Ask Lemmy

I wanted to play Cuphead because I really liked the concept and the aesthetic. I got it not knowing its reputation for being hard as absolute fuck. Played it for several days with increasing frustration, started watching walkthroughs, those didn’t help, still tried to stubbornly stick with it, and eventually got to the point where my heart just wasn’t in it anymore.

Any pokemon game after gen 2.

I started in 1999 with red. It was a childhood-defining experience. I spent all summer with my nose in that game boy. Keep in mind I had to use a loupe mounted in a glasses frame and had to hold the screen an inch from my eye, so the ergonomics weren't ideal, but the experience was compelling enough for me to bear through it. Then I got gold in the summer of 2001, I think, and was blown away. It was an upgrade in every way. I personally think the series peaked with gen 2. To be absolutely clear I am not a "gen-wunner" or whatever the word is. I just think the combination of the game itself and the zeitgeist it created for those first few years came together to make something unrepeatable.

Gold and Silver came out while Pokemon was still everywhere, but by the time gen 3 released, the craze had ebbed. Yes it was still popular but it was no longer in everyone's mouth. I was also in the latter half of high school, and most of my friends were no longer into it. I bought the game, so it's not like I thought I was too old, but it just didn't feel the same. They removed the day-night cycle and the calendar functionality. It felt like a downgrade.

I've tried several times since to rekindle that feeling I got in 1999. The closest was with Pokemon Go in 2016. For a few weeks it felt like the late 90s again,, with everyone and their dog talking about Pokemon. I actually beat Pokemon Let's Go, but I think the nostalgia is what kept me going. Tried with the first Legends game and just couldn't stay interested. Ditto with Brilliant Diamond.

There has to be a word for not wanting something but wanting to want it. That's how I feel. (Of course the nice thing about being a conlanger is I can make the word myself 😁)

sdC CB qGr qGrbfrp
0     sdC-0   CB-0   qGr-0  qGrbfr-p
[1sg] yearn-A want-A play-A video_game-3D
I miss wanting to play that video game.

1sg = 1st person singular (0 means it's dropped)
-A = authoritative verbal mood (-0 means a null morpheme that isn't pronounced)
-3D = 3rd person distal noun suffix ('that video game')

Silksong it's a great game but way too hard for me. :(

Skulls and bones. Sailing in black flag is probably my favorite gaming experience ever. Ubisoft announced a sailing game right after. All they had to do was add some upgrade paths so people could set up their ships for different playstyles. Like 10 years later, the game finally came out. It's the only game I've ever refunded. Everything about it was terrible.

Funny for me it was RDR2. I still think I probably would have liked it if I stuck with it, but 20 minutes in I was told that I would have to regularly clean my gun and hunt to feed my camp etc. and it just felt like doing a bunch of chores and I noped straight out.

World of Warcraft.

I didnt get to play it when it came out because I was still in school and couldnt afford the subscription. I was a huge Warcraft fan when I was younger. Eventually I forgot about it, until about 10 years later when I found a post online talking about WoW and I learned that they had a 14 day free trial. I immediately downloaded the game and made an account.

I uninstalled the game two days later. It wasn't even remotely close to the Warcraft that I grew up with. And sure part of that is on me. I had made the expectations that it was going to be like Runeacape but in the Warcraft universe. A top down, point and click, open world version of Warcraft 3.

The fetch quests was what really killed it for me though.

Witcher 3. Absolutely hated the sluggish movement, only made it a few hours

Starfield. I tried it on a more recent update and it was just boring. There was no point to exploring because outposts were useless and space combat was trivial. Just an overall boring game

Baldurs Gate 3 for me. I like the game mechanics and everything like that, but the story and characters put me off. The characters in general because of how unlikeable they all are, and the story I think my main problem is mostly that I know nothing about D&D and the game doesn't try to introduce anything. So I can't even follow the conversations properly because half the time I have no idea what they are talking about.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 kind of fits the bill for me here. I wanted to play it from the moment I learned about it. I had zero experience with 1, or any other dragon quest games. My biggest issue, and im still quite angry about it, is that the game I wanted to play, and the game the trailers promised actually does exist. Its all functional. The only way to play it though is the campaign, and its so frustratingly hand-holding and text-heavy it actually hurt to play.

"we need to build the BRONZE ROOM. So we'll need some BRONZE. Theres some BRONZE in the cave nearby." [Camera pans over to where the bronze is.] "Okay! We'll go and get the BRONZE!" "I think 3 pieces OF BRONZE should do it."

Head over towards the cave.

Hey! We're near the BRONZE cave! Isn't this where they said we could get the BRONZE that we need to complete the BRONZE ROOM? Let's get the BRONZE!

Head towards the bronze.

Hey! It's the BRONZE that we need to make the BRONZE ROOM! Lets mine some quick so we can make the BRONZE ROOM! You can do this! Let's go!

Mine the bronze

[BRONZE acquired!]

Hey! Thats it! We just mined the first piece of BRONZE that we need! Didn't the quest-giver say we needed 3 pieces? What are we waiting for? Lets mine 2 MORE!

Mine 2 more

Thats it! Weve got all the BRONZE that we need to make the BRONZE ROOM! lets Head back to the base as quickly as we can to make the BRONZE ROOM.

Head back to the base, get talked to by the quest giver for a solid minute about the importance of the bronze room. Then the concept of the silver room comes up. You think 'that was a really really really long-winded tutorial, but they'll leave me alone to do the silver and gold now that I know what to do. No. Go back to the top of that list but replace BRONZE with SILVER. Then gold. Then do it again and again and again until the credits roll and you realise the game never actually happens and you just wasted a bunch of your life and you'll never ever get it back and they could have made an excellent game, and they actually did, they just wouldn't let you play it.

Im still pretty bitter about that whole experience.

An old one: SPORE.

Cool creature editor. Lacked all the depth that was promised in the presentations. Instead of being a cohesive game through the ages, it's like 5 bare-bones shallow games glued together.

Control. stuck in an office with dull attack options. I played about half way through then looked up my progress and walked away. Way too dull for me. Friends were raving about it.

Ho boy! Don’t buy RDR2 in that case. Worst (and last) full price game I’ve bought. Goddamn disappointing

Right know for me is Baldur’s Gates, it really don’t scratch my hitch. I have to play it in baby difficulty because I’m no tactician and I’m not a min maxer playing DnD so this game is really not for me

Any MMO, I'll pick it up and give it an honest try for a month or so. And I feel like I'm just grinding away for days for a couple hours of fun a week.

It's so damn boring, all of it.

Breath Edge. I was looking for a new subnautica-like experience, having given up on any expectations from the sequel currently in development when the new owners got rid of the original devs (imo just pirate the original so they don't get money from owning that, too).

Maybe I dropped it too soon, but Breath Edge didn't give that sense of making progress. I was stuck having to go back to the same starting point after every trip. Those trips are longer, but I found progressing and exploring to just be annoying and frustrating rather than fun and rewarding and what you do find underwhelming. I stopped when it looked like it wanted me to set up "path extenders" for kms with effects that frost the helmet to 0 visibility. There's probably some mechanisms I'm about to unlock that will make those easier but I just don't want to.

Maybe I'll try looking at a walkthrough to see what the next steps are and decide if it's worthwhile (maybe I'm missing something important that makes the rest of it much less of a pain), but there's plenty of other games to play so I'm not worried.

Sonic CD.

For years and years it was a mythical sonic game, a rare golden-era game hardly anyone had got to play. And I’d slightly mis-remembered it appearing way more advanced and fluid than a mega drive game.

After being obsessed with Sonic in my youth, after finally getting to play it, it just felt like a less enjoyable Sonic 1.

I’ve never even bothered to finish it.

GTA V.

I liked all the previous ones, but this was just more of the same on a bigger generic map and a more convulted and stereotypical story. Online never worked for me either. Too buggy.

Vice City and San Andreas were the best of the series.

Map size/design is just more important than size. Same problem in Just Cause.

• CD Projekt RED's Cyberpunk 2077:
  the trailer showed V riding a crowded monorail train. I bought the game in promotion with Google Stadia. There was no monorail in the game. Or rather, you could look at it, and you could find some stations, but they were teleport points;
• Obsidian Entertainment's The Outer Worlds:
  it was marketed as a role-play game, but your possible choices were either bad or good, with no in-between, and they did not influence your story at all. It's just a shooter game, the SciFi setting is secondary and forgettable;
• Blackbird Interactive's Homeworld 3:
  too far from what I loved in Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm. For some reason the developers believed they had to introduce physical people with mental issues in a game about faceless ships blowing up each other. Nevertheless, the story is bland. I would like to pretend that this game did not ever exist.

A game that I've been waiting years to play for years is Mobius Digital's Outer Wilds.
I have only heard praise about it. I can't find the courage to finally play it and end up disappointed.

I never wanted to play any specific games but I did avoid playing Dave the Diver for months thinking it was boring. I could bet money that I would hate it. Gave it a try one day out of boredom and could not sleep until I finish it a week later. 70 hours. (yes I have a full time job)

fucking great game

Sekiro. I do not think its a bad game, I think it's excellent. But it is not for me. It requires rhythm and excellent reaction time, and I have neither. I have zero timing abilities, unless its like RE4 QTEs because i just need to do it a few times in a row at most, but the reactions being so constant and fast, I can not do it, i just cant, its frustrating and makes me feel stupid when I die to normal enemies. And its not like a Souls game, where I can make a build different, or summon someone for help. Again, its just not for me, I do not think its a bad game.

Nier series, expected way more from the stories

Duke Nukem Forever. As a teen Duke Nukem 3D was one of my most loved gaming experiences. Awesome game, came with easy to use level editor (Never got the original doom level editors to work back then). Played many many hours, made my own levels. Just plain loved the game.

Then the wait for Duke4Ever started and I waited, and waited and waited and (continue for 20 years so) and finaly got to play it.

It wasn't bad really, it just wasn't as fun as Duke3D was in my teens. It still had the same kind of humor, but never really hit any high notes. Weapons were limited, instead of having a weapon behind each number on the keyboard, now it was pick one up and drop one off.

Didn't even try to see how the level editing was.

Maybe I'll pick it up again if it's a euro on Steam or GOG, as Duke3D still is loved childhood memory.

Mewgenics. I just couldn't squeeze any fun out of it. Wish there wasn't 10 minutes of busy work every time I want to start a new run. Wish items were game-changing like in Isaac.

I'm stubborn so I'm still trying to enjoy it, but granblue fantasy relink just kills me... I enjoyed most of the game, but the endgame has pretty much everything I hate in action combat games: instakill dps check bullshit, enemies spamming crazy nonsense moves cluttering the screen, dodge timing that requires you to be a literal machine to get it right making elden ring look like a game for babies, and an ungodly amount of grinding the most aggravating bosses for materials...

I'm at an age now where I want to enjoy a game, not be enraged until I finally beat it.

Heavy Rain was one of those for me. I sometimes enjoy a cinematic game. Even if there aren't any 'choices that matter' in it, it can be nice to just go through a cinematic interactive story game. But Heavy Rain fell into the same hole so many others do: bad interaction UI. I hate any game that gives you the option to say 'I agree,' 'I disagree,' and 'What?' but makes selecting 'What?' the option to fly off the handle because 'What?' is actually short for 'What should I insert into your nostril, you filthy worm?'

Zelda OOT. The controls, especially when first using the slingshot and such, with the camera just sucked. I never got far with that after I finally tried it in my mid-/late-20s. It's one of those I found much more enjoyable watching someone else do.

Played Goldeneye for the first time at a barcade in my early 30s and I didn't really enjoy that much.

As I think about it, anything on N64 and maybe Gamecube that I would try once I had time and money later in life just were not great. I had been playing better PC games, even in the same years, and have zero nostalgia for it which probably doesn't help.

OP, you should post the exact opposite of this question, too (unless it already exists and i missed it).

The Last Guardian.

I basically never got a PS3 because I was adamant about waiting for that game to come out. It didn't even release for the PS3 when it finally came out in 2016.

I finally played it on PS5 and holy shit was it a sluggish, buggy mess. Even after almost 10 years from the original releaee date.

I’m a busy dad of two kids, so my play time is often fragmented and sporadic. There is a definite theme to mine.

Red Dead Redemption 2. There is so much I really love about it, but there are just too many systems to deal with. Hygeine, hunger, fashion, crafting, camp chores, random ambush attacks by too many enemies, stealth, tracking, etc. If it was a bit more streamlined I’d probably love it.

New Vegas. It’s the only Fallout I’ve played and I love it, up until inventory management takes more time than actually playing the game. I’ve made it to about the same point fiveish hours in three times.

Skyrim. I really want to love this one as well, but has both the inventory management issues that New Vegas does, and the controls are just wonky enough that I have to relearn them when I get back to it.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I really enjoyed it, up until I spent a precious uninterrupted hour and a half on a mission, only to die to something stupid just before the next save point. I know that it being Teh SupEr HaRdCorE is supposed to be part of the appeal, but I don’t have time for that shit.

smash bros melee. i was sooooo hyped. but the game felt way too fast for me compared to n64 smash, and the litany of clone characters was a massive letdown.

God of War: Ragnarok.

I don't have a console so I had to wait for it to port to PC, then wait til it went on sale and I could snag it at a more reasonable price. I loved the one before it and was so excited to play. The first couple hours were good, and then I felt like it was an endless repetition of fight a boss, talk about our feelings while we walk to fight another boss, talk about our feelings some more, and repeat. The part where you have to play as Atreus helping that giant girl do her daily chores made me want to weep from boredom and it just went on forever. I think I gave up shortly after Freya met her brother again, but I don't really remember the storyline because it was just so mind numbingly exhausting, like listening in on a bunch of therapy sessions (and I'm super pro "take care of your mental health and go to therapy if you need it", but if I have to listen to a literal god whining and acting willfully helpless for an entire video game I'm out).

I have been told that it is actually a good game that gets better and I should give it another go, but I'm not sure if it's good for MY mental health.