Almost good games that you wanted to like more but slogged through hoping for more

[xist]

As someone who effectively finishes every game i start (bar the really, really, REALLY appalling ones which amount to only a handful) i sometimes run into games that on balance i don't really enjoy, but sometimes thanks to the gameplay it gets fun. If that up/down ride is dangled like a carrot in front of me i end up not really enjoying a game but ploughing through it to finish it in the hopes that the sum will be better than it's constituent parts (most of the time it's not).

I've just finished Sly 2 Band of Thieves and really wanted to enjoy it. It looks good, i like the characters and levels and it's enjoyable to leap around exploring - there's a decent platformer there....which is what i wanted after the first game. However, the actual gameplay boils down to what i'd effectively describe as a minigame-athon. You never get the chance to be a platforming adventurer for very long, and i ended up playing it in the hope of fun, rather than YET ANOTHER FORCED SLOW STEALTH SECTION, or YET ANOTHER RC HELICOPTER SECTION, or YET ANOTHER PICK POCKETS SECTION...etc...

So......What games have you played that you've battled with to enjoy, and played to the bitter end in the hopes that the fun will remain in the green rather than the red? Which games just don't live up to being fun even though you felt there was a good game in there? (also if you disagree with a choice say why you disagree)

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Probably Braid.

I watched Indie Game The Movie and he was the only dev I could really tolerate. I know so much effort went into that game but I just wasn't too fond of the puzzles. Maybe I'm just stupid and didn't like the difficulty.

EDIT: Also No More Heroes 2. I was so hyped for the game, I got it day one, but I just didn't like it nearly as much as the first game. I guess my big issue is that they made it a bit too serious for my tastes, they just removed the bad parts of NMH instead of fixing them, and I felt ripped off that you started at rank 51 but didn't fight what you thought would be 50 bosses.

 

[Hyro-Sama]

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and RE:Coded

They aren't exactly good games though but w/e. I was so hyped for both, specifically for the former, but each game disappointed me greatly. To this day I can't figure out why I even bothered finishing them both.

 

[2ndApex]

Naruto Shinobi Rumble.

Combo system was kinda interesting but all the attacks and characters played too similarly and linearly, the game modes were lack luster, music was generic and lacked voice acting, and the presentation was awful.

 

[retKHAAAN]

Probably a tie between Dragon Age: Origins and Team Fortress 2...

I loathed the battle system in Dragon Age; actually had more fun with Dragon Age 2... The story seemed pretty good but I'm not one to punish myself by slogging through a game I'm really not enjoying.

Team Fortress 2 just wasn't fun to me at all. I have no doubt that it's a good game. However, I can't stand being inundated with a million different things to unlock or in-game economies in general. No MMOs for me. I either need a great story or gameplay that requires my relying teammates as little as possible.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Probably a tie between Dragon Age: Origins and Team Fortress 2...

I loathed the battle system in Dragon Age; actually had more fun with Dragon Age 2... The story seemed pretty good but I'm not one to punish myself by slogging through a game I'm really not enjoying.

Team Fortress 2 just wasn't fun to me at all. I have no doubt that it's a good game. However, I can't stand being inundated with a million different things to unlock or in-game economies in general. No MMOs for me. I either need a great story or gameplay that requires my relying teammates as little as possible.

The only real difference between DAO and DA2's battle systems is that you press A a lot in DA2. Also that AOE attacks don't hit your allies.

I like DA2's battle system better but DA2 was an awful game.

 

[Foxi4]

Xenoblade Chronicles and Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love. I was quite hyped to play both games but ended up being really disappointed early on to the point of losing the will to play.

Also, theme song of the thread:

Spoiler

I TRIED SO HARD...!​

​

;O;​

 

[xist]

Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love.

Oh god that was one i managed to stop playing....i really wanted to like it but there just wasn't enough game for me and the characters didn't really make me feel much in the way of empathy.

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

Diablo III.... lol not horrible but not as good as I felt it should have been. In the same breath I can say the same about StarCraft II although at least with that one I only expected it to be about 1/3rd as good as the original (being that they broke the game into 3 pieces as a cash in....)

 

[Foxi4]

Oh god that was one i managed to stop playing....i really wanted to like it but there just wasn't enough game for me and the characters didn't really make me feel much in the way of empathy.

Tell me about it. I went through hell and back to get it to work - for some reason my cIOS setup always failed to boot the game properly and it always froze after the intro - I can't tell how many ISO's and how many cIOS reinstalls I went through just to go past it, only to have to suffer through (I swear) at least an hour and a half of dialogue just to see the game proper.

I was asking myself on numerous occasions "Where is the game? I saw screenshots, there must be a game in this." and my girlfriend who sat beside me literally fell asleep before the training stage began... and it wasn't even that good.

Waste of bandwidth, if I bought this game rather than pirated it, I would probably return it and demand both my money back and some compensation for the time I've lost (not to mention my endangered sanity). There's broken pacing and there's waiting an hour and a half before getting to actually play the game.

 

[FAST6191]

At present I am actually growing to quite like middle of the road stuff- you usually get some nice ideas but are spared the "darling, it is an indie game: it is supposed to awful controls and everything else" cop out from the "usual" alternatives. For instance I do not regret deadly premonition or alpha protocol for a moment; given I usually get games at a tenner a pop or go with a nice deal down the second hand shop and tend not to value my time it is all good.

Also I guess in the end if I retained one ability from my NES/megadrive days it is the ability to make one game last and go back to play it in a whole bunch of different ways.

That said despite being a huge fan of co-op I dare say most of the ones for the 360 I ever played I would not have finished should someone else have not been there. Given that most of the usually megadrive games that caused this enjoyment to exist I will play in single player to this day that is not a good thing.

Edit- forgot about bulletstorm. I do not regret playing it but I doubt I will really remember it in ten years time and for a game like that such a thing is a fairly big failing.

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

I should also mention Nintendo Land its OK but just not my cup of tea I guess. Love my deluxe's but I wish NSMB was the pack in.

 

[Gahars]

Dark Sector, Stranglehold, and Timeshift.

I picked each up for $10 or so at a Gamestop a few years back (not all at the same time, mind you). I heard they were decent, and I was starved for games.

They all suffered from being just decent. Each game had some really cool ideas and moments, but their execution left a lot to be desired. I don't know if it came from rushed development times or just a lack of follow-through, but they all just fell short. In the end, as much as I may have wanted to, I couldn't find them to be anything more than decent time-wasters.

Now they take up space in the Used Sections of Gamestops everywhere. It's a bit sad, really.

 

[pokefloote]

Tell me about it. I went through hell and back to get it to work - for some reason my cIOS setup always failed to boot the game properly and it always froze after the intro - I can't tell how many ISO's and how many cIOS reinstalls I went through just to go past it, only to have to suffer through (I swear) at least an hour and a half of dialogue just to see the game proper.

I was asking myself on numerous occasions "Where is the game? I saw screenshots, there must be a game in this." and my girlfriend who sat beside me literally fell asleep before the training stage began... and it wasn't even that good.

Waste of bandwidth, if I bought this game rather than pirated it, I would probably return it and demand both my money back and some compensation for the time I've lost (not to mention my endangered sanity). There's broken pacing and there's waiting an hour and a half before getting to actually play the game.

That game's been trouble for me too. I had trouble getting the damn thing for my PS2, and as I wade through the hour long intro and things begin to look like it gets interesting, the game freezes or hangs or something. I hadn't saved yet.

Needless to say I didn't want to go through it again, deleted it off my HDD. One of these days though...

 

[narutofan777]

the 3rd birthday. i wanted it to be good...but it was bad.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Probably Braid.

I watched Indie Game The Movie and he was the only dev I could really tolerate. I know so much effort went into that game but I just wasn't too fond of the puzzles. Maybe I'm just stupid and didn't like the difficulty.

EDIT: Also No More Heroes 2. I was so hyped for the game, I got it day one, but I just didn't like it nearly as much as the first game. I guess my big issue is that they made it a bit too serious for my tastes, they just removed the bad parts of NMH instead of fixing them, and I felt ripped off that you started at rank 51 but didn't fight what you thought would be 50 bosses.

Agreed on Braid. That game was too confusing for me. Liked the soundtrack though.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

Dark Sector, Stranglehold, and Time..

DONT YOU DARE SAY IT! DONT YOU SAY IT BITCH! DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!

...shift

Good, I thought you were gonna say TimeSplitters.

Anyways for me, I don't have that trouble, mainly because I don't finish the games I can't get into. And the ones I do, usually just start off slow.

But for me, it would be any Elder Scrolls game. I have Morrowind and Oblivion on Steam, bought them when they were cheap. I heard Morrowind is good. But Oblivion, I just can't stand, it's boring, horrendous and overall not fun. Maybe if I could get mods working for it would be more enjoyable, but I can't even get those to work on the Steam version.

Same with Skyrim... thought Skyrim was a lot more fun for me, I just can't get too much into that series.

Gran Turismo or any serious racing simulator, they're boring as hell. If I want to feel like I'm actually driving, I'll go drive. You can say that about a lot of stuff and such, but come on.. a driving sim? Really?

Fighting games as well. More Specifically, Street Fighter IV as of recent. I beat just the story with Ken, then got bored and never touched it again.

Probably Braid.

I watched Indie Game The Movie and he was the only dev I could really tolerate. I know so much effort went into that game but I just wasn't too fond of the puzzles. Maybe I'm just stupid and didn't like the difficulty.

The exact same. I won't lie, it's a brilliant game, I can see why it gets a lot of praise, but the puzzles to me is what deterred me.

 

[chavosaur]

The world ends with you.
I kept wanting the game to be as good as everyone was saying it was but I honestly could NOT get into it. Story wise and gameplay wise it just bored the hell out of me.

 

[BORTZ]

Final
Fantasy
Tactics
A
2

 

[ShadowSoldier]

The world ends with you.
I kept wanting the game to be as good as everyone was saying it was but I honestly could NOT get into it. Story wise and gameplay wise it just bored the hell out of me.

TWEwY is a pretty fucking shitty game to be honest.