papers please. i thought i was doing pretty well in the beginning, but i guess it’s built in to the narrative of the game that no matter how hard you work, your family will still get sick and die, and the story progresses by you unknowingly screwing up and letting in a terrorist. not only are you responsible for paying for your own mistakes, it only gets harder and more unforgiving with each level. i realized pretty quickly that it’s not fun at all to spend my precious free time playing an extremely punishing game about working.
It’s more of a tragic story than a game. The misery is kind of the point. If you don’t see that point or can’t enjoy that, then yeah, it’ll be terrible.
While i agree that it’s rather punishing, but to me it feels like that’s how it works under a dictatorship. I like how i need to work toward some of the ending by breaking the law
Fwiw, it is absolutely possible to save your whole family in Papers Please. First time players aren’t necessarily expected to manage it, though, so you’re not wrong about losing family members being the intended experience. It’s definitely a game that tries to be “engaging” rather than " fun". I enjoyed it a lot back in college, but who knows how I’d feel now that I have a full-time job.
The game is more of a short story. Which means the gameplay is intentionally grinding because the job is grinding. Which honestly IS bad gameplay, but delivers the message it's going for. If reading depressing alt history dystopia is not how you want to spend your time, then I don't blame you one little inch. ♥
For me, my “misery is the point” game was This War of Mine. I got it just before Ukraine, but still couldn’t stomach it. My first character had a kid that was constantly crying and whimpering and I just couldn’t do it. I was bad at it—if you can be good. I couldn’t help others in the ways that I wanted to. I couldn’t stop the whimpering. Then I went out as someone else and came back and the dad and kid left. And I had to stop there for a bit.
I set it down to come back later, then Ukraine happened. Where it was hard to stomach while I knew this was hypothetical and the Euro-setting was pretty abstracted from the current reality there—though still very present elsewhere—knowing that people on the ground were looking and sounding similar to what was happening in game and seeing that in news daily just cut off any desire I had to play. It’s powerful and DEEPLY empathetic, but that spiral of misery and failure was the point and it made it in spades.
I feel these games are important, but I also know I don't want to put myself through them. Thanks to people like you who tell me about them so I don't have to play them myself lol
I only played that game briefly, and I was so confused with the game mechanics, maybe I didn’t stick with it for so long, but I remember it wasn’t very clear at the beginning how you should proceed?
I’m gonna piss a lot of people off, and say that I really, really cannot stand Halo - the whole franchise, not just the 343 stuff.
The way I see it, my problem with the series is twofold: storytelling and gunplay. The storytelling is weak at best: whilst I’m usually a huge fan of environmental storytelling, there’s just so little information in game for me to go off! It wasn’t until I read the Reach novel that I figured out who the Covenant were beyond just “evil aliens”. I questioned this issue on the site we don’t talk about and was told to read the books, but put simply, if I have to read a book to understand your plot, then you haven’t told your plot well enough. Chief is presented in the game as this incredible figure (as are the Spartans), but the games never really tell you why, and as such I never really care about Chief or his bullshit.
Regarding the gunplay, I find it (and movement) simply too floaty to be enjoyable. There isn’t enough recoil from a lot of the weapons, and the SFX on most of the guns don’t give a great sense of power.
I understand that it’s a massive series of nostalgia for a massive number of people. I understand that it redefined FPSes, and I respect the games for this. They deserve every bit of praise people give them. They aren’t bad games, but I just do not enjoy them.
Great question! Really loved the Bioshock series, along with Bethesda FPSs (although they’re not great, I rather enjoy the open worlds). Cyberpunk was great fun, although disappointing in a lot of ways. The Doom series is a personal favourite, although Eternal wasn’t perfect, I really loved how the stories were handled in the previous two games.
For me, I like to seek a balance between story and gameplay. My big thing though is immersion, and being able to really understand the Universe the game takes place in.
Whilst not FPSs, the closest thing to Halo that I loved (Space-Opera shooters), the Mass Effect trilogy tops the list.
Halo excelled at being a FPS on console before auto aim and aim assist were a thing. The terrible, tank-like movement and super floaty, slow jumps would be trash in any PC FPS around its time. But having players move at Quake speeds in Halo would be frustrating, and no one would hit things in multiplayer.
Or would, on a game without modern control assist, anyways. Games don't tend to be as fast as they used to, and Halo has really sped up as a series, but it is still on the slower side.
I only logged about 3-4 hours in that game and only encountered 2 battles. The story up to that point put me off too before it even picked up stream, like a classic “prince ascending to throne and hey here’s your betrothed future queen who you don’t quite get along with, oh hey bandits” Maybe my expectations were too high with the hype the story was getting. The dialog is so drab, it’s a chore to click through.
I just wanted to play a modernized FF Tactics, but I couldn’t even find the game within triangle strat.
I had also got FF7 crisis core reunion shortly before that. I put too many hours into that expecting it to evolve but the gameplay is nothing more than a grind in featureless terrain that you only have the option of fast-traveling to.
Then I realized this was my first time to play squeenix. I was expecting squaresoft.
I’m currently playing Mercenaries Blaze. It’s very similar to FFT, but heavy on combat and light on stories. Between each fight there is a 2-5 minute cut scene to push the story forward, but nothing ridiculous. The game has some balance issues, but if the main story quests are too difficulty, you can run a few training missions and level up and get caught up in no time.
Good to see some player opinions on Triangle Strategy. I’ve had the game on my Switch wishlist forever, hoping to snag it if it ever went on sale or I cleared some of my backlog. Now I’m not even sure I want it if it doesn’t come close to the greatness of FF Tactics.
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (or rereleased as Tactics Ogre Reborn), to me, is that modernized version of FFT. I like FFT, but I liked that Tactics Ogre game waaaaay better.
“Competitive” multiplayer games in general. I miss it when multiplayer games were just fun and not streamlined misery simulators where the attitude is everyone is an idiot except yourself.
I know it’s popular to fart on Overwatch 2, but even when the original came out I thought it was so fucking dull. The No Man Sky quote “Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle” can very well explain the hero roster of that game.
I’d rather do a barefoot pilgrimage to Jerusalem than play CS:GO, League of Legends, Overwatch, Fartnite, Valorant, etc.
Team Fortress 2 is unbalanced and janky, and it’s 1000x more fun than any of those games. It even proved that the competitive crowd could do their own thing that suit their needs, instead of ruining a game to the ground with “balance” and unfun gameplay.
I can relate to this very much. I love Team Fortress 2 - it has just enough of that random hilarious stuff in almost every match that makes you laugh. I think it’s a huge part of why the game is still alive and broke its player record recently.
streamlined misery simulators where the attitude is everyone is an idiot except yourself.
Too real (talking mostly about CS:GO as I that’s the one I have most experience with on your list). It’s… occasionally fun, especially if your team gets into a slighly less casual mindset and plays it a bit more tactically.
But it often ranges down to the collective team just getting mad all the time and throwing various accusations around for seemingly the fun(?) of it. Fun match? Maybe, sometimes. All the time? Absolutely not, thank you.
Over the years I’ve started reaching more and more for co-op instead (Deep Rock Galactic, PlateUp!, Alien Swarm, Minecraft, Unrailed, …) and it has been a lot of fun, both solo and with friends.
Co-op games are definitely the only fun I’ve had in multiplayer for the longest time. Toxicity can still be found (Looking at you Payday 2), but overall they are a more wholesome, chill and more importantly FUN experiences.
Minecraft. I’ll play it if my friends ask me to but I found it incredibly frustrating and boring. The combat feels super weird and hard to execute, most of the discoveries are repetitive, and I didn’t really like the building mechanic. I know, I’m in the minority for not enjoying it, but I guess voxel-style games just aren’t my jam.
On paper it’s everything I like in games. But when my friends invite me to play, I get bored so much, that I have microsleep episodes. It’s so incredibly boring I can not understand the hype at all.
Even as someone who enjoys it, I also feel it’s overhyped and not for everyone. You’re just doing the same 8 mission types over and over. The only progression is unlocking new weapons and skills/overclocks for said weapons to use in the same missions. And whenever there’s a new event, there’s no actual theme or anything, you just do those same missions yet again just to get a cosmetic for said event, and the actual missions themselves don’t change in any way.
I think it’s one of those games that you play when you specifically have a craving for it. Otherwise, playing it non-stop does get boring after some time
The changes they made to the game mechanics ripped a lot of the roleplaying out of the experience. I kept hoping to find a lot of what I loved about Fallout 3 and New Vegas in it, and never did.
It's not even necessarily a bad game, but the aspects of the games that I found fun were either heavily reduced or removed completely, leaving behind an open world shooter with a bad story.
100% agreed. Not only was the Dialoge Choice system of Yes, yes but sarkastic and no (but actually yes) incredibly limiting, but even the story didn’t really do it for me plus the whole settlement thing.
Worms Blast. I didn’t look at any of the game screenshots and thought it would just be like a normal worms games and not more like that arcade game where you throw the coloured balls up to the ceiling to match them.
I have nothing against that style of game, but I just didn’t like it in the Worms style.
Elite Dangerous is the most un-fun game I’ve spent 1500+ hours on. I want to love it but the developers’ actions, or lack thereof, makes it difficult. The game has so much potential the devs won’t or can’t take advantage of for some reason.
Superman 64 is the only game I tried to return to Blockbuster before the rental window was done. They wouldn’t let me so I had to keep it for the rest of the week.
I had never once experienced this. They WOULDNT let you bring the game back early? Admittedly my days of blockbuster a few, I think they closed when I was 9 or 10, but I can’t see a reason they wouldn’t take it early…
Octopath Traveler. The UI was terrible, the loot was nothing but stat sticks, and most of the dungeons, of which there were too many, were just long tree walk with potions at the leaves. Genuinely the worst game I’ve ever played. The three-directional sprites were also extremely lazy. I think I lost my mind right at the start when the lazy script response saw one of the characters’ childhood friend suddenly develop amnesia and treat him like a stranger because everyone needs generic dialogue.
The music and cast of thousands worldbuilding was fantastic, but otherwise, I hated almost every single of the 80 hours I put into it trying to give ti a fair shake.
I got about 1/2 way through the game, but as soon as I hit the first boss of act 3 I just couldn’t progress. He’d wipe the party every time. Walkthroughs were useless.
Yeah, the game had severe balance issues too with classes not scaling properly and consequently being either completely dominant or totally useless based on what level you were.
I’m glad I’m not the only person to dislike this game! After going through like three of the chapter 1 missions for the characters, the game felt very very samey, and on top of that, it’s probably one of the only story games that I haven’t finished.
From the moment it was announced, I could not contain my excitement for Octopath Traveler from the art style to the graphics to the music. I was even into the name. I was so enamored that I bought the collector’s edition.
Then it finally came out and never have I regretted a game purchase so much; not because it was awful, but it was so mediocre. Honestly, if it were awful, I might have been more okay with it, rationalizing how a game could turn out so bad with everything going for it, mourning what could have been, etc. It did everything it promised it would, I just realized that it didn’t really promise much beyond an art style and being a turn based RPG with 8 main characters. The package was delivered, but it turned out to be Game Gear, not Gameboy.
I think buying that game put me off collector’s editions. The package for it was very impressive, but I think I finally saw the man behind the curtain and realized that what I was buying was just a bunch of plastic and art books that I was never really going to touch anyway. The only physical bonus I cared about from that point on was Steelbooks, but I don’t even buy physical games all that much anymore thanks to my Steam Deck.
Honestly, Octopath Traveler put me off blindly preordering games in general. Now I just blindly buy old games, so if they’re bad, I have no one to blame but myself for not doing the research LOL
Hotline Miami 1 was such a fantastic game. Frantic, high energy, fun, good art style, a confusing at best story but that’s not why you played it. HM2 was full of off-screen instant kill bullshit that you literally could not prepare for in any way other than to die to it a handful of times before you memorized enemy positions off-screen. In the first game, you could always see threats before they could kill you. Not the case in the sequel. “You died and there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it” is a bullshit mechanic in any game.
Gloria Victis. It’s an MMO with factional PVP warfare that uses directional combat (like Mordhau). I’ll admit, I’m not a fan of these games, but I gave it a try since a friend of mine was interested in it. And I do like MMOs for the story content and to see what players can do with and within the world.
It was horribly boring. The main draw of the game is its PVP, but they definitely tried to also cater to the PVE playerbase, but the quests and story were generic and forgettable. I never even got to try the PVP, which I think my friend said was just OK anyway. I stopped playing after like a week. Apparently, the game is shutting down end of October, after releasing back in February 2023.
Another is the first Watch Dogs. I had played and completed Watch Dogs 2 and really liked it a lot. So thought to try the first one. I knew it was a very different mood and style from WD2, but thought it’d be OK. I can deal with moody and edgy. But it just wasn’t at all fun or interesting. I think I played for a couple hours and then uninstalled.
Noita, it’s the most sadistic “normal” game that i’ve ever played, barring those troll game that’s meant to be rage inducing. It’s a good game, but dang this game is bloody hard it become unfun the more i play as i couldn’t make any progress.
I’m really into games centering around magic or being a wizard. Noita regularly got recommended on r/gamingsuggestions for that kind of thing. I think it might have also gotten recommended for some other kinds of things I browsed r/gamingsuggestions looking for, like deep mechanics or having lots of different ways to solve problems. And the idea of spell creation, which Noita has, really appeals to me.
I’ve also heard of how infuriating this game can be, and I know I don’t like roguelikes or roguelites, so I didn’t pick it up.
I know, i’m enjoying the first few hours just learning thing and then the fun-ness just keep plunging afterward because i keep getting bad rng after bad rng for a few days and just decided to quit.
Download the mod that allows you to infinite respawns, and explore the outer bounds of the game. I really don’t understand the point of the roguelike nature of the game, except to purposely put itself into meme/streamer culture as one of the hardest games ever made.
It’s a fuckton better than spending four hours of prep on a run, securing all of the buffs, HP, and weapons to try to figure out some deep lore in some complicated area, only to die to a single pink pixel of Polymorphine. Roguelikes are meant for short and quick playthroughs, not hours-long doomed runs.
Yeah, i get games like binding of isaac or risk of rain 2 that the first level i can already know whether this run is gonna be shit/fun/sure-win, or game like rogue legacy where i can slowly upgrade my stats, this one i feels like i can be ultra careful but i can still get destroyed instantly without it being my fault. It’s what makes me give up
Final Fantasy 15. I’ve never been a fan of the modern (post FF7) games but fell for the hype around 15, purchased it, played it, actually finished it constantly wondering when the game would suck me in, and was left wondering what all that hype was about. The game had literally nothing I wanted in a JRPG as I found the story bog standard and the combat and traversal piss poor. That game officially made me give up on Final Fantasy since the only recent-ish game I’ve liked is FF Tactics. Make a sequel to that and I’ll reconsider.
This 100℅ I even bought a ps4 to play it. It was a really dull game and the character movement felt clunky. I finished it too, but I do not care to play it again.
kbin.cafe
Aktywne