Well Liked/Reviewed Games...That You *Didn't* Enjoy.

[laggyteabag]

GTA - After briefly playing IV, and spending more time lugging your cousin around, going on dates, and well, doing anything but shooting people, I decided that the game just wasn't worth my time. When I finally got into a fight, the controls were so intuitive that I dropped it immediately. Same goes for V.

Half Life 2- I have always said that the game is an average shooter with nothing going for it other than the gravity gun. I hate silent protagonists. I couldn't follow the story. I just don't get why it is one of the highest rated games of all time.

Fallout: New Vegas - Just wasn't the post apocalyptic experience that I wanted. I didn't want to spend my time running around endless deserts, but it seems that was pretty much all that was going on in NV.

RAGE - Damn, this game is ugly. Poor texture quality, every zone seems to have shadows that are one primary colour, the shooting felt light and generally like it didn't have much of an impact. The only redeeming thing about the game was the animation quality, but a game cant stand on animation quality alone.

Skyrim - Size of an ocean with the depth of a puddle. The game might be huge, but there is nothing to do. The story was pretty much non-existent, dragons were not much of a threat, the dungeons were boring (Draugr, Bandits, Dwemer Machinery OR Falmer), mechanics were broken (especially stealth and alchemy), the AI were stupid, there were invincible characters everywhere, the list goes on. Sure, you can fix most of these games via mods, and the game is marginally fun with them, but there are still much better games out there.

 

[Stats ^1]

Oblivion and Skyrim. They're buggy with extremely shallow gameplay. If Elder Scrolls wasn't already an established IP which didn't sell purely on the millions spent on marketing, then those two games would have been condemned to hell. The same with fallout.

Assassins Creed is also a shit franchise. The story is terrible and the gameplay pretty much boils down to holding one button. Again, this franchise sells purely on marketing campaigns and i'm convinced its fanbase is brainless and the reviews are bought out.

I would say the same about bioware games like origins and mass effect, but i actually enjoyed origin's story. I just feel like they were held back by the fact that they were games, because both games have awful gameplay. If they were more like the walking dead or wolf among us then they would have been much better.

 

[Sanunes]

A lot of the time I can see why people liked a game that I didn't, but the major ones that I can't see getting all the praise they did are.

BioShock Infinite: There was nothing special about the game (aside from Elizabeth's powers and felt were squandered) it also felt like the game didn't live up to the E3 demo they had the year before. Add in a poor combat system with weapon that get changed half-way through the game and use a completely different set of ammo. Of course then the ending was praised as good while it made less sense to me then Mass Effect 3. OF course the really championed story felt horribly paced to me for it felt a third of it was in the first 80% of the game, another third in the last three chapters, and another third was in collectibles you had to find and I despise story being "hidden" from the players unless they go find it.

The Witcher Series: I can see where a lot of people like the game, but it never resonated with me and all I see are its flaws. To me the combat system is worse the Dragon Age: Origins and without being able to have a custom character I never got into the story. Followed by some of the "romance" options in the second game and with both games each time I played it felt a lot longer then I actually did play the game. I did like the attempt to try and show consequence in the game with having two major plot points that did diverge, but when you can't care about anything else in the game it doesn't make a difference.

 

[Parasondox]

As the OP mentioned

Dead Rising 2

I didn't read any in depth reviews about it but I heard it was good and had high marks so I checked it out. I lost my frustration with the game way too quickly. The missions felt rushed and I felt I had to do everything in a small set time or else I failed the whole game. When you are trying to defeat one of the bosses, it takes forever cause they seem to hide half the time and what's worse is that the timer for the other missions still counts down. The mechanics were poor and the game felt so dull. Main character I didn't care for and the daughter, well looking after her was a pain.

So I looked at the reviews for the games and everything was the opposite of what I felt. Many giving it the best zombie game ever approval. It didn't connect well with me at all. Also, why are people in the game protesting about giving zombies some sort of human rights? THEY ARE DEAD!!!

 

[Zombie Badger]

How does it treat Bill's orientation as some sort of revolution? It doesn't even mention it at all. The game does exactly that: It doesn't make a big deal of it. No more than it does Joel or Tess' orientation. Most people probably still aren't aware of the fact that Bill is gay, because the only hints the game gives is that Bill cared a lot about Frank, and that Ellie found a gay porn mag in his stash, which could mean anything.

He's more referring to how the media and gaming culture treat those characters.

 

[Zombie Badger]

I'll join The Last of Us crowd. It's a mediocre, uninspired and very safe story with a boring and unlikable protagonist, which refuses to actually be a videogame by letting the player be involved in the story - everything plot-related happens in cutscenes. The gameplay is just really stock and uninspired as well.

 

[OhNoYouDidnt]

I'll join the People-Who-Didn't-Like-Bastion group. The artstyle is really pretty and the gameplay is alright, but I really didn't like the way how the world fell into place as you walked. The game didn't really make it clear where to go, resulting in countless unnecessary falls into the abyss for me. Can I point out as well how ridiculous the monster names are? Windbag? Gasfella? Stinkeye? Really?

And I also really dislike Hitman: Absolution, which is still a relatively well-reviewed game. The disguise system is just asinine. It's ludicrous that "colleagues" can see that you are an imposter from a mile away. They don't even wonder if perhaps I am a newly employed guy, no, they instantly assume that I'm a hired killer and start shooting. I'd had enough of that game's nonsense after three missions.

 

[SuperScrub]

Hmm, I didn't enjoy Bioshock: Infinite and considering that A) I loved Bioshock and Bioshock 2 and B) Bioshock:Infinite allows me to kill racist, religious, crazy, white people that game really had to work hard at it, I think it was the two weapon slots, and incredibly frustrating boss, and story that keeps throwing shit at me with me going. "Wait what?" all the way through. I had no idea what the plot was about during my playthrough.

Mass Effect: Okay I loved Mass Effect 2 and liked 3 but compared to Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 1 hasn't aged well at all, because it plays like fricking ass and the cut scenes look awkward as hell to me.

 

[WickedLordJasper]

Hmm, I didn't enjoy Bioshock: Infinite and considering that A) I loved Bioshock and Bioshock 2 and B) Bioshock:Infinite allows me to kill racist, religious, crazy, white people that game really had to work hard at it

That's sort of the problem, isn't it? Your enemies are so obviously political stereotypes that they don't even feel real. How can you take any of it seriously when the residents of Columbia are immediately established as "people you should hate, and here's why"? At least Rapture painted its residents as well-intentioned but misguided people who tragically went insane.

 

[small]

i was kind of enjoying assassins creed 4, i hated the series but yeah i got half way through and actually said outloud "im not enjoying this, why am i playing the main character is a gigantic twat"

 

[UmberHulk]

Outlast: It really is more frustrating than scary the majority of the game is spent waiting for the bad guys to move out of your way. Also the plot twist was fucking stupid ghost nano-machines really.

Dark Soles: I came for the atmosphere, emergent story telling, and visually interesting enemy destine. I left because the lock on controls got me killed on about 7 different occasions.

Civilization V: Absolutely incidental to every other civilization game I own.

every David Cage game ever

 

[Qizx]

Skyrim.

I hated it, I hated every second.

The combat was shit, the story was almost non-existent, the character models were ugly, the world was mostly ugly, the armor all looked like shit, all the dungeons were exactly the same, what is the point of exploring every inch of the map when most of it is empty, and I could go on and on.

I tried to like this game, I really did, I bought it for PS3 and forced myself through about 15 hours of it, I waited while people kept telling me how great it was, so I got it on PC on sale, forced myself through another 20 hours, and that is time I will never get back.

It was horrible, I can't remember having even an hours worth of fun out of those 35 hours.

Ok so I've noticed a few people saying this: "Out of XX hours I NEVER had fun." Then why did you keep playing it? Seriously? If I'm not enjoying a game I'll just stop, no one's forcing you to play it. Unless someone has told people it gets AMAZING 20 hours in then I would just toss it aside (Yes I would and have felt the pang of wasting money but better to waste it and be on my way, than to waste it and wallow in it).

OT: Bioshock Infinite. It was a lot of fun, don't get me wrong, but too damn short. I beat it in 10 hours easily, and that included at least an hour of me just having the game open while eating. I can't really forgive short games like that, pisses me off (same goes for Dishonored, lots of fun, but if I had done a slit throat murder run it would have taken like 6 hours tops). I should mention: I DO explore and go around, I don't go from A->B as quickly as I can.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

I've gotten no end of hate over this opinion...

Final Fantasy X. It is my opinion that the FF game that many people hail as one of the greatest in the series is actually scraping the bottom of the barrel. I mean, the combat system was pretty good, but the main reason I play Final Fantasy games is because I want to be told a good story...and it's difficult to do so with characters that are all (except for Auron, who's a badass) some manner of bland, stupid, or unlikable.

Auron was the only cast member I didn't wish death upon for some reason. I mean, I actually cheered when Tidus jumped, only for them to backtrack and tell me in the next game (which is even worse than X) that he somehow survived.

I hate this game. VI has been the best Final Fantasy game, and none of the recent games have even come close.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

The Grand Theft Auto series.
While I admit that part of the fun of a sandbox game is the ability to explore and fuck around I find that I spend most of my time in the GTA games doing that not because it's particularly fun but because it's more enjoyable than the actual missions which are usually an unplayable mess hampered by the games own janky controls.

To be fair, I've not played any of them since San Andreas so the newer titles could be polished gold for all I know.

The Halo series
A lot of folks tell me these games shine in the multiplayer mode which may very well be true. I'm of the opinion that unless a game is built from the ground up as a multiplayer experience then the co-op mode should be an enjoyable extra, not the saving grace of a mediocre single player game.

Skyrim
To be fair, I did enjoy this game more than the other Elder Scrolls games I've played, most of which I always felt used the open world experience to mask the fact that they didn't bother writing much of a story. My issue with Skyrim is more one of personal play preference than anything else. The game was heavily sold on the idea of playing however you like, that the game was accessible and enjoyable regardless of the character class you choose to play as. So I rolled up an Orcish warrior type, gave him dual axes as soon as I could, and went forth into the world to clobber everything that looked at me funny. As the game progressed I found that I was being forced to change my play style significantly to compensate for the games core mechanics.

It's hard to feel like a bad ass dragon slayer when you pretty much just have to wait for the guards to take down the attacking dragons because you didn't really want to play an archer or mage.

Red Dead Redemption
I really liked Red Dead Revolver, I thought it was a good pulp western game with some entertaining mechanics and fun characters.

And then they turned it into Grand Theft Horse.

 

[JayRPG]

Ok so I've noticed a few people saying this: "Out of XX hours I NEVER had fun." Then why did you keep playing it? Seriously? If I'm not enjoying a game I'll just stop, no one's forcing you to play it. Unless someone has told people it gets AMAZING 20 hours in then I would just toss it aside (Yes I would and have felt the pang of wasting money but better to waste it and be on my way, than to waste it and wallow in it).

They were cumulative totals, there were a few reasons why I didn't just stop, and believe me I would have preferred to.

The first time I played it I got through the opening stuff and to the first town where I killed someone I wasn't supposed to and got chased out, basically I was done with the game at this point. If you aren't supposed to kill an NPC, don't give me the freedom/option to do it.

But I did decide a few days later that I hadn't given it a real chance so I started again, played for a few hours, mainly just aimlessly walking around hoping that something interesting would happen. I went back to it again because a friend told me it doesn't get good until you kill the first dragon.. it didn't get any better.

Basically I was just continually being coaxed into playing by friends, I guess you could say I had "fun" playing with a mate but mainly just because it was with a friend, not because of the game. I vaguely remember going into some fortress, killing everybody and then throwing them off the cliff for about 45 minutes with my friend and that was about the most fun I had in Skyrim.

I got it on PC again because it was quite a long while ago I had played and my friends were still raving on about their 100-120 hour characters so I got committed and gave it a really good go.

It's not something I will ever pick up to play again and apart from that one semi-fond memory of doing something utterly stupid (and something that would have been boring without a friend and alcohol) I can't ever remember having fun. All I remember was trudging through and forcing myself to keep thinking that it'll get better.

 

[Mezahmay]

Hmm. Didn't seem to post the first time. Going to try again. If the post pops up later I'll deal with it.

Anyway...three games come to mind: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, every Dead Rising game after the first one, and Shovel Knight.
MP3:C because of hypermode, the lack of weapon variety, and the rehashed Dark Samus felt lazy at the time.
Dead Rising games because the novelty wore off after the first one. I tried the DR2: Case Zero demo and didn't feel excited for the real game, and DR3 just looks/feels too...brown. Read "brown" however you wish.
Shovel Knight because FUCK THOSE SPIKES. I really want to see why Shield Knight is so damn special, but I've learned that retro platforming is just not for me and I'm too invested to just watch the ending as a video.

 

[The White Hunter]

Xenoblade Chronicles.

Whilst the combat system is quite fun and the world is certainly vast and technically impressive; it also felt quite empty, the story is surprisingly standard and the game has a nasty habit of giving you an entirely new mechanic and then thrusting you into a boss fight where you use it or unstoppable, unhealable, unavoidable death for all. Lost interest after about 20 hours.

Also kinda grindy.

Might go back to it someday but eh.

And fuck those level 3 billion fish near the start.

 

[Ryallen]

Like I said. Surviving brothers. We are never explicitly told that Sam liked Ellie, only strongly hinted at it, and regardless, he dies in such a way that just makes me cringe in lack of meaningful execution. And as for Henry's parenting, we are only shown one real instance of that, where he denies Sam a toy robot that ends up being meaningless anyways.

No, you are never explicitly told. How wonderful is that? That the way the characters act with one another tells you how they feel, instead of the game blatantly shoving it in your face. And all this interaction between both him and Ellie comes to a terrific conclusion at the end with the toy; Sam has a crush on Ellie, but Ellie sees him more like a kid/little brother by presenting him with the toy. And then he dies without Ellie ever having known.

And wrong about Henry again. In his conversation with Joel about the Fireflies, Henry gets immediately defensive when Joel questions his plan of dragging Sam around to find them. And when they get cut off from eachother in the sewers, Henry almost goes full-on panic when he realizes he has to leave Sam in someone else's care. While at the same moment Joel pretty much trusts Ellie to take care of herself. Showing that Joel is more experienced as a parent than Henry, who was likely forced into the situation when their own parents died.

Again, notice how this is achieved by how the characters behave, not by the game flat-out telling you how the characters feel.

Except that it didn't have any effect on how they behaved. She acted exactly as I would have expected from someone who lost a friend as opposed to someone who just lost a possible love interest. Frankly, I'm still not convinced that it was entirely necessary to have except to manipulate our emotions so much, especially considering that I played with them for an hour, maybe even two hours, and I still didn't feel anything when they died.

And, if I remember correctly, I don't remember Henry panicking that much when he had to leave Sam with Joel, and even when he did, that easily could have been interpreted as brotherly concern instead of paternal instinct.

I'm not talking about inside the game. When this revelation was made, there was so much uproar (or at least where I was spending time on the internet) that it was shameful that people even cared this much about a little fact that affected absolutely nothing about his character, whereas with characters like Zevran and Leliana in Dragon Age Origins, it was made a factor of their actual personality, where it actually came into effect in their personalities, and it was treated as no big thing, in game or online. Personally, I didn't care and I still didn't care about their sexuality, but I still find it aggravating that Bill and Ellie were treated like mold breakers in the field of LGBT representation. (Or again, at least where I was on the internet.

It was treated as a "big deal" by many fans, because the game didn't treat it as a big deal (I'm talking specifically about Bill, because the Left Behind DLC sucked). In a lot of previous games a gay character had to have some sort of purpose. Like you said, it was made a factor of their personality. Because apparently being gay means it has to influence your personality, like it's some special state of being. Even now when there's discussions about putting female or gay characters in a game you'll have people saying 'yes, but there needs to be a reason for them being there'. TLoU didn't have a reason, Bill was just gay because he was. And more importantly, his relationship with Frank wasn't about him being gay, it was about them having this love/hate thing going on.

Like I said, Bill's orientation gets as much exposure as any of the straight characters. It didn't differentiate between the two. That's what people praised about it.

And yet Sir Hammerlock and Axton were both gay, or at least bisexual, and it was not only treated as no big thing, but no one gave two shits about it simply because the game is played for laughs half the time. Apparently it takes a straight face for any sort of writing to have any impact on people when they see this sort of thing. Could you tell that either Axton or Sir Hammerlock were gay? An ex-soldier with an ex-wife and a Victorian cyborg hunter with a British accent? Did either of them posses any sort of giveaways other than their "outing", so to speak? And neither did Bill nor Ellie, and yet they found it notable here, in a game that plays it straight faced, as if it being in a game that makes you laugh makes it any less notable.