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Critically acclaimed games you've never got into


legov

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Sigh. I'm playing The Witcher 2 right now - a few hours in and I'm already bored to death and thinking of going back to FIFA 12. It's not the only one though - the games below are games that I've bought or tried that for some reason or another have just not captured my interest the way it has for other gamers.

1. Witcher 2

2. Half-Life 2

3. Skyrim

4. Fallout series

5. Halo

6. Diablo (god I hate Diablo)

I'll never buy another medieval fantasy game again, I think.

Anyway, share yours!

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It's all down to personal preference really.

I don't really think I have ever been bored to death with a game though to be honest. If I have been then I give it a break and go back to it a few weeks/months later. Then it tends to be much better. You need to be in the right mood to play some games and have lots of time etc.

I have never gotten into Halo and GoW though. I have tried them both on numerous occasions, yet neither of them do it for me.

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Maybe you're just not too keen on dialogue-heavy RPGs, legov?

For me it's probably the original Deus Ex. I tried repeatedly to get into it, both at the time it was released and then years later, but I could never play the opening Statue of Liberty bit without getting too bored and irritated to continue.

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Maybe you're just not too keen on dialogue-heavy RPGs, legov?

Not at all, I love Mass Effect and Dragon Age (the first one) to bits, enjoyed the recent Deus Ex massively as well. I generally play games for their stories rather than challenging gameplay, primarily because I'm one of those people who deal very poorly with stress, but also because I'm a sucker for good story-driven media like films. I personally see games as interactive movies.

I bought Witcher 2 partly because I generally enjoy story-driven games but so far the story's been disappointing, the missions involving the fight with the forest monster (name starts with K, forgot what it was called exactly) were just dreadfully boring imo. Gameplay is clunky as well, and crafting is too complicated for my liking.

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Maybe you're just not too keen on dialogue-heavy RPGs, legov?

Not at all, I love Mass Effect and Dragon Age (the first one) to bits, enjoyed the recent Deus Ex massively as well. I generally play games for their stories rather than challenging gameplay, primarily because I'm one of those people who deal very poorly with stress, but also because I'm a sucker for good story-driven media like films. I personally see games as interactive movies.

I bought Witcher 2 partly because I generally enjoy story-driven games but so far the story's been disappointing, the missions involving the fight with the forest monster (name starts with K, forgot what it was called exactly) were just dreadfully boring imo. Gameplay is clunky as well, and crafting is too complicated for my liking.

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I can see why you didn't like TW2. I liked it but at the same time I thought there was a lot of wasted potential. TW1 was a flawed game also but seemed to do a lot more right in terms of story and setting. TW2's gameplay is clunky, with an uneven difficulty curve and stupid set pieces like the Kayran. I found it immersive despite that, perhaps because I had bought into the story and the game world off the back of the first game.

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Fallout 3. Didn't click with it at all.

Borderlands - Hideous MMO inspired grinding.

Gears of War - I've played them all, and none have struck me as anything other than average.

There's others I can't remember off the top of my head.

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The strange thing with Fallout 3 for me was I dearly wanted to like it. I loved Oblivion. I was down with the setting. I was down with atmosphere. I liked a lot about the game's basic identity.

And then I played it. The shooting is rubbish. The VATS system was unwieldy and removed me from the game. It's a curiously ugly game, a never ending sea of brown. You wander out in the Wasteland, just like you wandered out into Tamriel, but for me where Tamriel had wonderment and awe to drive you to success, the Wasteland struck me as dull, and I had no desire to wander aimlessly. I even found it more annoying to wander in - the opening hours of these games are always a little grim but Fallout 3 was particularly so, it seemed I struggled to become noticeably more resilient or powerful, or even really find anything that gave me a leg up. I forced myself one day to just sit and play it to try and like it.

I failed.

It made me appreciate Oblivion more, though.

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Ah see, I'm completely the opposite. I couldn't get into Oblivion for love nor money. It just didn't do anything for me. I really disliked the Oblivion gate parts and I was never really comfortable with using melee weapons in a first-person perspective. When Skyrim came out, I was really concerned that it was going to be the same, and in a lot of ways it is but Skyrim definitely hooked me in in a way that Oblivion failed to. I'm not really sure why I enjoyed one and not the other but when I get some spare time, now that I have played and loved Skyrim I'm going to give Oblivion another chance. I probably didn't give it a fair whack.

However, I absolutely loved Fallout 3. I think the start can put a lot of people off because certain things can be a bit difficult to get to grips with perhaps. Also, right at the beginning of the story I found it really quite difficult, particularly with the lack of ammo, I don't know if that was something that put you guys off it.

In hindsight though, after persevering with the game, I love that about it. It would be incredibly difficult surviving in those circumstances. I remember having to constantly go back and forth between Megaton and surrounding places just picking up as much as I could carry and selling it just to pay for bullets. It gets easier though, and then that's when the best bits of the game come in. Like going around the museum, creeping around the corners just in case there's a Super Mutant nearby. I was a big fan of the story, the characters and the RPG elements of the game too. I loved post-apocalyptic Washington D.C and all the stuff there was to do there, it's up there with one of my favourite games of all time.

The only other major game franchise I didn't like that immediately comes to mind is Mass Effect. I thought the story concept was really fascinating, and I like sci-fi and the whole backlog of historical events leading mankind up to advancing it's technologies and being involved with other alien species really interested me, but the gameplay just put me off. It seemed very cut and paste to me. Go to a world, drive to a building on the map, enter building, kill bad guys. It wasn't so bad, I enjoyed parts of it, but the controls felt very clunky. It didn't feel like I had to be particularly accurate when shooting the guns and I just felt like I was spraying bullets all over the place. I played the demo of Mass Effect 3 the other day though and the shooting and gameplay seemed a lot better though and I had a lot of fun with it. So now I'm kind of forcing my way through Mass Effect, then I'll give Mass Effect 2 a go and hope it's less like the first game and more like the third's demo.

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Mass Effect

Three times I've attempted to see the magic everyone else sees in this game but it just isn't there for me. The story didn't engage me, the universe wasn't interesting nor did it feel cohesive but rather a series of disconnected locations joined by loading screens - no sense of travelling the vastness of space. The combat was poor and the only thing left after that was selecting dialogue from a dialogue wheel. I own the sequel (bought it twice) and I enjoyed it a lot more although I've not really got to far into it - must go back to playing that.

Fallout 3

Everything about this game I should have liked. The Bethesda pedigree, the setting, the style of game - all made think "yup, this is going to be **** incredible". And I wanted to like it, I really did but nope. I can't even quite pin-point exactly what it is but it just bored the hell out of me and after 15 hours telling myself I'd get hooked, I never did.

Amnesia

Now I did enjoy this game BUT it's regarded as one of, if not the, scariest games of all time. And it isn't. What playing it made me realise is that gamers everywhere are big girls blouses. A spooky castle with gusty winds blowing open doors, monsters groaning in corridors, candlelights blowing out - sophisticated horror my arse. The only thing missing is the cart on the tracks and the word removed at the front door charging £3 a ride. Amnesia ain't got shit on The Shalebridge Cradle level.

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The only other major game franchise I didn't like that immediately comes to mind is Mass Effect. I thought the story concept was really fascinating, and I like sci-fi and the whole backlog of historical events leading mankind up to advancing it's technologies and being involved with other alien species really interested me, but the gameplay just put me off. It seemed very cut and paste to me. Go to a world, drive to a building on the map, enter building, kill bad guys. It wasn't so bad, I enjoyed parts of it, but the controls felt very clunky. It didn't feel like I had to be particularly accurate when shooting the guns and I just felt like I was spraying bullets all over the place. I played the demo of Mass Effect 3 the other day though and the shooting and gameplay seemed a lot better though and I had a lot of fun with it. So now I'm kind of forcing my way through Mass Effect, then I'll give Mass Effect 2 a go and hope it's less like the first game and more like the third's demo.

Don't worry, combat in ME2 is slick as hell :)

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The strange thing with Fallout 3 for me was I dearly wanted to like it. I loved Oblivion. I was down with the setting. I was down with atmosphere. I liked a lot about the game's basic identity.

And then I played it. The shooting is rubbish. The VATS system was unwieldy and removed me from the game. It's a curiously ugly game, a never ending sea of brown. You wander out in the Wasteland, just like you wandered out into Tamriel, but for me where Tamriel had wonderment and awe to drive you to success, the Wasteland struck me as dull, and I had no desire to wander aimlessly. I even found it more annoying to wander in - the opening hours of these games are always a little grim but Fallout 3 was particularly so, it seemed I struggled to become noticeably more resilient or powerful, or even really find anything that gave me a leg up. I forced myself one day to just sit and play it to try and like it.

I failed.

It made me appreciate Oblivion more, though.

I couldn't have put it better myself. I actually felt the same way. I had completely forgotten Fallout 3...

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Haven't enjoyed any of the Metal Gear Solid series since the first one (PS1) and absolutely hated MGS4 even though many rated it very highly.

The Halo and Gears of War series are another couple that spring to mind, but the winner for me has to be Gran Turismo. I've never played a single version of that game that has left me anything but 'meh' after a couple of hours.

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