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

[AnthrSolidSnake]

The latest Pokemon games. The story was so booooring. Sure, mechanically, the game was fantastic. It's the more refined Pokemon experience we've come to expect, but I've always bought the Pokemon games to go on an adventure, and I just wasn't feeling it this time around.

Customizing your character was a chore, the main hub town wasn't interesting to explore, and I found myself liking very few of the characters. They seemed...too childish. Like they were actually written by a child.

Maybe I'm a bit bitter because Pokemon was the main reason I even got a 3DS, and now I barely touch the thing.

 

[Starbird]

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.

Mm. I didn't like Skyrim on release - but am revisiting it with a buttload of mods and really enjoying my time thus far. Although half of it is simply looking at the jawdropping graphics on my new PC (seriously, google Realvision ENB - Skyrim looking better than Crysis 3).

 

[Starbird]

Batman Arkham City: Another heart-breaker because the gameplay is just great. It's the story that I can't stand. Not because it's poorly written, but because I just felt dirty playing it. Based on the henchmen chatter you overhear, those henchman can never think of any female character in the game without saying how much they'd enjoy raping her. All other chatter is divided between gameplay hints, expressing how much they love torture and murder, and how their supervillain bosses are even worse. And after being subjected to 10 hours of that, I'm expected to want to STOP the League of Shadows of burning the place down with all the inmates in it? I'd have handed them the fucking matches if only the game would let me. But no, Batman is just going to pretend that beating up criminals and sending them to jail works in his universe... never mind that the villains ARE ALREADY IN JAIL, and still managed to poison thousands of people and (per Arkham City) regularly maul their therapists, whenever they don't feel like breaking out of jail for the 257th time.

I loved BAC, but I must agree that some bits squicked me out. They were all implied, but I have a big thing about torture and abuse and...wow, there were a few nasty little bits in that game.

Although Batman has always had its moments as a series. Black Mask as a character and the stuff with Catwoman's family or Stephanie Brown...blah.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Seriously, I dare you to tell me one thing about Tess beyond the fact that she is a foul-mouthed *****.

Well, she was likely around Joel's daughter's age when the apocalypse occured, and so has grown up with a pretty ruthless kill-or-be-killed attitude. But as soon as she realizes there may yet be hope, she instantly remembers who she used to be before.

Or one thing about Sam and Henry besides they are surviving brothers, one of whom is a child and the other likes barbecues.

Sam has a secret crush on Ellie, and Henry is pretty strict with his little brother due to his own insecurities as a parent.

But the thing that pisses me off the most about this game is how they treat their homosexual characters. They treat Bill and Ellie as some sort of revolution in representation in gaming, how they are the first step in the acceptance of homosexuals in modern media. Well, news flash, dickheads! Gearbox did that first, and they did it so much better than TLoU. Want to know how? They mentioned Hammerlock's sexuality offhand as if it was no big deal. Because it isn't! The first step to acceptance is to stop acknowledging the difference. To treat everyone the same, no matter their race, religion, or sexual preference. If the LGBT community really wants to be accepted, they need to ignore those that treat them differently, because Lord knows that I do, and so does everyone else I know.

Whut?

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.

 

[Naeras]

This is assuming the games are from genres I usually enjoy. For that reason, this list has no racing games and no sandbox games.

Bioshock Infinite
I still haven't bothered playing this through. The story, characters and setting were intriguing, but the gameplay was completely uninteresting. Not thinking about picking it up again either, for all the praise that it got.

Mass Effect
See above. The gameplay was boring, even more so than Bioshock Infinite, so I couldn't be bothered to actually play for more than an hour. ME2 would have been equally bad if it wasn't for the Vanguard-class.

Antichamber
I remember it being interesting, but I had to stop playing because the game made me physically ill. Not in the "oh god this is horrible"-kind of way, but I did get nauseous from playing the game. It was quite a turn-off =/

Most of the Black Isle-RPGs
They.. just don't work for me. I have no idea why. I'm guessing the completely unnecessary RNG and overall tiresome interface, but I just don't enjoy them.

 

[Nazulu]

The Binding Of Isaac: Wrath Of The Lamb - I love the original but I can't stand the expansion at all. It's the type of game where you keep going into room after room with randomly generated enemy's and stuff set up in small stages that ends with a boss, and you need to find keys to obtain random items that you need to improve your abilities. You beat all the stages in roughly 30 to 40 minutes if you are not gambling.

First game is fair enough, not too hard but not too easy, but with the expansion it is only difficult. All new enemy's and bosses have higher damage output and more health, the rooms can be more cluttered than usual, more booby traps and annoying obstacles like web, and it's even more bloody random than before.

The last time I played, I had to fight 2 bosses before proceeding onto the next stage. Not only that, but the second one was a stage 4 boss in the original which took forever to kill with no upgrades. I was super optimistic for it, but I just ended up thoroughly hating. Everything just takes longer. Even if you are lucky, you will get hit because how cluttered some of the rooms are. I wish they would just make an easy and hard option.

Skyrim: and it's expansions - I really enjoyed it in the beginning, and I know why it's still popular, but I can't ignore how broken and tedious I found it.

I broke the game with my first 2 classes the first time I chose, and even when I went one of the weakest classes, I still couldn't scrounge any reason to continue. I forced myself to complete the main quests and some of the other big ones, and I really liked Blackreach, but that's it.

I can't explain why I find it so boring, but I think it has to do with the average game play, samey designs and challenges, and that nothing was difficult to obtain unlike the older MMO's I used to enjoy. I liked some of the story's though.

 

[TheGamerElite33]

Max Payne 3. It's the best cover shooter ever with great gore and genuinely challenging combat. But good GOD, you couldn't find a more depressed, self deprecating, whiny little shit if you combined navi with the goth kids from south park. The story itself has THREE separate scenes to establish that max payne is a heavy drinker, and to top it all off the people he's rescuing are stereotypes of the people you see on TMZ that he apparently hates and you don't give a fuck about, but save them anyways because money. And later just because the bad guy misled you and therefore deserves to die.

T

Max payne 3 is complete crap compare to Max payne 1 and 2. they ruined everything. no more dark, no more noir. just another cover shooter.

 

[infohippie]

Bastion. I like the art style and I love the voiceover, but the actual gameplay is, to me, dull, repetitive, and just plain annoying.

 

[Sylph_14]

Batman: Arkham Asylum. To much of the gameplay just felt gimmicky. I got a little bored of the "hop on the back of the giant roid-rage'd man after you tricked him into running into a wall" boss fights.

 

[Evonisia]

Grant Theft Auto V, which I think should be in some kind of Seventh Generation personal Evonisia awards thing for biggest disappointment.

It looked like so much fun in the trailers and I was liking what they were doing, but besides the eye popping amount of detail (my personal favourite being that your character will lift his leg a bit to step on a curb if you're on the road), the experience was so sad. Shitty auto aim feature which was so inconsistent, driving was OK and could only be considered great when compared to GTA IV's driving, story was non-existent and the writing of the characters was all fluff, nothing to contribute to the story or any of the messages the game was trying to send.

I'll put it next to Halo 4 for Most Hated Game of Seventh Generation and Saints Row IV for Most Pleasant Surprise of Seventh Generation.

 

[raeior]

There are quite a few games that fit this.

Telltale's The Walking Dead: I just don't understand what everyone sees in this. I knew it was basically a game consisting of QTEs but the story, characters and choices were supposed to be oh so good. What I got was a game that constantly said how important my choices are but then doesn't care about them ever again. Even worse were the characters: Except for Clementine they were all either psychopaths or complete idiots (or both).

Supreme Commander: Not even sure why I didn't like this because I loved Total Annihilation. It just never clicked for me.

Skyrim: The world design was a lot better than the one in Oblivion but the quests were worse in most cases. Though what annoyed me the most was that everything in this game screams "unfinished". The war for Whiterun at the start of the civil war is great, but afterwards the missions get more and more boring and then suddenly the war is over and no one cares for it anymore. This is even more noticeable with the Dark Brotherhood missions.

GTA 4: The story telling was quite good but I find the size of the world pretty disappointing, especially because I was missing really memorable areas. Also the checkpoint design during missions...the last mission alone was so bad because one missed motorcycle jump meant you had to kill dozens of enemies again. In my eyes San Andreas was better in every regard (except characterization of the main char).

 

[Ryallen]

Seriously, I dare you to tell me one thing about Tess beyond the fact that she is a foul-mouthed *****.

Well, she was likely around Joel's daughter's age when the apocalypse occured, and so has grown up with a pretty ruthless kill-or-be-killed attitude. But as soon as she realizes there may yet be hope, she instantly remembers who she used to be before.

I really don't see that she remembers anything like that. I only saw her die the way that she wanted to die, which is something that literally ANYONE in her position would do. Not to mention that the little fact of her being young during the initial outbreak means absolutely nothing in the context of the story and is given no sort of reference. And, again, foul-mouthed *****.

Or one thing about Sam and Henry besides they are surviving brothers, one of whom is a child and the other likes barbecues.

Sam has a secret crush on Ellie, and Henry is pretty strict with his little brother due to his own insecurities as a parent.

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.

But the thing that pisses me off the most about this game is how they treat their homosexual characters. They treat Bill and Ellie as some sort of revolution in representation in gaming, how they are the first step in the acceptance of homosexuals in modern media. Well, news flash, dickheads! Gearbox did that first, and they did it so much better than TLoU. Want to know how? They mentioned Hammerlock's sexuality offhand as if it was no big deal. Because it isn't! The first step to acceptance is to stop acknowledging the difference. To treat everyone the same, no matter their race, religion, or sexual preference. If the LGBT community really wants to be accepted, they need to ignore those that treat them differently, because Lord knows that I do, and so does everyone else I know.

Whut?

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.

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.

 

[babinro]

GTA4 - Bought it as a result of all the perfect scores and hype. To this day it's the only PS3 game I've sold. I found the combat very boring and somewhat clunky. The story was decent for what I played but I couldn't get into the game. The controls were terrible. I've historically had hit or miss experiences with sandbox games but I LOVE Mafia 2, inFamous and Arkham Asylum. I've not played GTA5 as I opted not to repeat my past mistakes.

World of WarCraft - I've played the trial version and couldn't get into the game at all. It's unfortunate because I have several real life friends who are into it and I'd love to actually play an online game with them but I just can't force it. The game had (maybe still has) too many grind elements to the point where I don't feel like I'm having fun. I spend WAY too much time getting to the fun.

And lastly....

Every single horror game that's not Resident Evil (franchise) or Five Nights at Freddy's. Resident Evil 1 had scary elements but it was never all that scary. I loved the mood it established. The remake was amazing and pushed those elements further. Future editions were not even remotely scary but were still fun to play. RE4 being the pinnacle of this.

I've tried other scary games and I've just been bored by them. I feel bad for it but Silent Hill 1&2 do nothing for me. I don't think they are bad games or anything I just don't 'get it'. It's sad because I'm huge horror fan. I don't get Outlast, I don't get Slender Man, I don't get Lone Survivor, etc, etc. None of them have been effective on me in a horror sense or even from a gameplay/entertainment sense.

Enter Five Nights at Freddy's. A game that hasn't been all that well received but yet completely worked on me. It's just some silly jump scares but the sense of dread and tension it creates is fantastic both as a viewer and a player....just amazing. It's sad that the game/experience only lasts maybe an hour or 2 before it wears thin but it was well the asking price (in my case $2.00 as part of a bundle deal).

 

[Casual Shinji]

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.

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.

 

[ThatDarnCoyote]

Generally a list of things I found disappointing, rather than outright bad:

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon - Don't get me wrong. I didn't hate it, and it was well worth the $5 I spent on it. The writing, voice acting, and humor were great, and I loved the clever shout-outs to 90s shlock action cinema. But after a while it just got boring; the missions and strongholds were all the same, the weapons were underwhelming, the enemy variety mediocre. And yet so many people raved over that game. It reminded me of the worst aspects of Far Cry 2, without the redeeming qualities of that game, and set in a less interesting and varied landscape.

Dark Souls - I have a weird relationship to this game. It was a title I swore I would never play, due to my low tolerance for frustration. But a part of me was always curious about it, and every gaming site I frequent was [em]nuts[/em] about it, so when it came up as a free download on XBL, I gave it a try. To my surprise, despite its difficulty I found it less frustrating than many other games. I could see the appeal, but it just didn't engage with me.

Oblivion - Lots of potential, marred by clumsy combat, ugly character models, a weird difficulty curve, and unintuitive controls. I keep trying to come back to it, thinking that my affinity and experience with Fallout 3 and Skyrim will help me get through it, but it never works.

 

[veloper]

Too many to list. Reviews are too often very generous.

So I'm going to limit myself to games with shitty gameplay mechanics that were often praised by forum members here as well as achieving wider acclaim.

Oblivion sucks as a action RPG, but it's doesn't work as a good roll-playing game either with no real strategy in the character building parts either. Just a horribly unbalanced game that rewards and encourages abusing the broken system (under-leveling). Extreme level-scaling and everything else being terrible, except for scenery being pretty for an old game, makes for a complete turd or a walking simulator.
For an open world CRPG play Fallout NV instead, or maybe even Skyrim, which is somewhat dumbed down again, but still manages to be better than it's predecessor. If decent combat mechanics are also a must, you're pretty much stuck with Amalur or Dragon's Dogma, unfortunately.

KOTOR doesn't work as a RTWP game (unlike BG2), because the interface is a mess and the player doesn't have direct RTS control over his companions, but it also doesn't work to control only the main PC, because the companion AI is just terrible. The overall result is a very clunky and unrewarding experience.
It's not hard to recommend something similar yet better here, since KOTOR is the worst Bioware game in this regard, along with the singleplayer part of NWN. As a sci-fi action-RPG with sappy dialogue choices, Mass Effect is good for what it is.

Galciv2 is a 4X game with all the tactical combat stripped out, resulting in a game that's mostly about managing a space empire's economy. Unfortunately the economy makes little sense (the slider problem), makes for a lot of boring busy work to play optimally and there's no game balance to be found (economic traits + population growth bonuses and speed trump everything else and the initial colony rush is everything).
A completely broken strategic AI ruin the rest of the experience, but exploiting AI stupidity is at the same time the only reason the player can compete with the cheating AI at the higher difficulty settings. This is true for most strategy games, but it's funny how it's doubly true for the AI advertised as the greatest.
Play Master of Orion 2 or Armada 2526 instead. Or just play Civilization, or just about any 4X out there really.

The Walking Dead The gameplay consists of quick time events and the occasional immobile prize shooting. The choose-your-own-adventure-book dialogue system is mostly fake and even the final outcome is fixed. The only thing going for it is that the story is okay, if a bit sentimental.
For a CYOAB, play Alpha Protocol instead, for all it's many flaws, it is the king in that area and at least it has actual gameplay.
Hell, the average Bioware title has more actual choices with consequences than TWD.
If what we want is a zombie-themed game, then just about everything out there plays better than TWD. Play L4D or something.

 

[Jacques Joseph]

Man, does it feel good to come here and find out that I´m not the only freak of nature who didn´t like Dragon Age: Origins...

Weird difficulty spikes, the whole combat system seemed wrong, especially with AI programming I couldn´t somehow understand - it always seemed my companions either did whatever the fuck they wanted or didn´t do anything at all. I know there´s the tactical pause system but that doesn´t mean I want to pause and tell them to attack the same enemy again after every single hit. I also hated the camera system which never seemed to let me see as far as my spells and ranged weapons could hit which always meant I was getting sniped by enemies.
Plus the whole game-rule system seemed cryptic and never really explained so I spent the whole game without actually knowing if the numbers on that or the other piece of equipment are high or low for my level or whatever.

And most of all I hated the generic story with its attempts at a grey system of morality which only meant being forced to choose between two evils not because each had some reasonable aspect you could relate to (which would make the decisions interesting like in The Witcher) but simply because the dialogues (for no obvious reason) never gave you some middle-ground option that always seemed both the most reasonable and perfectly feasible to me.
Oh and while we´re at the dialogue system - all the praise the choices-with-consequences, grey morality system and storytelling of this game got led me to expect I´d actually be able to do some roleplaying, yet all I get in basically any dialogue in the game is: 1) (where applicable) ask for more information; 2) standard good guy/positive answer; 3) standard neutral/I don´t know/I´ll decide later answer; 4) standard bad guy/negative answer. Sorry but choosing out of these and then imagining I had reasons for it that the game ignores is not what I call roleplaying.

Rant over. Sorry, had to get it out of the system.

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

hmm... the call of duty series, fallout 3, Street fighter 4(and it's million updates,)GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption,Borderlands,dark souls, Assassin's creed 4 black flag, the walking dead( the telltales game one), and Sleeping Dogs

 

[TheWorstMuppetEver]

Hmm...

I know it's popular to hate on Skyward Sword, but still...
I was having fun until I reached the first battle with Ghirahim. I noticed that the sword delay was quite apparent when slashing back and forth. The frustration in not getting my sword in the opposite direction of his hand made for a terrible demonstration of motion controls. I know they work most of the time, but thats the problem! They only work MOST of the time! I started to dread facing the electric moblins, because they'd predict my slashes at every turn! Drove me insane getting shocked again and again! And don't get me started on the harp minigame. Worst point of the game.

Blech, I say!

 

[verdant monkai]

The Last of Us.

Ellie is one of the most hate-able things in a video game history.
-She's not funny
-She acts tough but is completely helpless
-She refuses to learn how to swim
-She only wants to leave an area after every living thing in it has been murdered.
-She runs away putting you in danger for no good reason

Spoiler

If I was Joel I'd carve off her head and carry it in a sack to the surgeon people, then go and live in a crap town somewhere and probably try and get laid. Spending the rest of my life raising her would make the apocalypse 10 times worse.

I also hate Fifa because I hate football, I also hate call of duty because its bland lacking in imagination and the community is almost as bad as the football community.