Agreed. Given how many people are sucked in by dark patterns, I'm very pleased there's a contingent who is actively turned off by them, who refuses to reward that kind of design. I'll let it go in a game that seems otherwise quality, but it does count against you in the "are you an actual game or just freemium/predatory bullshit" assessment.
Street Fighter 1 is an interesting case of an historically extremely important game, that just wasn’t very good. Which in turn explains why it was largely forgotten and completely overshadowed by its sequel. While it invented most of the conventions for the fighting game genre, it implemented them all in a really clunky way. Special moves can’t be triggered with any kind of reliability, jumps don’t even follow a smooth arc but just jerk around and the thing is a button masher, due to originally not having the six-button layout of the sequel, but two huge buttons that would register how hard you pushed them. It’s barely even a functioning game by modern standards, yet it is the birthplace of a franchise that lasts to this day. It’s fascinating seeing all the elements from later fighting game on display in such a rough shape.
This is so true. I bought the anniversary collection years ago. When I went to play SF1 I was flabbergasted. It’s legitimately terrible. Even by standards back then. Though, as someone who is a bit obsessed currently, I am so glad they kept up with it.
Idlegames, though I kind of dont want to count those as games in the first place. What make them anathema to fun to me is that they are designed for you to waste your time on them. They dont teach you anything either, maybe some prioritization if you really get into them.
It could be argued that other video games are also designed for us to waste time on. It’s just that the method of wasting time is different. In one you make numbers go up, in another you kill enemies (which might just be to make numbers go up: referring to grinding in RPGs) or try to make the car go fast in the right direction.
I personally enjoy idle games, but I understand that others might not like just clicking some buttons that will make the numbers go up faster.
Now, it’s kind of the point. But I don’t know if it was my mouse or what but I found the controls to be too poorly implemented with how difficult of a game it already is. Sometimes, the hammer would basically glitch out or would apply way more pressure relative to my movements and fling me back down to the button. It served as an element of frustration that I think goes against the design goals. I’ve seen speed runs that make me think it could have been my hardware, but I’ll never know. Actually, remembering, I think I switched to a different mouse eventually that was better but still not great.
I also just didn’t really ever buy into the premise. I know it’s an ode to B games, but the piling of random assets is not what I would consider good design even if they serve the purpose of what the game is going for. There are plenty of difficult video games that are about perseverance but still put in the effort in level design, mechanics, controls, etc.
Tbh, I found it an interesting enough experiment with failed execution. I don’t understand people who hold it up as one of the better “art” games in the medium.
It’s certainly funny but it is not a fun game. It plays itself. Literally. That’s the point. It was something you ran along side with your mIRC client to show your uptime in a fun way.
I don’t find any of those kinds of games fun. From Cookie Clicker to most mobile games, “idle games” are just the most unfun, un-game-like games ever made.
That’s the thing: progress quest isn’t an idle game. It’s a parody of modern games that was made long before idle games were a thing. It wasn’t fun just like a joke isn’t an interesting story.
I would say it was the grandaddy of idle games. It was made as a joke, but actual games have followed its model seriously. And it sucks. It parodies JRPGs, many of which had an auto-battle option. But that was still just an option, and they typically had stories and other fun things about them.
The one I still remember is Donkey Kong 64. Just a boring collectathon with too much retreading. And it missed the funny writing of previous Rare platformers. Also it had a cringe rap song like every piece of pop media had in the late 90’s even my eleven year old self hated it.
I loved Rare games before that. After that game I stopped buying any Rare games. Probably because Dk64 was the first game I bought with my own money that I saved for a long time. I didn’t even buy Perfect Dark
This game came out pre-Twitter, so I've been surprised to see how many people hated this game. I've revisited it several times since childhood and still enjoy it quite a bit. The different Kong stuff made it feel somewhat like a metroidvania.
The stakes are just too high and the limit on time and funds you can safely earn just makes it feel stressful when it should be fun.
I can get the appeal of the risk/reward but it crosses the line from exciting and tense to anxiety inducing for me.
On top of that the game was kind of unstable on release and if you crashed it counted as losing the race and your wager etc and you cannot load an earlier save or anything, if that was the case the whole game would actually be decent apart from the lack of event variety.
I bought Unbound as one more desperate attempt to chase the love I had for the burnout series, and yeah…I hate the time limit thing. The driving is good enough (I still miss the frenetic arcadey driving of the burnout series), but I just want to race, not spend all my time assessing the risk and reward of every event.
I also hate the daytime/nighttime thing and just the cops in general. I don’t feel like NFS has ever figured out how to do the cops in a way that isn’t cheap and frustrating.
My go-to for this is Resistance: Fall of Man. Invisible walls everywhere, a cover system and a health system that were absolutely at odds with a gun that shoots enemies through walls, and an uninteresting story told in boring slideshows. The only reason I played through it is that my college roommate and I were broke and needed another co-op game after we finished all of the good ones.
Was the game at least good enough to pass the time with your roommate, or would you rather have been doing something else?
Off-topic, but kbin isn’t letting me send you a direct message so I have to post it here. I think it’s because we’re on two different kbin instances. I like your username!
I totally forgot this game existed until you mentioned it. I think this was the first game I actually played with the intent of writing a review for it and maaaan it sucked so fucking hard.
i’m trying desperately hard to like Haunting Ground for the PS2 (i’m a big horror game fan) but keep being interrupted from puzzles and exploration by each of the ‘stalker’ enemies. for context, they can’t be killed or gotten rid of permanently, you can only run and hide. it’s a shame because otherwise it’s a very fun and unique game.
This is a hard question to answer, because the really unfun ones either get dropped so fast I forget I ever played them unless someone jogs my memory by naming them directly, or I'm willing to just shrug and say "this is probably great to some people, but it's not a genre I like." I guess for this category, I would point to The Witness. I heard so many recommendations for it, but aside from the occasional "oh, neat" when I saw how a puzzle was placed in the world instead of on a board, I couldn't tolerate it for nearly as long as it wanted me to keep doing the thing.
The game I memorably should have enjoyed - that I had the highest hopes for (and the biggest subsequent disappointment for) was Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.
At first, I loved the deeply disturbed main character and grim Norse fantasy world being crafted around me, but the combat felt so disjointed from the story (on purpose) that it felt like there was one guy on the dev team who liked combat who everyone was afraid to piss off, so they had to make concessions and put one token immersion-wrecking battle in every so often. And it's mad that Senua has two entire character traits - "psychotic" and "warrior" - and one of them managed to feel immersion breaking.
Then the ending destroyed the bits of the game I DID like and made me feel like a tool for ever having bought into the grim fantasy world to begin with. That shit is everyone's most hated ending trope, and I walked away from the game feeling like I'd wasted my time.
That’s an interesting comment, because I felt almost the exact opposite. I greatly enjoyed the story and world building, too. But I also mostly enjoyed the combat. What was boring to me were the mundane riddles. I did not finish the game because of all the stupidly easy riddles that I felt were only wasting the player‘s time without adding much. However, since I was already pretty invested in the story, I watched the ending on YouTube. I liked it, and while it was not particularly surprising (there were many not so subtle hints about the circumstances of her „illness“) it gave me some closure.
I understand why they did the two disjointed variants of gameplay together with that story/theme. It didn’t work for me. Maybe they should have focused on one type of gameplay instead of two.
Oh, I'm positive yours is by far the more common experience - I haven't met anyone who agreed with me about it, haha. (But starting with "unpopular opinion, but..." is so tainted by popular opinions seeking attention that I couldn't bring myself to say it)
And yeah, the puzzles were simple, but the world was cool enough (until the ending loljk'd it all) that I enjoyed spending time in it even doing the simple stuff.
Sunset. It was a walking simulator back when they were all the rage.
You might think including walking simulators is cheating for a 'most unfun' game rating, but no matter what game comes to mind when you think of 'walking simulator', Sunset is more boring than that.
If you've played this type of game, you'll know that the best ones are the ones that have their plots unfold in interesting and engaging ways. There isn't a lot else going on in these games so a good plot and interesting ways to engage are paramount for this genre.
Sunset had you walk through an apartment to guess what object to interact with to advance the plot in a completely linear manner, driven entirely by post it notes. The plot was also pretty basic for the genre too.
How this game got 9/10s, 4/5s and a game awards nomination is fucking mystifying. The reviews talk about some deep commentary about civil wars or some shit, but I was too bored out of my mind to notice anything other than a high-schooler's attempt at writing about war. It's so far up its own arse about its 'war is bad' message that it forgets that it needs to convey it in an interesting way.
The game was received so badly by audiences that the developers just noped out of the video game market.
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