Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
3rd International Volunteer Brigade (Hexbear gaming discord)
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I know most people don't agree, but I never could get into Skyrim. I'm not much of a gamer, so I don't play a ton of games. I ended up playing Skyrim for the first time in 2021.
The story seemed generic to me, the combat was clunky, and the missions were all repetitive. I stopped playing after about 50 hours.
I should add that I love Fallout though. I'm not sure why I like it and not Skyrim.
I remember playing a little bit of Skyrim and then going back to oblivion. Oblivion is probably also shit, but the world felt much more alive. I was always curious to see what I would find when I left the paths, it was as if each area had a rich story going on. The gameplay wasn't very good, but it was made up for by some really cool quests.
Radiant quests ruined Bethesda games I guess.
As someone who loves RTS: Anything Age of Empires. Everything looks the same, yet there are dozens of civs to pick and they all just differ in boring-ass buffs and a few unit choices. The visual short-hand is terrible and reading what's going on in a fight or base at a glance is impossible for me.
AoE2 has an active player base and the casting overlays have been upgraded in the last few years so I sometimes watch games. Never really was able to get into the game.
Sorry Ulysses lol.
Never liked Armored Core, it's not a Mech game to me. Its an FPS arcade shooter with robot skins. Giant robots should not be zoomy-ass evengelion ballerinas engaging in sword combat. They should be unweildy tanks that casually stroll thru one-story buildings and fart artillery.
My first stompy robot game was Mechwarrior 3, and that's set my expectation of the genre ever since.
Hearts of iron 4 and Victoria 3 are far worse then their predecessors and deeply flawed because of the extremely boring tactics gameplay(frontlines). Victoria 3 economy is also extremely bland and feels like a auto clicker game. But, I only enjoyed vic 2 with pop demand mod which current vic 2 modders/players don't like.
I get your point about warfare being incredibly simplified in HoI4 v HoI3, however, I think that virtually everything else about HoI3 is borderline unplayable due to how many factors of high-level industrial economy it is trying to simulate. And I say it's unplayable, mainly because it's unreadable. I, as a new player, have no real way to figure out at a glance what effect any given action I take is going to have. And that makes it both harder to learn at all, and makes me not want to bother trying.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
The story just did not grab me at all, I found the art style incredibly ugly, and despite liking a lot of games with relatively similar playstyles I did not enjoy that at all.
I feel like people were just really excited to see a cyberpunk game, which at the time was definitely an underserved market.
Did not particularly care for Super Mario Odyssey. It was go here, throw your hat on this, complete a few objectives with the new power, then do it all again with different mechanics in the next place. The game just never built up into anything complex, so it felt boring after a while. It was also very easy so I blew through the main game really fast.
Hades. Bought it, tried to get into it multiple times. Says nothing to me. Death's Door is much, much better. I finished it.
Deadcells. Loved the art style, combat looked fun. I was so excited to play a new metroidvania only to discover it's a rougelike and that killed all interest in playing it. I just really dislike that kind of game.
every game that requires realtime input. turn based or, at a stretch, variable speed realtime with pausing is all that can capture me
Horizon Zero Dawn. It felt more like a tech/graphics demo than an actual game. Still haven't finished it and can't see myself doing it. I don't know how they managed to make robot dinosaurs so boring.
Also every call of duty after the original modern warfare 3. Yes, including black ops 2. I actually think black ops 2 was one of the worst call of duty games, the overuse of the three lane cookie cutter map design really screwed up multiplayer FPS games for a good 5 years after its release.
Also another controversial take, skill based matchmaking is good and more games should implement it. It forces you to actually play people at your skill level and prevents pointless pubstomping. If you want to have mindless fun with long killstreaks, just play against the AI/bots.
Final Fight, with its pitiful move lists and non-existent level design, regressed the beat em up genre in ways that are still felt today.
Elden ring, sure felt like the 9th demon souls just more barren land added to it, really didnt help that open world are just tacked on shit and an overused trope now.
Witcher 3. Every time I try to play it, I get bored within hours. It's so polished yes, but it's also so bleak and depressing, slow moving, and not super fun to play.
FF7 is also incredibly overrated.
