Games you hated the first time you played them.

[LordXel]

I hated Half Life 2 when I first played it. Because the thing was just so damn difficult. About a year later I gave it another shot. Three or so weeks later, finished it. It was an absolute fucking blast, I couldn't believe how entertaining it was! Still haven't gotten around to episode 1, but Half Life 2 is indeed one of the finest games I've ever played.

Then I played Obilivion... DESPISED IT! Hated everything about it. Two months later I decided to start a fifth profile to find a better race to play as. I'm now a female Dark Elf and Oblivion is really good! I've recently stopped to take a break but Obilivion just has so much crap to do I freaking love it.

One last game I hated first but loved later was the Resident Evil remake. I was more used to 4 and 5, and when I played the remake of the first game, the controls were mind blowingly awful! That and I didn't know where the hell I had to go next. Its been a year now, and two months ago I played it again and it really really fun. Its scary and quite deep.

Super Street Fighter II is another one, but I only like it.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Mirror's Edge was one. The crummy precision of the game drove me nuts at first, but I started it again a year later and I actually really liked it.

And Final Fantasy X. I don't know, maybe I was playing it wrong, but it just would work for me. Later I started it again and it became one of my favorite FF games.

 

[KrossBillNye]

I didn't like FF8. It was a load of crap. And...it still was when I tried to play it again. So yeah. Some of these really ARE crap.

I felt the same way at first but then it slowly started to grow on me. But FF-XIII I want to burn with fire. That was just a horrible gaming experience.

 

[Jakub324]

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. My first thought was 'No car customisation? I'm out of here!' But I went back to it after a few months and realised it was actually an alright game.

 

[Mike Richards]

I'd have to go with Chrono Trigger on DS. I still don't know exactly why but it did not hit me the right way the first time I tried it. But I felt like I hadn't given it a fair chance, so I fired it up again a few months later and now it's one of my favorite old games ever.

I expect that something similar will happen with DA:O whenever I get around to starting it again. I don't think it's a bad game by any means, but I had some issues that made it hard to work through. From the look of this thread I'm not the only one with the same problem.

 

[TehCookie]

Skyrim. The melee combat is terrible, the magic is broken and it wasn't til I tried sneaking I enjoyed it. Sneaking is how I thought the magic class would play.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

Legacy of Kain Blood Omen: Now let me just say, I did not hate it, but didn?t really like it.
I got it thinking it was Soul Reaver(was a kid had no idea soul reaver was a sequel) I played the hell out of the demo and wanted the game so bad only to find...I am playing a game that is like diablo where I am a vampire...Wasn?t a fan as a kid, of course now I flog myself every night for giving it to EB games.

Halo 2: I just didn?t get the attraction to Halo in general. It felt like every other first person shooter I had ever played, only I wasn?t able to pick any cool characters during multiplayer. But then I kept pushing myself to try and find something about it to like, just to try and stay on the up and up with my best friend, and wound up playing the champagne and becoming pretty immersed. What can I say I love aliens and vibrant colors and Halo 2 had a lot of that. Also Keith David is awesome!

 

[NemoJrThe1st]

Fallout 2.

The full version came with a gaming magazine a few years after release. Tried it out, hated it. Probably because:

a) I wasn't fluent in English yet
b) I was new to RPG games
c) I hadn't played the original (which introduced you to the setting, story AND gunplay right from the start) and didn't even play this one beyond Arroyo (oh the moment when you get your first SMG...)

Many years later, while digging through old demo CDs (remember those?), I came across it and gave it another try. Fell in love. Played the first one. Still a fan of the series.

 

[AbstractStream]

Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X. I hated them with a passion for a reason I can't even remember. Now they're my two top favorite games. Imagine that.

 

[esperandote]

SSFIV and MVC3, oh i had to like them the second time? I guess that those doesn't count then.

 

[Steampunk Viking]

Bizarrely, Final Fantasy VII. Seriously, bored me to tears first time around, then the second time I played it, became my favourite in the series.

EDIT: And Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

 

[teebeeohh]

the darkness
when i got it my HDMI-cable had just died and if you don't play it in HD it's next to impossible to see the tiny red dot used for aiming. tried a few weeks later and really liked it, even with the flaws.

 

[sextus the crazy]

Civilization V. tried playing it, found it a bit confusing and then put it away for half a year. then A friend of mine explained the basics and I played a few games and I haven't stopped since.

 

[Poetic Nova]

I have to go with Halo 2, it took me 2 years before I started to like playing as The Arbiter.
Still don't like Halo 3 though :/

 

[Kahunaburger]

Morrowind and Oblivion. Morrowind, of course, gets awesome over time. Oblivion just gets progressively worse, but I stuck with it for a while because I thought it was going to get better like Morrowind.

 

[ResonanceGames]

Also, I hated Deus Ex: Invisible War with a passion upon release. Hell, upon demo release. Years later, with some config file tweaks and an open mind, I discovered that it's not so bad. I actually put it at the same level as Human Revolution... still a far cry away from the original Deus Ex, of course.

Wow, I had the exact opposite reaction. I liked Invisible War when it was released, but I'm in the middle of a playthrough right now and it's...really hit or miss, to put it mildly.

Oddly, I hated Thief 3 when it was first released for being consolized and a pale shadow of the Looking Glass games (how I didn't notice that Invisible War had a far worse case of consolitis is beyond me). But I played it again recently and it turns out it's a great game with just a few problems.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Fallout 3 was mine.

I got it for 360 shortly after it was released, played it for 2-3 hours, thought "well this sucks" and never played it ever again on the Xbox.

2 or so years later I discovered it on Amazon for PC GOTY Edition for £13, so I thought I'd give it another chance (2 years before this point I didn't have a gaming PC to play it on). I ended up completing the main story, a bunch of the side missions, and the only DLCs I missed were Mothership Zeta and The Pitt, because Fallout DLC is just the worst in my opinion, but that's not relevant here.

Didn't play Point Lookout and Broken Steel did ya? You know, the ones actually worth it .

Point lookout was a great value for $10 (on the PC; on the console it broke the game) but Broken Steel felt like they were selling us the ending to the game. The core game had enough content to be worth at least $60 but Broken Steel keeps making me wonder if it was originally intended to be part of the game but was lopped off the end so they could sell 5 dlc packs instead of 4.

OT - I didn't get into GTA Vice City until I played Vice City Stories. After that, went back to it, and loved it...even if it was missing Phil Collins.

 

[kickyourass]

For me there was Starcraft along with the vast majority of RTS games I've played, but that was mostly a matter of 7-13 year old me not understanding why spamming the huge fuck everyone units that took roughly an hour each to train (while training NO OTHER UNITS AT ALL) was a bad strategy.

After that there was Ace Combat 6, I tried it a few times and thought it was A: too difficult, and B: dull as shit. But then I tried it again a while ago, stayed in the Tutorial until I had it down pat and found that it was actually pretty awesome. Now I can't find it and thus can't finish it.

 

[Scrustle]

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I didn't "hate" it at first, I just didn't get on with it. I usually find side scrolling beat-em-ups to be too simple and too picky about collision detection. But then after playing the game again round a friend's house I really liked it, so I went and bought it shortly after. Still got some of the niggling problems I usually have with the genre, but I gained a whole new appreciation for the game and I am really enjoying it overall.

 

[zuro64]

Borderlands!
I thought it was so boring and bland the first time i saw it and later when i played it was still the same!
Then a friend bought it and we played together it was better but still bland but when we had passed the first few missions and got to make our own choises, man... then it came to life and i have loved that game ever since.