I have this terrible compulsive disease where I cannot finish a single player game, even if I like the game. Here's a short list of games that nearly everybody else I know loves that I for some reason didn't want to finish, despite thinking the games are cool and fun:
Mass Effect - Although I liked the gameplay and dialog, it moved too slow and I got bored.
Fallout 3 - I liked exploring the wasteland and the characters, but I couldn't stand many aspects of the combat system and the gameplay. I thought the idea of being stealthy, targeting certain body parts (especially being able to shoot the enemy's weapons, or the weak spots on certain enemies), and stuff like that was great, but it all seemed to boil down to not using those tactics regularly and just getting a big gun and blasting people in the head, and then filling your health bar back with stimpacks.
GTA 4 - I loved the gameplay, the open world, and the characters, but it had the most frustrating mission design.
Red Faction: Guerrilla - I loved the gameplay, the destruction, and the open world, but later in the game everything felt so repetitive that I got bored.
Assassin's Creed - Like so many other single player games, great gameplay and very fun, but got boring later on.
Borderlands - Fun. But once again redundant.
Far Cry 2 - I thought it was great, until I realized that I didn't really have much of a choice in the story's outcome like I thought I had, because the game just ended up funneling me into one scene where I only had two choices, and then after that, I unlocked the second map with the SAME exact mission structure.
For a while, I just thought I didn't like single player games, but then one day I discovered the Orange Box and played Half Life 2 and Portal and for the first time in my life, I truly loved a single player game.
I feel like too many single player games are just one cool idea stretched across a painfully long 6-10 hour experience. But Half Life 2 and episodes 1 and 2 didn't have that, new gaming mechanics were constantly introduced, new environments, everything was mixed up, the story was interesting, I loved the characters. And although Portal was just one innovative idea stretched across a game, it was short and sweet and didn't extend the whole idea past the point where it wasn't fun anymore. Another single player game that I love, yet haven't finished (yet) is Psychonauts.
So I ask you, any single player games you think I would like? Games like the ones I mentioned above?
On a side note: I think I would have liked Mass Effect and Fallout 3 more if it wasn't for both games being thoroughly spoiled by my friends when they played it at my house. Even if I'm not really paying attention and am doing something else, I still tend to hear all of the dialog, the story, get peaks at the new weapons, ect. It kind of ruins it for me. My friends tend to blow through single player games extremely fast when they come out, to the point where even the alternate story endings and routes in those two games were spoiled for me.
Mass Effect - Although I liked the gameplay and dialog, it moved too slow and I got bored.
Fallout 3 - I liked exploring the wasteland and the characters, but I couldn't stand many aspects of the combat system and the gameplay. I thought the idea of being stealthy, targeting certain body parts (especially being able to shoot the enemy's weapons, or the weak spots on certain enemies), and stuff like that was great, but it all seemed to boil down to not using those tactics regularly and just getting a big gun and blasting people in the head, and then filling your health bar back with stimpacks.
GTA 4 - I loved the gameplay, the open world, and the characters, but it had the most frustrating mission design.
Red Faction: Guerrilla - I loved the gameplay, the destruction, and the open world, but later in the game everything felt so repetitive that I got bored.
Assassin's Creed - Like so many other single player games, great gameplay and very fun, but got boring later on.
Borderlands - Fun. But once again redundant.
Far Cry 2 - I thought it was great, until I realized that I didn't really have much of a choice in the story's outcome like I thought I had, because the game just ended up funneling me into one scene where I only had two choices, and then after that, I unlocked the second map with the SAME exact mission structure.
For a while, I just thought I didn't like single player games, but then one day I discovered the Orange Box and played Half Life 2 and Portal and for the first time in my life, I truly loved a single player game.
I feel like too many single player games are just one cool idea stretched across a painfully long 6-10 hour experience. But Half Life 2 and episodes 1 and 2 didn't have that, new gaming mechanics were constantly introduced, new environments, everything was mixed up, the story was interesting, I loved the characters. And although Portal was just one innovative idea stretched across a game, it was short and sweet and didn't extend the whole idea past the point where it wasn't fun anymore. Another single player game that I love, yet haven't finished (yet) is Psychonauts.
So I ask you, any single player games you think I would like? Games like the ones I mentioned above?
On a side note: I think I would have liked Mass Effect and Fallout 3 more if it wasn't for both games being thoroughly spoiled by my friends when they played it at my house. Even if I'm not really paying attention and am doing something else, I still tend to hear all of the dialog, the story, get peaks at the new weapons, ect. It kind of ruins it for me. My friends tend to blow through single player games extremely fast when they come out, to the point where even the alternate story endings and routes in those two games were spoiled for me.
