (certainly more than my friends, and enough to be annoying at parties). I have a PhD, so I'd like to think I'm pretty smart...
But this game broke me. The 450page manual destroyed me. I have 120 hours in this game, 3 whole working weeks and at least as twice as much reading guides and watching letsplays, and I understand absolutely fuck all about it. I feel like retard every time I start it and didn't take into account some insanely niche details about missile turning rates or how I should just know the radar crosssection of an F15 increases threefold when it climbs and turns right.
This game has won. I give up.
The last game I had buyer's remorse for was Mass Effect Andromeda. It just didn't feel like a Mass Effect game.
Andromeda felt like a new Star Trek series to me. At first, it’s all weird but they’re saying familiar things. As time goes on, I grew to accept it for what it was and had a good time. But it absolutely wasn’t no goddamn Shepard shooter.
I love them both like they’re separate children of mine.
I felt strangely at home in it though. The more those outposts improved, the more I liked walking around in the temp structures watching the respective planet outside and it just felt, dunno, cozy.
I think MEA's problem was mostly that it billed itself as a mass effect game. It feels to me to be more dragon age in space. If it had gone its own way instead of trying to tie itself to the main trilogy, it might have been better received.
I tried to get into it after completing the OG trilogy again but I just couldn’t. It looked a little familiar but just felt too different.
I might give it another go, see if it’ll work better standing on its own.
Latest one for me is Disco Elysium. Didn’t really like its form of story telling. Played it for about 6-8 hours without feeling that the plot had made any meaningful progression.
The trailer was also misleading, selling it more as some form of detective thriller. Most of the dialogue is about stuff unrelated to the ongoing investigation.
I also didn’t like how some actions could randomly kill you. Oh, got a bad dice roll? Too bad, you must reread the dialogue of the past few minutes again. In the end I actively saved the game over and over again to avoid losing any progress.
I absolutely love DE but I agree the trailer is a bit misleading and dialogue isn't typically about the case. That said some of the best writing I have seen in a game full stop.
I also died immediately though on my first attempted "playthrough". Damn you tie....
Punch me, but: "Doom Eternal."
I thought it was a guaranteed hit, but it turned out to be a really bad arena shooter where you make colorful resources shoot out of enemies and are forced to run into the middle of enemy groups, exposing yourself to attacks from all sides that don't count because you're repeating 5 kill QTEs ad nauseam - the only tactic the game allows.
Doom was great. Doom Eternal took the most obvious elements of the first and turned them up to 11 and threw out all the pacing, atmosphere, and subtle touches that made the first one work.
Doom Eternal sucks ass, I'm so glad I tried it on game pass instead of buying the damn thing.
Diablo 4
Starfield.
I sailed the seas on this one. Maybe when it's got all its DLCs and is on sale for $30.
The DLC's aren't going to fix the problems with that game. But in true Bethesda fashion, mods might.
Squid 44, I bought it before the name change and easy anti cheat. I now can't play on Linux 😕 not a recent purchase but recently went to try it out
This one might controversial, but Baldur’s Gate 3 for ps5.
Edit: to add, I rarely ever buy new games. I just buy my Monster Hunter, some Nintendo games and From Software games.
Also BG3 for me. I didn't experience any bugs, I just realized the combat is absolutely not my thing. And I dislike the combat to the point of avoiding the game, which makes me sad because I really like everything except the combat a lot.
I'm in the same boat, I find the combat both boring and frustrating, the worst possible combination. It's absolutely loaded with RNG. People said this was the crpg for people who don't like crpgs, but I can say that is not the case.
As someone who has never played DND, BG3 is like I imagine a lot of it. Constant dice rolling and combining attacks in ways that work. It's way too tedious for me when I want to play.
It’s for DND lovers.
I love d&d and hated the combat in BG3. They made it all flashy and loud, but lost everything that makes D&D combat fun for me.
It's pretty good for telling you things will be locked off, but very bad at telling you what will be locked off. I nearly didn't go to the creche at all, because the warnings made me think that was Act 2 through that doorway.
Co-op was an absolute bug-fest. Performance was appalling on PS5, crashes all over the place, and worse, players are likely to miss out on any real links with companions because of how reputation is dished out. It's an interesting mode to have, but it's objectively a worse experience than single player.
And yet despite all that, it's still probably the best game of last year. And last year had a lot of good games.
I learned my lesson. I’m used to some crpg and knowing that I would get locked out of quests if I do certain things, but it makes sense contextually. Here I just didn’t get why Halsin would be dead, but later I learned about “time-sensitive” quests and just to be safe I started doing everything before leaving the acts.
Yeah, there was a lot of misinformation about the "time sensitive quests" that lead to me trying not to take too many long rests. Long rests are essential for companion progression because they only do their stuff at night, and only one at a time at that.
I think there's only one in the game that's dependent on rests (someone in a cave with poison), and it gives you a warning before it happens. The rest of it is failed by leaving the area, and I think the only one that's easy to fail (no warnings given at all) is the inn fire in act 1.
Same. No bugs, but it just didn't live up to the hype for me. I dropped it just after starting chapter 2.
I got bored, honestly. The combat was a slog and I hated save-scumming to overcome poor design decisions that made gameplay unnecessarily complicated. I just wanted Baldur's Gate back, instead I got DOS with a D&D wrapper. And I didn't like DOS at all.
I've played through a few times. Before you leave Act I, there is an explicit warning that doing so will close out story-based quests that are incomplete. Having said that, it only closes out the main story quests for the most part; I've gone back to do side quests frequently. Act I doesn't truly lock until you've unlocked the end of Act II.
That seems consistent with actual tabletop D&D; ignoring a time sensitive quest may net negative results.
Palworld, I played an hour or two and thought it was fun at the time. But just haven't gone back, leveling felt like a chore instead of a grind
Those terms are synonymous... 🤨
When grinding feels like a chores then you know how grindy it is.
Having sex is a grind, but it's only a chore for the ones that don't enjoy it.
So not really synonymous.
I think the distinction is that chores feel like you have to do it and hate it. A grind is inevitable in all games. But you are excited to do it for the outcome.
Palworld is best experienced in multiplayer imo. Single player is boring, but when you’ve got friends around it becomes a social event and it’s more fun to work through a lot of things and go adventuring together
"Mario is Missing" for the SNES.
I remember opening the Sears catalog and seeing what must be the sequel to Super Mario World. I shovelled driveways and busted open my piggy bank - it was a full price Nintendo game and I had to have it.
I started my subscription to Nintendo Power after that...
Oh I feel your pain.
I was in a video rental store, saw "Mario is Missing", and like you assumed it was a sequel to "Super Mario World".
Got home to play it and was just flabbergasted. I don't think I played for more than an hour before complaining to my parents. Luckily they're nice people and they had more errands to run that day. So back out we go, back to the video store we end up, time for me to pick a new game to rent.
Oh, "Mario's Time Machine", now that's a Mario sequel guaranteed to be fun.
Mario and I were not on good terms for a long while after that.
(For those not in the know, "Mario is Missing" in an educational Mario game about geography, think Carmen Sandeigo but not fun. "Mario's Time Machine" is basically the same game, but time.)
My god that game was terrible.
Dwarf fortress. It makes me want to forgo sleep in favor of weed lol
D4, Starfield, Cities Skylines 2, and Mortal Combat 1. D4 and Starfield are self explanatory. CS2 is my biggest disappointment in years. Paradox killed whatever good will it had left by forcing the demise of CO. Under no circumstances should CS2 released this year. There's no mods. It doesn't function in any meaningful way. It's a performance nightmare. CS1 danced on the grave of SimCity and committed all the same sins a decade later. Don't listen to anybody that says the game has potential. They're sitting on 2000+ assets they can't release because they can't import buildings into their own city building game post release. That's how bad it is. Cities Skylines 2 was dead on arrival and it took the community 4 months to realize it.
MC1 isn't worthy of the K. It's just a slog. I don't know how much they fixed it but that doesn't break the fact that cameos are a major turnoff. Or that it has the worse progression system of recent MK games. Or that it's sitting on potentially one of the biggest rosters MK ever had but culled itself in half by reserving half the characters for cameos. Tekken 8 and SF6 have lapped MK hard this generation. Hell even Strive and DBFZ have taken steps to stay more relevant than MK1.
And you know what the kicker is? I bought all these games at the same time. I've been playing the clip of Totalbicsuit singing we don't pre-order games a lot lately.
Diablo 4. No doubt Diablo 4. Guess I never hated something as much as I hate buying Diablo 4
I got Super Mario Bros. Wonder day one and it made me realize I don't like Mario nearly as much as I thought I did. And I already knew I liked Mario less than most people. It kinda made me realize the only games in the series I truly loved were Super Mario World and Bowser's Fury. If you include the alternate character spinoffs you can add Yoshi's Island to the list.
It's definitely the best 2D Mario since NSMB DS, there's nothing wrong with it and it's the most creative 2D Mario since World...but it still fails to stick in my mind the way Kirby games, Sonic games, Mega Man games, and more do. It was fun but it didn't wow me and I thought it was too easy (am I crazy or are 2D Mario games easier than Kirby games?) I'm glad I played it but I wish I picked it up sometime in the upcoming period when the Switch is completely removed from being current but not old enough to be retro.
What I've noticed about myself is that I'd pick a Sonic game that's considered "decent" or "debatable" over a comparable Mario game that people consider a GOTY candidate easily. with very few exceptions. And while Wonder vs. Superstars is an exception, it's only because of how godawful Superstars' bosses are.
Oh, also, if you're into 3D platformers SM64 ROM hacks are more alive (and accessible) than ever. Serene Fusion in particular is very good. Dog Collab can be hit or miss with some levels, but the hits are really strong hits. They both have a wide range of easy to very difficult stars.
There's a ROM manager called Parallel Launcher that integrates with a site called romhacking.com, so you can literally click 1 button and have the whole hack set up for you (after PL is installed and you give it a SM64 ROM of course). No messing with different emulators or messing with compatibility settings, just one and done.
I totally agree. With the exception of BotW (except for the final fight...), I can't even remember the last time I bought a Nintendo game that actually challenged me. I guess kids these days are less willing to play games that challenge them.
If you want a good 2D platformer I highly recommend looking at Celeste or Pizza Tower. They're two very different games, but hands down the best platformers I've ever played in my life. (Very cheap, too). Celeste is the most mechanically interesting / challenging of the two. But every screen is a checkpoint, so when you die the penalty is losing like, 30 seconds max. It's a very chill yet challenging game.
And Pizza Tower has pretty typical mechanics (it's Wario Land but way more refined) but the art and sound design is incredible. It made me nostalgic for old cartoons like Ren & Stimpy and Courage the Cowardly Dog. The characters, sounds, and music are all so expressive I can't put it into words, you'll just have to look at the Steam page to see what I mean. It's also worth noting that there's no lives or health, so it's very chill. You're just playing for points like in old-school SMB. (Unfortunately it's not on Switch or any Nintendo products like Celeste)
Both games can be very easy or very difficult depending on what you want to achieve. The levels themselves aren't too crazy but they both have collectables and secrets that really ramp up the difficulty if you want to get them all. Celeste also has "B sides" for each chapter, which are bonus chapters where they crank the difficulty up to 11.
Elden Ring. The game is just too obnoxiously hard. I don't mind difficulty, I finished Doom Eternal and all its DLC on nightmare. But Elden Ring seemingly makes very little effort to teach me its mechanics, whereas Doom Eternal's mechanics felt pretty intuitive after just a little bit of trial and error.
As far as FromSoft games go, I had a much better time with Sekrio. That game had a good tutorial, and that ghost dude who would help you practice the more difficult aspects of the combat.
I feel like Elden Ring takes more of the Dark Souls aspects here. With that I mean that they just drop you in to explore and figure it out yourself. I understand your point though, it can feel ridiculous to go head first blindly in to a boss arena not knowing what to expect, but the satisfaction of figuring it out and beating it is something else.
Still though, this is not everyone's cup of tea. I enjoyed the game, but never finished it. And I don't think I ever will.
Check out the Elden Ring Seamless Co-op Mod if you're interested in playing with a friend or 3. It's a faaaar better experience and was exactly what I wanted in the game to balance the challenge.
Fromsoft generally teaches you things by killing you with it. That's a style decision that I personally enjoy (usually....) but it's not for everyone. Then once you master the thing, they hit you with another new thing and kill you with it, so on and so forth until the end of the game.
Doom (and don't take this as a complaint, I loved the game), is a game that wants you to beat it. It gives you tools and information up front and generally speaking, presents you a path of least resistance that you can take for optimal slaying. The Doomslayer isn't intended to die, he is an engine of destruction. Elden Ring and by extension earlier Souls games, don't do that. Those games want you to die and learn from it. The Tarnished, the Chosen Undead, all of them, canonically in lore die over and over and over in pursuit of their goals, and you as the player are expected to act that out. It's a fundamentally different approach to gameplay style and intent. Elden Ring provides you the tools to succeed, but they aren't laid out in front of you. You'll have to explore and experiment and die a few times to understand what you're working with.
Sekiro in particular was a little bit of a departure from this with its popup explanations for tutorials, and that was taken into Elden Ring to get even as much explanation as we got in that game. It's still cryptic, more so than Sekiro I think, but cryptic is Fromsoft's style, for better or worse, and this is the refinement of that.
I do, genuinely, recommend the game. It takes some getting used to and has a learning curve, but if you understand the language the game is speaking to you it becomes a little less frustrating. I've learned to love that language from as far back as Dark Souls 1, but if you learn to love Elden Ring first it will translate well backward in time if you'd like to try the earlier games.
Recently purchased? Fallout 76. God, it could’ve been great.
Recent? None right now, but I also rarely buy games nowadays.
If we’re able to go outside of recent times, I’m still pretty salty about buying fuckin RPG Maker 2 & 3 on the PS2 without having a way to connect my PS2 to the internet.
The last time I had video game buyer’s remorse was getting RAGE on launch day.
What a technically interesting, but utterly underwhelming game.
The enemy movement animations in that game were quite good from what I remember.
The game had a lot of great tech and visuals behind it, but it had so many fatal flaws that just sunk the experience.
Jedi Survivor. It's not a bad game, I just suck at it. Can't get past the first boss on easy mode. Getting old is annoying. I struggle with a lot of PC games now.
It might not just be a skill issue for that game. The PC version has serious performance issues from what I hear.
I just started it on PS5 and even then the combat has been pretty clunky. I beat Elden Ring where fights usually felt difficult but fair. So far Jedi Survivor just feels frustrating with ignored button inputs and animations that last too long.
Thanks telling me. Maybe I won't retire just yet.
I'm a dumbass who bought it on steam deck and can't get it to work, but I waited for the 55% off and was feeling cocky because I played the original on SD and have played other non deck supported games with no issues. Whoops haha
I just can't do that style of game. That and Gof of War, the puzzle based small open world games. They're too infuriating for me. I only get so many hours to play, I want to play the story - not spend 3 hours on a puzzle and then die 13 times with a boss.
I really like God of War, but I'm shitty at it. I was able to get through the main storyline on easy, and I accomplished some of the side objectives. But there's no way in hell I'm fighting all of those Valkyrie. I managed two or three of them, then noped out.
I have the same problem with fallen order. Even on the lowest difficulty the combat feels horrible, which is likely a skill issue, but still isn’t terribly fun
Everything AAA not on sale.
Squad. Looking for a more serious FPS game other than the popular shooters like CoD or Battlefield. Got a rec for it, so why not. Went to buy it and it’s $50. Well, the reviews looked mostly ok, and so did the screenshots… so I bit.
Man, the game plays like it’s 10-15 years old. Slow, clunky and the graphics leave room for improvement. Very dated. I don’t think I’d mind this game for the $15-25 range, but not $50. I returned it. I think probably the second game ever I returned.
If by "more serious" you mean more mechanically complex than "point and click", I recommend trying arena shooters if you're willing to get your booty cheeks slapped into the dirt for a bit while learning to play. Quake Champions is free and has the best GFX, but it has hero shooter aspects that a lot of people don't like. Quake Live is a paid (but cheap) alternative with no bullshit. (And I'd recommend the original Quake if it weren't so dead...still might be fun with friends, though.)
Half-Life 1's multiplayer is my favorite and it recently got a 25th anniversary update, but tbh it's still a chaotic and broken mess lol. But if you're into that, I highly recommend it.
I would recommend Counter-Strike as a more straightforward yet still mechanically complex FPS, but they recently removed a LOT of content. Lots of game modes and maps are missing, but if you're in it for the competitive experience you might still like it.
Speaking of Counter Strike I saw a line saying Arms Race was back but I haven't had time to reinstall and rejoice. I uninstalled specifically because it got removed so I'll be giving it another shot this week.
Mafia. The story is good, but you are basically watching a movie with driving and shooting in-between cut scenes. The player has zero choice or influence over the game.
Which one? If you mean the first one, then it's because it is basically a person telling the story, and you as a player is reenacting it. It's basically a movie you can somewhat play.
It's also old as fuck lol. Personally loved it, as a proud Czech.
So is 2, isn't it?
Yep. It didn't bother me except when the handsome guy (Henry Tomasino) set Joe and Tommy up on what was clearly a crap deal. It might have been better if he was trying to kill me off so he could take my job, but no, Tomasino was just stupid.
Having Joe Barbaro accompany me on every mission was a good set up for the ending.
There's a moment that really worked for me, Tomasino asks if Tommy can kill people on command, and he noted he killed a whole lot for President Roosevelt in Sicily. Tomasino says (I paraphrase) Yeah, but those were enemy. These are civilians. Tommy doesn't respond.
I was specially referring to "the definitive edition", which is a remake of the first game which was released in 2020.
Idk if this counts as recent but breath of the wild. Idk the last time I spent $60 on a game, let alone the $100 I spent on botw + DLC, because "how can literally everyone be wrong about this game".
The combat was fun for a decent amount of time but at a certain point I asked myself "wtf am I doing". I didn't care about the story because it was awful and the voice acting was embarrassing. Exploring the world felt incredibly shallow, with the most exciting thing to randomly run into being recycled mini bosses that rewarded me with weapons that I didn't need. Any challenge the combat or exploration presented could be bypassed by grinding for potions.
By far the most bafflingly over hyped game I've ever played.
Most disappointing Zelda I’ve ever played. Sadly this is the formula going forward for Zelda so the new ones are gonna be a hell no from me.
I loved the puzzle dungeons of the previous games. The shrines feel like just puzzles, with no real dungeon.
It was an awesome formula. I guess the people who invented it died off and the idiots that followed just didn’t understand what made Zelda great to begin with. It’s sad to see
Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus
I thought it was gonna be like an XCom or Divinity Original Sin kinda combat game.
Maybe it is? I don’t think so, but the UI and controls are so bad that I never really figured out how to play, and there’s no tutorial, so I can’t say for sure what kind of game it actually is.
All I figured out in my 2ish hours is that it’s not a game for me.
If you're looking for XCOM 40k, check out Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters. It unabashedly mimics XCOM and throws in the spaceship management from Battletech. I would say it's not quite as good as XCOM 2, but it's still pretty good. Bonus points if you're into 40k.
Thanks, I’ll check that one out!
Yeah I’m a little curious about the Warhammer 40k world, but not interested in getting into another tabletop game, so I figured a video game might be fun
The trailers looked sick
Not just the games, but the whole of the PSVR2.
I really liked the Horizon games, so I bit thinking it’d be more like the others but in VR.
Gameplay is much different. It looks cool, but if the gameplay is balls it doesn’t matter how good it looks.
All the other games I got make me sick to my stomach. VR is a niche and an acquired taste.
My gf got it for me for Christmas and it hurts my soul to have only used it a couple times since, but there's so few games and I can't wear it for more that 30 minutes without my face sweating, shoulders aching and the screen is so small, where is the full field of view wtf is the point of a tiny screen strapped to your face?
Red Dead Redemption 2 only because I bought it for full price a month ago.
Don't. Rdr2 is one of the few games I honestly felt like they deserved more for. So much detail, so well done. Of course get a deal where you can, but don't worry about paying full price.
Oh it's an amazing game it just never goes on a real sale. The game made me cry during the entire "final" mission. Absolutely worth every cent.
It's under $20 right now on steam. Is that not a real sale?
Ready or not Gameplay is pretty fun with the homies But for a $40USD game some maps are powerpoint slide shows on high in hardware 20-30fps on the house map.
For refrence Pc specs I5-10400 6700xt 32gb of ddr4 Game makes if feel like im playing on a toaster oven
Hogwarts Legacy on Switch. I should have known better, but my local Walmart had it on sale for $29.99 a few weeks ago and I bought on impulse after reading a few posts about how it's gotten better after updates. I've had glitches galore. Mad pop-in, falling through geometry, crashes, and two save game corruptions, all in the most up-to-date version available. If this is better, I can't imagine how broken it was at launch. I feel like I got $5 of content out of this. If the glitches were at least amusing, I might be ok with it, but the save corruption is just unacceptable.
cyberpunk for obvious reasons. they have improved it but its still nowhere near what they said it would be in the game. not that recent but im still salty about this one.
I love cyberpunk, but it’s not the game that was advertised. With modding and phantom liberty I’ve done ~4 full playthroughs of the game and enjoyed every one of them though. So if you haven’t modded the heck out of it, it might be worth trying.
I'm not mad about Cyberpunk but I did buy it on sale. It's pretty decent overall now.
For my response to OP's question, I regret buying Overwatch and Destiny 2. But those aren't very recent
oof overwatch hurts.
i bought it not long before they released overwatch 2, and the community really makes me feel like i wasted money.
I'm sorry to say you definitely did but it wasn't through any real fault of your own. We got real bamboozled by Overwatch, it was incredibly disappointing.
It’s a great game for $30, but at full price+dlc it can get a bit pricey
Escape from Tarkov
Maybe I just didn't spend enough time researching how to actually play the game but it didn't live up to the hype.
Honorable mentions: Squad and The Division 2
Forza Motorsport. Years and years of development for a bug ridden mess that’s shockingly light on content.
Between this and Starfall my expectations for anything coming from Microsoft game studios has plummeted.
I don’t know how Microsoft fumbled so badly with FM7. GT7 has been doing great, PC Simracing is the biggest it’s ever been (outside of covid bubble peak). The market is there to the point they could have been a major player, but the game is basically DOA and I can’t figure out where it went wrong.
Enshrouded. I'm on a 5600X and a 6800XT and no matter the settings or reported FPS I feel like I'm running on 30-40fps. Also for some reason the distant LODs look like garbage, nothing like the gameplay I've seen in review videos.
Devs confirmed it was a bug with the camera but they did not know what caused it. Engine is entirely in-house so hopefully they fix it soon.
The only thing I managed to care about so far was building a nice cave home with a huge great hall and ruining the scenery by building a giant Peter Griffin pixel art outside.
None. I agonise over every purchase for weeks.
Update on this, devs have "kinda" found a fix but need to do large scale testing. They have said that they will release a separate beta branch on steam to opt-in to if you want to try the fixed fps issues.
Monster Hunter.
Start the game with 2 hours of unskippable tutorials, endless dialogue and the explanation of a million game systems that should not come into play until later.
Then you're set out into the wilderness to track a monster, and all you do is pick up mucus... Eventually found the monster and hit it a bunch, then it ran away... and I chased it around for 10 more minutes.
Said what the fuck is this, and just uninstalled and never looked back.
Monhun has infamously bad onboarding...probably the worst this side of Dwarf Fortress. Fantastic series once you get into it, though. The scary thing is...the new games are way better about it than they used to be.
I played 100 hours of World and I honestly didn't enjoy a minute of it. I have no idea what people like about the series, and I especially dislike the comparisons to Dark Souls. It's nothing like souls.
I feel like every MH game I've tried to get into I play a few dozen hours and just lose interest, same as most Soulsbourne games.
Different weapon classes with significantly deeper movesets than is ever explained, have to be tactical about when to move/attack, "boss fights" rely on reading the enemy's moves and reacting appropriately.
The moods and details are black and white different but I get the comparison.
...Why on earth would you put 100 hours into a game you don't like?
Sounds like MH World. Other MH games had much less upfront material but people always complained about the lack of tutorials and guidance, hence World's approach.
Recent? None so far.
Somewhat old? Civilization III. I ordered it like 5 years ago and was trying to scratch the itch left by Call to Power II, but the multiplayer is flaky at best on LAN and the tech tree just isn't interesting to me. Later entries also have the "tech tree doesn't interest me" thing and also don't scratch the Call to Power itch (they don't have the wacky future tech like hover tanks and eco-warfare) but they also look a lot more visually interesting at least.
I miss when stacking was a thing in Civ. Sure it was relatively unbalanced, but that's part of the fun in my experience.
/end grandpa rant
By stacking do you mean combining units to form a single stronger unit? If so, Civ 6 has that, albeit only up to three units.
By stacking, I mean adding the units together on a single tile into armies so the units all fight together. Civ VI does have this, but in a very limited capacity (as you mentioned, up to 3 units). Older games had many more stacking possibilities (Civ III actually had infinite unit stacking, which was cataclysmically crazy lol, but I think Call to Power II really struck a good number with a max of 12 units in a tile)
Civ 3 and 4 would be so much more tolerable if the stacks were limited to something like 12. I haven't been able to go back to those games since 5 changed it up, the stacks of death are too much for me
I want my money back for battlebit remastered. It took about six hours to realize "wait, this game is half baked" last summer. Steam did not accept my refund request just one hour outside of their standard trial window (which they've always been extremely cool about before), i'm guessing because a bunch of people didn't like it all at once. I tried it again just a month or so ago, a bunch of stuff is still wonky, and the logarithmic decrease in players (even after a spike from winter sale) since its peak last june reflects this. Seems to me they put all their effort into skin and map "content" than actually fixing bugs or improving systems and mechanics.
This is the cycle most new FPS games have done the last few years. Nothing outside of CoD, Apex and Fortnite seem to stick. The Finals, Battlebit, Splitgate all had massive initial players, then drop off significantly once it’s no longer the newest, greatest thing and go back to the established games.
Skins and Maps are easy money to attempt to keep development going, as these games are often released before they’re ready and due to the financial situation of the developers.
What happened to splitgate? I thought it was pretty good, at least it was 100% ready for launch with interesting concepts. I dropped it because I realized I couldn't compete with the kids these days... getting older and my hands and fingers don't work as quickly as they used to, I frankly suck at aiming now. I'm disappointed to see its 300 player count now, I assumed it would do well with its concept and execution being so good simultaneously. What did I miss?
I’m not 100% sure exactly what happened, but my best guess is that it just got stale quickly. The twitch streamers and kids who hop from game to game played for a few weeks, then when they got bored it just started dropping off in popularity, eventually leading to the death spiral.
I know at least for myself I just didn’t enjoy the gameplay loop as much as I did Apex legends, so I just went back to what I was familiar with and sunk another couple thousand hours in.
It went the way of every other arena shooter, like Quake... The skill ceiling is so high that it hit a critical point where the number of more experienced / higher skilled players outweighed the new / lower skilled players. New players come in, get annihilated, they can't figure out how to improve because the skill gap is so big, then they leave. Very few new players make it past that hurdle, and the players who persist get better and better, and the skill gap gets wider and wider...
Believe it or not, most arena shooter players are pretty old (relative to videogame demographics at least lol). I'm in my mid twenties and I've NEVER met someone my age who plays them, except one in their late twenties. All of my friends and people I talk to on arena shooters are over 30, and I've even met a married couple who were in their 50s.
To be fair battlebit fucked the game up. People left because they started making the game like CoD which is opposite of what most people were looking for in the game. Battlebit drove people away. It wasn’t because it wasn’t new anymore.
That and lots and LOTS of cheaters. Blaming it all on ADHD folks is disingenuous.
AC Valhalla.
I played though all the other ones but that one felt so soulless and bland. I expected it to not be great but nothing this bad.
Then again I finally realized recently that I don't actually enjoy open world games (with some exceptions).
IMO the open world was a bad shift for the AC games, I haven't enjoyed one since Unity. Hoping Mirage is solid, but they lost my trust so I won't pay full price either
AC has kinda been open world the whole time it's when they expanded it then changed every mechanic of the game. It became less about being a stealth assassin and more about brute strength. Large out in the open combat instead of death from the shadows.
The settlers 2 history edition after I discovered that there is also an community remake (Settlers 2 RTTR) which is just overall better and actually fixed some decades old bugs, which the official re-release apprently didn't bother with. But that's Ubisoft for you.
I know this isnt what you asked, but the last seven or so games that I have purchased have been EXCELLENT and that is super rare for me! Elden ring (on release, I dont buy a lot of games), Armored Core 6, Nioh 1, Nioh 2, Baldurs Gate 3, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Dead Space Remake.
I was so sad when I beat AC6 because it was so short ;-;
Just s rank every mission and then get sad all over again
Back 4 blood. They added so much nonsense to it, I just want to slash my way through waves of zombies with fun weapons, not to manage a card deck and play in a very specific way to be able to advance in the campaign.
Faefarm. Not that it is a terrible game, it just wasn't worth paying full price for. I was in a bad spot and needed a cozy comfort game, and it was great for that. But there just wasn't enough there for me to justify the 60$ price tag. Wish I had just waited for a sale.
With you on that one.
Lawn Mowing Simulator
The deluxe remaster game of the year edition really fixed most of the original flaws with LMS. It's truly masterclass now.
The Front
Lethal Company
That weird followup to breath of the wild. Game was just annoying playing as the other characters. I think I maybe put 15 minutes into before I cut my losses.
… Hyule Warriors?
That’s a Zelda reskin of another game. It’s not really in the Zelda canon, kind of like Link’s appearance in soul caliber. It was just meant to wring an extra buck from Zelda fans.
Squad. People said that I would like it because I like Arma 3, but with no AI scenarios, editor or singleplayer for that matter, I just didn't like it. It felt too sweaty as opposed to Arma where I can take my time or have a casual game of Wasteland. Plus it feels like there isn't a casual gamemode in Squad like Arma KOTH which is basically just giant tdm with some squad and support mechanics.
That Avatar game.
I thought it was an Assassin's Creed game with an Avatar skin, but it's a Far Cry game with an Avatar skin.
Same. I platinumed both of the horizon games and thought even being ubisoft it was getting good reviews so I went for it. Absolute bore fest. Pretty world, and traversing it felt good. But none of the actual gameplay was any fun.
Nothing. Alan Wake and Cyberpunk are both incredible. Next will be Alan Wake 2 and then Death Stranding.
Oh yes. Alan Wake was such a surprise, like 1980s Stephen King. All those well-connected hints and mysteries. I have yet to play Alan Wake 2, but I loved the first part.
And it looks so good as a remaster. The animations are all great, so with the updated textures and lighting it looks and plays like a brand new game.
Fair warning, AW2 leans a lot more into horror than the first did. If you've played the resident evil 2 remake, it's kinda like that.
Latest patch gives a horror/jump scare toggle.
Vermintide 2 Just not my kind of gameplay.
I rarely bought game lately, so it's gonna be game from 2020 to now.
Grim Dawn: it's really a subpar diablo clone and it's boring, enemy either dies immediately or it's spongy as heck. Played to the point where i have to get to some manor but thus far the gameplay feels bland, and looking at the skill tree it doesn't offer much new thing. Not enjoying this one
Black Mesa: Not remorse per se, but i got bored of it and turn my attention to something else.
Call of Juarez Gunslinger: again, not remorse, i got bored of it.
Elder Scrolls Online: i have no idea what i expect from it, and i'm disappointed anyway. I thought it will play like the other ES but it's really just an MMO. Bought it with other game on sales but by the time i play it it's already off the refund time.
Forza Horizon 4: it's pretty good actually, but i feels like it just wasn't a good kb&m game. I can't turn well in curved road when in high speed while the bot turn just fine. It's one of those game that's meant for race wheel. This and asseto corsa have the same issue, and i was led to believe i can play just fine with kb&m but that wasn't the case at my end.
Space Pirate and Zombie 2: it's boring.
Incredible that you got bored with this list, it's literally some of my favorites.
One thing though, you should play horizon with a controller. It's not good with a wheel. And racing games haven't been good on m+kb in ages. You may have a chance if you hook up steering to the mouse, but all the Forza games are really meant to be played with controller.
If i would have bought watch dogs legion for full price I would have buyers remorse for sure. But I picked it up for 8 bucks and had a few hours of fun with it. So most of this thread is more about price for fun than anything I guess.
Danganronpa V3.
It's not bad but I could have just watched a playthrough because the "game" is so linear and the logic is so easy (even on "mean" difficulty) that there's no way to fail unless I was lobotomized.
It's a fun anime though. I should just watch the two seasons of the actual anime of it.
I think they do this on purpose, both Dangaronpa and Zero Escape had controversial endings to the series. I feel the V3 ending was a middle finger to the fans of the serie.
Is that why I've not actually seen much about it? lol
I got it because I watched Game grumps play the first 2 and wanted more.
::: CW: Unpopular opinion, incoming:
Tears of the Kingdom
:::
Remnant2. It wasn't bad exactly, but it didn't click for me. Not worth the $40. Maybe it's more fun with friends. But it just seemed kind of.. meh. Maybe I'd there were double the monsters or something
Darktide. One of the biggest complaints about Vermintide 2 is that it is too god damn grindy, so what did Fatshark do with it's next game? Make it so much worse.
I want to do build crafting, I want to try new weapons, but to experience the endgame means hitting the slots again and again hoping to get a weapon I can build on. It ruins what could otherwise be a good game, and I just can't do it anymore.
The Planet Crafter. Which is actually a terrific game, but I don't really have enough graphics card to play it properly. I have it at the lowest detail settings and the game still grinds to a near-halt when I'm in some parts of the map. Parts that I need to be in to advance. It doesn't crash, but I get something like one frame per five minutes. Maybe I should have waited until it was out of early access but I was impatient and the early game has been so much fun.
Where The Water Tastes Like Wine. Got tired of hearing the game's mouth before even getting to anything resembling a main gameplay loop, chose to exit, and it started another long winded speech, which I Alt+F4'd out of. I learned of this game via youtube recommendations of its soundtrack, liked some of the songs, game went on my wishlist. Got a Steam notification it was on sale, hit buy. Was busy with other shit for awhile, when I got around to playing and UTTTERLY FUCKING HATING it for thoroughly refusing to respect my time, the Steam refund period had lapsed. Did you know there's a "remove from library" feature where you can just...unown a game. I've used it precisely once.
BATTLETECH. I was thinking "Hmm, I've enjoyed this franchise for awhile but never actually played the tabletop game, and I live in an oubliette so I'm the only person within 100 miles that's even HEARD of the game, so maybe this will let me experience that gameplay. I died of old age three times in a row just waiting for the opening cinematic to finish. It's in the style of "slide the camera slowly across hand-drawn art while a voice actor monologues" things. It ran like constipation, somehow. Like it felt like the computer was struggling to handle what should have been simple video playback. The story is apparently about YET ANOTHER non-canonical pointless little periphery nation to be served by YET ANOTHER pointless little lance-strength mercenary company. The main menu appears and gave me a choice between 'Story Mission" and "Campaign" which...those are synonyms. Then we FINALLY after four generations have come and gone we get in-engine, and the tutorial mission is the last goddamn straw. They vomit story and gameplay control tutorials at you simultaneously, so you're hit with a voice saying "The duchess knows she can count on you.", a prompt at the bottom of the screen that says "Press T to use your weapons" and a text box on the left edge of the screen that says 'The duchess understands that it's dangerous being in a Battletech game, but she knows you'll do the best you can."
Brotato. I mean, it's cheap, so not a huge regret, but I really thought I would like it, but only ended up playing it twice .
Young Souls. I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to couch co-op games if we find one we can both enjoy.
And this one was good, but it was basically unplayable on the Switch (or, at least, constantly crashed mine). Finally got to the very end (where there's no saving from the start of the end cutscene until the finale) and it crashed before the final battle. Restarted, got through several minutes of cutscenes, got a little farther but crashed again, this time in the final battle. Tried one more time and it crashed again in a different spot. Promptly deleted the game.
So I guess we'll never finish that one.
All of them. I should be studying and working
has assignments due in
*plays palworld for 120 hours in 2 weeks
Helldivers 2. I just found it boring. I'm waiting still for my refund, I only haf about 1.5 hours in it. But only 45 minutes of gameplay. I managed to only get a few matches and they were very dry.
I just bought this and installed it and was going to play it after the kiddo went to bed. I'm a little bit worried that it's not going to be something I'm interested in.p
It's an amazing game. I can understand why it wouldn't be for everyone though.
I'm enjoying it, I also loved the first one so my expectations were perfectly set for it (the same exact game but 3rd person shooter instead of top down dual stick shooter)
It's a cool concept, but just seems short of what I expected. Seems the majority of good stuff is much much further down the line in it. I'd say Deep Rock is better option for this kind of game. Doing missions and fighting hoards of bugs.
I'm glad I didn't but that new Enshrouded. I was really excited for it. I'm so picky about new games and thought this could be one. But the first moments I saw some playthrough today, and I saw the crappy graphics, I was out. I don't even want to see anyone play it. Yuck.
Why in 2024 do they release these "hot" games with jaggy graphics, low quality graphics, cartoony and low color graphics?
Nostalgia first and formost imo. There's a big enough crowd of gamers who miss the days when games were more about gameplay as a pinnacle characteristic of video games. So if game devs don't have to have the latest and greatest visuals, but focus more on the story, gameplay, and characters, they have a game market.
Atomic Heart. I was excited to learn that Mick Gordon participated in the music and I got hooked by the aesthetic of the intro sequence, but the drawn-out underground lab
missionseries of fetch quests completely killed my enjoyment. I'd only gotten to three out of four macguffins before I gave up.The insufferable talking glove didn't help either.