Games you learned to despise

Matthew on 23/9/2008 at 20:09

Yes. Black wand White fourthed/fifthed/whatever. I even bought Black and White 2 and played it once before I became aware of my madness and gave it to the charity shop.

I really liked Ultima VIII as well! Eventually.

evilkalla on 23/9/2008 at 20:18

Quote Posted by Malf

More surprisingly, I find myself harbouring similar feelings towards Guild Wars these days, although it's more accurately described as apathy in GW's case really. I put a LOT of time into GW (well over 3,000 hours), and now whenever I start it up, I can guarantee that I'll be quitting in 5 minutes.
Somehow, they took the orignal premise and completely twisted it; where the game was originally advertised as providing the MMO experience with little to no grind, over the years pandering to community requests has resulted in a game where once you've seen everything, all that's left to do is grind for titles and pretty gear. And no matter how much I initially loved them, the addition of Heroes ripped the heart out of PvE, resulting in almost the complete destruction of PuG play.

Anyone else with such gaming-gone-bad tales?

As far as PVE in GW is concerned, once I had beaten it all I didn't feel there was any reason to do it again. After the expansions and all the new skills it has become formulaic as far as what you have to do in certain areas to completely clear them. Nowadays most groups want a scripted skill list for each person in their PUG and the fun is gone. Each expansion wreaked havoc in PVP, and I got tired of re-learning skills and playing against whatever new gimmick happened to be going around since the latest skill nerf.

Are they still working on Guild Wars 2? They announced it a long time ago but there's still no updated information?

Bjossi on 23/9/2008 at 20:33

Quote Posted by ZylonBane

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter I *almost* came to hate. It just got a little too crazy toward the end. I've never beaten the final level without god mode.

I could manage until Serious difficulty, then things started to get very difficult.

Malf on 23/9/2008 at 22:08

Quote Posted by evilkalla

Are they still working on Guild Wars 2? They announced it a long time ago but there's still no updated information?

Yup, it's well under-way last I heard. (http://www.guildwarsguru.com/) Guild Wars Guru has regular news updates about it.
I'll definitely check it out, although from what I've read so far, they're going against their original design philosophy right from the get-go, with PvE essentially having no level cap.

Muzman on 24/9/2008 at 01:15

The Max Payne series: hype-tastic pointless vapid nonsense. The gameplay is actually crap, as is most of the level design (actively working against its fabled acrobatic gimickry most of the time), the dialogue is infuriatingly smug about how cool it is being all noir (which it doesn't resemble at all really. More a parody of noir parodies by the likes of the Three Stooges and Daffy Duck and even then not very good). And the second one has the nerve to even try and take itself seriously as a romance. Professional wrestling does a better job there. It's at best a sexed up version of Anakin and Padme with scratchy photoshop filters (just in case things weren't flat enough). Stick with giant mascott head jokes fellas.

In a way this is hype fatigue on my part; everyone loves it, it has a gimick or two, it's unusual. I have to try to like it.
Some months later: "grrr! Begone pointless crap!"
(I'll probably give it a try again in a year or two and let it off the hook.)

june gloom on 24/9/2008 at 03:14

Iron Storm. Fuck that game has not aged well...

Fringe on 24/9/2008 at 04:24

I didn't start off Neverwinter Nights 2 in love with it, but it at least seemed okay, performance issues not withstanding. I didn't get that much into the original to begin with, but Hordes of the Underdark and some user mods justified that purchase for me, and I figured that it would be the same thing this time around.

It was when I got to that infamous extremely lengthy/grindy quest chain to get into the city's upscale district that I realized that I didn't care about the characters or the plot at all. It put me off so much that I didn't do much searching for user mods, either (not that many were around at the time). I'd probably enjoy it more if I looked for mods now, and got that new expansion, but the thought of reinstalling it just fills me with ennui.

BlackCapedManX on 24/9/2008 at 05:30

Another one in for Diablo II. I loved D1 so much and just wanted it to be good, but because I actually played Diablo 1, Diablo II just couldn't stand up to my expectations. It wasn't the game I wanted, but then again, thank god for Diablo 1.

EVE-Online, for a while. I joined at just the time when the gaps between ship classes were wide enough, the player driven economy broken enough, and the solo income difficult enough that it was nigh impossible to play with just a friend or two, instead of organizing a whole corp, or even get anything done on my own. 4 years later I signed up again, to find the game had been substantially fleshed out, and I'm having a much better time with it. It's like the all of the "level plateaus" have been smoothed out.

Starcraft... because I have Total Annihilation to compare it to. There you go.

[Edit]OH! and Armored Core 3: Last Raven. They took everything that was good about Nexus and fucked it the hell up. When a Dual Sniper build can't even kill one enemy, much less the 3 they send you up against, if you hit with every single round (there's only like, 24) then what's the point of having sniper rifles? AC4 has taught me to appreciate pure rifle builds, so I might find LR playable at this point, but you could at least use other builds in AC4, even if they weren't as good.

Thirith on 24/9/2008 at 07:26

Quote Posted by Muzman

It's strange - I didn't like the first Max Payne at all. I simply didn't think it was much fun, and in terms of storytelling/noir it was trying much too hard for my tastes. Max Payne 2, however, completely won me around. I just replayed it and it still holds up okay for the most part, although I don't think I'll be playing it a third time.

Quote Posted by Fringe

Did you play Mask of the Betrayer? I thought that the NWN2 main campaign was about as boring as that of the first Neverwinter Nights and I found the character writing mediocre and the voice acting downright terrible, except for one or two of the characters (Ammon Jerro wasn't too bad). The expansion, however, was probably the best D&D-based game in many years. Cool writing, cool characters, interesting situations.

Malf on 24/9/2008 at 07:41

I must be the only person who's tried playing Mask of the Betrayer who just can't get along with it.
I find the whole scenario dull and uninspiring and still massively constrained by its Bioware origins. Let alone which, I can't put a finger on it, but there's something off about the NWN2 engine in that incarnation. I'm amazed that CD Projekt Red managed to almost completely disguise it and produce the wonder that is The Witcher.

And saying that, as you can probably guess, the NWN games are some more that I've learned to loath over the years.
Hordes of the Underdark was the highpoint for me, and since then, it's been a downward spiral. The Bioware interpretations of the D&D ruleset and worlds are just so overused and uninspired. For a fantasy world, everything feels far too clinical and clean. I got the same feeling from Mass Effect and to a lesser extent, KoToR.

Yet I know that D&D when done right can be brilliant; see the flawed gem The Temple of Elemental Evil. Released half-finished, bugged to fuck and with quite frankly embarrassing voice acting, it still manages to feel unique and has the best combat mechanics of any RPG I've ever played.