Popular/raved about games you DIDN'T enjoy?

[TheRabidDeer]

This thread is about popular games, usually seen by the gaming community as near-flawless, fun, addicting etc. that you, personally, have played but didn't see what the fuss was all about. Games you feel don't deserve the favorable review, or games that you feel are just so terrible you're amazed so many people can enjoy it.

For me, it'd be Bioshock. Never a huge fan of shooter games in the first place, I decided to give this one a try due to the high amount of praise it received. It played too fast-paced, took too long to kill enemies (like, are these bullets made of rubber?) and just had a storyline I couldn't get in to. The whole hand powers thing was pretty neat, especially the swarm of bees which I thought was hella fun, but it staled down quickly.

The other game being Mass Effect, which I loved the huge amount of customization, but the focus on action/strategic gameplay was given the backseat in favor of dialogue and cutscenes.

To each their own, lets not flame eachother and throw a huge fuss.

Mass Effect series
Elder Scroll series
Assassin's Creed series

[shokter]

Maybe I'm too easily entertained...but I like almost every game I buy/play. There are some games in my catalog that I have never finished (Dead Space 1, Skyrim just for some examples)...but usually I still think of them as good games. The last truly awful game I ever bought was Vampire Rain...but I'm pretty sure nobody raved about that one.

[Mechazod]

Note that none of the games I am going to say I consider bad, I just dont consider them to be as great as people make them out to be:

Bomberman 64: Just didn't see what was so great about it. Its an ok game, but I see people listing it as one of the best N64 games which I just cant relate to.

Suikoden: Just the first one mainly. Bland music, characters, world and battle system. While the 108 something characters you can recruit was interesting, it seemed almost impossible to do without a guide since a lot you could only get during certain time frames by exploring the bland, uninteresting world. The game just didn't really do anything for me and unlike other RPGs I have never really had any urge to replay through this.

NiGHTS into Dreams: A lot of the game just seemed like flying through circles in a side scrolling game. To me the game felt kind of boring outside of boss battles and stages where you had actual enemies to fight and obstacles. I actually liked the Wii sequel a little more.

Secret of Mana: This game just doesn't really do anything for me and I am certain its my biggest offense for listing it. Combat was ok in some aspects, but it felt like for the majority of the game you needed to just grind enemies to be able to beat major boss encounters that most of the time attacked in ways totally different then the rest of the game with instant hit/no dodge attacks. Co-op was a little bit better, but still didn't really hold my interest for that long. In my opinion Terranigma also on the Super NES was a way better action RPG then Mana was.

Journey(PS3): I got the Journey Collection for PS3 when it came out because I am always excited for game compilations of formerly digital only releases and I had heard this particular game get so much praise. My biggest problem with this game however is its length, its so freaking short that it kills what could of been an amazing idea for a game. Now I know it was originally a small release, but that to me is its biggest problem. The actual game play, once you get into it, actually had a lot of potential: Exploring a large unknown landscape, avoiding obstacles, traversing environments and hiding from monsters and also the ability to do it alongside a partner. All of that was pretty interesting, but by the time I really got into the game and those aspects, like an hour in, the game was already over and it just takes you back to the start again. If Journey (or a sequel) had been built on a much larger scale, possibly a open-world, with many more hazardous environments to trek through, hidden secrets to find, more stealthy encounters, possibly more interaction with other players and maybe even some small attack against some new smaller enemies, then that would of been a game worth all the awards it received and would probably become one of my all time favorite games. I ended up playing more/having more fun with Flower and flOw also in the Journey collection then I did with the actual main game itself (and also the three mini-games). I also dont get all the praise it gets as a work of art. Sure the game looks nice and some parts like the sand-surfing were well done, but I can think of a lot more games I would consider better pieces of art then Journey was that actually feature more enjoyable game play.

the Pokemon series: Now I am listing this, but I dont mean to say I dislike the games and didn't have fun with them. I mainly am putting it down because I actually think certain Pokemon "clones" do a better game then the actual series they are inspired by. My main subject of this is the Dragon Quest/Warriors Monsters series. I find those games to be far more enjoyable with with the way the games story plays out, the more traditional RPG battle system, the monster fusion creation and I enjoy some of the monster designs more.

[Mikehuntz]

LoL...tried for a week or so...didn't like it
Skyrim...fun for like 2 weeks-ish
GW2...one day...man that was a waste of 60 dollars lol
Minecraft...It's good every 2-3 months...but as for everyday...god no

[PuppetShowJustice]

I actually decided to slip in a fairly unknown one, Savage 2, just for the magnitude of the disappointment I felt at the time of a great idea with poor implementation.

At the risk of a slight derail; I feel your pain. I loved the first Savage. The second one was a travesty. >.<;

[Deleted]

fallout, the newer ones.


i loved fallout on the PS2 when it was a birds eye view, loved it. (think it was PS2) but i just cant get into the newer fallouts, i tried playing fallout 3 a while ago, after an hour i just gave up, had no idea what i was doing, kept dying for no apparent reason, havnt been on it since.

[Aphrel]

any of the 20? 30? 150? cod games..

[lakhesis]

The Witcher 2.

I read some of the people raving about it & seriously questioned if we were playing the same game. Constant boundaries with no exploration, a combat system that was trivial & repetitive at all difficulties, boss fights on rails (I could've programmed my keyboard to reliably beat nearly all of them), and countless other flaws.

A good story was the only thing it had going for it... I'd read the books, but I wouldn't touch another game in the series.

Oh, and Diablo 3. Destroyed by always-online. Action games should not be server based unless you're prepared to put a server on every continent, located every few thousand miles.

[PuppetShowJustice]

Secret of Mana: This game just doesn't really do anything for me and I am certain its my biggest offense for listing it. Combat was ok in some aspects, but it felt like for the majority of the game you needed to just grind enemies to be able to beat major boss encounters that most of the time attacked in ways totally different then the rest of the game with instant hit/no dodge attacks. Co-op was a little bit better, but still didn't really hold my interest for that long. In my opinion Terranigma also on the Super NES was a way better action RPG then Mana was.

Actually, I agree with you. Combat in SoM is terrible. Especially the magic system's capacity to stun-lock anything and everything (including the player characters). Melee combat is a total joke the way you take a swing, back off until 100% meter and then move up to swing again. It's amazingly bland and I'm always surprised to see people remember the game so fondly.

Oh, and the characters are beyond flat. I always named my SoM lead character "Hero" and left it at that. My god, man. Crono was also a silent protagonist and we learn more about his character in the first 5 minutes of Chrono Trigger than we ever learn about the Secret of Mana kid.

[Deleted]

any mario bross game.

[Tzalix]

Mass Effect
Call of Duty series after the second game
Halo after the first game
Borderlands was very enjoyable at first, but got boring
Guild Wars

Actually, I agree with you. Combat in SoM is terrible. Especially the magic system's capacity to stun-lock anything and everything (including the player characters). Melee combat is a total joke the way you take a swing, back off until 100% meter and then move up to swing again. It's amazingly bland and I'm always surprised to see people remember the game so fondly.

Oh, and the characters are beyond flat. I always named my SoM lead character "Hero" and left it at that. My god, man. Crono was also a silent protagonist and we learn more about his character in the first 5 minutes of Chrono Trigger than we ever learn about the Secret of Mana kid.

I mainly have fond memories of Secret of Mana for it's story, really. Terranigma was absolutely a better action RPG.

[Powerogue]

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria (it was about here I feel they stopped trying to innovate enough from expansion to expansion) Bioshock (very limited demo, but it didn't really grab me)

Portal 2 was good but I felt it dragged on in the underground levels. That was mainly due to me getting horribly stuck on around 3 specific parts for hours each though. The solution isn't immediately obvious, but there's a far harder, nearly impossible second way it looks like you can do it. I shouldn't blame the game for personal incompetence...

Batman: Arkham City was an amazing game, but man the bugs they left unpatched when I bought it left the game unplayable. Once those were remedied though, one of the best games I've ever played, definitely the best combat.

The only games I've played that have been truly awful have been mods. Cry of Fear had its good moments, but also a horrific Xen level towards the end if you get a bad ending, and just generally way more parkour than was needed for the clunky "realistic" jumping the game has.

[Thelxi]

I have to go with Skyrim. It was a great game but for some reason I got bored with it real fast. I didn't spend nearly the same amount of time on it as I did with both Morrowind and Oblivion. Huge hype but the game was just good not amazing.

[Oerba Yun Fang]

All of the Fallout games, most of the Elder Scrolls games (Skyrim being the only one I enjoyed), KOTOR, all the Halo games, Borderlands, Bioshock.

[Deleted]

I was going to say AC3 but a lot of people ended up not liking that, struggling to think of something... super meat boy, all my friends rave about that, but I really can't have any fun playing it at all. I didn't like borderlands 1 at all, but I loved 2.

[OrcsRLame]

Final Fantasy 6. It's actually the only Final Fantasy before 12 that I dislike. And it's not even that it's a bad game. I just expect a lot more out of Final Fantasy and I got very little enjoyment out of it. If I say more I'll end up launching into a long rant about the characters/leveling/story/gameplay that many people on these forums have seen before. So I'm just not even gonna go there unless someone really wants my opinion that badly.

---------- Post added 2013-04-06 at 10:46 AM ----------

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria (it was about here I feel they stopped trying to innovate enough from expansion to expansion) Bioshock (very limited demo, but it didn't really grab me)

Portal 2 was good but I felt it dragged on in the underground levels. That was mainly due to me getting horribly stuck on around 3 specific parts for hours each though. The solution isn't immediately obvious, but there's a far harder, nearly impossible second way it looks like you can do it. I shouldn't blame the game for personal incompetence...

Batman: Arkham City was an amazing game, but man the bugs they left unpatched when I bought it left the game unplayable. Once those were remedied though, one of the best games I've ever played, definitely the best combat.

The only games I've played that have been truly awful have been mods. Cry of Fear had its good moments, but also a horrific Xen level towards the end if you get a bad ending, and just generally way more parkour than was needed for the clunky "realistic" jumping the game has.

I'm one of the people that loves the hell out of Bioshock and I'm not surprised the demo didn't grab you. Its combat is good, but very average in a lot of ways. The game held my interest because of the story. It become known as a classic fan favorite due to the last ~30% of the game where the story just kind of comes together.

Bioshock is a game that would probably be better as a movie. The enemy types aren't very diverse, which leads to the game being a bit repetitive. There's just Splicers, Big Daddies and security robots. Granted, there are different kinds of each enemy type, and that does switch up the gameplay quite a lot, but the overall look is the same. So even if you use different tactics, it still feels like you're fighting the same enemies. A movie would obviously not have that problem, plus other characters could get a bit more screen time.

I think if Bioshock was a movie, people'd be like, "Fuck Inception, Bioshock is the shit!"

[Frozen Death Knight]

Counter-Strike 1.6/Source. Compared to the amount of varied fps titles there are now as well as back when those two were released, Valve's widely popular E-Sport shooter franchise is one of the most bland fpses I have ever played. It's like this franchise plays in the stoneage of shooter games with none of the modern stuff that was coming out at the time (i.e. Battlefield 2 and the first few CoD games). What's worse is that Counter-Strike Source was 1.6 repackaged in the Source engine, which is frankly not enough to warrant a sequel, to be perfectly frank.

I loved Half-Life 1 and 2, though.

As for other games that I do not like, I simply don't buy them. I know my own tastes, so I don't fall into the trap of buying something I know I will not enjoy.

However, there is one f2p game that is super popular right now that I think is pretty meh... League of Legends. Say what you will about Dota 2, but at least that game got the right feeling in regards to how the combat feel was like in the WC 3 map (although I think Dota 2 has some big issues as well). Blizzard All-Stars will be my choice of MOBA game once that comes out.

[Gallahadd]

Elder Scrolls
CoD
Halo
Bioshock (although Infinate looks pretty epic...)
Farcry
are you seeing the patern


oh and any football game... Well sport games in general really.

[Deleted]

I couldnt get into Skyrim at all and after restarting it a few times and putting a few hours into the different quest lines i started to hate it.

I loved Morrowind and Oblivion but Skyrim just felt far too generic cookie cutter and far too dumbed down for the kids consoles.

Im thinking the next Fallout will be something like Fable the Journey set in the future.

[Toby451]

Skyrim (TES series in general tbh) are all extremely overrated and beyond boring. I never cared enough to try modding the game, maybe that helps a lot.

Call of Duty is complete garbage, I cant believe how many people purchase this game every year. Biggest mystery in the history of forever.

Diablo 3 but im not sure that counts as popular. Seems the majority of the playerbase hated the game.