Ask Lemmy

Souls games.

I really want to like them too, but they seemingly aren't compatible with how I play games. I need to be able to put a game down for a couple of weeks and not feel like I'm back at square one because the specific muscle memory for that game has gone.

Just kinda kills the fun when the game is effectively telling me to get good, when I don't actually have the amount of free time IRL necessary to do that.

The Witcher. I really want to like it. It seems like the kind of game I would love and I recognize that it’s an objectively well made game. However, I’ve bounced off it at least 4 times after getting 1-4 hours in.

Name any sports title ( NHL, NFL, NBA, MBA, etcetera )that isn't a zany, over the top SuperTuxKart or Cartoon Network Racing style kart racer and I'm out.

Same goes for any PVP shooter games such as Call of Duty, TF2 Counter Strike, etcetera. Anymore I really find no interest in them because I don't feel like breaking things over some 6 month old who can squad wipe me, all while getting their diaper changed and slinging slurs my way.

Monster Hunter. Probably tried like 4 of those games since Tri and people keep recommending them to me, saying the newest one will surely be the one to convince me. But I found them all to be a boring grind.

Pokemon - having to watch animations and not being able to speed anything up killed my interest

Skyrim - tried a melee run recently and the combat feels like you’re whacking air

The legend of Zelda - played Tears and the story and puzzles were a bit too kid friendly

Doom - I really tried to like it but I felt like I didn’t get anything out of it. It doesn’t scratch that itch I get out of FromSoft’s Souls games where I want to learn a boss’s patterns and die to it a million times.

In general I don’t think I can do story games anymore

I can think of lots of series that I don't like, just because I'm not into the genre. I think that everyone has genres that they don't like.

I think a more-interesting question is about popular series that I don't like within a genre that I do like.

I didn't like Frostpunk, despite liking city-builders. Felt like the decisions were largely mechanical, didn't involve a lot of analysis and tweaking levers.

I didn't like Sudden Strike 4, despite liking lots of real time tactics games, like Close Combat. It felt really simplified.

I didn't like Pacific Drive, despite liking survival games. It has time limits, and I often dislike time limits in games.

I didn't like Outer Wilds, despite liking a lot of space games. Didn't like the cartoony style, the low-tech vibe, felt like it wasn't respectful of player time.

I didn't like Elden Ring, though I like a number of swords and sorcery games. Just felt simple, repetitive and uninteresting.

EDIT: A couple of honorable mentions that I don't hate, but which were disappointing:

Borderlands. The gunplay can be all right, and the flow of new guns and having to adapt to them is interesting. But every Borderlands game I play, the always-respawning enemies are a turnoff. Feels like the world is immutable. Also don't like the mindless farming of every container with glowing green dots. And for a combat-oriented game, it doesn't make me mix up my tactics much based on whatever I'm facing. While I finish the game, I always wind up feeling like I'm not having nearly as much fun as I should be having.

Choice of Games. I like text-based games, but a lot of games published by this company, even otherwise well-written ones, have adopted a convention of making one win by playing consistently to certain characteristics of a character, so one tries to just figure out at every choice what option will maximize that characteristic. That's extremely uninteresting gameplay, even if the story is nice and the text well-written. I feel like the same authors would have done better just writing choose-your-own-adventure type games if they weren't focused on the stats. I also really dislike the lack of an undo, to the point that I've put some work into a Choicescript-to-Sugarcube converter.

Assassin's Creed.

Love the historical gameplay. But I cannot stand being interrupted by the modern day parts. Even if they are small. They feel so disrespectful with my time that I've always been unable to play those games. I forced my way through AC2 but I have never replayed it, despite loving the actual gameplay, just for the modern day boredom.

Just about any multiplayer game. I generally don't like playing with randos (why would I want to listen to a 12 yo squeal in my ear that they fucked my mother in a pitch only dogs can hear?), and most of my friends don't play games I'm interested in.

I found both Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect completely unplayable.

Assassin's creed. The movement and combat didn't feel satisfying to me at all

D&D

I've been playing RPG for decades, but play D&D less than once a decade, and my impression goes form awful to not worth my money/time. When I was young and broke, having to buy a player manual + a GM guide + a monster manual when tons of RPG would fit in a single book (Yes I know, clan-books for let's say Vampire are also a money-pit), was out of my budget, then every-time I played D&D, feel like the story were not interesting as concept like alignment and some spells like detect lies would kill many interesting plot. Too which you had a lot of character optimisation often over the long-term (If you didn't take that feat a low level you cannot have the killer feat at high level), let alone the people mixing RPG and miniature games

Sure you can have some funs game with D&D and play it differently but there is so many other game out-there (and so few time) , that why would I even bother joining a D&D game rather than another,

I've failed at getting into any Battle Royale, Survival, or Extraction type game so far.

The Bethesda (and related) RPGs. The core gameplay loop just feels so shallow in both, meaning most of your time is spent wandering with nothing meaningful to do, or in spammy, often janky combat. The parts that are interesting, the character builds and the lore, aren't super involved in most of the game. You spend so little time building characters, and most of the lore is in written logs and books.

RE and Silent Hill and Fatal Frame and Alien Isolation. I just can't get over the horror aspect.

I cannot do balders gate 3, or any rpg of that style. I suspect it's to do with trying to roleplay a character while simultaneously viewing them in that top-down third person perspective. I can do X-COM, strategy, I can do roleplay in third person, but that particular combination just kills it for me. It's bizarre.

Fortnite.

Just. No.

God of War. I played 1,2, and 3 and they were all pretty much the same. I think a lot of the hype was from marketing and edge lords who were thrilled to have so much blood and some low-poly tits on the PS2. Once you get past the spectacle, the combat is a slog of mashing the Square button until the game decides to stop spawning HP sponges for you to hit. The puzzles are tedious and annoying. The platforming they try to force in just doesn't work with the physics and controls. The music is bland and generic "epic symphony" stuff that may as well just be from a stock music library, with no Greek influence at all. The story is a generic and modern story with a thin vineer of Greek mythology. Kratos is less of a character and more of a reason to move the game along to the various locations. I know it's not a completely fair comparison, but Hades used Greek instruments to create greek-influenced and interesting music that I still find myself humming and drumming to years later. Hades also did a way better job of using actual Greek mythology to create a narrative that would actually fit in that cannon.

I remember playing Knack 1&2 and thinking "wow, this is like if the old God of War games were fun". Knack is far from perfect of course, but is largely a similar series that cares more about being fun than being mature.

I'm playing through the 2018 God of War now. Completely different, and honestly a few hours in I'm still not sure why they chose to make this a God of War game staring Kratos instead of just making it a fresh IP. Maybe more lore reasons will be revealed, but so far it seems it was just to capitalize on the brand for marketing reasons. The music is still not a strength, but it's better. The environments are better. The combat is still pretty boring with way too many boring enemies with way too much health, but it's better. This is the first game where I'm starting to get tired of the same UI and over-the-shoulder perspective that other Sony games have used lately (Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Horizon, Spiderman). GoW, like most of those games, has an unnecessarily complicated itemization and leveling system that just bogs the game down, and feels almost inspired by MMO's or gacha mobile games.

It does a great job of characterization, with plenty of small, subtle, beautifully written moments that grant insight into personalities. The boy is annoying, but I can see that's the point so I mostly don't mind. It's really annoying how the game won't shut up- there's always someone saying something, and if you even just stop moving for a second someone pipes up to remind you of what you should be doing. It doesn't have space to breath. The puzzles are better than the prior games- they are an acceptable tool for pacing but aren't great by themselves. The story seems a lot better, with much more attention given to original Norse mythology.

With Uncharted I could push last the mediocre puzzles and bullet sponge enemies because the cutscenes were really good and the stories were fun. For Ratchet and Clank I can ignore how the humor has gotten worse and more juvenile over time because it's still fun to platform, dodge, cycle through weapons, and kill tons of enemies. For Horizon Zero Dawn... Actually I don't have many complaints, that was a solid title. For GoW (2018) there's just nothing pulling me back to it.

Pokemon, TCGs in general, Fallout, Darksouls and the related things

Walking simulators
Something like outer wilds should be fine but i get easily annoyed from just running around
Even that i know that in some cases its very fast running around or something

Final Fantasy, it's too grindy for me.

Baldur's Gate, Elder Scrolls and Divinity series all spring to mind. I really want to like those games, but the story just progress way too slow.

I loved Planescape: Torment though.

Warcraft