Games you couldn't understand the hype over?

[Ihateregistering1]

What games (or series) have come out in recent years that, for the life of you, you couldn't understand what the big deal was?

I'll avoid the obvious ones (Call of Duty, Madden) and get myself nice and (probably) flamed: the Uncharted series. Don't get me wrong, they're good games; great graphics, good voice-acting, fairly fun, but to me they just seem kinda generic and dull and not even close to "game of the year" material. I had to force myself to finish Uncharted 3 and only because I wanted to see how it ended (and boy was that disappointing), and the others are good but they're just kinda blah. A day after finishing them I could barely remember anything that happened in them and I had no interest in playing through again.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Fable, Skyrim, and Kingdoms of Amalur. Just... why?

 

[Montezuma's Lawyer]

Fable
CoD
Dark Souls

 

[Zhukov]

I never understood the hype for Tetris.

The story sucked and the gameplay was the usual shallow modern crap, but everyone just goes on about it being a "classic". Must be nostalgia at work!

And don't even get me started on Asteroids...

...

These threads get under my skin something fierce. They turn up like clockwork about once a fortnight and are made of nothing but whinging, insecurity and supreme arrogance.

Also, stop liking things I don't like. Don't you all know how rude that is?

 

[Skoldpadda]

Oh so many of them. I honestly don't know where to start. It's like everyone except me has been going absolutely insane for the last 20 years. I'm so lonely. I need a drink. But you know, let's start with everything Bethesda. I can only put it this way: what would you rather bang? A human being of flesh, blood and soul, possible crooked teeth, possible bad breath, too much or too little fat included? Or a Realdoll?

 

[TrevHead]

I know its a old fave of threads like these but im gonna mention it anyway

Gears of War series, to me its just a slow boring game. Rank and file enemies are bulletspunges, the AI, crappy weapons, slow movement speed.

I can usually understand why most games are enjoyable, even those I dont, but Gears just doesnt twig

 

[derintrel]

Final Fantasy. I can't get over the way over the top JRPG style and look. I'm sure the story is great but man I can't look at it. The giant swords and spiky hair, just...why not normal proportions?

 

[krazykidd]

Final Fantasy. I can't get over the way over the top JRPG style and look. I'm sure the story is great but man I can't look at it. The giant swords and spiky hair, just...why not normal proportions?

Wait do you not understand why people like it? Or do you just don't like the style in general ?

Dark Souls

Take that back !

OT : deus Ex : HR . It's not a bad game . But it's not great either . I haven't played the original so maybe that's why , but i found it completly boring and unchallenging ( i played on give me deus ex on my first playthrough). I really think it was average at best . The enviroments were small and looked like an N64 game ( seriously , detroit looked a lot like perfect dark ). The gamePlay was okay i guess. But i really don't understand . I even made a thread about it .

 

[derintrel]

Final Fantasy. I can't get over the way over the top JRPG style and look. I'm sure the story is great but man I can't look at it. The giant swords and spiky hair, just...why not normal proportions?

Wait do you not understand why people like it? Or do you just don't like the style in general ?

I don't like it so I guess by extension I don't get why people do. Final Fantasy 7 has to be the most hyped game ever and I'm just not getting it. Nothing wrong with anybody else loving that style and game. I just don't get why people like the giant swords/hair over the normal realistic swords/hair.

 

[SajuukKhar]

I cant see why people get hyped for any game ever.

Getting hyped only causes people to make unreasonable assumptions about what will and will not be in a game, then when the game comes out and doesnt meet thier imaginary, overblown expectations, it causes them to not like it.

It seems to me the entire system of hype is something the fans do on purpose so they can hate games later.

but what makes it terrible is that it also seems like most of them do it subconsciously.

 

[CAPTCHA]

In b4 Halflife

Anyhow I'm going to go ahead and say Minecraft. Never before has such a mediocre game been lorded so highly. And the way Notch has been put on this pedestal as one of the industries greatest heros... it's like some kind of real life Talos. Case in point, on this site there was a new article on the main page relating to minecraft every single day for a whole year! They should have renamed the site Escapecraft. I guess we'll see if that kind of rabid overpraise continues when Mojang brings out its next game or whether the fickle nature of the public will result in a flop.

 

[Hyper-space]

Oh so many of them. I honestly don't know where to start. It's like everyone except me has been going absolutely insane for the last 20 years. I'm so lonely. I need a drink. But you know, let's start with everything Bethesda. I can only put it this way: what would you rather bang? A human being of flesh, blood and soul, possible crooked teeth, possible bad breath, too much or too little fat included? Or a Realdoll?

You want to fuck Bethesda's games? I don't get your comparison/analogy.

On topic: I don't get the hype for games I do not like. There.

 

[Therumancer]

Pretty much any shooter right now, as they all seem to be slight variations on the same things, and even wind up using the same basic "whack a mole" pop and shoot cover mechanics. There have been some good ones out there, but I fail to see what is so radical and exciting about say the newest "Call Of Duty" or "Gears Of War" installment or clone.

HOWEVER, like everything I guess it depends on what you like, you aren't going to really "get" hype over something you don't much care for.

If I had to pick a specific game I'd probably point to "Half Life: Episode 3", like "Duke Nukem Forever" it's a game from a popular franchise, but one that has been dead for a long time and where it's unlikely it could just be picked up by the creators after all this time and constructed to the satisfying specs demanded by it's fan base. As sad as it is, after a while it's time to just admit something is dead, and let it go, as angry and disappointed as that might make you. I "don't get it" because after all this time you have successful trolling attempts like the one that just happened with a faux steam site, and a gabe troll face (covered here on The Escapist).

After a while, just admit it's either going to happen, or it's not. If it does, it's cool, but it's no longer worth being invested in.

I tend to look back at say the original "Wasteland" which even had a mention of "Wasteland 2" in it, this was when I was a kid playing on the C-64. I long since gave up, and right now there is a chance there will be a Wasteland 2 (I invested $30 in the Kickstarter, might put some more in if I can afford it before it goes down), but I'm not holding my breath for it to be everything I hoped, nor do I have any plans of harassing Faran Brygo daily to hurry it up or whatever. If it died tomorrow it would annoy me because I put a few bucks into it, but wouldn't have me climbing walls like people do over "HalfLife, Episode 3" and really you can't say it's "not the same thing" and "I don't understand", I know what it is to get invested in a game that will never be followed up on, even if they aren't that one. I just use "Wasteland" as an example because it's being talked about again despite the odds (now all we need is "Wizardry 9"...)

 

[Esotera]

Mass Effect 3, especially how everyone praised the ending like it was the best thing to come out of the industry in the last decade. [/alternate-universe]

OT: Skyrim, sort of. It looks like a really good game, but not the amount of hype it generated. All the recent COD games (as yet again, they look decent enough games, but their marketing has built it up too much). I also didn't really care for Dead Space or Team Fortress 2.

 

[skywolfblue]

Skyrim. It's a decent game, but half the whole friggn' internet turn it into some form of god, offering their firstborn to it etc etc.

Mass Effect 3's ending. But does that count as hype since it's technically anti-hype? Good or bad people went simply rabid over it.

 

[Darth Rahu]

Gears of War. It comes off as such a bipolar mess of manliness one minute then maudlin frathouse drama the next. Also, Halo. I played the Anniversary re-release of the first game, and I kind of enjoyed how it felt a bit like DOOM but with more "modern" sensibilities as in the ones the very franchise founded. But then I look at the rest of this series that has been around for ten years, and after seeing footage of Halo 4 I just want to yell, "IT'S THE EXACT SAME GAME WITH MORE BLOOM AND DETAIL! GET OVER IT!!!" As for the deep storyline that so many Halo fans tell me about, it feels like some Theology 101 paper over "the dangers of blind faith" when it comes to the Covenant. So yeah, will never understand how Halo can be overhyped when all I see is literally the exact same game repeated several times.

 

[Jak23]

Gears of War. It comes off as such a bipolar mess of manliness one minute then maudlin frathouse drama the next. Also, Halo. I played the Anniversary re-release of the first game, and I kind of enjoyed how it felt a bit like DOOM but with more "modern" sensibilities as in the ones the very franchise founded. But then I look at the rest of this series that has been around for ten years, and after seeing footage of Halo 4 I just want to yell, "IT'S THE EXACT SAME GAME WITH MORE BLOOM AND DETAIL! GET OVER IT!!!" As for the deep storyline that so many Halo fans tell me about, it feels like some Theology 101 paper over "the dangers of blind faith" when it comes to the Covenant. So yeah, will never understand how Halo can be overhyped when all I see is literally the exact same game repeated several times.

Exactly what I was going to write, thank you for saving me some trouble! XD

 

[malestrithe]

Bioware. To me, the company is not advancing the medium in any meaningful way. They are hucksters that have been making one game ever since 1996. How many of them cast you, the person with a mysterious past, as the is the only one that can save or enslave the world? It does not matter where the game is located when you playing the exact same one over and over again.

Western RPGs in general. I am not a fan of this "choose your own adventure" mentality that a lot of them took. I am looking for a story that moves in a logical progression, one that provides you with an opportunity to explore your environs just a little bit, but also never forgets that there is a story to advance.

That is my problem with most Western RPGs. I should have a destination to shoot for, something like kill this guy because he is a royal pain to you. That guy should also remember to be a part of the game every once in a while. I should not have a vague goal like avenge my assassination or kill all the dragons, but then forget about it because I have to green source my salad tonight.

 

[Starke]

OT : deus Ex : HR . It's not a bad game . But it's not great either . I haven't played the original so maybe that's why , but i found it completly boring and unchallenging ( i played on give me deus ex on my first playthrough). I really think it was average at best . The enviroments were small and looked like an N64 game ( seriously , detroit looked a lot like perfect dark ). The gamePlay was okay i guess. But i really don't understand . I even made a thread about it .

The first game was a large part of that. Deus Ex was, at the time, a bold direction that we expected FPSs and RPGs to be heading in... they never got there. In many ways, Human Revolution is a very faithful recreation of that path marker towards a kind of game we're just not seeing today.

Also, stop liking things I don't like. Don't you all know how rude that is?

Not a clue.

Anyway, on topic, and I know this one is a kinda strange example, but I don't get the hype for Diablo 3.

Diablo spawned an entire sub-genre with some very good games in it, like Torchlight, and the upcoming sequel, and I still hold up Titan Quest as one of the best iterattary improvements on Diablo 2 I've ever seen.

But, Diablo 3 is going to require an always on, MMO style DRM, it has a Real Money Trading system (which will encourage gold-sellers), and on top of that it's not doing anything new for the genre. It's not the same team as Diablo 2, at all, they're gone. How can people still be hyped for this game?