Games you couldn't understand the hype over?

[TephlonPrice]

Battlefield 3. Would I be chatised for saying I thought it was a fancy tech demo like Crysis but without the interesting gameplay mechanics (eg. Nanosuits), a tacked-on campaign which plays like a giant QTE sequence instead of giving you an idea of what you'll be hopping into, and an MP that I could see the hype for, but made me long for BF2 or Unreal Tournament 2004 again?

Did I mention BF3 could've used some more content to help it along a bit? Ya know, like mod tools so I could recreate Ponyville for an FPS? Or some decent bots so I get used to vehicle controls without putting an F-18's engine up my ass & in the ground? Or something like a class-based survival mode, where 1-12 players, each with their respective classes, hold out in a building against enemy forces who use the destructible environments with reckless abandon to kill you?

 

[Catfood220]

I have mentioned this in the past but Portal 2, I just don't get why everyone is dry humping Valves leg over this game. Sure it was funny but it was so boring (and ugly and repetetive) that I only got so far and stopped playing due to the fear I was falling into a coma.

 

[thememan]

Skyrim. After blowing $60 on it, I don't know how the fuck anyone stays patient enough to play it.

You obviously never played Morrowind. For the first 20-some hours you are effectively being ripped to shreds by Mudcrabs of all things. It is at this point you are graduated to "Nix-Hound kibble". Only after investing nearly a hundred hours worth of time can you confidently stroll the landscape without getting eviscerated if you wander across the random bestiary you did not plan to run into but did.

Skryim moves at lightning speed for anyone who played Morrowind. That said, it's a sort of game that isn't for everyone really. It's a whole lot of "making your own way" with little to no guidance at all. Which is what I have always loved about the series.

 

[thememan]

Well... i didn't expect Duke Nukem Forever to be particulary good and i have no idea why many people thought it would be. I mean, it was pretty obvious that the developers spent most of their fifteen years picking their nose and hoping someone else would finish the game for them. And because the world is unfair someone else actually did finish the game for them.

Actually, the story of Duke Nukem Forever is infinitely more idiotic than that. The lead developer would get damn near finsished with the game, a new game engine would come out, and since it was new he had to have it! So the entire game was scrapped and they restarted from square one multiple times. On certain occasions, it was somewhere around 50% or so complete, on others I've read that it reached 80-90% complete in development... only to be completely scrapped and built from the ground up. As I recall this happened somewhere on the order of about 5 or 6 times during development. The current incarnation is the result of the license being bought with the game essentially at 75% or so completion, and producer effectively saying "Fuck it" and haphazardly finished it within a few months just to ship it.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Actually, the story of Duke Nukem Forever is infinitely more idiotic than that. The lead developer would get damn near finsished with the game, a new game engine would come out, and since it was new he had to have it! So the entire game was scrapped and they restarted from square one multiple times. On certain occasions, it was somewhere around 50% or so complete, on others I've read that it reached 80-90% complete in development... only to be completely scrapped and built from the ground up. As I recall this happened somewhere on the order of about 5 or 6 times during development. The current incarnation is the result of the license being bought with the game essentially at 75% or so completion, and producer effectively saying "Fuck it" and haphazardly finished it within a few months just to ship it.

Actually when Gearbox got DNF it was nearly 95% done. All Gearbox did was finish some of the last things 3D Realms had left to do and release it.

When we got was exactly what 3D realms was planning to release anyways. Randy Pitchford over at Gearbox even promised not to change anything 3D realms made because of the fact he worked at 3D realms on Duke Nukem 3D back in the day.

It isn't the result of some rushed last minute development, it was as it was supposed to be.

 

[WaReloaded]

The amount of people (teenagers) in my hometown that were eagerly anticipating MW3 and expecting an entirely new gaming experience. Wow. It's funny, too, because there were no pre-orders of BO, MW2 or WaW in my hometown (at least not at EB Games or K-Mart) but MW3 was so popular it had a midnight launch at both stores!

*shrugs*

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

Nothing new to add:
Skyrim - rented it, it felt lifeless and boring

Half Life 2 - just got bored

Halo - never liked the art style of this series

Fallout 3 - bought it for my (now dead) 360 and got bored even if i`m some kind of gore hound.

GTA4 - as much as i liked the characters and the whole story/setting it was kind of a drag to play and there was not much to do for an open world game (boring minigames/ i-net and social contacts aren`t my kind of fun). I liked both DLC episodes more and i love how Rockstar tied all three stories together.

COD - i like them but i started to rent the last entries. Activision got enough money from me and there`s nothing new to get hyped about (the last former pleasent suprise was the switch from WW2 to modern combat a long time ago). Now it`s like watching some action movie on tv when you`ve nothing better to do and forget about it as soon as it ends. Good forgettable fun tough.

 

[thememan]

Actually, the story of Duke Nukem Forever is infinitely more idiotic than that. The lead developer would get damn near finsished with the game, a new game engine would come out, and since it was new he had to have it! So the entire game was scrapped and they restarted from square one multiple times. On certain occasions, it was somewhere around 50% or so complete, on others I've read that it reached 80-90% complete in development... only to be completely scrapped and built from the ground up. As I recall this happened somewhere on the order of about 5 or 6 times during development. The current incarnation is the result of the license being bought with the game essentially at 75% or so completion, and producer effectively saying "Fuck it" and haphazardly finished it within a few months just to ship it.

Actually when Gearbox got DNF it was nearly 95% done. All Gearbox did was finish some of the last things 3D Realms had left to do and release it.

When we got was exactly what 3D realms was planning to release anyways. Randy Pitchford over at Gearbox even promised not to change anything 3D realms made because of the fact he worked at 3D realms on Duke Nukem 3D back in the day.

It isn't the result of some rushed last minute development, it was as it was supposed to be.

Wow. That's pretty damn sad then. Guess my info was wrong, and I wrote that at about 5 in the morning here so I was a tad less than concerned about looking up the actuality.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

That I have actually played so that I'm not speaking out of ignorance? Probably The Sims. Bored the ever loving FUCK out of me. Granted I only played the first one without any of the expansions, but I can't imagine how any of that would've made it any less boring.

 

[HandsomeZer0]

Mass effect. (All of them) I just don't understand the attraction.

 

[Mikejames]

The Call of Duty and Battlefield series. I'm not a huge FPS multiplayer fan.

Skyrim, to a lesser extent. Wouldn't say it's a bad game. I'm sure lots of effort went into making such expansive environments and the like, but once the initial thrills wore off, and I realized just about every quest would follow the same fetch quest formula, it's hard to regain its appeal.
I mean, even for all the flak Oblivion got I at least spent more time interested in its plot and guild storylines, whereas the plots in Skyrim were spread noticeably thin.

 

[Forgetitnow344]

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!!!"

You really just have to have been a fan from the start to get it. Any fan will tell you that your capitalized statement is the biggest load of shit ever... But you have to have played the game to get it. Each game is MASSIVELY different and that's why thousands of players cried themselves to sleep the night Microsoft turned off Xbox Original's servers, killing Halo 2. I personally prefer Halo 3, but I love playing Halo Reach for my girlfriend's sake. It's not my favorite, but it's all right and it has a pretty good community.

I'm just worried your stance of "it's the same game" is borne of ignorance. Being a sequel to a game is definitely not being the same game, especially since Chief and Cortana are alone on some new environment fighting a new enemy (I assume... I haven't seen footage yet). If there's a series that's the same game over and over again, it's Call of Duty, and I've played them all. Since CoD4, they're all the same except for WaW which sucked extra hard.

 

[putowtin]

COD
Final Fantasy

people get really giddy over these games, I tried to play them I really have, but I just don't get it

 

[Norrdicus]

And lets not forget, standard military discipline is evil (apparently).

If Bioware considers military discipline "evil" then politicians feed off the lives of orphans and kittens after their afternoon smugness competitions.

Poor Udina

 

[Deathmageddon]

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

Well said.

As for me, I didn't get the hype over Mass Effect 3. ME2 was awful- huge step back from the original in every area except the graphics. Played the ME3 demo and it was completely broken. The cover mechanics were sketchy at best, and your squadmate's AI was shamefully bad. Omniblade thing got real old, real fast. I felt like it was just thrown in to make the game look flashier and more exciting than it actually was. Bioware didn't even have the decency to crap out an acceptable ending, which is weird, because they clearly put all of the effort into the story. I don't get why people get all worked up about it either-the characters say words and do things but I feel nothing.

 

[TheGreatAndPowerfulZOG]

Half-Life 2. No...seriously. There is a reason FPS games stopped having grenades and melee weapons as entirely separate weapons. The story seems to have a shit load missing. Alyx Vance is NOT interesting (Nor is she really that likeable). I have no idea where the fuck the game takes place, aside from somewhere in eastern Europe (Possibly one of the Soviet satellites). What the hell happened at the end of the first game, which somehow connected with the second, and why is the G-Man even still....anything?

Seriously....Half-Life 2 seems like the kind of game people SHOULD be spending large amounts of time in the Internet complaining about, instead for complaining about how ME3s ending was crap. It seemed the only thing the game had going for it was the physics system and graphics.

What's to complain about? the very high standard of writing and characterization? the great understanding and implementation of a character/player driven narrative within an interactive context? the unique use of visual design elements as world building and expository devices? well balanced and dynamic gameplay that easily incorporates action, puzzling and mood building? pioneering a physics engine as a gameplay element? the masterful pacing?

Even your few criticisms have little actual weight... it doesn't really matter where the game takes place... it's not relevant to the story... having separate weapon slots is important to the pacing and flow of action... if it were set up... like say... CoD... it would suffer the same problem... in that the action would be far too fast paced to concentrate on anything else and seeing as how puzzles and thinking are an actual element in the game you can't just faze out and just run around shooting people in the face... as far as the story goes let's not forget that it's an episodic series and we're still waiting for some details that will no doubt be cleared up in Half-Life Episode 3 or Half-Life 3 or whatever... and a lot of the details concerning Half-Life 1 connecting to Half-Life 2 are actually easily cleared up in the second game... there are very few things... aside from the G-Man that hasn't been cleared up... that's relevant to the overarching plot anyway...<.<

Also, the bit on Alyx Vance is a matter of opinion...

OT: The Halo games... they've always been really bleh... nothing special... I mean they do nothing particularly wrong... but at the same time they do nothing particularly right... just always somewhere in the middle... though I suppose that's why... just bland enough to have a mass market appeal...<.<

Fallout 3/ New Vegas... I mean they're quite innovative I suppose... but that's it... clunky interface... clunky gameplay... impossible to roleplay... boring world... boring characters... boring plot... just nothing I particularly like about them... though I suppose up against everything else lately the series is a breath of fresh air... though I find it utterly unpolished...

lol @ HL2 having a well executed narrative and Fallout: NV having boring characters. HL2's story is shit. Besides the nice art design the game world is fairly unengaging. But Valve is untouchable, so gamers keep on parroting the same points about pacing and "narrative structure" and Alex Vance that they read in a review one time and overlook the numerous flaws in the games design. Obsidian, on the other hand, has some of the best writers in the business. They also make interesting, non-linear games. Half Life 2 = linear shooting gallery arcade-style twitch shooter. New Vegas = deeply non-linear well-written innovative RPG. Half Life 2 was a beautiful, dumb, easy game, so it's no wonder people rode Valve's dick so hard for it. New Vegas used the shitty Gamebryo engine, and was too complicated and difficult for casual gamers to appreciate.

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

Ahhh this good old thread. Where people can come to pretend that they weren't excited by games that didn't live up to their expectations. Or, to simply be hipsters who rail against popular games that they might even like, for the sake of not appearing akin to one of those sheep that actually fucking enjoys something that someone else does.

What is the point of this thread? Sure fandom gets out of control but why is worth it to say you didn't like how excited other people were?

Since I'm here.

Timesplitters was terrible, how anyone like it is beyond me.
Portal was valve stealing ideas from indie game studios and taking the credit.
The witcher 2 is the single most boring thing to ever come out of the human imagination.
Half Life 2 was a vanilla shooter with a vanilla plot delivered in a way that made it impossible to realize how stale it actually was.
Deus Ex might have actually been compelling as a fucking book.
Baldurs Gate 2 was like Diablo with all of the interesting bits ripped out.

How any of these abominations deserve any hype is completely out of my range of comprehension. Anyone who likes any of these games obviously has no taste and should go back to playing CoD or something.

 

[omega 616]

Portal (2), Catherine, gears of war, god of war, DMC, bayonetta (basically anything hack and slashy like the previous 3 games), kingdoms of ameh, new vagas, dead island, journey, flower, ME3 (I like the series and still do but the hype around it! JESUS!), anything that involves plastic instruments ... there are probably more but I can't think at the moment, there is another game with a girls name that I can't think of that should be on this list aswell though.

Yeah, I don't "get" a lot of games.

 

[Cheery Lunatic]

Persona.

A hyped up life sim. Seriously, school is annoying enough irl, don't fucking quiz me over it in a goddamn game too.

 

[shadowyoasis]

Okay this is probably going to to get me some hate but...


Zelda Series...

No wait hear me out, the individual games are good, the series as a whole isn't worth the hype it garnishes. The games aren't that different from each other, at least not enough to garner the hype it has. But if all you ever had was a nintendo then I can see why you'd think it was.

They are a lot of games I don't think deserve the hype they deserve but I delegate the rest to a matter of opinion and nothing else.

If you don't like Final Fantasy games, thats cool its just the way they play, not really games as much as stories.

Don't like western RPGS, thats cool too a lot of them don't really have a story in them at all and are about choices and character development. Its not really your cup of tea.

Ect, Ect, Ect.