Thirith on 31/10/2012 at 07:53
Have you ever had to revisit a game several times before it clicked for you? I'm probably doing this less and less because a) I don't have as much gaming time as I used to and b) I've got a huge back catalogue of games I haven't even played once - but if it weren't for giving games a second chance I would've missed out on some real gems.
Case in point? Thief (or rather, Thief 2). My first exposure to the Thief universe was the "Life of the Party" demo... and I just couldn't get into the game. Years of first-person shooters had trained me to be impatient, so I simply didn't understand that the first lesson of Thief was to wait in the shadows and bide your time. I understood, at least superficially, that I could sneak up on people and hit them over the head, but I simply didn't have the patience to do this well, so I usually alerted the guards and reloaded. Not the way to enjoy Thief, obviously...
I can't remember how or why I got to give the games a second chance - but when I did and they finally clicked (perhaps because I was a bit older and more patient?) I was glad I did.
Which games did you only learn to love at a second, third or fourth attempt?
Angel Dust on 31/10/2012 at 08:10
Metro 2033. I borderline hated it when I first played it on the 360 but half a year later I picked it up cheap in a Steam sale (looking to test my new PC's metal), played it on the Ranger difficultly and ended up really liking it. I still wish it would let you explore a bit more (the way it literally railroads you away from that huge, teaming settlement near the end is almost comical) but the lethality of the combat, scarcity of resources and the touches like the manual pumping of weapons, all combined to make a really engrossing experience.
zajazd on 31/10/2012 at 08:13
Deus Ex took me 3 or 4 tries :rolleyes: between 2006 and 2008.
DarkForge on 31/10/2012 at 08:30
I'm currently playing through Far Cry for the first time. I played the demo in the past and wasn't impressed, so I was a little hesitant about putting myself through the full game, but it's actually not chugging along too badly at the moment.
N'Al on 31/10/2012 at 09:35
GTA 4
Must've played the opening ten missions about 5 times over until the game finally clicked for me. The controls just feel so incredibly sluggish the first time you play it - especially if you've played the GTA 3 series games beforehand.
Now, though, having got used to them I find the vehicle controls in particular absolutely delightful; the feeling of weight and momentum in the cars is just great - provided you can control them, that is.
That is why this
[ATTACH=CONFIG]1491[/ATTACH]
is so exciting.
Which reminds me, I should really get back to Gay Tony. And in the game.
demagogue on 31/10/2012 at 09:51
I didn't finish System Shock 2 the first time around and came back to it a few years later to finish it off. That wasn't so much about "clicking" as just the fact I didn't have the time & initiative to play it the first time around, and the second was a time in my life where I was able to enjoy it properly. (And even then, my favorite levels in SS2 were the early ones like Hydroponics & Engineering, and I thought it lost steam by the Rickenbacher.)
There are a lot more classic games I only played the first time recently and really got into them (i.e., more than a decade after they were released) -- Halflife, Viet Cong, Age of Empires 2, Fallout -- but that's a different thing.
Thirith on 31/10/2012 at 10:47
@N'Al: I had that issue with San Andreas the first time - I didn't like how the cars handled, plus I thought that the starting area was ugly and the gang warfare gameplay boring. Once the game clicked, though, it became my favourite GTA title.
N'Al on 31/10/2012 at 10:56
The driving in SA wasn't very different to GTA 3 or VC, though, was it? Had you not played any of those two beforehand?
Thirith on 31/10/2012 at 11:11
I had, but IIRC the driving's actually closer to GTA IV in that the camera's largely independent from where you're driving. It adjusts itself after a while if you drive in a different direction, but in the previous titles it was fixed perspective, wasn't it? It might be different if you played the games on a gamepad, but I went KB+M all the way with GTA III to San Andreas, and the latter was the first to use the more elastic (rather than fixed) camera.
The other thing, of course, was that you had a driving skill that would improve over time, so especially cheapo cars handled like crap at the beginning.
N'Al on 31/10/2012 at 11:14
Ah, true, I do remember now that the driving was somewhat different to the two previous titles (especially so for helicopters!) Nothing quite like the jump to GTA 4, but still...
