I can't remember where I first heard of Fortune Street, but I was hooked immediately by the premise. It's a Monopoly-style board game where you buy up property, and try to dominate each section of the board by owning all the shops there. You even charge people if they land on your space, and can make the rent go up by pumping money into a property. The one real difference here is that stocks play a major role. If you buy a lot of stock in your district before investing money into it, your stock price will go through the roof. Alternatively, if you can buy stocks in a competitor's district before they invest, they have to decide between helping both of you or abandoning that district. Or, if one player has all their money tied up in stocks, you can buy out property from under them, tanking that district's stock price and ruining them. I'm a huge Mario Party fan and this basically sounded like a grown-up version of it, with some of the randomness reduced and more strategy involved.

It didn't exactly work out like I hoped. I could only find one friend who was willing to trade Mario- and Dragon Quest-themed stocks with me, so we decided to try the single-player mode. That began a nearly decade-long quest to conquer one of the most frustrating games I've ever played. The deck is stacked against the player hard in Fortune Street, to the point where I’m convinced that the AI flat out cheats. That may sound like sour grapes, but it’s hard not to think after you’ve seen Bianca make a boneheaded trade to Mario to hand him the win, or Bowser Jr. bumble through Dragonlord’s district, handing him thousands of dollars, while deftly sidestepping every trap you have set for him. When you’re in a race with the AI, suddenly you’ll be rolling all ones, while they’re rolling eights. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t experienced it, and I know there’s no point in a developer rigging the game against their players, but I’ll always be convinced that’s the truth.

But that only steeled us further. We were the underdog, virtuous warriors fighting to beat an unjust system. Like any cheater, we couldn’t let the game get away with what it was doing. It took a long time, and it was exhausting work, but it’s oddly one of the most satisfying notches in my gaming belt.

Games are weird like that. Due to their interactive nature, they challenge us directly in ways that other media can’t. If the insult is personal enough, you can get drawn into a ludicrous grudge with a children’s game. I’ve been thinking a lot about my Fortune Street experience lately, so I wanted to pose the question to the GBAtemp community: do you guys have any games like this? Ones that you know are bad, but for whatever reason, you just need to force yourself to beat anyway?

 

[Cey]

Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I dislike so many things about it and its community compared to New Leaf and the previous games but for some reason I still keep playing it.

This. Now that it's gone mainstream and feels like it was modeled more after Pocket Camp than New Leaf (while Pocket Camp gets three times as much content as New Horizons if not more to rub additional salt in the wound), and with Nin's stranglehold on how they feel people should play their game -- ie, only according to how they want you to, it might as well be a dictatorship over a video game run by people who decide when, where, and how you're allowed to play and enjoy yourself. Doesn't make sense.

What strikes me the most is that they used Pocket Camp to draw in an audience that was used to mobile "neverending games" that have constant mobile events / updates, then used that to pull a fast one on their players. Here we are two years after release and still missing vital game play updates, from a game by a massively established company with plenty of funding. They have taken so much game content and piecemealed it out until it became completely unenjoyable for anyone used to New Leaf mechanics, and most other traditional non-indie games, where the game is expected to be more or less "finished" on release, and tricked a new audience into enjoying their stranglehold on content releases. A lot of the new players fail to realize how badly the launch actually went. New villagers and amiibo weren't even planned for them and released on launch alongside the game? Still no amiibo for them afaik? Couldn't dive to start? Supposedly we're supposed to wait three years for Brewster??? All manner of things. How many years is a player supposed to stick around to "complete" this game, when the developers insist on using a model that allows them to release incomplete content for, again, years. I can't think of another video game that has required actual years to even get to just core gameplay mechanic updates. If someone is still playing a game after two years, it's usually because they completed everything and they're enjoying personalizing things/playing for the fun of it. One thing to host holiday events unrelated to core game play mechanics but watching the New Horizons development has been like watching a train wreck driven by people who hate their playerbase.

 

[SavageNoble]

Ys VIII was something like a japanese spin on the Gothic franchise. Janky gameplay, shitty graphics, shitty animations, one-dimensional characters. Still, I somehow got very invested and 100%-ed it.

Can't wait for Ys IX's Switch release lol

 

[SonicRings]

I feel like the weird one here for not playing any games I dislike...

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

I feel like the weird one here for not playing any games I dislike...

really?

but I'm gonna be that guy and simply say: No. I don't have such game in my book.
Personally, if there's something that I can't stop playing, it's because I like it more than other games in my library.

None. That's masochistic if I don't like a game I don't play it.

Can't think of anything like that. If it's something I don't like I don't play it. Bad movies on the other hand I will usually stick out because I still want to know the story even though it sucks.

i stopped playing games i dont like

No game
If i hate a game i stop playing it. Games are made to entertain, they're not for torture

 

[SonicRings]

really?

Wow, 5 comments out of 104, yeah I guess all the people playing games they don't like are the weirdos here, you're right.

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

Wow, 5 comments out of 104, yeah I guess all the people playing games they don't like are the weirdos here, you're right.

Well i mean there are probably a lot more people who don't, they just didnt reply here because there would be no point

 

[SonicRings]

they just didnt reply here because there would be no point

Yet here you are.

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

Yet here you are.

Sonic unleashed, the night stages suck but im on a quest to complete every sonic game

 

[Ricken]

500% League of Legends

I feel obligated to mention that if you set your Mii traits so your personality type is "Zealot" and hit "Out to Lunch" your AI will usually win you the games, and will win on repeated attempts

 

[Jhett]

Monster hunter

 

[Codemastershock]

one tip that I have is to use the Chunan glitch to gain infinte rings then going to Apotos and buying a lot of chili dogs with a old salesman. What I found frustrating abut Werehog stages were how much Sonic is weak and it takes a very long time to level up, adding the fact that whe you are hit there are no invincibility frames so it is very easy to get bombarded with hits if you are too weak.
On the other side I dont like to upgrade Sonic very much, it makes the game too difficult to manage in my opinion, especially when playing for the first time, since Medals are much more important than ranks and it is very easy to miss them if you are going too fast.
And when going to Eggmanland, before that, hoard as many lifes as you can on Spagonia Capital. The final stage is very, very long and you dont want to lose your lifes there. There are a lot of 1 ups there, sure, but you can still lose a bunch of them there. It is not that diffcult to be honest, but it has some frustrating sections.

I honestly liked Unleashed more with these exploits since I think what it makes the game annoying is how the designers wanted to slow you down at all costs to add game time with leveling up and medal requirements. Removing at least the leveling up out of the way makes the game flow better, since you can play the stages focusing on collecting as many medals as you can. Many people complained about backtracking, but I didnt need to do this at all because I wasnt blasting through stages (and even then, the medal requirements are not that high to be honest, you only need half of the maximum medals to reach Eggmanland).

 

[BlazeMasterBM]

pokemon sword...god I hate this souless husk of what could have been amazing but at lest the online raid battles are fun

I swore I would not buy that game but I'm considering borrowing my cousin's copy just for the raids

 

[Something whatever]

I swore I would not buy that game but I'm considering borrowing my cousin's copy just for the raids

its worth a rental you can legit beat it in a day

 

[Blavla]

After the fall, Kirby

 

[Jayro]

Team Fortress 2.