I REALLY Want to Like You!

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

Right now (as in, I played it yesterday), I'm really really REALLY trying to like this new MMORPG, Age of Wushu. It's Skyrim in China, honestly. Huge, beautiful world, except this world actually feels alive. I was impressed by the sheer amount of NPCs walking around breathing life into the game.

However, I haven't touched an MMO in nearly a decade, so I'm kind of lost. There's so much stuff in the game, so much stuff you can do, so many little details you have to pay attention to. Sadly, I no longer have the free time I once had when I was younger, and this game looks to be really time consuming. You will need lots of time to merely learn the basics.

I actually think it's kind of a shame that this is a MMORPG. It's a world I'd love to get lost in, but I'm afraid it isn't for me.

Trailer below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlFjQUAg8Hk

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

Skyrim. I suppose I drained myself of any enthusiasm for that one by playing the shit out of Oblivion, and Bethesda's "more of the same" aesthetic didn't appeal to me anymore by the time Skyrim finally came around. I only got 25 hours out of it before I realized my experience wasn't going to improve.

DayZ was another one I tried hard to like, but Arma II's mechanics just never feel right set in a game about a zombie apocalypse. It had so much potential but was completely squandered by poor implementation and lackadaisical design. I'm not expecting the standalone version to be much better, honestly.

 

[Mr.Squishy]

Dishonored: It looked kinda cool and had some pretty nifty abilities, but the story and characters were bland and predictable as fuck, and that really yanked me out of it. Also, instances of psychic cops.

Borderlands: On the surface, it's perfect - an FPSRPG in a decent setting, with tons of really awesome weapons and four classes. But no, it ended up feeling like a grind, with really unmemorable characters and nothing to call a story. Oh and it really breaks my immersion in any game when I can headshot someone with a sniper rifle, using incendiary rounds, and have them shrug it off like nothing, and then come tear through my shield with a rusty butter knife.

 

[Dandark]

I tried, I really did but I could not enjoy dishonored. I don't think it's a bad game but I just couldn't get into it myself which bugs me because I really wanted to play it.

EDIT: To add onto that I also really wanted to like Guild Wards 2 but constant lagouts made it unplayable for me. According to support it's all my connection despite me being able to play other games fine including Planetside 2.

 

[Pink Apocalypse]

Oblivion: Wow, just....wow.

I fell in love with Skyrim so much that I became interested in wanting to know what came before, so I gave it a try. Between the bizarre, distorted NPC faces in psychedelic orange lighting, the strange, slightly-muffled quality of the sound, the weird way many female NPCs sounded like men imitating women's voices (seriously, I'm convinced that was going on), the male-looking body modeling, the painfully, excruciatingly-slow crawl to be effective...it must be what being on a drug trip is like. I've put about 50 hours into it (forcing myself by the end), and I just can't do it anymore.

The raving, glowing praise, coupled with the aggressive Skyrim slamming, makes me think there's some serious nostalgia-goggles going on, and I really, *really* wanted to like it. Despite this, I'm still a little curious to go further back and try ES3, but I don't know.

Fable 3: Worst let-down of all time for us.

By 'us' I mean my boyfriend and I. We both really liked Fable 2 (and he liked Fable), and were really looking forward to the co-op feature in 3, as well as the game in general. Whoever thought it would be a brilliant idea to remove menus entirely, and force you to go through a series of physical rooms to make even the most trivial of changes to your character, should never be allowed near a game again. The character mechanic gets into its own way so profoundly that it's spoiled the game as a whole for us.

And that's not mentioning the game-breaking bugs. We didn't even get through the first main quest-mission before several glitches broke the game, forcing us to start over. Overall, just awful. It's a text-book example of DON'T TRY TO BE OVERLY CLEVER AND REINVENT THE WHEEL.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

I try to come into every game I play with an open mind. I seldom write off a game entirely before I get the chance to play it myself. I even gave Dragon Age 2 had a fair 'chance' to impress me, despite the immediate concerns I had.

So, off the top of my head:

[HEADING=2]DmC - Devil May Cry[/HEADING]

Oh yes, THAT game again.

I have a lot of thoughts about this game, but I'll preface them by saying this: Yes, I did want to like this game. I really, really did.

Spoiler

Perhaps the most recent example of going into a game I wanted to like with as little pre-existing bias as possible. Yes, I'm a fan of the franchise before this game, but I didn't let that stop me from attempting to enjoy this one. I was looking to what this game had to offer on it's own, and it's merits as an hack n slash spectacle fighter. I wanted to consider this game good on it's own.

The demo left me with a fairly positive impression. It wasn't great, but I saw potential. I thought the full game would be able to deliver on what I thought the demo was missing. So I got the game, and went into it with an open mind and expecting goodness.

Good was perhaps the only expectation I had going into the game. Which I don't think is an unreasonable expectation.

Sadly, the game was not good. On it's own, without comparing it to any other DMC game or any other spectacle fighter, this game has a lot of gameplay problems.

The game, was simply way too fucking easy. (Yes, on ALL difficulty levels. Including DMD and Hell and Hell.) Personally, this is a HUGE problem.

Enemies were sluggish and unresponsive.

Guns were almost completely worthless.

Red/Blue enemy types are heavy handed and boring, and become more frequent on higher difficulties.

Almost every single enemy in the game is a pushover.

The focus on aerial combat trivializes nearly every enemy in the game. So much so that I call the combat BROKEN.

Bosses are handled terribly. All of them require only a single strategy, and oddly become easier on higher difficulties (Due to the fact that the strategies don't change between difficulties) You just need to do the same thing you did before, and you'll beat them every time. Simply put, bosses in this game are not tests of skill.

Thats about all the major complaints I can think of, which sadly permeates every level of it's gameplay from beginning to end on all difficulties.

And that's not even TOUCHING the story in this game. I don't even have the energy to delve into it, but to sum it up: Boring. All of it. Every character, every aspect, every theme, every villain, every development, every single line of dialogue. It would've been favorable if new Dante was at least an entertaining character, but all he managed was to be slightly less boring than Vergil.

So yeah, i REALLY wanted to like this game. But I can only leave it in complete disappointment. It has so many problems, so many failures, and what's actually there that has any merit of quality - is middling and tepid. As far as spectacle fighters go, this is a forgettable one.

 

[scorptatious]

I only got stone medals for most of the game Feel so incompetent now...

OT: Bioshock Infinite- The story is really good but my word it has the worst gameplay I've seen in a while. You know you messed up when the first game has better gameplay than the sequel with a $400 million budget.

As much as I hate to admit it, I kinda feel the same way. After playing through Bioshock 1 a couple of times after playing through Infinite twice, I definitely prefer how the first game works. Not saying I dislike Infinite, I just kinda feel the combat was a missed opportunity.

Oh well. Hopefully in the next Bioshock, System Shock, or whatever title they're going to use "Shock" in, they'll work a bit more on refining the gameplay.

 

[FFP2]

As much as I hate to admit it, I kinda feel the same way. After playing through Bioshock 1 a couple of times after playing through Infinite twice, I definitely prefer how the first game works. Not saying I dislike Infinite, I just kinda feel the combat was a missed opportunity.

Oh well. Hopefully in the next Bioshock, System Shock, or whatever title they're going to use "Shock" in, they'll work a bit more on refining the gameplay.

I even missed that stupid pipe dream minigame... It added a bit of variety to the game.

I prefered the atmosphere of the first one too. Infinite just felt dead to me.

 

[scorptatious]

As much as I hate to admit it, I kinda feel the same way. After playing through Bioshock 1 a couple of times after playing through Infinite twice, I definitely prefer how the first game works. Not saying I dislike Infinite, I just kinda feel the combat was a missed opportunity.

Oh well. Hopefully in the next Bioshock, System Shock, or whatever title they're going to use "Shock" in, they'll work a bit more on refining the gameplay.

I even missed that stupid pipe dream minigame... It added a bit of variety to the game.

I prefered the atmosphere of the first one too. Infinite just felt dead to me.

*shrugs* Can't really say I miss the hacking mini game myself, I would always either use buyout or auto hack unless I'm feeling particularly cheap.

As for the world and atmosphere, I thought they both excelled. It was a pretty nice contrast to the ruins of Rapture. Of course, which one you would like more is up to preference.

Overall, I do think Infinite was a good game, I just feel it's dragged down a bit by the gameplay.

 

[Professor Lupin Madblood]

I really wanted to get into the Pearl Pokemon game. Me and a friend who loved the classic games decided to revive those days with the release of newer Pokemon games, but we just couldn't immerse into them.

For one there is no challenge at all (except that cave that required flash but I decided to go without). And speaking of the cave, it was pretty much the same adventure with the same elements. We didn't find them as charming as the previous games and the music was boring so I couldn't get into that either. Plus, there were hardly any Pokemon designs that we liked and none of the legendary's motivated us to look for them. After getting through most of the game in a day we just stopped caring.

I'm sure these all sound like little things but they add up. We really did try though and we were optimistic and stuff.

You should try Pokemon Black or White. They have all the charm of the early games, but with actual mechanics and graphics and gameplay and stuff.

Black 2 and White 2 not so much, but I maintain that Black and White are the best Pokemon games to date.

 

[FFP2]

*shrugs* Can't really say I miss the hacking mini game myself, I would always either use buyout or auto hack unless I'm feeling particularly cheap.

As for the world and atmosphere, I thought they both excelled. It was a pretty nice contrast to the ruins of Rapture. Of course, which one you would like more is up to preference.

Overall, I do think Infinite was a good game, I just feel it's dragged down a bit by the gameplay.

That part near the end where

Spoiler

You have to protect the airship and use Songbird and fight the same generic mooks you've always fought

really turned my dislike of the gameplay into hatred.

Still, it's my GOTY so far. At least until Blood Dragon comes out.

 

[scorptatious]

*shrugs* Can't really say I miss the hacking mini game myself, I would always either use buyout or auto hack unless I'm feeling particularly cheap.

As for the world and atmosphere, I thought they both excelled. It was a pretty nice contrast to the ruins of Rapture. Of course, which one you would like more is up to preference.

Overall, I do think Infinite was a good game, I just feel it's dragged down a bit by the gameplay.

That part near the end where

Spoiler

You have to protect the airship and use Songbird and fight the same generic mooks you've always fought

really turned my dislike of the gameplay into hatred.

Still, it's my GOTY so far. At least until Blood Dragon comes out.

I actually like that section a bit.

Spoiler

If only because I can have Songbird destroy Zeppelins. Plus I kinda like the atmosphere to the battle

But yeah, I can see why people would dislike that section.

 

[jdogtwodolla]

Epic Mickey why'd you have to go and be so uninteresting?I played until I beat the Chinese place in the beginning and I stopped.

I didn't play enough to notice the camera. What I did notice was that the move-set was aesthetically identical to Mario Galaxy, and while the move-set looked the same, it felt worse to control over Galaxy. And it definitely wasn't as engaging as Galaxy.

 

[Beautiful End]

So many:

-Mass Effect
-Grand Theft Auto 4
-Fallout
-Brutal Legend
-Call of Duty
-Elder Scrolls

That's all I can think of right now. Most of them look awesome in playthroughs and my friends love to play them and all. But I just can't force myself to get into them. Plot, characters, tiny, insignificant details, you name it. There's always something that stops me from fully liking them.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Dragon Age 2. I like the idea of the game and Hawke and Varric are pretty cool, it just has soooo many things wrong with it.
I'm hoping Dragon Age 3 will be better though I've heard it has multiplayer :| so yeah...

 

[Azaraxzealot]

Call of Duty.

When it became a big mega-sensation I felt left out, but then my brother brought home a copy one day, played it for 5 minutes and was disgusted.

 

[JasonKaotic]

Kingdom Hearts. It's got so much I'd normally love. It's got a great soundtrack, a good storyline (from what I've gathered, anyway), I really liked the non-cameo parts of the game, etc etc, but it's just... really not my cup of tea. I find the combat really boring (any game with only one attack button gets boring really fast for me, especially when enemy encounters last as long as they do in the Kingdom Hearts games), it's cheesy as all hell, the Disney stuff really took me out of it, the Final Fantasy cameos are horrendous, and just... agh. I keep playing it to force myself to get into it, but I just can't.
I suppose it's mainly because I'm a sucker for good soundtracks in games. Kingdom Hearts, you taunt me. And I hate you for it.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

Bayonetta,I really liked the art direction and the character enough to finish the game, but getting slapped with bronze and silver medals made me feel like I was playing it wrong.

I only got stone medals for most of the game Feel so incompetent now...

OT: Bioshock Infinite- The story is really good but my word it has the worst gameplay I've seen in a while. You know you messed up when the first game has better gameplay than the sequel with a $400 million budget.

So this is how Daystar feels when he talks about Spec Ops' gameplay... Except that was supposed to be bland.

Heresy, you dareth speak ill of Bioshock Infinite, I bite thy thumb at the!
But I can't say the first one blew me away with it's game play.