I was just thinking about some games I played the first day and thought “woa, this game looks good”, but when I played more I changed my mind because the game was repetitive, unfun or just ultimately bad.
What games would be your “looked good, were bad”?
The Crew. I was so hyped for the original, but then it ended up being a mess to me. People enjoy them, but the series has never lived up to its full potential. The big issue for me every time is the handling physics of the cars, which feels pretty awful.
What’s the name of the platformer about the guy who has to slay christian gods and rites? 2D dark souls? Well, that one.
Blasphemous? I like it, but I don’t see what everyone else sees in it. It’s a solid Castlevania clone but doesn’t really do anything that other prior Metroidvanias weren’t already doing. Plus I think it lacks challenge.
This year it was Dustborn.
When I played it I found it slow, tedious and a combat system that bored me and frustrated me.
Also Bioshock Infinite and Atomic Heart.
That one, yes! I think part of the appeal comes from the aesthetics , which I never got too into tbh. There is something attractive about slaying gods and religious figures, but I just never managed to like the in betweens.
I went into Dustborn thinking it would be a let down, largely based on your review. I was surprised to find it’s actually a pretty great game. I really love the style, characters, and story, and I didn’t really struggle to enjoy the combat. It’s not particularly deep combat, but its perfectly fine as a means to supplement up the rest of the game with some contextual action. You can also basically turn it off, for those only interested in the story. I love the comic style, and the way powers are tied to mental and emotional states while also metaphorically being powers that speak words to actions. I think the game was doing some very interesting thematic things and I don’t feel the combat elements really held that back enough to prevent me from enjoying it.
I thought Ruiner looked really slick, but ended up really disliking the gameplay. It was a major letdown.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a huge disappointment, especially after really enjoying the first two in the trilogy.
Wolfenstein: The Old Blood was another letdown, especially after the superb Wolfenstein: The New Order. It just got bogged down in repetition and boring fodder enemies like zombies. The New Colossus was also a letdown, but not quite as much at The Old Blood. It was just too bloated for a series that started nice and tight and streamlined.
Yooka-Laylee looked really promising and super cute, but it’s the only game that has ever actively given me motion sickness. It’s also a deeply uninteresting collectathon that is too preoccupied with duplicating the collectathons of the N64 era to actually have it’s own identity outside of nostalgia. And beyond that, it’s just an unfun slog.
Beyond Two Souls. Ugh. Enough said.
desert child is probably the biggest gap i’ve felt between expected quality and actual quality.
It has to be Halo 1 for me. I think my expectations for it was astronomically high since Dunkey and a few of my irl friends praised it so much. I played it, I liked it, but I wasn’t blown away like I thought I would be. That was back in 2019 though so it’s possible that a replay can change my mind.
2019 is a long time from the debut of that game, I could see how it might not hold the same impact. At launch it kind of blew my mind, lol.
Yeah, that definitely played a role as to why I wasn’t as impressed. But interestingly enough, games like Half Life 1 & 2 blew my mind and I played them just last year.
Half-Life is more interesting in many ways, especially thematically. Halo is a very good FPS, with great new ideas that shifted FPS in important directions. But they have different aims, and Half-Life’s aims are a bit loftier.
Halo’s big impact was bringing fps games to conosles, back then they were almost exclusively thought of as pc games. Most consoles just didnt have the power. You had golden eye and perfect dark, doom was on a few things, but it wasnt like it is now. It also has a control scheme that i think still holds up very well. It was a big landmark of the time.
This is a good point. It had a big impact on the development of better gamepad controls for FPS, which really did then balloon out into possibilities for other console shooters.
I will say though that Halo 2 (the remake) is one of my favourite games of all-time, and in my opinion was a significantly better game.
Fallout 3 instilled in me my skepticism of the open world formula. When the game leaves you to make your own fun, there’s a good chance you will spend more time making the fun than having it. I was about 20 hours into a playthrough when I realized I’d spent an hour constantly fast traveling back and forth selling hundreds of land mines with numerous bits of save scumming intermingling in it. I put it down, it was hard but it was the right choice.
This skepticism followed me and now I feel like I’m the only sane person in a world that considers Skyrim and Breath of the Wild to be masterpieces… I’ve played both and I am hyper aware of how often I spend having fun versus corner fucking my way up walls or trying to cheap kill enemies with physics. It’s got me feeling like
I didn’t like Fallout 3 open world either.
Why would I want to be in a empty world? There was almost anything interesting out there.
I haven’t played Elder Scrolls yet.
this is so painfully true and to-the-fact. lmao
I NEVER understood the excitement and hype for HALO. granted, I haven’t actually PLAYED it, (just a few levels in past the part where you get a vehicle and go down a bridge or something) but back in the day nobody did! They just played it for the multiplayer. (which I did play and just didnt like) Sorry but no console game had multiplayer as good as PC shooters. (This is back when SEGA croaked, despite IMO the Dreamcast actually being a really cool console with really brilliant technology and an overall smartly designed product)
I think it must have had to do with Microsoft marketing their technology, more than anything else. It was a way to showboat the highly touted XBOX, which was a console that had 3d acceleration using PC components. While it was impressive compared to other consoles, it was essentially an inferior, underpowered PC (at least compared to what I had at the time) It was such a a big deal that even the most popular line of graphics cards at the time the Voodoo 5500, had a screenshot of some render from HALO on the box 
which i always found hilarious (as at the time it was a XBOX Exclusive for quite a while)
Fallout 3 open world does have some issues. They might have patched them out since I spent the most time in it. A lot of the time you are aimlessly going through a literal wasteland with little in it. Or fighting and engaging enemies from weird distances. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Bugthesda’s design approaches.
Death Stranding core mechanics are cool for 6-8 hours. not 60-80 hours and then doubling-down on them as you make progress in the game. lol
(The first) Dishonored feels this way for me. I don’t like stealth games that penalyze you in ways to make you try to play it ‘their’ way. It’s great but it gets really old to do things the same way over and over again.
DOOM: Eternal is cool I have mixed feelings about its design, but appreciate the novelty all the same. However, I just cant force myself to finish the expansion because I just honestly, HATE HATE the way jumping works in the game. I have a friend who thinks i am crazy but to me this game is the worst jumping puzzle FPS ever made that i’ve played. Maybe human history. lol I think they literally included jumping puzzles in it just to be edgy, because the industry knows ‘dont do it’ and they wanted to break all the rules.
For myself personally, I think the Metro series is a good example of this. They look cool, they have atmosphere, the guns looks great, but they always feel like less-than-satisfying post-apocalyptic forays to me.
SOMA was this for me, it was the dev’s freaking best at first and then the story took a turn that I just thought was terrible
Ready or Not was/has been a real disappointment. I’ve done a few levels and while it scratches itches nd ticks the right boxes. Nothing is explained in the game, and its full of bugs and issues related to lighting and visibility that make it unnecessarily hard (and its hard enough)
This is going to be a weird one, but… Clickolding. I mean, I can’t say it was falsely advertised or anything, but after Hypnospace Outlaw and El Paso, Elsewhere I was expecting Xalavier Nelson to have a much harder-hitting and specific commentary on sex work incorporated into the game, and… it’s just not there. It doesn’t really have anything to say at all.
