Uncharted made me feel like being the protagonist of a movie (something like Indiana Jones). The production value was much higher than other games at the time.
The universe is great but why would I feel bad about bandits not being able to be bandits anymore!? Still there is a lot of potential in that wild west universe.
GTA5. I loved the 4th one but not really liked the 5th one. I guess I can’t understand why you have to be a bad guy in these games and I’m getting too old for that.
Assassin’s Creed after the second one. The plot lost me and I don’t think there is a plot anymore.
MGSV. I loved the first 4 MGS and hated that one as it had no good story…
You can’t understand why you need to be a bad guy in a game called Grand Theft Auto, where the main focus of the series is stealing cars and building a criminal empire?
To be fair, in many of the GTA games, you’re not a bad guy. Sure, you break the law; but in almost every instance, the law is super corrupt anyway and you almost always end up working for said corrupt cops at some point because they have you by the balls.
Vice City is the only one I can’t really find any justification for the protagonists actions other than greed; and that one’s story is basically Scarface where you’re playing as Tony Montana.
To be fair, in many of the GTA games, you’re not a bad guy.
I've played Vice City, 4 and 5 and every one of them started out with the main character(s) being a bad guy who is just a little less evil than the people around them, but still willing to kill to get what they want.
4: Niko grew up as a child soldier and has basically been under the thumb of mob bosses his whole life. It’s also the ONLY game where you actually have choices in many cases to not kill someone as part of his revenge story (he wants to find and kill the man who sold out his unit in some war and got all his friends killed).
5: Franklin used to be a car thief, and has since gone straight as a repo man. His dumbass friends, along with Micheal and Trevor, get him caught up in all sorts of bullshit he doesn’t necessarily want to do, but doesn’t really have much choice. Micheal is also an ex-criminal trying to go straight, but having a much harder time at it than Franklin. His hot headedness is what got them into major trouble prior to Trevor’s arrival. Trevor is not only a bad guy and a psychopath, he could be considered the main villain of the game. Most of the plot revolves around Micheal trying to hide the truth from Trevor, because he knows Trevor is a fucking maniac and will possibly kill him and his entire family because he sold him out to the cops when they were bank robbers and Micheal wanted out of that life.
San Andreas: CJ is an ex-gang member who comes home to attend the funeral of his mother who was recently murdered. Things start out with him simply wanting to bring the killer to justice, and gets swept up in more gang violence, police corruption and even government conspiracies.
They’re as much bad guys as John Wick or John McClane or Arnold Schwartznegger in pretty much any of his 80’s and 90’s action films.
Being an ex criminal who is trying to reform after armed robberies, but still committing new crimes, is still being a bad guy. Choosing not to kill people doesn't make someone not a bad guy when they still continue to commit crimes as part of the game.
Painting the targets of their crimes as worse doesn't make them not bad people.
I totally agree with MGS5. I just could not get in to the game, I barely felt like I was playing an MGS game. It felt like Ghost Recon or some Ubisoft collectathon game, with just such a lackluster story.
Visual novels. I haven’t tried many but as a fan of steins gate series, I didn’t find the visual novel fun. Maybe because they were so outdated or because I already know the story but when I played it, I was thinking it would be more fun to just watch as media or watch someone else play while I have my lunch.
It makes sense, but I highly suggest to try and see visual novels as reading material with mixed media (e.g. music). Many are very mid, but some do excel: Higurashi and Umineko are a great example of that.
At their best, the originals were about a hyper-competent adventurer who always had a plan and was unapologetically confident. She was like Xena and Indiana Jones combined.
It was already a pretty tired cliche at the time to make a gritty origin story when the first game came out. We got an uncertain, untrained, and unprepared Lara with a whimpering attitude.
By the third game they tried to act on the feedback about this, but instead of something closer to the original, she became Rambo, covering herself in mud, hiding in the shadows, stealth killing hordes of enemy soldiers.
I think the Uncharted series did what Tomb Raider remake series should have done.
The enemy ai in those games was so bad that i couldn’t get into them. Especially after coming off of playing the last of us. That game ruined a lot of other games for me. Lol
For games that are in genres that I'd actually play:
Final Fantasy 6 (3): I grew up with the NES, and when we got a SNES I got whatever games I could from the $20 bin at Toys R Us. I had some friends who were a bit better off that loaned me some games, and I eventually managed to get my hands on a copy of Chrono Trigger (as well as other RPGs like Breath of Fire), but when I borrowed FFIII from one of them I was just... underwhelmed. I didn't really care for the characters, it felt pretty slow initially, and I remember getting to a bit with a bunch of moogles in the party and I just put it down and never went back.
I've since tried to play it a few times here and there, but it never really manages to hook me... but people sing the praises of it high and low and I just don't really get it because I can't get over the hump.
The Witcher 1/2/3: I just really don't like the combat, honestly. I've tried playing all three, and managed to get enough time into them to appreciate the good bits (voice acting, story, quest lines) but the main meat and potatoes for me in a game are exploration and combat, and only one of those really works for me in those games. I had a better time in the first game, all things considered, because I guess I was willing to allow a bit of jankiness from an older game, but I bounced off Witcher 2 pretty quickly combat-wise, and didn't manage to get more than many 1/3 to 1/2 way through Witcher 3 before I just admitted that I wasn't having fun.
Persona 3: I got into the games with P4G on my Vita, so part of this is 'going backwards is hard' in terms of QoL improvements and what not. But I also played the PSP port of Persona 2 (whichever one was actually ported in English) and had a good time (not so much with the PS1 version of the one that didn't get the English PSP port... that one was rough) so I guess its just the game didn't resonate with me as much as the other ones did... Maybe it was the characters or maybe it was the cuts that were made for the P3P version of the game, but it just didn't hit the same.
Otherwise, a lot of military-style FPS games (stuff like Halo or Destiny or Timesplitters or even Goldeneye 64 are/were fun), the more recent sports titles (up to the Dreamcast/PS2 I was fine with them, but more realism doesn't do anything for me), and stuff like MOBA or visual novels or 'walking sims' or battle royale or whatever those asynchronous horror games just don't tick the boxes for me in terms of what I want from a video game.
Ugh I feel the same way about The Witcher. I tried 2 and 3 and just couldn’t get into it. The combat was not enjoyable and it felt really clunky to me. I actually tried 2 a couple of times because everyone raved and I thought maybe I was just missing something, but it wasn’t for me.
I’m with you on FF6. The leveling system for abilities was interesting (but slow), but there were too many characters. The previous one on SNES (called 2 in the west but I think it’s 4?) had a better balance with number of characters to story.
I think Portal is the only one I'm fine with, probably because there's not as much action. First person puts me on edge and not in a way that I really appreciate. I also really like to be able to see the character in general.
To that end I also don't really like horror games, but I don't think that's as divisive an opinion.
I’m the opposite, I just don’t stay immersed in third person games, I despise third person peeking in multiplayer games, and I find it disorienting and claustrophobic when going into buildings or confined spaces in third person. I also just can’t walk up close to something in 3rd person and look at it in detail which I like to do.
Hell yeah, love BAR. The discord group slowly started falling apart as we all fell out of love with SC2 but we’re back to regular matches every night now that they’ve been getting converted to it.
I am more of an AoE or SC2 style RTS player, as opposed to the Supreme Commander/Planetary Annihilation/BAR style but BAR really just makes RTS feel so good it doesn’t matter.
My son and I are like 95% done the end-game content in the Super Mario RPG remake, only Culex 3D remains! It’s been a total blast. My biggest struggle is finding more games like this.
We’ve loved all the Paper Mario games we’ve been able to play (original, Super, TYD, and Origami King…. unless I’m forgetting one), but trying out miscellaneous JRPGs hasn’t had any success with him yet. He’s too young for a lot of games, but seeing things from that pre-tween point of view I also feel like we all could do with more games that aren’t fueled by adolescent angst or grim brooding. Bright, fun adventure on a foundation of silliness paired with great music is such a good recipe.
The Mario & Luigi games are similarly approachable and good RPGs, Superstar Saga (the first one) especially. They are handheld games so maybe a bit more difficult to play together with someone, though you could emulate them very easily to play on a more suitable device.
Sea of Stars also might be worth a try. Takes a lot of inspiration from Paper Mario.
Well, with that memory unlocked, it’s time to go pull out my Dune II CD and fire that one up again. House Ordos! In the meantime, I guess I’ll check out BAR.
Oh you’re in luck, with the original CD you can play the remake people have been working on! (requires some files from the original game but has been upgraded)
Dune Legacy - Dune Legacy is an effort by a handful of developers to revitalize the first-ever real-time strategy game. It tries to be as similar as possible to the original gameplay but to integrate user interface features most modern realtime-strategy games have like selecting multiple units.
Open source and cross platform
Modern display resolutions
Modern RTS controls like selecting multiple units and right-click commands
Original campaign with Harkonnen, Atreides and Ordos
Super Dune campaign with Fremen, Sardaukar and Mercenary
Multiplayer support
Map editor
edit: @gmr_leon listed below the OpenRA which also has a Dune 2000 rebuild on it if you’re interested.
Combat that feels closer to Dark Souls than Zelda? Odd.
I’ll add in a genre rather than a game: Battle Royal games.
We used to play a variety of games. Halo, warcraft, Smite, League of Legends… Now I have no gaming friends left as they refuse to play anything other than Apex Legends or the latest greatest Call of Duty.
We used to play a variety of games. Halo, warcraft, Smite, League of Legends… Now I have no gaming friends left as they refuse to play anything other than Apex Legends or the latest greatest Call of Duty.
Try hunt showdown. It’s kind of an anti battle royal game and a smart person’s thinking shooter and not a twitch shooter. Civil war era so no spray and pray. 12 man servers instead of 100 so it’s more tactical and strategic with our randomly dying all the time. And it’s a carrot instead of a stick; no shrinking map to create a funnel of conflict, but hunting for a single boss on the map that you must kill and then attempt to extract with the trophy it drops best sound design I’ve experienced in a shooter.
I realize this is an overgeneralization I’m making.
every game made since the ps2 was officially retired. I don’t hate them because they’re hard and I’m just not getting the handle of gameplay. I hate them for specific reasons:
the reliance on online modes. games used to be a singular affair between the player and the game. since 2008 online modes have become increasingly necessary to a requirement. with online modes comes a need for a server dedicated to that game. so what happens when the company shuts that server down? you’re sol. and piggybacking on that
games are released buggy out of the box. before a game wasn’t published until it was done. now it’s released on a target date and patches get released along the way. so if you happen to be in a position where you have the physical media but no internet you could have a broken game and not be able to do anything about it. I just think about that situation with the tony hawk game where the manus didn’t ship the game on the disc and players had to download the entire game as an “update”. and what’s going to happen when that server shuts down?
games are moving to downloads instead of on physical media. I’m a full believer in you buy a game you own it. some game publisher just said recently that players shouldn’t own their games anymore. gaming is going to move to a streaming model where you own a service (console/platform) and games will move on and off it when a licensing deal expires. sorry I don’t want any part of that.
games made that don’t require you to be online to have any kind of gameplay are becoming rare. I’m the game player that plays the game just to play the game and doesn’t want to play against another human player online. my competitive juices don’t flow that way. I’m perfectly fine playing against the game’s ai.
At least back in the day, multiplayer games released with the server you could self host.
Or you’d find a chill one that you liked and it became its own little community of sorts with regulars and whatnot.
Now, some games make it genuinely hard to even play multiple rounds back to back with the same people.
The ranking system and match making superceded the lobby.
There’s still a lot of enjoyable games, gems even, but there’s a lot of hot garbage too.
I don’t think it’s (just) Internet’s fault.
Hell, we’d play Diablo over dial-up and it was amazing at the time.
I think it’s more the corpo greed making its way everywhere. No mTx, no subscription, no battle pass, no unlocking bs, no cosmetics, no unending daily grinds, just you, the game, maybe a buddy if your family didn’t need the phone.
DRM didn’t exist, they’d ask you questions about the game manual instead.
I remember bringing the Fallout manual on a trip and reading through it thinking about what character I’d make. Now everything is digital only, you’re almost lucky if it comes with a wallpaper.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne