Games you enjoy watching but not playing

[Phoenixmgs]

Since the lockdowns started due to the virus, I stumbled upon Ryukahr videos of the Super Mario Makers. I absolutely love watching his edited videos on Youtube of playing troll levels or the really hard ones or a combination of both. I don't think I could watch his live streams just due the repeated nature of what goes into beating the levels. I love me some good Mario Bros so it's not that I don't like the game per se but I'd hate playing these type of levels. Anyway, here's one of his vids...

 

[Ghostrick Dorklord]

Smash Bros in general

Its going to sound weird but I have anxiety for playing online, especially with strangers. Smash has moved on to being more online and the community more or less encourages to be flashy and stylish as possible that I just get performance anxiety. I also don't enjoy playing Smash as other fighting games either since I tend to just play until I unlock everything where in other fighting games I actually try to learn mechanics and combos. That and I'm not really attached to any particular character like in Blazblue or what not.

But I enjoy watching it because of the said flashiness people bring to the table. The montages that are everywhere are just so fun to watch. Idk what it is but I just can't get into this game like everyone else but I'm at least content with watching it at least.

 

[Kuplung]

Dark Souls. All of them. Love to see the findings, the intricate lore, would hate to play it.
AAA games for their story, their gameplay is already samey to me.

Disco Elysium for different builds than I did, cuz I don't have the stomach to replay it for the sake of Muscle Detective.

 

[gorfias]

Dumb proud moment in my life. My brother's family stayed over Saturday. On Sunday, I introduced my brother to Uncharted 2. He is a very light gamer. Yet, I helped talk him through 7 hours straight of game play. It was fun to watch and fun to watch him being amazed.

Another more recently: I was playing the opening of G-d of War 3 remastered on a 65" Samsung for my brother in law. He is not a gamer but had the system for those times gamers are over. He just sat amazed watching the visuals.

 

[dscross]

I don't experience this. I'd just watch a film or series if I wanted to watch something with a story. I'd rather experience the game for myself usually. I do watch cutscenes sometimes before I get a game but it's probably because im impatient.

 

[Dalisclock]

There are certain older games I'd rather watch other people play then actually play. A number of them were punishing as fuck and literally any misstep would kill you. Sometimes things you did or didn't do HOURS ago would cause you to die but the game doesn't tell you this. I once watched Yathzee play through Future Wars on his "Let's drown out" series. I tried playing the game once and never made it past the intro due to my inability to enter a code(using point and click on a tiny keypad) before the room I was in crushed me. I watched Yathzee play it and now I realize the entire game is much like that, one death trap after another.

Not to mention a lot of them are hard to track down legally.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Disco Elysium for different builds than I did, cuz I don't have the stomach to replay it for the sake of Muscle Detective.

Aren't you kinda replaying it by watching it? The game is mainly reading after all.

 

[Worgen]

Hearthstone, back when TB was alive I really liked watching his Hearthstone vids. But, I have absolutely no interest in playing the game, not so much because I think I wouldn't enjoy it, I have a weakness for card games like that, but because I hate blizzard and refuse to give them money even through advertising.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Horror games, I guess.

Pacing in horror games make them un-fun for me, jump-scares annoy me more than scare me and I like to stop and study shit, which takes a lot of the horrific-ness out of the experience, but watching other people play horror games is an entertainment of its own, like certain YTers who, as their community knows, fear-sing, have a safety-beany, have colleagues that set things up to troll them, and yet are willing to submit to conventional vs VR experience comparisons for shits n giggles.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Now most recently it would be the Resident Evil games; particularly the Remakes. I just find the gameplay and design too cumbersome and tedious to be enjoyable. What put me over the edge was those stupid plant things in the lab in RE2 Remake where they leave no room to get by them if you’re out of ammo from the bullet sponging enemies and didn’t get the optional flamethrower. And forget actually being able to fight back at all once you’re “grabbed”. Then when your health is on danger because you’ve had to backtrack through them looking for shit, the game goes oh hey fuck you sideways, because the relentlessly indestructible Mr X. is smashing back into the mix to finish you off.

Don’t even get me started on the “puzzles” like needing a floor jack to clear a 6” gap across the bookcases. I know it’s based off of a 20 year old game, but damn.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I spent quite a bit of time between 2013 and 2015 dabbling in Dota 2, but it was around that time that I realized I enjoyed watching people who know how to play it already a lot more than trying to figure it out myself. The game's near-infinite depth is its greatest strength, and its greatest barrier to entry. I haven't watched as much of it lately, but every now and then I like to drop in and watch a match unfold.

 

[Dalisclock]

Now most recently it would be the Resident Evil games; particularly the Remakes. I just find the gameplay and design too cumbersome and tedious to be enjoyable. What put me over the edge was those stupid plant things in the lab in RE2 Remake where they leave no room to get by them if you’re out of ammo from the bullet sponging enemies and didn’t get the optional flamethrower. And forget actually being able to fight back at all once you’re “grabbed”. Then when your health is on danger because you’ve had to backtrack through them looking for shit, the game goes oh hey fuck you sideways, because the relentlessly indestructible Mr X. is smashing back into the mix to finish you off.

Don’t even get me started on the “puzzles” like needing a floor jack to clear a 6” gap across the bookcases. I know it’s based off of a 20 year old game, but damn.

It's very simple, really. Resident Evil is basically adventure game moon logic inserted into a survival horror game. Because that made sense to someone at the time and it sounds like they figured "Hey, why not?" when the remake came out.

As someone who actually likes adventure games, I'm occasionally bewildered how other genres decided that was what they were gonna copy from adventure games. Metal Gear 2, for example, had the infamous "Get a dude to open a gate by getting a owl to hoot at him" puzzle, because the guard is incredibly stupid and will assume it's nighttime(despite all the daylight) when he hears the owl hooting and because it's SOP to open the gate at night because everyone working in that camp is incredibly stupid and/or wants Snake to punch them to death. That's a bad adventure game puzzle that doesn't get any better when inserted into a stealth game.

 

[Kuplung]

Aren't you kinda replaying it by watching it? The game is mainly reading after all.

Well it's not the same. I like to savor the rich expressions this game constantly rolls out. For that I need my own pace of playing.
Plus I am biased ideologically so I don't have my fun when Harry starts quipping in Communism.

But other than that, you are right it is basically a replay

 

[Kuplung]

I spent quite a bit of time between 2013 and 2015 dabbling in Dota 2, but it was around that time that I realized I enjoyed watching people who know how to play it already a lot more than trying to figure it out myself. The game's near-infinite depth is its greatest strength, and its greatest barrier to entry. I haven't watched as much of it lately, but every now and then I like to drop in and watch a match unfold.

You are right, pro esports players are a treat to watch. MOBA is too chaotic for me sometimes, but who am I to judge binge-watching Starcraft 2 Championships...

 

[Chimpzy]

I enjoyed watching the Chip and Ironicus LP of MGS5 Phantom Pain more than I ever did playing it myself.

 

[Fat Hippo]

Definitely League of Legends for me. I had my fun playing it back in the day, but I'm pretty much "done" with it at this point. Still enjoy watching the occasional professional game, however.

 

[Yoshi]

competitive Pokemon.

fun to watch
but it's too much of a pain the arse with the amount of time and effort it takes to build a competitive team.

 

[wings012]

Complex crafting/building/sim games. With the right person at the helm, I can enjoy watching people play games like From the Depths, Rimworld or Kerbal Space Program. Me myself, I don't really have the patience with figuring out and learning all the systems nor do I really have the creativity to amuse myself like that.

 

[dscross]

Serious question, what do you get out of watching someone else play a game that you are never going to play? What's the point? Do you treat it like a spectator sport?

 

[SckizoBoy]

Serious question, what do you get out of watching someone else play a game that you are never going to play? What's the point? Do you treat it like a spectator sport?

Depends on the game. I tend not to watch singleplayer/co-op let's plays and those that I do watch will usually be from channels that have more than one person on them, so the entertainment comes from the commentator's banter and whatever hijinks they get up to rather than the game itself. I don't watch multiplayer gameplay (whether it be BR/team-based or whatever) as that holds little entertainment value for me. *shrug*