I'm going to say Monster Hunter. Although the way I experienced it was kind of backwards. I didn't find out about it and think "this sounds awesome, I know I'll love it", to only then buy it and find I hated it. I actually just found a copy of the game in a second hand game shop that used to be in my town. I really miss that place. They still exist, but now it's just a small computer hardware shop, or at least I think it is. But they used to do loads more, and they had a small collection of used games. Although they didn't have much they always had really interesting and unusual games there. I bought a few games there just on how interesting the box seemed. In fact, that's how I came across Elder Scrolls for the first time, when I found this strange little game called "Morrowind". Didn't have a clue what it was back then. The shop also had a very unique smell to it which conjures up a lot of nostalgia. I can't quite describe it, I guess it was the smell of brand new computer parts. It was pretty potent.
But enough nostalgia. I went in there one day and found a strange game on PS2 which I'd never heard of. It looked very Japanese, but not like any other game I'd seen before. I was originally drawn to it because if it's unusual but simple name. Just "Monster Hunter". I thought to myself "hunting monsters sound cool, but why did they just call it that?" It sounded really weird, like if you came across a skating game simply called "Skateboarder". From the look of the box, it didn't seem to have the low production values you would expect from something with such a seemingly uninspired name. In fact it seemed awesome. Fighting enormous monsters and crafting gear out of their remains in a huge, epic landscape. The game was cheap and I was curious, so I went for it.
When I tried it things went pretty wrong pretty fast. I was a different gamer than I am now, so I didn't really know what to make of it. I was thrust right in to the thick of it, right in at the deep end. I was not used to any game doing anything like that. Of course, right from the start they put you up against very imposing creatures. No easing in to this game at all. I couldn't get the hang of it. It wasn't just the difficulty of the game from the start that turned me off. I'd never played a game with a similar tone to Monster Hunter before. I'd never come across anything with similar mechanics. It was completely alien to me and I didn't know where to start. I didn't really know where to go or what to do, and I found the controls very unintuitive. I was completely staggered at the sheer size of the world though. I'd never seen anything close to it. Such a shame I never really explored any of it though.
Alas, my time with the game was short, but it made a big impression on me. Even though I didn't enjoy the game at the time, it left me with a soft spot for games with that kind of atmosphere to them. That quirkiness that you only seem to see from Japanese games. Shadow of the Colossus captures some of that, I think. As does Dragon's Dogma. Probably more the latter than the former. So far I'm having trouble getting in to Dragon's Dogma too, in fact. But I think one day I may give Monster Hunter another chance. If they only released the PS3/360 version of the game outside of Japan, that would have been perfect. But of course, Capcom, like so many other Japanese publishers of late, seem to have become incompetent. They release Monster Hunter for the Wii in the west, but not the consoles with a big online following, particularly the 360. Why bother making a 360 version of any game if you're only going to release it in Japan?
Sean Hollyman said:
Crackdown, I thought it sounded cool, but when I played it it was shitty.
Just out curiosity, why exactly did you think it was shitty?
