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?

 

[Robika]

I have been playing Final Fantasy X since I got my ps2 in 2005. I replayed it on the Vita and the PS4. I am gunning for that platinum but I am taking it slow since I 100% it on ps2.

 

[fyredragon]

Fortnite. Ever since 2018/19, the game has been on a steady decline of players. Too many sweats that make the game unplayable.

 

[Uiaad]

Probably slightly the topic, but Tales of Zesteria. I absolutely HATE it with a passion and I did got about maybe a quarter the way through before tossing it aside. The story was drab and boring, characters rather one dimensional and the battle system was just ...off. Then Berseria was released and damn it shared world, so I had played through the first 2 or 3 hours of Berseria before I bit the bullet and went back and played every crappy hour of Zesteria just to make sure I didn't miss out on anything storywise or any references. But turned out I Loved Berseria.

So maybe not " couldn't stop playing " but I had to see it through to the bitter end

 

[Kanakops]

smash bros

( I main kirby )

 

[Blaze163]

Fortnite. I seriously don't get the point of it, just grinding for skins to look slightly more interesting while repeating the process. There's nothing real to work towards, no actual point in the grand scheme of things. Unless you're a streamer or the kind of idiot 11 year old who thinks being good at Fortnite will make everyone think they're cool. And yet I keep it around as a time killer, play a few games even knowing I'll achieve nothing while I'm in that lull between big releases.

 

[eriol33]

probably the sims. I actually don't really like aimless, casual games, but I once addicted to the sims 2 to the point I played non-stop over a week. For my own good, I stopped playing the game for good and stick with story-based games. It's too much fantasy fulfillment game.

 

[Tweaker_Modding]

beat saber got real boring for me as its been the same thing for 3 years with no new gameplay updates and barely any content updates that aren’t paid dlc

but something about it keeps dragging me back

i swear i have an addiction to it where even me not liking it much anymore i still play it

 

[Nerdtendo]

Almost forgot about Mario 64. I will die on the hill that that game has aged horribly and is not worth playing over literally any other Mario platformer or spinoff platformer (2d or 3d) but the modding community keeps me coming back to the game.

I'd even say that having an analog camera in the decomp port made it almost enjoyable.

 

[banjo2]

Almost forgot about Mario 64. I will die on the hill that that game has aged horribly and is not worth playing over literally any other Mario platformer or spinoff platformer (2d or 3d) but the modding community keeps me coming back to the game.

I'd even say that having an analog camera in the decomp port made it almost enjoyable.

Other people: Can you beat Super Mario 64 with 0 stars?
Me: Can you beat Super Mario 64 before running out of stars that are actually fun to obtain?

 

[Paulsar99]

Cyberpunk 2077. Hated how buggy and broken it is but can't deny that I still go back to play it again even after completion.

 

[MaskedMarvel]

Finished Shadow of the Colussus and I was cursing quite a bit by the end.. About half of the boss fights are fun and the rest can be quite tedious. Still not sure why I kept playing

 

[Codemastershock]

beat saber got real boring for me as its been the same thing for 3 years with no new gameplay updates and barely any content updates that aren’t paid dlc

but something about it keeps dragging me back

i swear i have an addiction to it where even me not liking it much anymore i still play it

It depends where you are playing. If you are playing on PS4 that is why.
Gameplay, dont expect things changing that much since it is the biggest appeal of any music game: they have minor tweaks over the years, but all music games remained unchanged at its core and for a good reason: the mechanics have to be straightforward to the point of the music itself being the core, not the mechanics around it.
The issue is that, playing on console it is limited to licensed tracks, on pc the game can be much more improved with songs from the community. When people ask me if PSVR is worth it and point Beat Saber, I always tell that I cant recommend much this version because there is a high possibility of the songs that you want to play are not there because they are not licensed.

Someone mentioned Kingdom Hearts and I kinda agree. Dream Drop Distance and 358/2 Days completely soured my relationship with the franchise to the point of not wanting to play any of the games anymore for a long time. Got back to play the franchise and I started to appreciate again, but in a different way. I kinda ignore all the nonsense tying the franchise and opened my heart to simply go along for the ride. DDD at the time I hated so much the story progression that I dropped mid way... Recently with Game Pass I forced myself to finish the game and I still hate it so much, what made it "acceptable" is that the gameplay is the same as Birth by Sleep so on that point I kinda had some fun (still not much because it is a gimped and glitched version of BbS but still...).

 

[osaka35]

One of those "intrinsic reward" vs "extrinsic reward" things for me, I suppose. If I find myself just playing to upgrade for upgrading's sake (extrensic reward) then I don't like it so much and put it down. If I'm completing tasks as a means to master controls and unlock the more advanced mechanisms, then it's fun for me. For instance, let's take any RPG.

-if most/all leveling up revolves around getting "stronger" gear or unlocking a stronger version of the same move, well...cool. but kinda boring and makes me want to not play.
-if generally leveling up unlocks options for strategizing, if the bosses get continually more weird and complicated, where i have to use the mechanisms I've learned to win, this is good. Luckily, this is what most games aim for. Bravely Default comes to mind.

I'll play games like animal crossing or stardew valley, but I'll stop the instant I get to the "stable and the hard parts done". then it's boring for me. I really haven't finished quite a few game in a long time, because when I start to not having fun, i'll say "nope, not today satan" and just not pick it up again. Got to really have well-driven story to get me to keep playing.

Seriously, stopping playing games that have stopped being fun has made my life much happier. No need to finish that experience if you're miserable. Go find a better one.

 

[bonkabun]

Pokemon GO. It's really the friends you play it with that makes it fun

 

[BigOnYa]

WWE 2K18-2K20 Wrestling is my most hated but loved, mostly because, I've always loved playing the wrestling games and like having the newest version with the new characters and better graphics, but the latest games all suck.

 

[Tweaker_Modding]

It depends where you are playing. If you are playing on PS4 that is why.
Gameplay, dont expect things changing that much since it is the biggest appeal of any music game: they have minor tweaks over the years, but all music games remained unchanged at its core and for a good reason: the mechanics have to be straightforward to the point of the music itself being the core, not the mechanics around it.
The issue is that, playing on console it is limited to licensed tracks, on pc the game can be much more improved with songs from the community. When people ask me if PSVR is worth it and point Beat Saber, I always tell that I cant recommend much this version because there is a high possibility of the songs that you want to play are not there because they are not licensed.

Someone mentioned Kingdom Hearts and I kinda agree. Dream Drop Distance and 358/2 Days completely soured my relationship with the franchise to the point of not wanting to play any of the games anymore for a long time. Got back to play the franchise and I started to appreciate again, but in a different way. I kinda ignore all the nonsense tying the franchise and opened my heart to simply go along for the ride. DDD at the time I hated so much the story progression that I dropped mid way... Recently with Game Pass I forced myself to finish the game and I still hate it so much, what made it "acceptable" is that the gameplay is the same as Birth by Sleep so on that point I kinda had some fun (still not much because it is a gimped and glitched version of BbS but still...).

nah its the pc version but when you’ve played over 200 hours throughout the span of november 2018 its bound to get boring at some point even with mods

 

[BORTZ]

BORTZ is in a relationship with Destiny 2.
Status: it's complicated.

It's actually more what I would call toxic or abusive haha

I'm over 2000 hours in with Destiny 1 and 2 combined. I've played every single expansion with my friends. We beat every single expansion into the ground. We love it at the beginning of each season when there's new content and fresh players. And then a few weeks later when we have played all the content as much as any steamer or content creator, we whine and complain because Destiny is the worst game we have ever played and- oh look new content!

 

[SilverWah]

Any fighting game with delay based netcode for its online.
I love you Xrd but your netcode pisses me off sometimes. Same deal with CVS2 on NullDC BEAR because that also runs delay based netcode untill we get rollback netcode.

 

[Hells Malice]

I played Hood for a good 5+ hours despite it being a hot steaming pile of shit

 

[AxlSt00pid]

Fortnite

Enough said (but I really enjoy Save The World though)