Its vastly different than 1 by taking everything that waa good and tweaking it to be bad. No dash sorceries, cursed items changed and theres now some weird curse room, enemies are boring, unqiue art is now bland 3d, it is far more sluggish than the original, the persistent rewards lack any feeling of being rewarded. I can just go on and on. Not to mention the original had like 2 DLCs worth of free updates while the devs were still supporting it. All they had to do was rehash the dungeons and make it truly online. They could have released nearly the same game, with the same art, and if they just made it natively online co-op I would have bought it and blown the back out of it too. But its just lesser in every measurable way.

One reason the controls are bad is because the Metal Gear Solid games were built around the use of the DualShock controller. It's not really advertised as such but that controller has a lot of analog buttons. In CQC you press L3(?) and it puts a knife to the soldier's throat. Depending on how hard you press L3 determines how close you are to cutting their throat and how scared they get.

The function is still there but the analog input is not. It's not quite the same without the analog.

I've played with and without the analog inputs, and using a real DualShock 2. By default it's not L3, it's circle for cqc, and square for pressure sensitive controls for the gun.

The controls were even worse on ps2 because even though they are technically analog buttons, they have a very short travel distance which makes it too easy to accidentally do the wrong thing. I found the modern controls slightly more intuitive.

There was also a time I tried to play the ps2 version on pcsx2, but could only use a DualShock 4 then. Since that controller doesn't have analog face buttons, I remapped cqc to L2 and gunfire to R2 and found that control scheme worked surprizingly well.

But the basic controls are the least of those game's problems.

I'm with you on both.

For RDR2 in particular, I found it so irksome how on-rails the missions were while the rest of the game was so free form. If you're going to make me follow in the footsteps you planned exactly, don't tease me with freedom between your set piece sequences. Ride-shoot-ride is also not super interesting to me.

I've come to believe that the Rockstar formula just doesn't work for me after GTA4.

It does, but that's done using a combat system I can't get into, and if you lose, you're sent all the way back to the very start, which is like 3 genre shifts away from the furthest point reached.

I am with you. I really want to like the game, but it just is not fun. I gave it 15 hrs.

Add to your list just how tedious all the bosses and mini bosses are. All of them act with maximum efficiency on every turn. Causes so many battles with them to drag on.

Exactly, the trailer does a hell of a job of selling the game. It completely hides how you're supposed to avoid destruction. How the hell the devs didn't think of adding a free "fucking around" mode, or villain mode (which is the top mod for the game) is truly baffling

My experience was the opposite (hated the gameplay, loved the lore). I couldn't finish it because every fight was a lopsided slog and nonstop environmental hazards made exploring annoying as fuck.

Mods and cheats all day long.

Bags of Holding for Skyrim are great mods

Starfield. I tried it on a more recent update and it was just boring. There was no point to exploring because outposts were useless and space combat was trivial. Just an overall boring game

World of warcraft. I tried so many times to get back into it. Tried many TLPs, custom emus to want to like the game.

The bland-ing of the art and the sluggishness were the things that hit me most. The snappy action and well-matched visual art/hitboxes were key to my enjoyment of the first one. Also, really hate the voice acting. At no point playing the original did I think, 'man these generic filler text lines would be so much better if they were being unskippably forced into my ears as audio.'

It just doesn't make sense. Something happened. Because in 2002 this would easily have been shipped the next year with nearly the same things but "more". 4 player co-op and more maps\items. Thats it. What happened in the decision department? I know the game sat for a bit after the updates stopped and then changed hands but I cannot fathom how this came to be. Okay, rants over I think the last demon on the subject came out with me on that one.

MMO is a one and done genre. You never match the original high.

Gonna disagree with you on that one my friend. FPS and BR on the other hand. You played one you've played them all.

I had some fun playing slightly newer titles with an action replay to cut down on the grind and it really helped.

Any MMO, I'll pick it up and give it an honest try for a month or so. And I feel like I'm just grinding away for days for a couple hours of fun a week.

It's so damn boring, all of it.

Seems like an obvious answer. Changing hands. The original creator of a thing is usually obsessed with it. Someone hired by a publisher to milk an IP is usually just there to work. I'm sliding more and more toward just assuming any game that isn't basically 100% made before publishers get their mitts on it is going to suck.

But wouldnt be easier to basically releass the same game rather than make a new one? Thats what I dont understand unless they had no acces to 1's source code and only got rights to make 2. Even then it seems it would be harder ro make something new.

Red Dead Redemption 2. I played partway through, then ran into that quest where Arthur was supposed to meet one of his party members in Blackwater, but it just kept spawning bounty hunters and I gave up after dying like ten times and not finding this guy.

Ship of Harkinian is incredible, full on “however you want the controls to be” controls. It’s by far the best way to play OOT! I used a Dualsense with gyro and my right thumb stick is used to look around like a modern game.

I've played D&D and can't follow half the BG3 conversations either. Names of places and characters have no intrinsic meaning. I find it to be a major pain in the ass to manage my own character's abilities, let alone ~8 in total. Yes, there's auto/suggested builds so you don't have to choose everything, but it's still difficult to remember how to utilize everyone. Plus, all that freedom of choice means freedom to pigeon hole yourself into some situation - unintended consequences, missed opportunities, that sort of thing. Yes, that's great for roleplay, depth of game, replayability, and all that, but I just don't have the time to get into that anymore.

Still playing tho. Took me like 20 hours to get into the swing of things. That's also about how long it took me to get comfortable with Elite Dangerous, actually. But the 1200hrs in THAT game certainly paints a different picture about enjoyment

Yeah it's a 45-minute unbreakable opening tutorial sequence that is totally unskippable and totally unnecessary.

Oh Lord I hated everything about that game, but I don't want to go off LOL

Elden Ring. Love DS2 and 3 but I HATE the open world aspect. Makes it feel pointless and then sucks to find out my exploring took me somewhere I can’t deal with due to my level.

Same! I played it for a while got a nonlethal hacker attack pattern down pretty well, i WAS enjoying the story but its a game that makes you feel like you SHOULD be doing the busy work. Then i just stopped because i didn't want to.

Also something about the absurdity of just sprinting through town smaking strangers to help the obvisouly corrupt cops felt like a tonally stupid thing to do.

Many of the games I could make have already been mentioned (e.g. cyberpunk, rdr2, outer wilds etc), however I have another one The Alters. I thought I would really enjoy this and friends recommended it to me, but I just couldn't stick with it. I have like 10 hours in it and it just feels tedious. Kinda sad because I like the overall idea, it just doesn't click for me

This indie game called "selaco",I kinda didn't like the level design (especially the pass code parts)
Or a more main stream game:
"Lego movie 2: the video game", I was young when I bought this and it was a confusing video game. (Don't remember much)

Played that for a short time, then lost track of it. Did love the intro.

Duke Nukem Forever.
As a teen Duke Nukem 3D was one of my most loved gaming experiences. Awesome game, came with easy to use level editor (Never got the original doom level editors to work back then). Played many many hours, made my own levels. Just plain loved the game.

Then the wait for Duke4Ever started and I waited, and waited and waited and (continue for 20 years so) and finaly got to play it.

It wasn't bad really, it just wasn't as fun as Duke3D was in my teens. It still had the same kind of humor, but never really hit any high notes. Weapons were limited, instead of having a weapon behind each number on the keyboard, now it was pick one up and drop one off.

Didn't even try to see how the level editing was.

Maybe I'll pick it up again if it's a euro on Steam or GOG, as Duke3D still is loved childhood memory.

There was the "spiritual successor" of L4D announced. Back 4 Blood looked like a very nice and fun L4D clone with some new mechanics thrown in. I have applied for a Beta to try it out and got lucky!

Game was boring AF. Play on medium difficulty and you can't do it without real players who actually have to be decent shooters including you. Basically, enemies hit you harder and you hit them less. Same as Left 4 Dead, right? Well... In Left 4 dead you'd just shoot special infected til they drop dead. Here, some infected are impeccable unless you shoot weak spots that are so tiny you might aswell just waste all your ammo on plain shooting. And a typical non-boss special infected on medium diffciulty is like tank on expert in L4D. PvP is locked in a small area so no actual campaign pvp like in L4D.

Also, afaik, card mechanics was broken in so many ways that they only kept nerfing it from the release til they closed servers.

That wasn’t Raiden… and that wasn’t MGS4…

I actually had a fantastic time with ESO in the early game, because everything was new and fun and magical.

1k+ hours in I started feeling like that.

Oh, then which MGS opened with ??? (Snake? Snaaake? Snaaaaaaake!?) in an open hospital gown?

Til that there is a second one now.
Loved the first one, especially before they removed tiers, kinda stopped playing about when they did that

I don't think you are supposed to go to Blackwater with Arthur. That's an absolute death sentence.

• CD Projekt RED's Cyberpunk 2077:
  the trailer showed V riding a crowded monorail train. I bought the game in promotion with Google Stadia. There was no monorail in the game. Or rather, you could look at it, and you could find some stations, but they were teleport points;
• Obsidian Entertainment's The Outer Worlds:
  it was marketed as a role-play game, but your possible choices were either bad or good, with no in-between, and they did not influence your story at all. It's just a shooter game, the SciFi setting is secondary and forgettable;
• Blackbird Interactive's Homeworld 3:
  too far from what I loved in Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm. For some reason the developers believed they had to introduce physical people with mental issues in a game about faceless ships blowing up each other. Nevertheless, the story is bland. I would like to pretend that this game did not ever exist.

A game that I've been waiting years to play for years is Mobius Digital's Outer Wilds.
I have only heard praise about it. I can't find the courage to finally play it and end up disappointed.

Yeah, Blackwater is inaccessible for Arthur, you never go there in the game. I don't know what quest they are talking about.

If you do a 100% run, it's probably a bit more than half. If you just bum rush the story, the Mako stuff might be around 30%? But you can't say it's copied and pasted, all the story worlds are individual. I think there were 3 of them you had to do, then there was the one with the beaches, and then after that the jungle planet, so, five? But only the lava planet had significant Mako parts. The rest were a mix of on-foot, Mako, shooting, and conversations.

The real magic with ME1 was the stuff that carried over to 2 and 3. ME2 was better in every way.

About Mass Effect 1? The original had issues that make it unplayable (past a certain point) to me, but the Legendary Edition (remaster/remake that ports back fixes and balancing from the latter two titles) makes it fully enjoyable and now I love it.

So the game was good, but the software was holding it back. New software (the remake) has made it better.

Starfield only reinforced my aversion to pre-ordering.

I had about $100 set aside to pre-order the deluxe edition of Starfield when orders went available, but around that same time, a similarly priced, new limited-time premium cosmetic pack was announced for Warframe, and they did one of those things where "and it's out RIGHT NOW!" (we typically know at least a couple months in advance before something drops), so I, without hesitation, redirected those funds to the Warframe item and did not order Starfield.

Still one of the best decisions I've made. Starfield, even had it delivered on all its promises, was just not the game I was looking for. I pledged for a Star Citizen ship two months later.

There are game changing items combinations. But it depends also on your traits.

For example, one run, I had a cleric that shared his regeneration with other cats, and an item that gave me +3 regen if I had at least 1 armor point.

So I equipped an armor item and every turn, my cats would heal 4 hp, making them extremely tanky and making the run trivial.

But it's hard to get a combo going.

Uptick for the awesome nickname.

Outer Wilds (not Worlds) is incredible, I doubt you'll regret playing it.

Well, you might. Some people do bounce off; usually due to not knowing where to go next, or what to do next. But if you're the kind of person who doesn't want your hand holding and are okay to persevere a little, you'll probably have a good time.

No other game for me has ever matched the feeling of exploration and discovery, and that is only possible because the game gives you a long leash.

Funny! Outer Wilds was exactly the OP question for me.

Utterly frustrating realistic space controls, unguided exploration that leads to reentering the same planet for the 8th time and still not finding anything new, annoyingly specific timing-based puzzles…

I’ve had games in my wishlist now that I see “It’s like Outer Wilds!” and I start to think twice about them.

minor correction, there WAS a second one. They couldn't recover after messing up the launch of Robocraft 2, and eventually the studio itself shut down.

I had a similar experience with OOT, never owned an N64 but finally played it 2 years ago on PC. IMO the gameplay just isn't very good by today's standards, yet it was very innovative for its time.
Some of my friends who played it in the 90s when they were young still love that game.

Hogwarts. And all the horizon games.

anyone who played Hogwarts Legacy after the huge outcry about boycotting it for trans solidarity deserves to be disappointed

Different experience for everyone I suppose :)

I found the space controls and conservation of momentum to be such a fun aspect. I loved getting consistently good at it, and feeling like a competent rocket pilot when I nailed fancy manoeuvres.

Silksong on the other hand, I had to give up because it was way too hard for me!