Games Everyone Seems to Care About that You Don't

[hooksashands]

Mass Effect.

And yes, people never shutting up about it has made me dislike it that much more.

I know! It's a cover-based third person shooter with dialogue choices. The voice acting is above average, but even with that it's still boring mediocre sci-fi action rpg sludge.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Realistic Military FPS. The context just seems boring as hell to me. I like a bit of fantasy in my games running around in modern day with everyday weapons fighting Terrorist A just seems really mundane.

Same with sports games. If I was interested in sports I'd go play them or watch them on TV I don't see them fun in playing a computer game with them in. My only exception is bloodbowl.

I fully understand that people like those types of games, they are just not my thing at all.

I've been hankering for a game with a really good protagonist driven storyline in it lately can't seem to pin one down.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Silent Hill (what's the point when there's Alone in the Dark?)
Fallout
Anything Elder Scrolls
Kotor
Resonance (crappy adventure game that everyone around me seems to think is good)
Arcanum (played it for a while, just didn't seem worth the effort)

 

[Druyn]

Let's see.... Portal and Half-Life both. Portal I thought was fun, cute, but nothing really special, and I actually found everything in Half-Life except for the Gravity Gun to be incredibly boring, and even somewhat generic. Then there's the legend of zelda, I've played two of the last three and found myself entirely unimpressed. Not that they were bad, just nothing special. I think maybe I've played too many similar games and clones before I played them because I found it to be generic and uninteresting. The puzzles were easy, the combat not very difficult, and the story feels old and isn't very engaging.

Oh, and GTA (IV, at least). I got Saints Row 2 and GTA IV at roughly the same time, and played Saint's Row first. When I beat it and went to play GTA, I managed to get through some of it, up until that fucking bank robbery, and put it down. Not that it was bad, there were definitely parts where I had a good time, but I just found Saint's Row to be so much more fun and engaging. Yahtzee's review/comparison is pretty much exactly what I felt. It also didn't help that whenever I was driving from the police, police cars would literally just appear out of nowhere in front of me and on every side street, with such frequency that I couldn't possibly shake them. Though maybe that one's the fault of my sub-par driving skills.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Absolutely anything from Bioware, Blizzard, Bethesda, or Valve (except for Left 4 Dead, which I had fun with, though it wasn't even developed by Valve, come to think of it), Minecraft, and... that's all I can think of for now, though those first four companies include quite a few of the usual suspects.

Not an rpg fan I take it? I always found that strange. I can understand that you don't like most RPG's. But not that you don't like any. I'm not really a FPS kind of guy but I do like some (for example crysis).

My single biggest problem with western RPGs is that they have very little focus.

What they try to do is imitate Dungeons and Dragons, where you have your own character, backstory, and choose what to do in a given situation, placed in a world of endless possibilities. The major difference with Dungeons and Dragons is that you have an actual person reacting to your decisions on the other end, so what you do and say not within the game's plot to begin with can have impact... assuming that person does it.

That never happens in western RPG video games, though, mostly because it reasonably can't. Choice is one of two things: an alternate dialogue tree that may affect something someone says then or later and little else, or an opportunity to get morality points (a stupid and awful system I can't stand, by the way).

The result is a protagonist that never feels like a person. Nothing they do is consistent or within reason - you can be a paragon of virtue for 90% of the game, then eat a baby in public out of nowhere, and barely anyone will notice, and if they do, it can be rectified by doing them favors for twenty minutes or so, for example - no one reacts to anything they do on a long term scale. All of the "choice" presented is hollow, superficial, and without long-reaching context or consequence, and thus the feeling that nothing the character does matters pervades, and that the character themselves is just a boring, blank slate. Sure, I can make them out to be something interesting, but that's no merit of the developer's work; it just means what I came up with is more entertaining to me than they did, and that's poor game design in my opinion. When you make a game revolve around one person, and that person is nothing - faceless, emotionless, nameless - then your game itself has nothing to stand on, as far as I'm concerned, and it takes me out of the experience every time.

And that's just my gripe about the protagonist. The plots are also largely unfocused, the narrative waits for as many pointless fetch quests as the game has (which is a lot), and there's no sense of urgency to anything you do. You just feel like you're there, and I'm not the sort of person who's impressed by the scope or size of a world; I need to feel like something important is happening. There has to be something worthwhile or important to do, and there just rarely is.

I also tend to find actually playing the game to be clunky and tiresome, again bogged down by the overabundance of superficial choice. Combat's often boring, there are usually too many menus, and I have to spend too much time slogging through tons of skills and abilities that often aren't very useful looking for the constant in these games: "kill everything around me". I also find the tons of generally useless loot and having to constant fight with limited inventory space to make room for the stuff that stinks the less.

On the more shallow side, I also think most of them are just ugly, with bad art design and poor aesthetics, and that the music is generally generic, forgettable orchestral scores that sound fine, sure, but aren't catchy or memorable in any way. Shrug.

The funny thing is I don't even care about characterization or plot in video games, but that's generally all these games have, with anything that isn't those things just there to be there, so the nagging flaws I find are front and center at all times. It doesn't work for me. These just aren't games that appeal to my interests, because they don't have what I look for in a game. And there's nothing wrong with that.

why is this directed at western RPGs? These are issues with all RPGs. And anyway, unfocused plot and fetch quest is usually a good thing when the alternative (in JRPGs) is grinding and walking down endless corridors feeling like you're playing through a movie: "Push button to move forward plot".

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Final Fantasy and Saints Row. But overall, I actually do enjoy most of the games that other people seem to like. I feel that's notable, considering the number of responses mentioning Assassin's Creed, Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty (I only played one, I think the problem is that people then buy it again the next year and wonder what they paid all that money for) and Metal Gear Solid (wasn't there from the beginning and the cutscenes were f***ing ridiculous, but has great style, and the PSP ones are about the best games you can get for the PSP). Also World of Warcraft, tasteless visuals and I'm way too cheap to go for anything subscription-based. Other than that, I pretty much only buy games I like the look of.

One person even mentioned Portal, which even having only played it recently and thus noticing the slightly outdated graphics, was extremely good.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

why is this directed at western RPGs? These are issues with all RPGs. And anyway, unfocused plot and fetch quest is usually a good thing when the alternative (in JRPGs) is grinding and walking down endless corridors feeling like you're playing through a movie: "Push button to move forward plot".

It's not an issue with all RPGs, but the primary reason I mentioned western ones is because absolutely none of the games I mentioned weren't, and you didn't make the distinction. Although now that I'm thinking about it, I can't stand the Shin Megami Tensei series or its spinoffs either, although for different reasons than I've mentioned.

You regardless don't need to try and convince me whether one's better or the other; you asked why I don't like them, and I told you.

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

Bioshock. Because System Shock is better (and deserves a sequel, Irrational) and steampunk is really overrated.

Baldur's Gate. Because D&D is a horrible combat system, the story was boring, there was a difficulty curve like a brick to the face, I died every 10 seconds and perma-ragequit the game, and I like my HP in the double-digits or higher, thank you.

Batman anything. Because Batman is a terrible character.

Final Fantasy. Because they're *boring.*

 

[fwlzdxil]

Most popular:
God of war: controls feel sluggish and it just kills any game, especially when there are DMC, Bayonetta and Ninja Gaiden right next to it on the shelf.
Gears of war: cover-shooters are the most boring thing ever. Realistic, yes, but reality is boring.

In my mind, both of these games are somehow supposed to be watched, rather than played (as opposed to MGS, that actually has sharp and well-thought mechanics).

Tekken: It's just so god damn boring. D:<

Gotta know which buttons to press). But in case you're comparing it to 2D fighters, then, yeah, it's generally slower, so I see where you're coming from.

 

[Frankster]

Wow/mmos. I can never fit in them or get comfortable playing them. Maybe its partly due to seemingly everyone i met having spent years on wow and having learn the mmo forumla by heart but a lot of it made little sense to me. In kotor I had no clue what to do once i reached the "end game" and people were telling me I had to do raids and stuff, which involved finding a guild.
Went through 2 guilds and despite being as helpful as i could (i was an armor crafter who gave out free armor, even rare ones, for free to my guildies, maybe i was being too nice?) didn't go anywhere and I ended up feeling rather dissilusioned considering i was paying good money every month for this.

Singled out wow as it's a game that I never played but which has seemingly affected every mmo i tried (in that they would always be compared to wow in the chat).

Half life series: Never really got into them (though did enjoy the coop half life on the ps2) and my nasty experiences with hardcore valve fans during march madness insulting games i do like due to them not being like half life means i've little inclination to change my stance and give hl2 another go.

Gears of war series: Completely flew over me even though i remember playing coop gow1 at a friends house

Cod/mw2/modern military shooters: This is the epitome of dullness for me, I guess its because i dont have a hardon for modern military sims...Actually no i do like modern military sims that are respectful of source material, its these "arcade" military themed shooters (40 fucktards running around in multi randomly spamming nades is not how i picture the usa army fighting irl...i hope) with multiplayer emphasis i can't appreciate.
But even without the arcadness and the fetichism of guns and military, i find these games incredibly dull and terribily unimaginitive (yey lets go fight in not-iraq-istan for the billionth time). Wouldnt mind so much except that they sell so well they start affecting games i genuinely do care about :/

Diablo 3: And i feel terribly vindicated in snubbing diablo3 from what ive read. Dungeon crawlers overall dont seem to be my thing, though i did enjoy titans quest (ending up building a hoplite class which was cool) with friends.

 

[AlotFirst]

Snip


Dragon Age would be a secondary example since I own them, but don't quite get what all the fuss is about it. As far as I saw it, Origins was a decent-to-average game that everyone seems to have decided was some sort of masterpiece while DA2 was a decent-to-average game that everyone seems to have decided was some sort of atrocity.

Thank you, good sir, I agree. I recently purchased the Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition and to name this a game of year... no, just no...

snip

Once again, I agree, thank you for breaking the monotony of people praising Dragon Age as the best RPG of the universe.


And now... my addition to this thread: Morrowind.

I have played Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. I have played them in that particular order and I never understood the mindless hatred Morrowind fanboys seem to have for Oblivion and Skyrim, and if you ask me the series has only improved since it left Morrowind behind.

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

Left 4 Dead. Alhouh that's probably just because I have no fiends.

 

[Darren716]

Mass Effect, Half Life, and Final Fantasy

 

[Doneeee]

I am extremely tired of the Mass Effect series but I don't hate the games at all. Now a game I absolutely loathe that all of my friends get a stiffy over is Dead Island. Fuck that game.

 

[hoboman29]

Fallout 3 has to be it for me.

The map feels so empty with 90% of it being the same empty wilderness, and what isn't wilderness isn't interesting.

The gameplay is boring (but New Vegas isn't that amazing in that aspect either)

It's too easy I should be afraid of the toughest enemy not bored of fighting it.

Lastly the story wasn't interesting at all with side characters I never cared about (Wait I was supposed to care about vault 101 and the Brotherhood)

 

[OblivionSoul]

I don't understand MMO's, just not a type of gameplay that appeals to me. I feel too disconnected from the character.

Modern day military shooters have been done to death, although I think COD died after World at War, not 4. In fact, I'd happily go back to World At War.

 

[putowtin]

Final fantasy
MGS
Most Nintendo games (there all the same with a slightly different main character!)

 

[Kotep]

all of the games you like

 

[GlorySeeker]

I never got into Skyrim. Mass Effect and AC are games that really didnt catch my interest right off either.

 

[Conn1496]

Skyrim, COD, new Minecraft, anything past Halo 3, anything before ME3 (I could never get into ME or ME2. They just felt bland in comparison.), and finally GTA with the exeption of San Andreas (For the reason that you could blast cheats into San Andreas and treat it like a real sandbox game, whereas most other GTAs have you unlock shit by doing assy missions that are as boring as watching paint dry... in the dark.).