Topic: Any Games That Just Never Clicked With You?

So, I have a bit of a confession and I hope you don't think of me as the monster I obviously am. You see I really like RPGs and generally can't get enough of them, but I see everyone raving about The Witcher 3 and I just feel empty when playing it, it isn't bad it's just average. The combat is passable, but not all that good and the story is a bit dull, I really want to like it, but I just can't ignite that spark to keep me invested in a game of that length. Oh, and while we're at it I never particularly liked Resident Evil 4 either - I know the franchise needed to advance and the original formula was starting to get a bit stale at the time, but it just didn't work for me.

There, I've said it now and I feel a little lighter for the confession. Judge me all you want, but I would wager that you too have a similar story, perhaps about another game, or even other games, that you had been told were good by all others, yet they sank into the pit of mediocrity for yourself. I offer you a place to unburden yourself of such dark secrets and not be judged for having an opinion different than that of the almighty internet. Feel free to speak thy blasphemies below.

Dark Souls. I tried it time and time again to see what all the fuss was about but no, I couldn't get into it at all. I thought the combat was abysmal.

@ApostateMage That's one of my favourite games and the combat system is sublime, but I forgive you

Great thread idea - there are a few classics that never clicked with me.

The biggest, in that it was what my friends all played, was the Halo series. I played Halo 1 and 2 with a friend and I bought Halo 3 and I felt the single player campaign was a slog and didn't enjoy the MP at all.

I never really enjoyed, at the time, the original PS1 and PS2 era Metal Gear Solid games - even though I think I would appreciate them more now.

Finally, GTA IV just didn't gel with me, not sure why. Didn't like the characters or the mechanics or the setting. I didn't get very far into it. I loved GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas but nope, couldn't get on with IV. It kind of put me off GTA V.

the GTA series, i have tried it every now and then but i just find them all BORING same with the Fallout series

also Telltales Walking Dead, i know it's meant to a fantastic game but once again it bored me

nice idea for a thread by the way

Oh yeah, a ton of popular games have done nothing for me. A few off the top of my head...

The Last of Us: Remastered - Tropey characters, bland visual design, boring gameplay, and I didn't really care for the plot

Bloodborne - Samey environments, simplified Souls gameplay that forces the player into one real playstyle (hyper-aggressive, because the game is designed to be played this way), poor performance, and unimpressive visuals.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (series got better with every subsequent game, thankfully, to the point where I actually really enjoyed Uncharted 4) - Awkward platforming. Boring shooting section. Awkward platforming. Boring shooting section. Even more boring boat sequence. etc.

Fallout 4 - Ugly, doesn't perform too well even on a high-end PC, and is a huge step back from FO3 and NV in terms of the dialogue system, actual role-playing, characters, side-quests, etc. Sad!

GTA III - Tried playing this after Vice City and San Andreas, and it was just too basic for me to enjoy.

Rocket League - Dunno. Can't point to anything wrong with it. Just never enjoyed it.

Mass Effect 2 - Turned the series into a cover shooter. A downgrade from ME1 in almost every way, from the smaller, less interesting environments, to the gimped customization and character builds, to the horrid planet-scanning system... one of the worst sequels I've ever played.

Super Mario World - Just a bit too weird for me. Also don't care for the game's visual design, and Mario feels too floaty for me.

Super Mario 64 - Worst camera I've ever seen in a video game. Boring level design. And I HATE the way Mario controls in this game. It's just no fun to play for me.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (Quit after three hours or so, although I'll probably try it again one day) - Ugly, slow-paced, and the game feels like it's trying to be super-edgy to make up for The Wind Waker and its delightful cartoony aesthetic.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - I detest some of the dungeons in this game, and the trading sequence in this game is horrible. Also not a fan of the weird plot.

For the most part, Grand Theft Auto. I appreciate the series for it's technical achievements, but I've never really enjoyed it as much as everyone else. I very much prefer Red Dead Redemption.

The early Mortal Kombat games are another one in hindsight. Fun with friends, but crap if you're alone, thanks to how dated they feel.

The biggest one though, is possibly the original Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic 2 & 3 are great, but the series suffered from First Game Syndrome in my eyes. I can't enjoy it without going at a slow pace. You know, the antithesis of what Sonic is. It also has Labyrinth Zone and Marble Zone, two of my most disliked levels in any platformer.

@Dichotomy The Witcher 3 is one of my favourite games and the stories and characters are sublime, but I forgive you.

Exactly this.

Edit: I'll have to add Final Fantasy to this, actually. I've tried two or three games in the series, and never been able to get on with it. Just not my cup of tea, I think.

@Rudy_Manchego It's a topic I've thought about before, but seeing Jim Sterling take a lot of flak for his recent 7/10 Zelda review it reminded me what a hateful, single minded organism the internet can be. I think I'm very glad I never had to review The Witcher 3 given the pedestal that game has been lofted onto as, for me, it is a 6/10. With that in mind I wondered what games other people don't like since we all have different tastes. I actually fully agree with the GTA IV thing and have never played GTA V due to that, my GTA fix comes from the Saint's Row games because, as silly as they are, they are focused on being fun first and foremost.

@FullbringIchigo As above, I agree to an extent with the GTA games, the earlier 3D ones I got on with a bit better (especially Vice City - I liked the 80s theme). The pre 3D era ones were OK, but more a novelty than anything I'd spend time playing. I originally had trouble with Fallout 3 too as I was a relatively big fan of the isometric ones that came before and it just didn't feel all the much like Fallout (New Vegas did a better job). I literally had to not think of it as a Fallout game to get any enjoyment out of it strangely enough. The Walking Dead ones are a story and not really a game when you get down to it - the equivalent of Dragon's Lair from the 80s brought up to date and I can fully see why you wouldn't like that.

@Ralizah That's a big list I found The Last of Us to be a bit of a chore when I played it on the PS3, but for some reason enjoyed it a lot more playing through on the PS4, don't really know why though. I really liked Bloodborne, the theme and altered combat system was enough to make it feel fresh for me, plus some of those bosses were great - it is unusual, but good to see someone who likes the Souls games and not Bloodborne though. I also much preferred ME2 to ME1, in part down to the removal of those awful Mako sections - I'll take the scanning over that any day. It was simplified, but at the same time the story was, for me, presented in a much smoother and enjoyable manner.

@DerMeister Seems GTA is a running theme, it's still in the top 10 charts each month though so this must be everyone who doesn't like it by now To be fair I think the original MK games were only seen as OK when they came out and certainly had a lot of people talking badly about them within a year (Street Fighter 2 was so much better). If people had seen back then what would become of Sonic they probably would have joined you in your dislike just to stop those abominations happening.

Mass Effect 1 and 2 — Dont know why but I fund these games just boring and drawn out tried several times but just couldn't get into them.

LoZ Wind Wake — The graphics were a complete turn off for me still I gave it a shot and just got bored of it especially all the sailing.

GTA San Andreas — Loved GTA 3 and Vice City but SA I just couldn't get into. I think most of it had to do with the sterotypical guy from the wrong neighborhood story just bored me.

CoD: Infinite Warfare — I tried and still do to get into this game but just everything just doesn't click for me. The setting is to Sci-fi for me which mind you I do like sci-fi shooters like Halo but for CoD just doesn't feel like CoD. The rigs have no personality compared to BO3 specialist, the rocket jumping and all the movement stuff.

Sport Sims — Unless it's FIFA, NBA 2K, I just can't get into them mainly baseball ones like The Show. I prefer arcade style sports more. Mainly cause of the pick up and play ease.

First and foremost, anything Rockstar. Tried several of their games and there is just something about them that I'm not a fan of. This list includes Red Dead, GTA V, LA Noire, etc. May still give RDR 2 after a price cut.

Dark Souls / Bloodborne - I think these are love or hate games for everyone.

The DKC reboots - I have no idea but I couldn't get into Returns or Tropical Freeze for some reason. LOVED LOVED LOVED the original trilogy and played the heck out of them when I was kid, even finishing up one more recently with my wife. Couldn't finish the reboots though. Something just felt off.

Dishonored - I might give this another go eventually. But I just felt like the mechanics didn't set you up to succeed the way the game wanted you to.

@Ralizah Good point on Fallout 4. Bought it and sold it when I sold my PS4 and upgraded to Pro. I may try it again if it gets the VR version being touted on Vive on PS but, just couldn't get into it at all and felt it looked pretty last gen. I know several people though who have put 100s of hours into it so I am probably just not getting it.

The entire Metal Gear franchise. It didn't attract me early on, and since each game expanded the story upon what came before, I felt even less interested on it. Metal Gear Solid V looks interesting, though, but I can't find myself playing a game that probably won't make much sense if I didn't bother to fully play the series.

Being a fan of Kingdom Hearts and Assassin's Creed, this may be a little weird saying, but I really dislike stories expanding through different games. Everything that happened in a different game that is important to the story of another should be explained in the game as if there was no previous game... Also, why expand the story in different consoles? You gotta end each arc in a single gen, please! Hopefully, AC will realize the present-day story sucks after III and so they can focus completely on individual stories. As for KH, I have no idea if there are gonna be any games after KH3, but if there are, I hope the stories are more independent. =)

@Dichotomy I like the Mako sections in ME1. The controls were a bit of a mess, but you were still exploring alien worlds, which was much more interesting than rotating a holographic image of a planet until you found a resource to collect, imo. As to Bloodborne and Dark Souls... I'll never be the biggest Souls fan, but I respect the Souls games (especially the first) for their deep gameplay systems, weapon and environmental diversity (neither of which Bloodborne has), more strategic combat, etc.

Regarding TLOU:R... it could be that you already knew what to expect and set your expectations accordingly. It could be due to the smoother framerate or increased visual fidelity. Who knows? There are some games I enjoy a lot more the second time I play them, which is why I will inevitably try some of these games again eventually (especially Bloodborne, which I stupidly bought in a digital format at launch, so I'm stuck with it anyway).

@Rudy_Manchego I didn't mention it in my post, but one thing that really killed the game for me was the town building feature. Wasn't a fan, but I felt like I was missing out in terms of upgrades and whatnot if I didn't do it. Also not a fan of how they turned the power armor into a mech. And yeah, it looks last gen because the engine they're using is a variation on the same engine they used in their last gen Fallout and Elder Scrolls game. I wouldn't expect Elder Scrolls VI to look much better, either. I enjoyed FO3 at the time for what it was and had a lot of fun with NV and Skyrim, but I don't think Bethesda has sufficiently evolved with the times in terms of its engine and game design. Honestly, The Witcher 3 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild both feel like huge evolutionary steps over Bethesda and Ubisoft's open world games.

@ztpayne7 I forgot about LA Noire. That game was boring, and, for the life of me, I could never learn to read the tells people were giving me that they were lying, which was frustrating. Textbook example of a game that is interesting in theory but flawed in execution.

I got a few
Mario Party series- mini games aren't my thing
Call of Duty- never could get into it, not my type of online play.
Mega Man series- Capcom is one of my favorite companies but Mega Man is one of my least favorite franchise from, I can get into a few games, but I wasn't really upset when Mega Man Legends 3 got canned.
Banjo Kazooie- I prefer Conker
Mutant Mudds- just meh
Mortal Kombat- I just prefer any other fighting game than this. The series is overrated with all the blood and gore IMO.

I'd rather kick my console around a field than play FIFA on it.
I've never understood Super Smash Bros' appeal, seems like button mashy randomness.

I have this problem with really long games that aren't captivating enough to play all the way through in one go (I crave variety, so I have to really love a game to play almost nothing but that game for multiple weeks in a row). A lot of longer JRPGs, in particular.

@CountFunkula78 It can be button-mashy, or it can be a complex and incredibly technical fighting game, depending on what options you have selected and how you play. That versatility is one of the reasons it's so popular, I think.

Speaking of, I couldn't get into Playstation All-Stars. Just didn't like the feel of it, even though a Playstation equivalent of Smash sounded interesting. I guess part of the problem is that, for all of Sony's superb first-party content, it has never really built up a roster of instantly recognizable characters like Nintendo has. Crash Bandicoot and Nathan Drake are the closest things we've ever had to Playstation mascots.

@Dichotomy I agree The Witcher is a really strange game, the critics fawn over it - but its so depressing. I really wanted to enjoy it, but I found it impossible.

I really like the Witcher series - I never played the first (PC only) but loved the 2nd and the 3rd is definitely a masterpiece.

I did enjoy GTA - up until GTA3 but after that I lost interest - 4 was a bore fest - a big City with about 3 buildings you can actually go in. Missions were awful too...

MGS series for me is greatly over-rated. Mind you I think that about most Japanese games.

I can't stand games like God of War, Dante's Inferno etc either or 'fighting' games like tekken, SF, Killer Instinct etc - if you have played the first 5mins, you have basically played the whole game. I don't like the 'Souls' style games either - never saw the appeal. Its not the 'challenge' either as I enjoy playing a lot of games on 'hardest' difficulty too but I just didn't see the point in these at all.