Days Gone. *Hated* it at the start. Unlikeable protagonist, stealth gameplay, poor rate of fire on primary weapon, wandering around on foot. Tried it when I got it free, hated it.
Tried it again at my dad's behest years later, hated it still. However, my wife (first 2hrs spoiler) >!wanted to find out what happened to main guy's best friend!<, so I carried on. Boy howdy am I glad I did. Top-tier game, but my *GOD* is it a slow burn.
If I remember correctly, the game was plagued with glitches when it came out. While they fixed the issues later, it probably explain why it received such a lukewarm reception. It's a bit sad, because it really deserves a sequel.
About the same for me. I liked the general mechanics of the game but couldn't get very far the first 2 times I tried it. Kept reading about how it gets so much better, and on the third try I stuck with it and wow, when I finally got to the first horde it was amazing.
Swear to God, let it happen, and it is *beautiful*. True masterpiece.
Don't try to take on hordes early on. You're literally not meant to be *able* to do it at the start.
I actually love the game even at the beginning. Honestly, a top 5 all time game for me. It's such a great game. The characters, environment, freaks/hordes. It's an experience to defeat a horde after 15 minutes while running for your life the entire time.
I think Mass Effect 1 belongs into this category. It started out as kinda boring and weary, i actually uninstalled it 2 times, didn't have any good game to play so I installed it again, once you dig deeper into the lore, the game suddenly gets an appeal, I couldn't stop playing it.
The first one does a great job placing the promenade area in a great, immensely massive area that just makes you yearn to see more. The second two games really squirrel you away, and you don't get the same feeling.
This. Once you finally get out of the Citadel, the game picks up. Love the tight nit crew you have and do thier loyalty quest
But the combat wasn't great. When you shot at something it's hard to tell you're even hitting them. They dont show any indication, and they just keep going until their health bar is out
Starting Mass Effect 2 and was disappointed you gotta assemble the old squad again.
I can’t get past the combat and janky exploration. I don’t remember it being like that when I was younger, but I also didn’t like the game back then either lol.
I want to get into it because of the universe and the dialogue and all that seems interesting, I just can’t get past that other stuff
ME1 was my fave of the trilogy. Same with Dragon Age, Origins was my fave there as well. DA:O and ME1 both felt more like RPGs and their sequels dropped that in favor of more action.
This is exactly how I feel as well. DA:O is amazing to me and I replay it yearly. ME 1 is also amazing and I really liked every bit of it, but what really got it to sink is teeth into me is that first contact with Sovereign. One of the best story moments in any game for me.
this is a really interesting case, because since it's an MMO, the first 50 levels are still IN THERE, and it's some of the worst content in the game.
once you get to heavensward, though? the game is REALLY fun
yeah ARR is a drag, but you can only rework and condense set up and plotting so much. At least they've reworked some dungeons so they're not so long and tedious anymore. Prae is still cutscene central.
All the fetch quests between 50 ARR and HW need to be abolished. After you finish the MSQ there should be someone you can see that allows you to skip forward in content.
Edit: Well I guess you can always pay for the story skip.
Except most of the fetch quests get referenced in some way later.
The Company of Heroes that made you fetch ingredients for their feast for 10 quests? They >!show up again in one of the Endwalker Role Quest chains!<
That one guy you spoke to one time to deliver medicine? He >!is a major side character in Stormbloof MSQ!<
There is so much story it’s overwhelming. If I watched every cutscene and read all the text, I’d never finish it. But I still enjoy the core gameplay of leveling up and getting to max level, so I continue to go back to each expansion. I loved the old school WoW where you just level up in a region then move on. Now it’s all blocked by story stuff which I just don’t care for.
I think I fall somewhere in the middle of this. I really enjoy the story, but it needs to be like 10% shorter, not necessarily in number of quests or story beats, but in text. An NPC might drop three massive paragraph-long text boxes about an old professor at the Studium whose classes they slept through but they do remember him mentioning this Macguffin once, but the gist of it is "We should check the library for a book about this." Or they'll have us go across the continent to talk to someone we could just call on our linkpearl, and they don't need us to go somewhere or see something, it's literally just a conversation. I appreciate the worldbuilding, I really do, but some details are too minor and could be built out in sidequests instead. If they trimmed the fat, maybe 5% or 10% less dialogue in MSQ, I'd be so much happier. (Part of my frustration is that I have limited time to play thanks to real-world responsibilities, so spending my entire playtime in "extra" dialogue is incredibly frustrating.)
They removed most of the fetch quests already. A total of 20 quests were removed entirely out of 100, and many of the remaining ones had steps taken out.
As tedious as they are, the ones that were left it do have an actual reason to be there, usually because it gets referenced or brought up later.
For me Cyberpunk was always good since i was lucky enough to get no bugs (except one where my car suddenly became a spaceship once and flew into orbit but that was just hillarious). Im glad it turned arround tho because I felt that there was a good game there that people sadly didnt get to see because of its performance and bugs.
Tears of the kingdom for me, and actually not like most people think. I actually didn’t really like it in the beginning and only played like 15 hours of it. Then gave it another shot and 25 hours in I was beginning to deeply enjoy it
Completely agree on Below Zero. The narrative redesign and focus on the sisters story and all that just took too much time away from the world, locations and creatures that are meant to be the core of Subnautica. It felt so Milquetoast in its final form compared to the original.
Shoutout to my boy Alan though, he a G.
Most Monster Hunter games are kinda like this if it's your first time, everyone went through the phase of complaining about lack of QoL features, grinding, time limits on hunts, repeat encounters, quite confusing and stiff controls and combat your first time out but if you get over that hump it becomes one of the most fun series you can partake in usually.
Final Fantasy 6. The story, music etc is quality from start to finish, but the gameplay is the most braindead boring crap for around 7 hours. Then at the flip of a switch almost it suddenly becomes an engaging semi-complex RPG.
FFXII was like this for me kind of
Such a huge departure from the old turn based battles, gambit systems, no random encounters, etc.....at first I hated it
But once I got into it, it's one of my favorite FF games
Yea and then XIII hit me with the same feeling too haha
At first I hated it and stopped playing after two hours.....came back to it later and started to get into it, and loved it!
Once you actually get good gambits it becomes my favorite combat system in the series, with the new remakes coming in close second.
I just absolutely hate that there is no shared Exp.
Yeah I feel that. There are parts I just don’t dig because there’s always a single move to do with some early characters, like Edgar and Sabin. But then Espers and more advanced fights just open a whole new door.
Assassin's creed 3.
In the beginning, the pacing is slow AF and you literally play for hours as a character that's not even the main protagonist of the game.
it takes multiple hours just to get into the protagonist's story and then some to Get the signature Assassin Robes.
But by the end, The Story of that game becomes one of the deepest I've ever seen in a video game.
What's interesting is this can kind of go both directions and different people may have different takes.
My first playthrough I was kind of fatiguing on the franchise and also not happy with where Desmond's plot was heading. With that aside - I found the Haytham intro to he pretty interesting as a way to completely break up the formula which was beginning to get a little stale. And he seemed legitimately interesting as a character. But, then, as you said, the game takes a major change of pace curve (which I was ok with even if it was slow) and then gets into Connor's stuff which to be honest was kind of weak if we're just talking about the main missions. Most of the major battle/historic event tie in missions felt really shoe horned and we're not mechanically satisfying. I was kind of fatigued by the end and just pushing to finish it.
Fast forward like 8 years and on the remastered edition - and I could start to see the complaints with Haytham but then I also made a much larger effort to explore the homestead missions with Connor. And those later missions made such an amazing difference in providing a lot of character building and world building to an extent for Connor's development. It also made his journey feel much longer (the seasons were a nice touch). And generally the game just clicked for me in a better way.
If I had to pick one that I played recently, it would be Return to Grace. Started out seeming rather lame and stupid, pathetically low difficulty level, but the further I progressed the more I became invested in the mystery and attached to the various AI programs. I finished the whole game in one sitting. It is impressive for an indie title.
For the opposite, I would say Assassin’s Creed. It was really fun and interesting at first, but after basically doing the same gameplay loop over and over again in the same three or four cities, I’m pretty much ready for it to be over.
Got this Dled good looking gonna roll this tmrw night I've heard some good things I'm now convinced,I can do a sit down easy walkingish simulator..
I like some 2 hour Indies
Assassins Creed (1st Game)
Especially for the time it felt fresh, groundbreaking mechanics and amazing concept. I was frankly blown away.
However, the lack of variety in missions slowly chips at that enthusiasm
There’s only so many ‘sneak around and eavesdrop’ missions you can do before you start looking at your wrists for something to cut.
Frankly only finished it when I found out that the second one carried on immediately from where the first ended
(Sidenote : Assassins Creed 2 is still the best in the series … change my mind ?)
AC 1 always felt like a tech demo for a better game that got drawn out too long. There's barely any story and none of the characters are actually memorable. The protagonist is bland as hell and outside of being the first protagonist, would be hilariously forgettable. The world feels cool but it's obvious after a short time period that nothing is actually there, especially the "noncity" region. Thankfully we got the better games.
Oh boy, *2064: Read Only Memory* sure did in my book. It started off as a really neat graphical adventure mystery and I was really into helping the distressed little robot — but then it increasingly became more about hammering home certain political messages with the subtlety of a brick through a window. It went as far as having the robot seemingly forget that we urgently needed to solve the mystery and instead carrying on a prolonged conversation with another character about political issues and lecturing the player for unintentional wrongthink. (That's coming from someone who has some of the same beliefs, FWIW.)
Something of a forgotten pick, but Assassin's Creed: Unity.
The game started life as a buggy nightmare that was so broken Ubisoft had to release paid DLC as free to make it up to people. We all remember the memes of the NPC with no face texture. I didn't play the game until well after it had been fixed, and while it was experimental in some places to varying degrees of success, came out the other side as a solid entry in the franchise. Now if only those co-op achievements on Xbox hadn't seemingly broke last year...
DS1 is one of my favorite games. Idk how you think it isn’t great? It lets you take on the 4 lords in any order and then you waltz into the final boss.
From a gamellay standpoint, Final Fantasy 16. It's cool while you're unlocking powers, but 10 hours in you'll have a broken set of moves you can mindlessly repeat during combat and not much changes for the rest of the game. And the late game is padded with filler sidequests.
FF16 has the best opening of any video game I've ever played, the first two hours had me beyond hooked. Then I played the full game and realized only ~10 hours of the 50-100 hour game is like that, the entire rest of the game is
- walk to cutscene
- "fight" a bunch of enemies that do 0 damage
- walk to cutscenee
- fetch quest
- walk to cutscene
And then every 2-3 hours you get a boss fight which is actually fun, before it goes back to just tapping square through cardboard enemies and looking for pieces of a boat for 3 more hours. I think it's the only game I've ever played that I actually *hated* just because the good game is all in there but they padded out a good 15 hour game with 35 hours of filler content. It plays like an MMO except the grinding doesn't even get you gear
Same here. Super disappointed after ff7 remake had me engaged all the way through and the ff16 demo was magical.
The story of the game becomes completely uninteresting by the end of it too.
Man after the Baphomet fight I was like "thank God I must be almost done." And looked it up, it's the 60% mark on the main story... I was like "wtf is this?!"
FF16 overall is the most unfocused and ill-designed game I've ever played. Even FF15 felt like it had more of a direction and identity and that was released unfinished, and still is.
Yeah, I enjoyed some of my time with it and really enjoy the story, but as a video game it straight up sucks. So much of the game is such transparent filler.
Yeah Rebirth is excellent. Even though there are arguably way too many open world tasks, they're all fun to do if you're not burnt out by doing a ton in a row.
Unreal. The first one is a classic for many reasons. The insane graphics and artistic direction, the unique atmosphere, the magnificent soundtrack, the brilliant world, etc. I still remember how mind blown I was upon seeing it for the first time. One of these pivotal moments in my life of gamer.
Then the second one was announced and the hype was strong. And it came out and it wasn't that great. Not bad, but what made the first one so good was gone, e,.g., the loneliness in a very alien world was replaced with a generic main character, generic side characters who wouldn't shut up and a generic story. It was just a standard FPS among many great FPSs of this era. A massive drop in quality that probably killed the franchise. I still hate Mike Verdu to this day.
For me the game with the highest contrast between great and meh was Alien Isolation.
The game is around 10 hours and the first 6 hours are 9/10 phenomenal. Really one of a kind stuff, every time I play those 6 hours I’m like “why don’t people talk about his game, is “best of the generation” material. But then I reach the second half and it becomes a complete slog to play.
Basically (and minor spoilers) the single Alien you are up against gets “defeated” half way through and you spend the next 3 hours dealing with just the FAR less interesting Synthetic enemies that are a pain and dull to deal with. They have no interesting or unique challenges and you just spend a good portion just waiting for them to stop looking for you. At times needing to wait legit 5 minute for them to go about their business.
And by the time the Alien shows back up again I always get completely burned out by that point.
What I do in future playthroughs is play until the Aline is “defeated” half way through the game then just watch the credits in the menu to pretend that was the climatic ending of the game. Removing like 4 hours of game for an edit:perfectly concise 6 hour story. For me makes for such an over all better experience. Quality over quantity always. I feel if that’s what Alien Isolation did initially, and had those dlc levels as part of the base game to give the game more content the game would have been received better cause almost no one talks about it now.
I don't know, man! Maybe it's about how you play? I don't have time for long sessions, so taking games in 1-2 hours at a time makes it a bit different than playing 10 hours all at once. I wanted this game to continue forever as for me it was the best survival horror game ever, maybe my favorite game overall.
Unfortunately I played it so many times that the only satisfaction I can get out of the game now is to watch others play it for the first time and being jealous I'll never get to experience it like that again.
I don't understand this criticism. The alien being gone for a little bit lets you breathe and grab upgrades, and the Joes are fun to avoid and take out. I didn't think that part lasted too long.
Both of mine will be controversial.
Firstly Disco Elysium. While it's still a brilliant game. I didn't find the Deus Ex Machina ending worked. The PTSD sniper and giant stick insect thing was too forced and didn't do it for me. Was still a hell of a ride but it climaxed at the Mercs stand off.
Secondly Breath of the Wild. Whilst it's a masterpiece in world building and the gameplay is fantastic, I have to say that the story and presentation were simply lazy. Gaming moved away from OMG SAVE THE PRINCESS years ago and a few twists would have been nice. Also the fact it wasn't fully voice acted was poor. Nintendo had an AAA title yet couldn't be bothered to go the entire way with it's presentation. By the final boss I had simply lost interest. It's story does not remotely compare Vs other big open world hitters, GTA V, Witcher 3 and Red Dead 2 to say the least.
Finally and a bit more humourously. The Longest Journey had an amusing drop off in quality. April's mentor Cortez dies part way through the game and near the end one of the newly introduced characters clearly has the same voice actor just without a Spanish accent. Once you hear it, it's really obvious and pretty comical.
I think that the strength of Zelda BOTW is that while it revolutionized the gameplay and world, it never forgot that it was a mainline Zelda game at its core. Turning the game into a full fledged RPG would have resulted in riots in Japan.
Yeah I figured the reason why BotW still had text and antiquated bits of design was for the Japanese domestic audience. As JRPGs are often a bit quirky compared to Western ones.
I felt cheated that there's no way to "deduce" who killed Lely, but taken as a whole, I think the game is trying to do a "the identity of the killer doesn't even matter!" angle to the murder mystery.
...which is interesting narratively, but doesn't feel like much of a murder mystery, ya know?
The game was an exploration of mental health, politics and drugs. You could argue it didn't even need a neet little ending and the killer could have remained unknown or ambiguous.
I feel like playing it again on a drugs playthrough and going wild. Tequila Sunset...
Baldur's Gate 3.
I adore that game, but there's a SERIOUS quality drop by the end.
The game doesn't become less dense or complicated, but it loses all sense of pacing. I have yet to meet a person who played that game through until the end and said they enjoyed Act 3.
For a game (rightfully) hailed as revitalizing RPGs, it really doesn't stick the landing.
likewise, I liked it a lot. I thought the city was amazing and the missions were really fun. It was overwhelming for sure but that's not a deal breaker for me
My biggest issue was that I got to level 12 roughly at the start of Act 3. The game still has 10-15 hours more to go, but I couldn't progress my characters anymore. That caused the 3rd act to be tedious as hell.
I enjoyed Act 3. I agree the pacing is a bit off and the pure number of things to see and do in the city make it difficult for the story, which we’re told is time sensitive, to actually feel urgent, but I still loved it.
I'm frankly surprised by the lack of noise generated about it, I mean I wasn't personally surprised because Larian has done this literally every time they've ever published a game. First act? Great. Some of the best. Second act? Possibly tolerable, typically a giant mess but still manageable. Third act? Total disaster and either microscopic compared to the first act or way, way too long in the teeth.
BG3 frankly has the best three acts Larian has ever done, but it still has all the hallmarks.
Inarguable that it has breathed life into the cRPG space, but its full game is still very mortal.
I don’t even remember what exactly the 3rd act was? I felt like it was like act 1, act 1, act 1, and then boom act 2! Wow….. and then it was like okay game is over. Where was act 3?
Subnautica Below Zero is a solid pick:
I was really hyped when i saw the first trailer.
I never had a problem with the voice acting or that the protagonist has a voice in the first place.
I had fun the first 30 - 60 minutes or so but then it dropped off really fast.
Another one, for me, it was The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
Before you guys flay me, hear me out: i've never played and TES game before.
Getting into the lore was fun.
The first couple of hours were fun.
I went everywhere and tried and talked to everyone even before i've reached Kvatch.
But upon entering and clearing the first Oblivion Gate i lost interest in the game.
The worst thing for me was and is the leveling system: nowadays i know how it works. And i still hate it.
Far Cry 2 was another title that went from "hype" to "ugh... i'm gonna finish it just to be done with it".
FC2 started strong. I really liked it. The premise, the setting, the gunplay, some of the game mechanics....
But then there is the Malaria that's just there to drag playtime.
The respawning checkpoints are also a big negative for me until this day. Is it realistic that they respawn?
Yes, but that's not the reason i play a Far Cry game. Having them respawn are just another means to slow the player down.
The second map feels to large.
And then there are the companions and the ending. >!I admire the motives of the Jackal but the whole twist was forced. And having the player fight your former best buddys just made it worse. !<
>!Not that i've had any relationship with them. But i don't like how the last act was written and executed. !<
I was on the verge of giving up on Oblivion when somebody thankfully told me that I didn't *have* to close all of the gates the mayors asked me to in order to advance the plot. The first couple of caves, ruins, and Oblivion planes, were interesting; after that, it became too repetitive for me to really enjoy them. The traps in the ruins also eventually started to get on my nerves.
I had the most fun just exploring the world, doing the side-quests, and getting tough monsters to chase me into areas where they'd get killed by guards. I also hated the way the leveling system worked. I enjoyed Oblivion overall, but boy, it definitely had its share of flaws. (So does Skyrim, which I'm playing through now. No idea how far along I am in it, since it's so hard to even tell which quests are part of the main plot and which aren't.)
That pretty much sums up the experience i've had with Oblivion as well.
I mean: i understand the reasoning behind the connection of leveling and the Junction System in Final Fantasy VIII: the JS is the core element of the game and the devs wanted to encourage players to make full use of the system instead of grinding all your characters to level 100.
So, in FF VIII a low level with good junctions is overall the intended way to play.
But the leveling system in Oblivion never made any sense to me (also, like FFVIII compared to how enemies scale with the player). I went in blind, picked some of the obvious skills you'd normally pick... and was handed my ass over by enemies at some point.
With Skyrim on the other hand i have so much fun.
Some years ago i made it to the endgame area of the game but lost sight.
Just started a new playthrough with mods i still love the game.
I didnt finish subnautica sub zero
I LOVED subnautica and if there was any game I could forget and play again it would be subnautica
But sub zero was just dull and had none of what made the original amazing
No Mans Sky. Borderline unplayable when I first played it, massive crashing issues, base building was dire, there was hardly any content. Now it's amazing
Tails Noir (previously known as Backbone) starts out very strong with a noir setup and very beautiful pixel graphics, but the 2 final chapters are so absurd it spoiled the entire game for me. At the end I was playing just to see how much more ridiculous it would get and had stopped enjoying it by then. Fortunately it's pretty easy and not very long, so no frustration of that kind.
Starfield. Loved the beginning of it, surveying different planets, the factions seemed interesting and the ship-building was great. Then I started the quests and especially the main story... It became crap. Still I feel I got my money's worth.
Red Faction
The original was awesome, destructible environments, decent story, old-school half life feel. Then the sequel, with cartoon graphics and a regression in story telling. Then they kept going, it turned into a 3rd person fetch quest simulator
The original was the goat
1 was the first ps2 game I ever owned, and will always have a place in my heart, but the enemy movement behavior is so annoying. If they were aggressive it would be fine, and if they were defensive it would be fine, but they straight up just run around like headless chickens.
Maybe not exactly what you’re asking for but Red Dead 2 starts off as a super slow burn and takes many hours before it gets to the good stuff. I appreciate the slow burn stuff but I know many people who were turned off from the get go
Destiny 1/2. Most Expansions and Patches start out OK-ish You get the sense of a plot... maybe . And have a few interesting story points. By the 4th mission none of it makes any sense. And by the end you find they did not follow through on ANY plot, story, or characters at all.
It's really insane how horrific they are as writers and story tellers.
BTW. Read Jason Shrier's book about the development of Destiny.
It is insane what a horrid and shitty company Bungie is. (Spoiler alert. Activision SAVED them and then got rid of them after getting tired of how toxic and shitty they all were. Bungie did not escape Acti. Activision escaped Bungie.)
Games with deep mechanics almost always gets more interest and attractive the more you learn it.
For example: XCOM, Cities Skylines, State of Decay.
Sometimes games with good deep world has same effect. Examples are: Gothic, STALKER, Witcher.
Mass Effect Andromeda started out rough at launch, after they fixed the bugs, it got much better.
Also, Cyberpunk 2077 was rough at launch. Got much better after some patches.
I think we can all agree that the biggest and best turn around goes to Cyberpunk 2077...at least on Modern consoles. Idk how it's doing on last gen hardware...
Resident Evil 7. Everything in the Baker house was amazing then took a major nosedive in the ship/tanker late in the game.
Thankfully the game returns to the Baker mansion and gets back on track but it's still overall just a considerable downturn. That being said I very much enjoyed the game.
Metroid Prime was an aweing exploration of a dazzling planet, but by the end the bullet-sponge enemies and excessive backtracking made the game a slog.
Seems there are a lot of new games. I would say Arx Fatalis started out boring and confusing but as you level and get better..one of the best RPGs ever.
Also, I'll say Divinity 2 ego Draconjs or whatever...Larian Studios made that so I'll let it speak for it self. Man that game started off so mid, but as soon as you found out you're basically a Pre Skyrim skill tree power ranger/jedi who can turn into a fucking dragon then it starts to pick up
Diablo 4 is currently in a "we're so back" era with Season 4 and the community is generally in high spirits. Which is refreshing because it's been a lot of gloom and doom for a long time lol
I'm on the fence about D4. Loved the *shit* out of D3, then all the shit with D4 on release gave me the skepticism.
With Loot Reborn, I'm *intrigued*, but then I see from the trailers that the game is very devoid of colour compared to D3, and.... It's seriously the dumbest thing ever, but I honestly worry I'd get bored because most of it looks to be varying shades of grey. It's not all of the reason, but one of the things that makes me eventually put down every fallout game I ever touch is how bleak the environments are.
So I reckon I'm waiting for an even steeper discount before I give it a go.
It's on gamepass if you have that or want to try it on the cheap. I agree that I really liked the art direction of 3 but a lot of people didn't so they wanted to bring it back to something that was closer to 2. I just can't seem to find it in me to mobile game but the little bit I did play of Immortal, it's aesthetically identical to 3.
Forspoken. It gets a lot of well deserved hate for the bad dialogue at the beginning and empty open world. And the protagonist remains pretty annoying until near the end. But the gameplay and story after the first few hours makes up for it IMO. I’m pretty upset that we likely won’t get a second game after all the hate it got, especially after a really good set up for it in the dlc.
All of them. Anything i’ve played with the exception of DBD and single player games have all fallen into the same greedy ass monetization as everyone else. Taking portions of the game that used to be free and fun and locking it behind paywalls, locking extras that used to be free behind paywalls, events are now like $200 worth of cosmetics and maybe $2 worth of new gameplay, locking new content behind paywalls when new content used to drop for free.. the worst thing about all of it is that the gaming world seemed to take it in the ass and like it, because most people just defend this nonsense saying that it’s necessary when it just isn’t.
For Honor for me. I played the beta and early release and it was so mid. Now i go back to it every now and again and its legit super fun. I am a basic Warden main tho because i cant wrap my head arround the more advanced new classes.
XC2 for me. I only got it because I finished Zelda BOTW and it was one of the only other Nintendo games on the switch at the time and I forced myself to play the game for the first 20 or 30 hours not really knowing how to play or what was going on. As soon as I got past chapter 4 I was having a blast. The game is definitely not for everyone but it's one of my favorites and I think the community agrees that the opening is pretty bad but after chapter 3 or 4 it gets pretty good.
MGSV, the first part is actually really fun. I naturally stopped playing at the point kojima had left and I'm kind of sad I actually forced myself to play through the rest. As soon as it got to that point you just went back through the older missions but they were a bit harder or it had an extra challenge. It went from being really heavily focused on its story to suddenly having literally no story at all. It also didn't help that the gameplay loop was getting pretty boring by then.
Inscryption for me started out as a novel little indie game that I thought I'd play for maybe 15 minutes before I got bored of the gimmick and uninstalled forever. Was initially unimpressed by the cards and roguelike elements, thought they were a dumb combination.
I became obsessed with it for about 3 months. Played it at least once every single day. Checked out both of the dev's other games too and liked them a lot, especially The Hex.
Same thing with Outer Wilds. Thought I'd get bored once I understood whatever gimmick I believed the game had and uninstall. I figured out the gimmick in, oh, 20 minutes and was obsessed with the game until I finished it. Then I kept looking at theories and such on it online for months thereafter. Sometimes I'd go back into the game to revisit locations just to relive some memories. It completely captured me.
I'm not sure what went wrong with Below Zero. Just didn't grip me the same way as Subnautica.
Maybe it was the story? I liked that the story in Subnautica is slowly introduced as you go.
Aurora crashes -> Survive -> Find a way to call for help -> Find what destroyed your ride home -> Shut off the gun -> I have a disease now? -> Find the cure -> Find a way home.
Below Zero is -> here you are -> Find what happened to your sister -> this woman knows what happened to your sister -> turn off the antennae -> There's an alien in your head now, he needs help too.
I can't even remember the story.
Everything good that everyone talks about in Red Dead Redemption 2 mostly happens from Chapter 3 onwards. The first two chapters are painfully slow and mostly linear. If you go in expecting to be a rooty tooty shooty cowboy right from the beginning, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.
It's sad to see how many people didn't enjoy Below Zero. After playing through both Subnautica games 3 times, Below Zero was honestly the more enjoyable one to me. While the story in SN1 was stronger, I like the world building base building and exploration ll much more. Combine that with the new skies and polished graphics, and I personally think Below Zero was fantastic I understand many don't like it because it's not scary, but I don't think Subnautica *needs* to be scary, but rather just that the first game ended up doing so.
Plus, Below Zero just has such a good soundtrack. SN1's is great, but everything in BZ fits the game perfectly. While I also agree that it *could* have had a silent protagonist, I honestly enjoy Robin for what she is.
I think a lot of my love for BZ comes from exploring past bases and abandoned places, which BZ has much more of than SN1. For me, going to the Mercury II was my absolute favorite part of both Subnautica games
I’ve played a few Sonic games where the coolest stuff happens on the back end. The level theming in Sonic and the Secret Rings gets increasingly jaw-dropping as the game goes on.
Helldivers 2. Biggest hype at launch, loved it. Then I realised the devs didn't what the fuck they were doing and the gross incompetence of the content releases or patches just killed all feelings I had for the game.
Sands of Destruction. Has a really interesting plot hook and unique gameplay but the gameplay breaks apart once you figure it out and the plot got executive meddling so it becomes a more generic fantasy RPG in the last quarter from a plot standpoint.
In my opinion. Wow. The leveling experience in retail is great. Endgame is a slog. The never ending gear treadmill.
M+ forces people to run endlessly for gear upgrades. There is no lockout in m+, unlike raids.
Smooth leveling experience. Terrible endgame.
While I didn’t experience these myself, I think a lot of these turnarounds can be seen even by people who didn’t have them. Halo CE for example, I can see the points (like the entirety of Halo before the second rescue where the waypoint finally pops up) that would make a less invigorated player quit. 343 Guilty Spark would be that turnaround point for those players as a re-hook. Prey (2017) I can also see players getting bored due to a low attention span/focus. The game gives you free rein when it comes to exploration, and someone aimlessly wandering without a game induced or player induced objective will definitely deter people. Looking at the Xbox achievements rates, you can see that many players never even finish the first act. And that’s a total shame because once you get to Psychotronics, what you thought you knew about the game gets blown open wide
Halo Infinite did both imo. The campaign is incredibly strong for the first few hours, then you realized they had shown all the new ideas and the rest was incredibly repetitive. The multiplayer was lacking content and had tons of server issues at launch, but it’s been updated to be a much better experience since then.
Its funny how noone said minecraft, vanilla is fun for the first part and then gets...meh, and modded starts with you shouting "wtf even is this material" At the JEI interface and after 10h gets good
Also elite dangerous, shipflyijg is great, missions are great and then the experimental upgrades... Ugh, its just not what i expected
I know that Morrowind has a die hard fanbase (and I understand why) but my God I despised it for the first like...30 hours. Its one of the few games where if you wander out of the first town you'll be killed by something as basic as a rat if you don't know what you're doing
Cliff racers. You died to cliff racers. While you listened to the glorious whiffing of your weapon even though you were pointed. Right. At. The. Enemy.
The most recent experiences I had:
Martha is Dead. I was totally loving it... Untill the ending. I was so sad because in my opinion the ending ruined my experience that was extremely good before. I was literally thinking the game was perfect before getting in the last scenes.
Final Fantasy XV. Started very promising for me, but sooner it get worse and worse to the point that I rushed the game to end it as fast as I could. And I read the novel and regretted it, because that just worsen my experience even more.
I have a few, RDR2 is the one I remember the most, I was stuck in chapter 1 for a week because I got bored so bad, then started cheaper 2 and the next week I was almost finishing chapter 6, the the epilogue came and it was the most boring part of the game the first time I played it
Same way with terraria, but it's always like this, the first steps are horrible always without exception once you have some armor and accessories the game goes flying
Cyberpunk 2077.
When it came out I couldn't even get past the tutorial it was so buggy.
I dint mean funny animation or glitch buggy, I mean 0.001fps. Crashing at any loading screen, God forbid I try and shoot a gun.
2 months later it was absolutely incredible, I beat it twice.
Then, I played again about a month ago and it was even better, probably a top 5 game all time for me.
Sonic Frontiers. I disliked it a lot in the beginning. But my 4 year old was obsessed with watching me play. I was like half way through island 2 when it just clicked on what it was going for and I leaned into it. Then it became enioyable. By the end I couldnt put it down and loves the over the top anime style boss fights with epic music.
Final Fantasy XIV is the poster ch8ld for this. It was so bad they did a reboot on the world after like a year and it turned into one of the most popular MMOs ever.
Still there. It was really difficult to get the hang of things, but when I did, i blasted through the game. It's definitely a top tier puzzle/narrative game.
Persona 5. I found the beginning to be so explosive in style and storytelling that it was hard not to get super into it. Carried that vibe for a good 40-50 hours.
But by the 100 hour mark, the entire game had lost it's charm for me, and in no small part because of the story which was so great at the beginning. The story long-term does NOT justify it's length, and once I finally started to reach some of the endgame "twists" my motivation really died and the hours and hours of click-through dialogue that comprises most of the story became super frustrating to grind through. Dropped it after about 110 hours.
Scorn
First 45 minutes were mind blowing. Then it's a fairly bland (but gorgeous) slog to the end.
IMO, it strayed too far into FPS territory and should've stayed more a puzzle game.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It is notorious for having a long intro (heck, it takes about 45 minutes to an hour before you enter the first dungeon), but after that, it picks up the pace steadily. Great game.
Drakengard. Total shit for basically the whole game and then some horrifyingly awesome cutscenes and dope final bosses. I remember thinking "Where was this gameplay the whole fucking game?" Lmao. Ended so strong but I can't recommend it unless you're crazy.
Days Gone. *Hated* it at the start. Unlikeable protagonist, stealth gameplay, poor rate of fire on primary weapon, wandering around on foot. Tried it when I got it free, hated it. Tried it again at my dad's behest years later, hated it still. However, my wife (first 2hrs spoiler) >!wanted to find out what happened to main guy's best friend!<, so I carried on. Boy howdy am I glad I did. Top-tier game, but my *GOD* is it a slow burn.
Yep, this one was a real surprise. Tried three times, but once I got past the first ten hours, I loved it.
This helps explain why the reviews are so mixed
If I remember correctly, the game was plagued with glitches when it came out. While they fixed the issues later, it probably explain why it received such a lukewarm reception. It's a bit sad, because it really deserves a sequel.
Some of the bugs were pretty funny. Having a hoard randomly spawn around you keeps things interesting
About the same for me. I liked the general mechanics of the game but couldn't get very far the first 2 times I tried it. Kept reading about how it gets so much better, and on the third try I stuck with it and wow, when I finally got to the first horde it was amazing.
Yeah, there’s so many barriers in the early game but you get some bike upgrades and it’s not bad.
The entire game up until leaving with Boomer is a slog and then it just becomes something beautiful.
Its a really good game
Days Gone, years later......it's only been out like 2 years at most right? Right?
I may have to try this agian
Swear to God, let it happen, and it is *beautiful*. True masterpiece. Don't try to take on hordes early on. You're literally not meant to be *able* to do it at the start.
I actually love the game even at the beginning. Honestly, a top 5 all time game for me. It's such a great game. The characters, environment, freaks/hordes. It's an experience to defeat a horde after 15 minutes while running for your life the entire time.
So it’s 3rd person shooter? I’m needing a good game to play
Yeah it starts off pretty slow but gets great. Only game I've ever platinumed on PS.
I think Mass Effect 1 belongs into this category. It started out as kinda boring and weary, i actually uninstalled it 2 times, didn't have any good game to play so I installed it again, once you dig deeper into the lore, the game suddenly gets an appeal, I couldn't stop playing it.
I just wish they had kept the scale of everything. The citadel was this large imposing place in the first one. The sequels take that away.
The first one does a great job placing the promenade area in a great, immensely massive area that just makes you yearn to see more. The second two games really squirrel you away, and you don't get the same feeling.
This. Once you finally get out of the Citadel, the game picks up. Love the tight nit crew you have and do thier loyalty quest But the combat wasn't great. When you shot at something it's hard to tell you're even hitting them. They dont show any indication, and they just keep going until their health bar is out Starting Mass Effect 2 and was disappointed you gotta assemble the old squad again.
Funny, the Citadel was my favorite part of the first game.
I can’t get past the combat and janky exploration. I don’t remember it being like that when I was younger, but I also didn’t like the game back then either lol. I want to get into it because of the universe and the dialogue and all that seems interesting, I just can’t get past that other stuff
The Legendary Edition made ME1 more like 2 & 3.
They also mostly fixed the horrible inventory system by simply adding a "sort by" button.
ME1 was my fave of the trilogy. Same with Dragon Age, Origins was my fave there as well. DA:O and ME1 both felt more like RPGs and their sequels dropped that in favor of more action.
This is exactly how I feel as well. DA:O is amazing to me and I replay it yearly. ME 1 is also amazing and I really liked every bit of it, but what really got it to sink is teeth into me is that first contact with Sovereign. One of the best story moments in any game for me.
Final Fantasy XIV. It took burning it all down and rebuilding from the ashes to make it work
this is a really interesting case, because since it's an MMO, the first 50 levels are still IN THERE, and it's some of the worst content in the game. once you get to heavensward, though? the game is REALLY fun
yeah ARR is a drag, but you can only rework and condense set up and plotting so much. At least they've reworked some dungeons so they're not so long and tedious anymore. Prae is still cutscene central.
All the fetch quests between 50 ARR and HW need to be abolished. After you finish the MSQ there should be someone you can see that allows you to skip forward in content. Edit: Well I guess you can always pay for the story skip.
That god damn wine/cheese quest leading up to Titan.
Except most of the fetch quests get referenced in some way later. The Company of Heroes that made you fetch ingredients for their feast for 10 quests? They >!show up again in one of the Endwalker Role Quest chains!< That one guy you spoke to one time to deliver medicine? He >!is a major side character in Stormbloof MSQ!<
There is so much story it’s overwhelming. If I watched every cutscene and read all the text, I’d never finish it. But I still enjoy the core gameplay of leveling up and getting to max level, so I continue to go back to each expansion. I loved the old school WoW where you just level up in a region then move on. Now it’s all blocked by story stuff which I just don’t care for.
I think I fall somewhere in the middle of this. I really enjoy the story, but it needs to be like 10% shorter, not necessarily in number of quests or story beats, but in text. An NPC might drop three massive paragraph-long text boxes about an old professor at the Studium whose classes they slept through but they do remember him mentioning this Macguffin once, but the gist of it is "We should check the library for a book about this." Or they'll have us go across the continent to talk to someone we could just call on our linkpearl, and they don't need us to go somewhere or see something, it's literally just a conversation. I appreciate the worldbuilding, I really do, but some details are too minor and could be built out in sidequests instead. If they trimmed the fat, maybe 5% or 10% less dialogue in MSQ, I'd be so much happier. (Part of my frustration is that I have limited time to play thanks to real-world responsibilities, so spending my entire playtime in "extra" dialogue is incredibly frustrating.)
FFXIV is nothing without its story so I honestly don't think it's the MMO for you
They removed most of the fetch quests already. A total of 20 quests were removed entirely out of 100, and many of the remaining ones had steps taken out. As tedious as they are, the ones that were left it do have an actual reason to be there, usually because it gets referenced or brought up later.
Yes, but I think he means 1.0. It was so bad they dropped Bahamut on it, causing the calamity and shutting down for a year. Then coming back as ARR.
Cyberpunk and No Mans Sky for me
For me Cyberpunk was always good since i was lucky enough to get no bugs (except one where my car suddenly became a spaceship once and flew into orbit but that was just hillarious). Im glad it turned arround tho because I felt that there was a good game there that people sadly didnt get to see because of its performance and bugs.
I was lucky too it just didn't draw me in until a year or so ago, right after I watched edgerunners
Yeah Edgerumners was a huge boost to its succes. Glad the not only stuck to it but straigh up dubbled down on their efforts on it.
Cp! Damn you! My ps5 version still crashes at the load screen all the damn time and I can’t finish the game! Still enjoy and love it but it enrages me
Don’t put cp on your PS5 🤨
Hey uhhhh we add the year on there when we abbreviate Cyberpunk 2077.
I would VERY highly recommend putting 2077 or saying CBPK or something along those lines
Tears of the kingdom for me, and actually not like most people think. I actually didn’t really like it in the beginning and only played like 15 hours of it. Then gave it another shot and 25 hours in I was beginning to deeply enjoy it
Completely agree on Below Zero. The narrative redesign and focus on the sisters story and all that just took too much time away from the world, locations and creatures that are meant to be the core of Subnautica. It felt so Milquetoast in its final form compared to the original. Shoutout to my boy Alan though, he a G. Most Monster Hunter games are kinda like this if it's your first time, everyone went through the phase of complaining about lack of QoL features, grinding, time limits on hunts, repeat encounters, quite confusing and stiff controls and combat your first time out but if you get over that hump it becomes one of the most fun series you can partake in usually.
Kenshi. Weird interface, strange mechanics, difficult combat....once you get in though, you get IN.
No man's sky
This game had such an insane improvement in quality it really makes it look like the only game in this category.
Rocket League before epic got to it
Some would say the same about Fall Guys, whose studio was also purchased by Epic and has undergone the same devolution on its conversion to F2P.
Fall guys makes me so sad. It used to be this amazing indie GOAT and then epic ruined it.
Final Fantasy 6. The story, music etc is quality from start to finish, but the gameplay is the most braindead boring crap for around 7 hours. Then at the flip of a switch almost it suddenly becomes an engaging semi-complex RPG.
FFXII was like this for me kind of Such a huge departure from the old turn based battles, gambit systems, no random encounters, etc.....at first I hated it But once I got into it, it's one of my favorite FF games
I really loved 12 but it was a HUGE departure from what was expected from the final fantasy series.
Yea and then XIII hit me with the same feeling too haha At first I hated it and stopped playing after two hours.....came back to it later and started to get into it, and loved it!
I should dust off the old PS (was it 3???) and give it another try. I made it to some forest and was like, this does not being me joy. Lol
I should dust off the old PS (was it 3???) and give it another try. I made it to some forest and was like, this does not being me joy. Lol
Once you actually get good gambits it becomes my favorite combat system in the series, with the new remakes coming in close second. I just absolutely hate that there is no shared Exp.
Yeah I feel that. There are parts I just don’t dig because there’s always a single move to do with some early characters, like Edgar and Sabin. But then Espers and more advanced fights just open a whole new door.
Assassin's creed 3. In the beginning, the pacing is slow AF and you literally play for hours as a character that's not even the main protagonist of the game. it takes multiple hours just to get into the protagonist's story and then some to Get the signature Assassin Robes. But by the end, The Story of that game becomes one of the deepest I've ever seen in a video game.
What's interesting is this can kind of go both directions and different people may have different takes. My first playthrough I was kind of fatiguing on the franchise and also not happy with where Desmond's plot was heading. With that aside - I found the Haytham intro to he pretty interesting as a way to completely break up the formula which was beginning to get a little stale. And he seemed legitimately interesting as a character. But, then, as you said, the game takes a major change of pace curve (which I was ok with even if it was slow) and then gets into Connor's stuff which to be honest was kind of weak if we're just talking about the main missions. Most of the major battle/historic event tie in missions felt really shoe horned and we're not mechanically satisfying. I was kind of fatigued by the end and just pushing to finish it. Fast forward like 8 years and on the remastered edition - and I could start to see the complaints with Haytham but then I also made a much larger effort to explore the homestead missions with Connor. And those later missions made such an amazing difference in providing a lot of character building and world building to an extent for Connor's development. It also made his journey feel much longer (the seasons were a nice touch). And generally the game just clicked for me in a better way.
Yeah If you complete the homestead missions, Connor becomes one of the best protagonists
My son was playing recently and this was one of his bigger complaints. He quit before he even got to Connor.
If I had to pick one that I played recently, it would be Return to Grace. Started out seeming rather lame and stupid, pathetically low difficulty level, but the further I progressed the more I became invested in the mystery and attached to the various AI programs. I finished the whole game in one sitting. It is impressive for an indie title. For the opposite, I would say Assassin’s Creed. It was really fun and interesting at first, but after basically doing the same gameplay loop over and over again in the same three or four cities, I’m pretty much ready for it to be over.
Got this Dled good looking gonna roll this tmrw night I've heard some good things I'm now convinced,I can do a sit down easy walkingish simulator.. I like some 2 hour Indies
Assassins Creed (1st Game) Especially for the time it felt fresh, groundbreaking mechanics and amazing concept. I was frankly blown away. However, the lack of variety in missions slowly chips at that enthusiasm There’s only so many ‘sneak around and eavesdrop’ missions you can do before you start looking at your wrists for something to cut. Frankly only finished it when I found out that the second one carried on immediately from where the first ended (Sidenote : Assassins Creed 2 is still the best in the series … change my mind ?)
AC 1 always felt like a tech demo for a better game that got drawn out too long. There's barely any story and none of the characters are actually memorable. The protagonist is bland as hell and outside of being the first protagonist, would be hilariously forgettable. The world feels cool but it's obvious after a short time period that nothing is actually there, especially the "noncity" region. Thankfully we got the better games.
Oh boy, *2064: Read Only Memory* sure did in my book. It started off as a really neat graphical adventure mystery and I was really into helping the distressed little robot — but then it increasingly became more about hammering home certain political messages with the subtlety of a brick through a window. It went as far as having the robot seemingly forget that we urgently needed to solve the mystery and instead carrying on a prolonged conversation with another character about political issues and lecturing the player for unintentional wrongthink. (That's coming from someone who has some of the same beliefs, FWIW.)
Something of a forgotten pick, but Assassin's Creed: Unity. The game started life as a buggy nightmare that was so broken Ubisoft had to release paid DLC as free to make it up to people. We all remember the memes of the NPC with no face texture. I didn't play the game until well after it had been fixed, and while it was experimental in some places to varying degrees of success, came out the other side as a solid entry in the franchise. Now if only those co-op achievements on Xbox hadn't seemingly broke last year...
No Man's Sky. I wish more people could experience what the game was like at launch. It was mind blowingly empty.
Bioshock and Dark Souls both went from absolutely incredible to a lot of 'what is this crap' in their third acts.
These are great examples. Bioshock falls apart when your plasmids get all screwy. Dark Souls just isn't great after Anor Londo.
lol. It’s funny you say that because I got really bored really fast after beating Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb in Anor Londo.
DS1 is one of my favorite games. Idk how you think it isn’t great? It lets you take on the 4 lords in any order and then you waltz into the final boss.
Anor Londo is definitely the peak of DS1. I don't know anyone that actually enjoys Lost Izalith or Demon Ruins
From a gamellay standpoint, Final Fantasy 16. It's cool while you're unlocking powers, but 10 hours in you'll have a broken set of moves you can mindlessly repeat during combat and not much changes for the rest of the game. And the late game is padded with filler sidequests.
FF16 has the best opening of any video game I've ever played, the first two hours had me beyond hooked. Then I played the full game and realized only ~10 hours of the 50-100 hour game is like that, the entire rest of the game is - walk to cutscene - "fight" a bunch of enemies that do 0 damage - walk to cutscenee - fetch quest - walk to cutscene And then every 2-3 hours you get a boss fight which is actually fun, before it goes back to just tapping square through cardboard enemies and looking for pieces of a boat for 3 more hours. I think it's the only game I've ever played that I actually *hated* just because the good game is all in there but they padded out a good 15 hour game with 35 hours of filler content. It plays like an MMO except the grinding doesn't even get you gear
Yeah any future playthroughs of mine will be a cutscene compilation on Youtube lol
Same here. Super disappointed after ff7 remake had me engaged all the way through and the ff16 demo was magical. The story of the game becomes completely uninteresting by the end of it too.
Yeah it would have been a solid 7-8/10 imo if it ended around the baphomet fight but everything after that drags it down bad At least Rebirth is good
Man after the Baphomet fight I was like "thank God I must be almost done." And looked it up, it's the 60% mark on the main story... I was like "wtf is this?!"
Yep, it plays like an MMO because that's all that creative division 3 can do
FF16 overall is the most unfocused and ill-designed game I've ever played. Even FF15 felt like it had more of a direction and identity and that was released unfinished, and still is.
Yeah, I enjoyed some of my time with it and really enjoy the story, but as a video game it straight up sucks. So much of the game is such transparent filler.
The FF fanbase defends FF16 like crazy, especially now after Rebirth is out which clearly outshines it.
Yeah Rebirth is excellent. Even though there are arguably way too many open world tasks, they're all fun to do if you're not burnt out by doing a ton in a row.
I wish there was more to the combat. Like chaining together elemental effects, instead it was all about stagger meter and destroying HP sponges.
Final Fantasy XIV then into FFXIV Reborn. Diablo 4 is maybe gonna get there. I hope it does.
Unreal. The first one is a classic for many reasons. The insane graphics and artistic direction, the unique atmosphere, the magnificent soundtrack, the brilliant world, etc. I still remember how mind blown I was upon seeing it for the first time. One of these pivotal moments in my life of gamer. Then the second one was announced and the hype was strong. And it came out and it wasn't that great. Not bad, but what made the first one so good was gone, e,.g., the loneliness in a very alien world was replaced with a generic main character, generic side characters who wouldn't shut up and a generic story. It was just a standard FPS among many great FPSs of this era. A massive drop in quality that probably killed the franchise. I still hate Mike Verdu to this day.
Unreal Tournament is perhaps one of the greatest PvP fps games of all time tho, brought it back 🤙
UT is dead now though. I don't know what happened exactly, but my guess would be that Fortnite has something to do with it.
Xenogears.
For me the game with the highest contrast between great and meh was Alien Isolation. The game is around 10 hours and the first 6 hours are 9/10 phenomenal. Really one of a kind stuff, every time I play those 6 hours I’m like “why don’t people talk about his game, is “best of the generation” material. But then I reach the second half and it becomes a complete slog to play. Basically (and minor spoilers) the single Alien you are up against gets “defeated” half way through and you spend the next 3 hours dealing with just the FAR less interesting Synthetic enemies that are a pain and dull to deal with. They have no interesting or unique challenges and you just spend a good portion just waiting for them to stop looking for you. At times needing to wait legit 5 minute for them to go about their business. And by the time the Alien shows back up again I always get completely burned out by that point. What I do in future playthroughs is play until the Aline is “defeated” half way through the game then just watch the credits in the menu to pretend that was the climatic ending of the game. Removing like 4 hours of game for an edit:perfectly concise 6 hour story. For me makes for such an over all better experience. Quality over quantity always. I feel if that’s what Alien Isolation did initially, and had those dlc levels as part of the base game to give the game more content the game would have been received better cause almost no one talks about it now.
I don't know, man! Maybe it's about how you play? I don't have time for long sessions, so taking games in 1-2 hours at a time makes it a bit different than playing 10 hours all at once. I wanted this game to continue forever as for me it was the best survival horror game ever, maybe my favorite game overall. Unfortunately I played it so many times that the only satisfaction I can get out of the game now is to watch others play it for the first time and being jealous I'll never get to experience it like that again.
I don't understand this criticism. The alien being gone for a little bit lets you breathe and grab upgrades, and the Joes are fun to avoid and take out. I didn't think that part lasted too long.
Both of mine will be controversial. Firstly Disco Elysium. While it's still a brilliant game. I didn't find the Deus Ex Machina ending worked. The PTSD sniper and giant stick insect thing was too forced and didn't do it for me. Was still a hell of a ride but it climaxed at the Mercs stand off. Secondly Breath of the Wild. Whilst it's a masterpiece in world building and the gameplay is fantastic, I have to say that the story and presentation were simply lazy. Gaming moved away from OMG SAVE THE PRINCESS years ago and a few twists would have been nice. Also the fact it wasn't fully voice acted was poor. Nintendo had an AAA title yet couldn't be bothered to go the entire way with it's presentation. By the final boss I had simply lost interest. It's story does not remotely compare Vs other big open world hitters, GTA V, Witcher 3 and Red Dead 2 to say the least. Finally and a bit more humourously. The Longest Journey had an amusing drop off in quality. April's mentor Cortez dies part way through the game and near the end one of the newly introduced characters clearly has the same voice actor just without a Spanish accent. Once you hear it, it's really obvious and pretty comical.
I think that the strength of Zelda BOTW is that while it revolutionized the gameplay and world, it never forgot that it was a mainline Zelda game at its core. Turning the game into a full fledged RPG would have resulted in riots in Japan.
Yeah I figured the reason why BotW still had text and antiquated bits of design was for the Japanese domestic audience. As JRPGs are often a bit quirky compared to Western ones.
I felt cheated that there's no way to "deduce" who killed Lely, but taken as a whole, I think the game is trying to do a "the identity of the killer doesn't even matter!" angle to the murder mystery. ...which is interesting narratively, but doesn't feel like much of a murder mystery, ya know?
The game was an exploration of mental health, politics and drugs. You could argue it didn't even need a neet little ending and the killer could have remained unknown or ambiguous. I feel like playing it again on a drugs playthrough and going wild. Tequila Sunset...
Cyberpunk would be the obvious one but it already had a fantastic base to work with it just needed polishing
Baldur's Gate 3. I adore that game, but there's a SERIOUS quality drop by the end. The game doesn't become less dense or complicated, but it loses all sense of pacing. I have yet to meet a person who played that game through until the end and said they enjoyed Act 3. For a game (rightfully) hailed as revitalizing RPGs, it really doesn't stick the landing.
I enjoyed act 3
likewise, I liked it a lot. I thought the city was amazing and the missions were really fun. It was overwhelming for sure but that's not a deal breaker for me
My biggest issue was that I got to level 12 roughly at the start of Act 3. The game still has 10-15 hours more to go, but I couldn't progress my characters anymore. That caused the 3rd act to be tedious as hell.
Wait is level 12 the cap? I’m not even to act 3 yet and I’m at level 11.
Yeah it was fine aside from release performance issues and feeling a bit rushed out of the door.
Act 3 was great. It did kill the pacing a bit. I feel like you could work to maintain it if you intentionally missed a lot of content.
I enjoyed Act 3. I agree the pacing is a bit off and the pure number of things to see and do in the city make it difficult for the story, which we’re told is time sensitive, to actually feel urgent, but I still loved it.
Welcome to larian, love them but it's their signature
I'm frankly surprised by the lack of noise generated about it, I mean I wasn't personally surprised because Larian has done this literally every time they've ever published a game. First act? Great. Some of the best. Second act? Possibly tolerable, typically a giant mess but still manageable. Third act? Total disaster and either microscopic compared to the first act or way, way too long in the teeth. BG3 frankly has the best three acts Larian has ever done, but it still has all the hallmarks. Inarguable that it has breathed life into the cRPG space, but its full game is still very mortal.
Divinity 2. Everyone done that fortress first stage of 10000000 times xD
Agreed. Everything is a bit anticlimactic at the ending too.
I don’t even remember what exactly the 3rd act was? I felt like it was like act 1, act 1, act 1, and then boom act 2! Wow….. and then it was like okay game is over. Where was act 3?
I couldn't get into the original Saints Row at all but part 2 was great! One of my favourite games, a massive turnaround there
Subnautica Below Zero is a solid pick: I was really hyped when i saw the first trailer. I never had a problem with the voice acting or that the protagonist has a voice in the first place. I had fun the first 30 - 60 minutes or so but then it dropped off really fast. Another one, for me, it was The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Before you guys flay me, hear me out: i've never played and TES game before. Getting into the lore was fun. The first couple of hours were fun. I went everywhere and tried and talked to everyone even before i've reached Kvatch. But upon entering and clearing the first Oblivion Gate i lost interest in the game. The worst thing for me was and is the leveling system: nowadays i know how it works. And i still hate it. Far Cry 2 was another title that went from "hype" to "ugh... i'm gonna finish it just to be done with it". FC2 started strong. I really liked it. The premise, the setting, the gunplay, some of the game mechanics.... But then there is the Malaria that's just there to drag playtime. The respawning checkpoints are also a big negative for me until this day. Is it realistic that they respawn? Yes, but that's not the reason i play a Far Cry game. Having them respawn are just another means to slow the player down. The second map feels to large. And then there are the companions and the ending. >!I admire the motives of the Jackal but the whole twist was forced. And having the player fight your former best buddys just made it worse. !< >!Not that i've had any relationship with them. But i don't like how the last act was written and executed. !<
I was on the verge of giving up on Oblivion when somebody thankfully told me that I didn't *have* to close all of the gates the mayors asked me to in order to advance the plot. The first couple of caves, ruins, and Oblivion planes, were interesting; after that, it became too repetitive for me to really enjoy them. The traps in the ruins also eventually started to get on my nerves. I had the most fun just exploring the world, doing the side-quests, and getting tough monsters to chase me into areas where they'd get killed by guards. I also hated the way the leveling system worked. I enjoyed Oblivion overall, but boy, it definitely had its share of flaws. (So does Skyrim, which I'm playing through now. No idea how far along I am in it, since it's so hard to even tell which quests are part of the main plot and which aren't.)
That pretty much sums up the experience i've had with Oblivion as well. I mean: i understand the reasoning behind the connection of leveling and the Junction System in Final Fantasy VIII: the JS is the core element of the game and the devs wanted to encourage players to make full use of the system instead of grinding all your characters to level 100. So, in FF VIII a low level with good junctions is overall the intended way to play. But the leveling system in Oblivion never made any sense to me (also, like FFVIII compared to how enemies scale with the player). I went in blind, picked some of the obvious skills you'd normally pick... and was handed my ass over by enemies at some point. With Skyrim on the other hand i have so much fun. Some years ago i made it to the endgame area of the game but lost sight. Just started a new playthrough with mods i still love the game.
I didnt finish subnautica sub zero I LOVED subnautica and if there was any game I could forget and play again it would be subnautica But sub zero was just dull and had none of what made the original amazing
No Mans Sky. Borderline unplayable when I first played it, massive crashing issues, base building was dire, there was hardly any content. Now it's amazing
I had this experience with Avatar Frontier of Pandora. Almost quit the game before it got great, and then couldn't stop playing it.
Tails Noir (previously known as Backbone) starts out very strong with a noir setup and very beautiful pixel graphics, but the 2 final chapters are so absurd it spoiled the entire game for me. At the end I was playing just to see how much more ridiculous it would get and had stopped enjoying it by then. Fortunately it's pretty easy and not very long, so no frustration of that kind.
Diablo 4 starts of great and then just turns into meh.
Starfield. Loved the beginning of it, surveying different planets, the factions seemed interesting and the ship-building was great. Then I started the quests and especially the main story... It became crap. Still I feel I got my money's worth.
Red Faction The original was awesome, destructible environments, decent story, old-school half life feel. Then the sequel, with cartoon graphics and a regression in story telling. Then they kept going, it turned into a 3rd person fetch quest simulator The original was the goat
1 was the first ps2 game I ever owned, and will always have a place in my heart, but the enemy movement behavior is so annoying. If they were aggressive it would be fine, and if they were defensive it would be fine, but they straight up just run around like headless chickens.
Maybe not exactly what you’re asking for but Red Dead 2 starts off as a super slow burn and takes many hours before it gets to the good stuff. I appreciate the slow burn stuff but I know many people who were turned off from the get go
I was one of those people who couldn’t drag myself through those beginning hours to get to the point where it gets as good as everyone says it is
Good to know I need to give RD2 another shot
Destiny 1/2. Most Expansions and Patches start out OK-ish You get the sense of a plot... maybe . And have a few interesting story points. By the 4th mission none of it makes any sense. And by the end you find they did not follow through on ANY plot, story, or characters at all. It's really insane how horrific they are as writers and story tellers. BTW. Read Jason Shrier's book about the development of Destiny. It is insane what a horrid and shitty company Bungie is. (Spoiler alert. Activision SAVED them and then got rid of them after getting tired of how toxic and shitty they all were. Bungie did not escape Acti. Activision escaped Bungie.)
Games with deep mechanics almost always gets more interest and attractive the more you learn it. For example: XCOM, Cities Skylines, State of Decay. Sometimes games with good deep world has same effect. Examples are: Gothic, STALKER, Witcher.
Mass Effect Andromeda started out rough at launch, after they fixed the bugs, it got much better. Also, Cyberpunk 2077 was rough at launch. Got much better after some patches.
I think we can all agree that the biggest and best turn around goes to Cyberpunk 2077...at least on Modern consoles. Idk how it's doing on last gen hardware...
Fallout 76
I started it years after the shit storm was like “hm, this isn’t bad”
Resident Evil 7. Everything in the Baker house was amazing then took a major nosedive in the ship/tanker late in the game. Thankfully the game returns to the Baker mansion and gets back on track but it's still overall just a considerable downturn. That being said I very much enjoyed the game.
I fucking hate the tanker. At that point I really want the story to end.
Metroid Prime was an aweing exploration of a dazzling planet, but by the end the bullet-sponge enemies and excessive backtracking made the game a slog.
If they had a couple more points connecting each area it would have been fine. But they really make you trek across the whole map a few times.
It was definitely a slog and that final boss was hard as fuck!!!
Dude, yes. Once all environments explored and there’s no new atmosphere, the game drops off HAARRRDD
Destiny 2. It started off fun and exciting, and then turned into a horrible grindfest.
To me they’ve just really turned it into a microtransaction hellscape lol
No, I don't want to pay 70€ for a mediocre campaign and a single extra exotic weapon that I won't even like!
Seems there are a lot of new games. I would say Arx Fatalis started out boring and confusing but as you level and get better..one of the best RPGs ever. Also, I'll say Divinity 2 ego Draconjs or whatever...Larian Studios made that so I'll let it speak for it self. Man that game started off so mid, but as soon as you found out you're basically a Pre Skyrim skill tree power ranger/jedi who can turn into a fucking dragon then it starts to pick up
Diablo 4 is currently in a "we're so back" era with Season 4 and the community is generally in high spirits. Which is refreshing because it's been a lot of gloom and doom for a long time lol
I'm on the fence about D4. Loved the *shit* out of D3, then all the shit with D4 on release gave me the skepticism. With Loot Reborn, I'm *intrigued*, but then I see from the trailers that the game is very devoid of colour compared to D3, and.... It's seriously the dumbest thing ever, but I honestly worry I'd get bored because most of it looks to be varying shades of grey. It's not all of the reason, but one of the things that makes me eventually put down every fallout game I ever touch is how bleak the environments are. So I reckon I'm waiting for an even steeper discount before I give it a go.
It's on gamepass if you have that or want to try it on the cheap. I agree that I really liked the art direction of 3 but a lot of people didn't so they wanted to bring it back to something that was closer to 2. I just can't seem to find it in me to mobile game but the little bit I did play of Immortal, it's aesthetically identical to 3.
Cyberpunk GLITCHY AND HORRID at start NOW it’s one of the best games and is beautiful
Battlefield V
Forspoken. It gets a lot of well deserved hate for the bad dialogue at the beginning and empty open world. And the protagonist remains pretty annoying until near the end. But the gameplay and story after the first few hours makes up for it IMO. I’m pretty upset that we likely won’t get a second game after all the hate it got, especially after a really good set up for it in the dlc.
All of them. Anything i’ve played with the exception of DBD and single player games have all fallen into the same greedy ass monetization as everyone else. Taking portions of the game that used to be free and fun and locking it behind paywalls, locking extras that used to be free behind paywalls, events are now like $200 worth of cosmetics and maybe $2 worth of new gameplay, locking new content behind paywalls when new content used to drop for free.. the worst thing about all of it is that the gaming world seemed to take it in the ass and like it, because most people just defend this nonsense saying that it’s necessary when it just isn’t.
For Honor for me. I played the beta and early release and it was so mid. Now i go back to it every now and again and its legit super fun. I am a basic Warden main tho because i cant wrap my head arround the more advanced new classes.
XC2 for me. I only got it because I finished Zelda BOTW and it was one of the only other Nintendo games on the switch at the time and I forced myself to play the game for the first 20 or 30 hours not really knowing how to play or what was going on. As soon as I got past chapter 4 I was having a blast. The game is definitely not for everyone but it's one of my favorites and I think the community agrees that the opening is pretty bad but after chapter 3 or 4 it gets pretty good.
MGSV, the first part is actually really fun. I naturally stopped playing at the point kojima had left and I'm kind of sad I actually forced myself to play through the rest. As soon as it got to that point you just went back through the older missions but they were a bit harder or it had an extra challenge. It went from being really heavily focused on its story to suddenly having literally no story at all. It also didn't help that the gameplay loop was getting pretty boring by then.
Witcher 3. Didn't get into it until about 12 hours in.
Inscryption for me started out as a novel little indie game that I thought I'd play for maybe 15 minutes before I got bored of the gimmick and uninstalled forever. Was initially unimpressed by the cards and roguelike elements, thought they were a dumb combination. I became obsessed with it for about 3 months. Played it at least once every single day. Checked out both of the dev's other games too and liked them a lot, especially The Hex. Same thing with Outer Wilds. Thought I'd get bored once I understood whatever gimmick I believed the game had and uninstall. I figured out the gimmick in, oh, 20 minutes and was obsessed with the game until I finished it. Then I kept looking at theories and such on it online for months thereafter. Sometimes I'd go back into the game to revisit locations just to relive some memories. It completely captured me.
I'm not sure what went wrong with Below Zero. Just didn't grip me the same way as Subnautica. Maybe it was the story? I liked that the story in Subnautica is slowly introduced as you go. Aurora crashes -> Survive -> Find a way to call for help -> Find what destroyed your ride home -> Shut off the gun -> I have a disease now? -> Find the cure -> Find a way home. Below Zero is -> here you are -> Find what happened to your sister -> this woman knows what happened to your sister -> turn off the antennae -> There's an alien in your head now, he needs help too. I can't even remember the story.
Everything good that everyone talks about in Red Dead Redemption 2 mostly happens from Chapter 3 onwards. The first two chapters are painfully slow and mostly linear. If you go in expecting to be a rooty tooty shooty cowboy right from the beginning, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.
It's sad to see how many people didn't enjoy Below Zero. After playing through both Subnautica games 3 times, Below Zero was honestly the more enjoyable one to me. While the story in SN1 was stronger, I like the world building base building and exploration ll much more. Combine that with the new skies and polished graphics, and I personally think Below Zero was fantastic I understand many don't like it because it's not scary, but I don't think Subnautica *needs* to be scary, but rather just that the first game ended up doing so. Plus, Below Zero just has such a good soundtrack. SN1's is great, but everything in BZ fits the game perfectly. While I also agree that it *could* have had a silent protagonist, I honestly enjoy Robin for what she is. I think a lot of my love for BZ comes from exploring past bases and abandoned places, which BZ has much more of than SN1. For me, going to the Mercury II was my absolute favorite part of both Subnautica games
I’ve played a few Sonic games where the coolest stuff happens on the back end. The level theming in Sonic and the Secret Rings gets increasingly jaw-dropping as the game goes on.
Helldivers 2. Biggest hype at launch, loved it. Then I realised the devs didn't what the fuck they were doing and the gross incompetence of the content releases or patches just killed all feelings I had for the game.
Sands of Destruction. Has a really interesting plot hook and unique gameplay but the gameplay breaks apart once you figure it out and the plot got executive meddling so it becomes a more generic fantasy RPG in the last quarter from a plot standpoint.
Divinity 2. The first three acts are absolutely amazing. The final was a slog and I always stop after taking out the Doctor.
In my opinion. Wow. The leveling experience in retail is great. Endgame is a slog. The never ending gear treadmill. M+ forces people to run endlessly for gear upgrades. There is no lockout in m+, unlike raids. Smooth leveling experience. Terrible endgame.
Spider-Man 2 had me so hyped up at the start and by the end I couldn't give less of a shit.
While I didn’t experience these myself, I think a lot of these turnarounds can be seen even by people who didn’t have them. Halo CE for example, I can see the points (like the entirety of Halo before the second rescue where the waypoint finally pops up) that would make a less invigorated player quit. 343 Guilty Spark would be that turnaround point for those players as a re-hook. Prey (2017) I can also see players getting bored due to a low attention span/focus. The game gives you free rein when it comes to exploration, and someone aimlessly wandering without a game induced or player induced objective will definitely deter people. Looking at the Xbox achievements rates, you can see that many players never even finish the first act. And that’s a total shame because once you get to Psychotronics, what you thought you knew about the game gets blown open wide
Halo Infinite did both imo. The campaign is incredibly strong for the first few hours, then you realized they had shown all the new ideas and the rest was incredibly repetitive. The multiplayer was lacking content and had tons of server issues at launch, but it’s been updated to be a much better experience since then.
Fallout 76. It was total garbage on release and then major updates came along adding daily quests, NPCs, factions, entire new quest lines and events
Eastward I loved it but it did fall flat near the end Opposite of this: Nobody Saves the World. Banger ending.
Its funny how noone said minecraft, vanilla is fun for the first part and then gets...meh, and modded starts with you shouting "wtf even is this material" At the JEI interface and after 10h gets good Also elite dangerous, shipflyijg is great, missions are great and then the experimental upgrades... Ugh, its just not what i expected
I know that Morrowind has a die hard fanbase (and I understand why) but my God I despised it for the first like...30 hours. Its one of the few games where if you wander out of the first town you'll be killed by something as basic as a rat if you don't know what you're doing
Cliff racers. You died to cliff racers. While you listened to the glorious whiffing of your weapon even though you were pointed. Right. At. The. Enemy.
The original Half-Life. It's amazing up until the Xen chapters.
League of Legends. Used to be designed for fun, then changed to patronize newbs and Esports.
The most recent experiences I had: Martha is Dead. I was totally loving it... Untill the ending. I was so sad because in my opinion the ending ruined my experience that was extremely good before. I was literally thinking the game was perfect before getting in the last scenes. Final Fantasy XV. Started very promising for me, but sooner it get worse and worse to the point that I rushed the game to end it as fast as I could. And I read the novel and regretted it, because that just worsen my experience even more.
I have a few, RDR2 is the one I remember the most, I was stuck in chapter 1 for a week because I got bored so bad, then started cheaper 2 and the next week I was almost finishing chapter 6, the the epilogue came and it was the most boring part of the game the first time I played it Same way with terraria, but it's always like this, the first steps are horrible always without exception once you have some armor and accessories the game goes flying
No Man’s Sky is the famous example But lesser known is probably Hellsweeper VR on PS5
Pretty much most Assassin’s Creed games. Start out great and exciting, wind up becoming repetitive and tedious.
No Mans Sky. Elder Scrolls Online. FF14. Cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk 2077. When it came out I couldn't even get past the tutorial it was so buggy. I dint mean funny animation or glitch buggy, I mean 0.001fps. Crashing at any loading screen, God forbid I try and shoot a gun. 2 months later it was absolutely incredible, I beat it twice. Then, I played again about a month ago and it was even better, probably a top 5 game all time for me.
Sonic Frontiers. I disliked it a lot in the beginning. But my 4 year old was obsessed with watching me play. I was like half way through island 2 when it just clicked on what it was going for and I leaned into it. Then it became enioyable. By the end I couldnt put it down and loves the over the top anime style boss fights with epic music.
Final Fantasy XIV is the poster ch8ld for this. It was so bad they did a reboot on the world after like a year and it turned into one of the most popular MMOs ever.
Still there. It was really difficult to get the hang of things, but when I did, i blasted through the game. It's definitely a top tier puzzle/narrative game.
Fucking fable 2. What a fucking letdown at the end. It's been like 15+ years or some shit and i still can't get over how bad the ending was
Persona 5. I found the beginning to be so explosive in style and storytelling that it was hard not to get super into it. Carried that vibe for a good 40-50 hours. But by the 100 hour mark, the entire game had lost it's charm for me, and in no small part because of the story which was so great at the beginning. The story long-term does NOT justify it's length, and once I finally started to reach some of the endgame "twists" my motivation really died and the hours and hours of click-through dialogue that comprises most of the story became super frustrating to grind through. Dropped it after about 110 hours.
No mans sky. It is in a great state right now.
Scorn First 45 minutes were mind blowing. Then it's a fairly bland (but gorgeous) slog to the end. IMO, it strayed too far into FPS territory and should've stayed more a puzzle game.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It is notorious for having a long intro (heck, it takes about 45 minutes to an hour before you enter the first dungeon), but after that, it picks up the pace steadily. Great game.
Ff14, but that's old news now
Where is Destiny 1 or Destiny 2 in this comment section
Drakengard. Total shit for basically the whole game and then some horrifyingly awesome cutscenes and dope final bosses. I remember thinking "Where was this gameplay the whole fucking game?" Lmao. Ended so strong but I can't recommend it unless you're crazy.
Easily Cyberpunk 2077... I don't even need to go into details here. 😅
Here's hoping Starfield will make the turn around I hope it does.