Games Everybody Else Loves But You Don't

[Big Pete]

I suspect this thread has already been done but I can't find anything within the past year so I thought I'd get this going!

As gamers we've probably played hundreds of titles within our lifetime. Some we've grown to love and others for whatever reason just weren't our cup of tea. What are some games or even series that you just couldn't get into?

I'll start.

Tales of Vesperia

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the gameplay of this game and thought the dialogue for the most part was fine - some of the skits and exchanges were great and I enjoyed how the players bounced off each other.

My issues? Apart from the usual cliche anime design I just thought the story was incredibly base and at times poorly constructed. A lot of interesting sub-stories were randomly dropped, barely touched on or had really ordinary resolutions. Some of the twists were 100% recycled off of ToS and the final boss was probably the biggest let down I've encountered in an RPG.

So what are some of yours?
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[Frozencry]

Bayonetta

Great gameplay, awful everything else. Calling Bayonetta sexy is like thinking a deformed, legless, festering mutant is attractive.

Also terrible story and I seriously couldn't handle its stupidity.
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[grim-one]

Modern Warfare

I'm tired of single-player, blockbuster, straight-up shooters. I hate multiplayer, XP-based, skill unlocks. Every modern FPS seems to want to emulate these guys and I don't know why. You know, aside from the fact that it makes eleventy-billion dollars a year.
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Steam:grim_one | PSN/Live:najakh | Flickr

[Jarrod]

It's like this thread was made just for me. Rather than rattle off the list, I'll just pick one.

God of War (series)

Of all franchises out there, the God of War series is, for me, the poster child of graphics and presentation carrying an entire game made up of uncreative, unpolished and bland mechanics. Without these, and the hilarious ultra violence, the franchise would be panned as average at best.

Combat system? Bare-bones, poorly communicated to the player, and not even in the ballpark of deeper combat systems found in games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. Puzzles? I scoff at anybody who criticises Zelda or likewise for having repetitive puzzles, when 'push block onto pressure plate' has been the backbone of nearly every puzzle in this series. Variety? Recycle the same enemies and level design over and over. Platforming? Clumsy jumping controls, unmemorable design.

Where God of War excels is in having gorgeous art and incredible technology, camera angles and setpieces shot to look like you're watching a movie, and an incredible sense of scale. That and the over-the-top ultra violence. It's not surprising. David Jaffe wanted to make movies, couldn't, and instead got into games. Low and behold God of War is a ho-hum game, and plays like a movie.

Might I add I've played through the series and had my fun. In fact, God of War 3 is sitting in my PS3 right now. But I play them because of the above; sometimes I want to mash X to win, and watch pretty graphics show off gallons of blood. As a video game though I think of the series no more than I think of Michael Bay's better films; cheap action and grand visual spectacles doing their very best to hide an exceedingly average videogame.

Also Kratos is a terrible protagonist who is impossible to sympathise with.

EDIT: I guess I cheated because I don't dislike the series, I just don't care about it. It does make me laugh when people talk about it as one of the must-have games for the PlayStation though.
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[PixieGirl]

Oh god so many. I'll just list the main two that come to mind because they are the ones where I don't "get" why people love them and gobble down the negs accordingly. Weirdly they are both Zombie games.

Left 4 Dead

I love Valve, but I don't love multiplayer. Normally I wouldn't just dismiss a multiplayer game because its not my cup of tea, in fact Team Fortress 2, another Valve multiplayer game, I can totally see why its popular even though I personally don't like it much. But this? Its the same 4 (I think) short repetitive campaigns over and over and over and over etc. Once I'd played each once I was done with the game. I really don't understand why it continues to be so popular apart from nerds having a weird obsession with zombies.

Resident Evil

The old games I can at least respect for just being in total contrasts to my tastes, in other words, "because they are old-school survival horror". The last two main games? I've never known anything like them, they are the only games I can think of where the atmosphere, enemies, story (more in 5 than 4), level design, basically everything about the games; are total opposites to the way in which you play the game. I constantly felt like I was just being restricted from enjoying it properly, because the actual gameplay is slow and awkward with these deliberately bad controls. As I've said before, both games to me feel like third person shooters desperately trying not to be third person shooters. I'm not saying I would consider them great games if they just cut the pretense and just embraced the new genre, but at least they would feel fluent and not like they are clinging onto their roots by the tips of their fingers. As it stands I find both games endlessly frustrating, and I only played RE5 on the PC for the pretty graphics.

Also the RE storyline is terrible. Really really terrible.

[Jarrod]

[Pagan's Mind]

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare

Single player was boring and linear. I don't get how this can pass as a good first person shooter. My idea of a good shooter is the open world of Crysis or the great pacing and narrative of Half Life 2. Modern Warfare was just a linear shooter with terrible story telling and characters I felt little connection with.

Gameplay wise it offered little freedom forcing you to follow a heavily scripted squad AI. Most of the time enemy spawn would be unlimited which takes away the satisfaction of the shooting mechanics. It had some great set pieces like the Chernobyl level but they were too few.

Multiplayer places too much emphasis on kill/death ratio, stats, unlocks and XP which completely ruins the experience for me.

[PixieGirl]

@ Jarrod

Well yeah that's why RE4 is a game everyone else loves and I don't It seems like everyone considers it amazing apart from me. However good the level design, sound, voices, script, variety, and all those other things you mentioned might be, to me its always going to be a clunky mess because the gameplay never felt like it fit in with anything else, I hate the controls and inventory system, I feel like none of it works in the context of the rest of the game, and that ruins the whole thing for me.

Ooh I'll add another one to that list just to stirr things up a little more ^_^

Deus Ex.

Its dated in almost every single way and doesn't hold a candle to anything even mildly acceptable released in the last 5 years, its beyond me how people can still think its "one of the best games ever". If it was released today for the first time (even with modern graphics) it would be lucky to score 5/10's

[Quin]

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Rather glad it lost out to Bastion in RPGamer's RPGOTY awards.
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[Gamesta]

[GooberMan]

I can't really post in this thread without trolling about Mirror's Edge again. At least, not until I get some sleep and proper think about it.
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[Benza]

On RE 4, I think it gets a lot of slack because it was kind of creating the modern 3rd person shooter when it came out. There were no Gears of War or anything else, so they were kind of making it up as they went.
RE 5 has no excuse and is rightly balls.

Half Life 2
Yeah sorry I don't like this game. More to the point I can't really understand why everyone else does. I mean you see modern FPS's get slammed for being nothing but set pieces followed by set pieces. That's basically what this game is, although at least in modern FPS's games the set piece is something like out running a chopper crashing through a building or something, compared to HL 2 wich has a set piece of 'locking you in a room while the other characters talk exposition at you'

Yeah that's not fun, it gets all this praise for it's 'interactivity' and never taking control away from the player. Interactivity only means something if I can have an effect on the out come, if you lock me in a room while people talk at me for 10 minutes with the only thing I can do is throw coffee cups at his head, that isn't interactive. That's boring. Just give me a god damm cut scene. At least then I could skip it.

To it's credit the game does have some pretty great scripted events. Crouching through the building while the attack chopper tries to find you, controlling the ant lion army as you invade the prison, those were pretty cool. But it usually then goes and fucks it up by making you spend 20 minutes on a hover craft or sticking you in one of it's many "We made a physics engine so we're going to force you to make a see-saw 20 times" puzzles.

It also kind of makes the game feel like an entire hodge podge of different kinds of games just thrown together with little regard for the overall coherency. I mean the game starts off with this great big brother esque vibe in this creepy city. But soon it decides 'oh wait, now lets make it a survival horror game' but completely forgets the whole survival bit and just loads you up with ammo so that there's no challenge.

Also the whole silent protagonist thing is handled horribly. Some games do it well, as much as I dislike Bioshock (And this overly long rant was almost on that game) it did the silent protagonist well. Half Life is supposed to make you care for the characters and believe that the characters care for you. But you're this creepy mute that just stands around starring at them. Is this really supposed to add to my immersion? And from what people tell me about the episodes there's supposed to be some kind of romance between Alex and Gordon?
Jesus talk about the creepiest romance, can you imagine Gordon having sex. Just silently starring unblinkingly.... thrusting...

So yeah... not a fan.


Also to kind of even out the bitterness.

Games I love that I don't think anyone else does
Nintey Nine Nights
Currently at 61 on metacritic

God I loved this game, I mean it's shallow as shit yeah, but god damm, having an entire screen covered in enemies with the only way to be able to find your character is to look for the glow of your sword as enemies fly up into the sky is fucking fun as hell. The story line was actually pretty interesting too since they actually showed both sides of the war as towards the end of the game you played the orc...goblin things. It wasn't exactly the best thing ever but it had slightly more depth then I imagined it would.

The various characters actually felt sufficiently different to one another
Which made playing through often the same couple of fights less frustrating then it could have been.

The strategy component to the game was... well non existent and the way to get the true ending sucked.

The game definitely isn't flawless, it has some major issues. But man I had a heap of fun with it, totally worth the 10 bucks I payed for it.
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[Frozencry]

I'm also an RE4 hater, though I largely attribute this to the fact that I've never actually liked an RE game. Mechanically they've never felt comfortable.

And I do have to agree somewhat with grim regarding Modern Warfare. I liked the first one, thought it was a good game and a lot of fun, but it effectively destroyed everything I loved and craved in competitive FPS online and has turned it into a shallow and unsatisfying shell of what it used to be.
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[Luketheman5]

Hmmmmmmmm probably
Batman: Arkham Asylum
I couldn't even finish it, the corridors and backtracking just didn't entertain me and I didn't even like the story much.

I did however enjoy Arkham City a lot, a much better story, better boss fights and I didn't feel so trapped.


Thought of another, the Devil May Cry series.
I played/beat the 4th one and it's just boring, I don't see the appeal in "kill 1000's of enemies with awesome combos if you can figure how to pull them off" kinda games.
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Now playing: Binary Domain
Now Replaying: Mass Effect 2

[Cyph]

Ohh, nice thread!
Where to start... well, of recent;
Call of Duty (after the original 2 on PC)
Battlefields
Elder Scrolls, ESPECIALLY SKYRIM... I think I dislike it more than Oblivion
Mortal Kombat (the latest release)
God of War
Sonic Generations
Bioshock 2
Assassin's Creed
Killzone 3
Condemned 2
Portal 1 & 2
Starcraft 1 & 2
Warcraft 3

I'm sure I'll think of more soon....

[Benza]

Woha up there Cyph, you're gonna have to atleast give us a little explanation on some of those titles. I mean hating Warcraft 3? Disliking Skyrim more than oblivion?

You can't just drop that list and run.
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[Cyph]

Heh, busy at work cause it's first thing Monday.
But..
Warcraft 3 and Starcraft because I ain't a fan of those type of RTSs. SoaSE and a few others are exceptions.
Skyrim more than Oblivion because I had higher expectations. It's just a dumbed down Oblivion with Dragons and more bugs.
Call of Duty/Battlefield because it symbolises everything I hate in most modern FPSs.
God of War (and you can add Vanquish, Bayonetta too) because... well.. I don't know, I just didn't find them appealing.
Sonic Generations would've been great if they got rid of 3D sonic and just remade the original levels, that's all I wanted.
I hated EVERYTHING about Bioshock 2.
Assassin's Creed I can see why people enjoy, but I'm not a fan of a lot of sand box games.
Killzone 3 looked horrible, played horrible and was completely different than Killzone 2.
Condemned 2... can't remember now but I seem to recall thinking it was very little like Condemned 1.
Portal 1 and 2... well... I don't see what all the hype is about this game. A few funny jokes, the puzzles were more annoying than anything else and I didn't enjoy playing them at all.

I'll go in more depth later but I'm swamped with emails to reply to atm.

[Esposch]

[Benza]

[GooberMan]

It's like the game SiN. Completely overshadowed by Half Life when it was released. The demo was great, so I bought it. Tried playing it through, got to the half way point before I finally said "Screw it, it ain't worth it." But over the proceeding years, I heard a few people say it was great. Decided to give it another shot (with the 1.1 patch so I could actually play the damned thing without all those gamebreaking bugs). Turns out that the game fairly well turned spectacular right after I threw in the towel the first time.

Can't really fault anyone for hating on it, because only half of it is a great game.
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[stuffandthat]

Gran Turismo 5.

Apparently cars do not have brakes that can be upgraded.
I also found the game boring. Due to the years of production I had higher expectations.

[StorminNorman]

Do... people actually like GT5, though? I don't think I've met anyone that does. Even my Dad, who's put upwards of 100 hours into it thinks it's deeply flawed.

[Benza]

[Fetidchimp]

Mass effect 2

I loathe this game, everything about it, my renegade shephard is a complete pussy in the second, also my shepherd from the first one probably would have woken up and proceeded to curb stomp the entire cerberus network...i dunno, nothing in the second one sat well with me, i only got half way through it though, and that was a chore.
I recently got it again and thought my mind was possibly playing a prank one me originally, nope, i went back to playing escape from butcher bay because i was enjoying that more.
That is about the only game i can think of that i actively want to burn every copy of though.

benza I like ninety nine nights, got the second one the other day
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kill, kill, kill.....the white man. Kill the white man, kill

[Charly]

Hotel Dusk

So many people list it as one of their top DS games and sing its praise. I found it to be dull as all heck, bar the art style.
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