What does it take to ruin a game for you?

Bob_McMillan

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Aug 28, 2014
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Happyninja42 said:
Bob_McMillan said:
Happyninja42 said:
Bob_McMillan said:
Kinda ashamed to admit this but... Difficulty. I stopped playing Deus Ex, Battlefield 3, and Rainbow Six because dying more than a dozen times in the first level isn't anywhere near fun.

Another would be too much realism. Syndicate was a 'meh' enough game, but the motion blur, weapon sway, all the weird little movements your character would make, and the basically one color levels strained my eyes and made me quit the game.
That one's usually easy to fix thankfully, as most games have easier difficulties than the default "Normal"
Yeeeaaahhhhh, so I was actually kinda already playing on easy...

Also, it feels like cheating to not be on Normal.
Meh, it's not cheating if the game is designed to allow that type of gameplay. You're not under any obligation to the gaming community to play the game on Normal mode. xD It's your damn game, that you paid money for, play it how you want. xD
But what would I tell my friends? It would ruin my street cred haha
 

Tojumaru

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Oct 17, 2014
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1) Not getting involved in the story.
2) Lackluster characters(looking at you Dishonored)
3) Uninteresting world
4) No tutorials(Dark Souls, Demon Souls)
5) Difficulty curve(if it's obnoxiously hard, no thanks, especially if you can't adjust settings, again, looking at you Dark Souls)
6) If it's the 25th installment in a series and I haven't played any of them before(so, no Final Fantasy, Zelda, Metroid, Sonic, Mario, etc for me)
7) A sequel only in name(I first played Morrowind, so finding out your actions there have no bearing on Oblivion and Skyrim was a letdown)
8) No maps, local or world maps(Overlord really sucked because of this, I can't be bothered to backtrack through labyrinthine corridors when there's no fricking map to rely on, I ain't Indiana Jones)
 

Grendich

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Mar 7, 2012
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damn, it's really hard to think of something that actually ruins games for me, and not just 'this is what i hate about games'.

1.Hit/miss chance. It's just so frustrating when you stand there, swing your sword, but just dont hit shit with it swing after swing.
Morrowind was awful cause of this. Baldurs gate 2 and spellforce 1 did a pretty bad job too when it comes to that.
I played through them both, but when i tried to replay them again, i just couldnt do it.
Im so glad this isnt a thing anymore in most modern games.

2.When it's just too much of a hazzle to actually get into the game. There are multiple causes for this: required registration/signing in (cancer for windows live), obscure controls that you have to change completely, clunky game mechanics, Mods that are required to make the game playable (morrowind, skyrim, Dark Souls) or just bugs that you need to fix before you can even think about playing it.
When i first got Dark Souls, it was pretty awful in that regard: Games for windows live, console button display, just general awfulness without the DSfix and probably the most obscure keybinds ive ever encountered in a PC game. If you cant even get back to some sort of menu because its hotkey is something weird instead of ESC, then thats pretty low.
Nope'd the fuck out of it, despite friends highly recommending it and didnt pick it up again for months. In the end, i managed to push through and loved the game, so it was really ruined for me. But it came close.

Another examples would be Vampire Masquerade and Bioshock 1. I hear so many good things about the first one but im just too lazy to install the things required to make it playable. So it still sits around in my steam library, waiting to be played.

Latter one apparently has some sound-bug. i dont hear anything and couldnt be arsed to fix it so far.
 

Xerosch

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Apr 19, 2008
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Non-optional driving/skateboard sections in Jump & Run games.
I suuuuck at them and it's the only reason I think the Jak Trilogy is inferior to 'Ratchet & Clank' and 'Sly Cooper'. Granted, all of them had driving missions. But in the latter two they weren't so frikking hard.

Collect X amount of stuff to continue/see the best ending available.
The little known but charming 'Majin and the Forgotten Kingdom' had this problem. You had to collect memory fragments in crystal form or something which were only visible at night. So in the last third I did nothing but stand around in daylight, waiting for the sun to set.

Reach level X to progress the story
My current offender is my otherwise beloved 'Final Fantasy XIV'. I'm paying already, so don't stretch my time! On the other hand, having a subscribtion seems to be the sole reason for giving you a forced entry level.

Having to kill someone at the start of the game
This ruins absolutely every protagonist for me. 'Lords of Shadow 2', 'Watch Dogs' and 'Silent Hill Downpour' suffered from this immensely. Making an act of murder the entry point without context is a really, really bad design decision. Even if the gun isn't loaded.
 

CpT_x_Killsteal

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Jun 21, 2012
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A) When a dev makes promises and doesn't keep them.
B) Uberly retarded DLC framework.
C) Bugged to fuckery.

The game itself can't really "ruin" itself, I usually manage to find a way to enjoy every game I come across no matter what the genre. I like new things. Each game is a new feeling, a new adventure, a new experience; sometimes I get bored of those experiences and end up not liking them, but such is life.
But when a game is designed to to assault my wallet, doesn't F'ing work, or is stripped of things I was told to expect and look forward to, that really screws it up for me.

I want to get lost in what you created. No matter what it contains, no matter how disturbing, overdone, simple, cliche, or 'bad', it is - If I can get absorbed into it, that's enough for me.

... But fuck games that rely heavily on chance then force you to start over. Lookin' at you Theatre of War.

Edit: And for multiplayer, lag problems. If I don't have a server in my region or the netcode is shit, it becomes player vs lag, not player vs player.
 

joshuaayt

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Nov 15, 2009
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I give escort/defence quests 3 tries- I had to relax my rule of "Stop playing immediately upon finding an escort quest" so I could play Resident Evil 4- then it's done.
If it's an escort mission that's hard enough that I can actually lose it, I don't want to know about it. Hate that mechanic so much, and I really don't know who it is that keeps telling devs that people like them, because I've never seen someone say "Boy I love those escort quests"

It won't necessarily ruin a game for me, but I hate bad voicework- which is why I'm glad so many dubbed games are getting good actors these days.
 

Littaly

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Under delivering in a spectacular manner on the thing I bought the game for. If I was expecting a good story and what I get is barely a story at all, or I expect choice and consequence and what I get is one small choice at the end of the game affecting only one cut scene, then that would definitely ruin it for me. But it would have to be really bad and there would have to be little else I picked the game up for in order for me to give up on it. For example, I bought The Walking Dead primarily for the moral choices and branching storyline, but it only kind of under delivered and the story was still really good, so I didn't flat out ruin it for me.

Other than that, if the game it's mainly if the technical stuff is really badly screwed up I tend to be too frustrated to give up. Corrupted save files and glitches and bugs to the point that I'm more surprised if everything works as intended than not. I was really close to putting Dragon Age 2 down when I found out that on top of all the other technical issues, it had corrupted my save file keeping me from finishing certain side quests, and even after a patch, there was no way to restore it. For some miraculous reason (I guess I didn't have anything else to play at the time) I decided to restart the game despite being 75% through, but I managed to grow tired of it before I finished it. I still haven't completed the last act.

Gameplay that I find unnecessarily punishing too. I can't believe I'm saying this but right now I'm about to give up on GTAIV. I'm so tired of failing a mission thanks to sluggish controls and then have to restart at my safe house and have to retake the drive across town, first to pick up the mission and then to the mission location, every damn time I fail -.- It's a shame because other than that I really like the game, but it's just starting to feel like a waste of time.
 

Proto Taco

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Drizzt

And/or shameless capitalism.

I've enjoyed some pretty shite games in the past, often using the breaks and glitches to create a kind of Gary's Mod experience for myself. But being strung out/along for money, and fantasy's perennial Stephanie Meyer Sue will always turn me away from a game. I want t'settle in and have fun, with dark levity, not brood or hand over wads of cash.

Also, blue screens. If the game makes me blue screen, that's like trying to have sex with an OCD Germaphobe, it aint happening.
 

Shoggoth2588

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Aug 31, 2009
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Does the core-gameplay suck? Is the core-gameplay boring or tedious? If so than I have given up playing your stupid game...unless of course I feel personally insulted by the game, which is the case with Final Fantasy XIII.
 

Evonisia

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Jun 24, 2013
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If it becomes fairly obvious that the developer thinks lowly of the player. Call of Duty: Ghosts was a game that absolutely despised the player, deciding to do a tick-the-box attitude to gameplay. Adequate level design, adequate video game story, adequate gameplay (a step down from Black Ops II by far), adequate everything. There was nothing worth noting about it, nothing worth cursing to the depths of Hell. It was just a game that existed, a game designed to waste the player's time.

On a similar note, when the developer has hypocrisy in regards to the fans. Mass Effect 3 can go fuck itself and I shan't indulge in this franchise only to have the developers give an abrupt "fuck you" for the final third of the series. And Halo 4, which is just ill-thought out fanfiction designed to piss off any fan that actually gave attention to the story of the first six games, making it all the more pathetic when some of the level design and set pieces are directly ripped off from those previous games.
 

BeerTent

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May 8, 2011
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Oh my god, so many games, so many issues... Here's my list.

Lists are FUN!

When action and down-time are skewed, 1:10... I lose interest pretty quick, DayZ!
When I can find or obtain one item or weapon, and completely devastate the game, Phantom Crash!
When there is no difficulty at all to a game. Like, I just walk on through that shit, Countless fucking titles like Mass Effect 2, Far Cry 3, Watch-Dogs (Handgun only)!
When the story intrudes into the gameplay way too much, Metal Gear Solid 2! (I'm not here to watch a fucking movie!)
When there is a positively shit story, Afterfall and Sang-Froid!
When Regenerative health is done wrong, 90% of CoD and BF games, Mass Effect 2, Watch-Dogs! (This also goes for retarded fucking screen effects, ME2.)
Super short arcade games don't do it for me anymore, so... Uhh... sorry, Isaac and Risk of Rain!
Sad, sad fucking attempts at satire... Simulator games! Nono, stay put Surgeon. You're actually funny. Go fuck yourself Goat. Sanctum was sub-par too.

That wasn't fair. I actually enjoyed Sanctum.

OH! And shit control schemes! So LoL can go fuck itself with a pike too.
 

Reasonable Atheist

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Mar 6, 2012
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A female protagonist. *takes cover and plugs ears*

But in all seriousness i would say scores of totally useless items that pile up and take time to sort threw
 

Razuli

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Feb 26, 2013
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If the game doesn't make me care about it's characters, I won't care about the game. I'm willing to overlook a lot of major problems with games/movies/books if they actually makes me care about what happens to their characters.
 

Clearwaters

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Jul 14, 2014
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Too much DLC will stop me from buying a game. It just gets so confusing and tedious trying to get the complete experience sometimes, especially for some games that are few years old.

Long loading times will also kill a game for me. Too much sitting around waiting will have me drift away to other activities in no time.
 

Elementary - Dear Watson

RIP Eleuthera, I will miss you
Nov 9, 2010
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I can never really put my foot on when I get turned off a game. I love playing things like GTA and Bethesda RPGs, but I can get turned off when a JRPG gives you too much freedom too quickly.

I like a good looking hack and slash, but I sometimes get bored if there is too much going on.

I loved playing Bastion for the first time recently... but then was turned off by the 'collect crystals... ooh, nearly... they are gone though, collect again... ooh, so close... last few now...' story. I normally wouldn't care, and was happy having more game, but this time it just annoyed me! :S
 

CannibalCorpses

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Aug 21, 2011
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All it takes to ruin a game for me is low difficulty and my perceived impression that the game was made for the lowest common denominator. I know that's incredibly arrogant but having spent 25-30 years of gaming it baffles me that nobody makes games for people like me anymore.
 

Reincarnatedwolfgod

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Jan 17, 2011
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well a shity story is something I can not tolerate unless the gameplay is really good.

One way to scare me way from a game without me even trying it, is having too much dlc. I could buy the game on a later date when there is a big sale and the game , along with all dlc are being sold together.