I wanted to play Cuphead because I really liked the concept and the aesthetic. I got it not knowing its reputation for being hard as absolute fuck. Played it for several days with increasing frustration, started watching walkthroughs, those didn’t help, still tried to stubbornly stick with it, and eventually got to the point where my heart just wasn’t in it anymore.

Any pokemon game after gen 2.

I started in 1999 with red. It was a childhood-defining experience. I spent all summer with my nose in that game boy. Keep in mind I had to use a loupe mounted in a glasses frame and had to hold the screen an inch from my eye, so the ergonomics weren't ideal, but the experience was compelling enough for me to bear through it. Then I got gold in the summer of 2001, I think, and was blown away. It was an upgrade in every way. I personally think the series peaked with gen 2. To be absolutely clear I am not a "gen-wunner" or whatever the word is. I just think the combination of the game itself and the zeitgeist it created for those first few years came together to make something unrepeatable.

Gold and Silver came out while Pokemon was still everywhere, but by the time gen 3 released, the craze had ebbed. Yes it was still popular but it was no longer in everyone's mouth. I was also in the latter half of high school, and most of my friends were no longer into it. I bought the game, so it's not like I thought I was too old, but it just didn't feel the same. They removed the day-night cycle and the calendar functionality. It felt like a downgrade.

I've tried several times since to rekindle that feeling I got in 1999. The closest was with Pokemon Go in 2016. For a few weeks it felt like the late 90s again,, with everyone and their dog talking about Pokemon. I actually beat Pokemon Let's Go, but I think the nostalgia is what kept me going. Tried with the first Legends game and just couldn't stay interested. Ditto with Brilliant Diamond.

There has to be a word for not wanting something but wanting to want it. That's how I feel. (Of course the nice thing about being a conlanger is I can make the word myself 😁)

sdC CB qGr qGrbfrp
0     sdC-0   CB-0   qGr-0  qGrbfr-p
[1sg] yearn-A want-A play-A video_game-3D
I miss wanting to play that video game.

1sg = 1st person singular (0 means it's dropped)
-A = authoritative verbal mood (-0 means a null morpheme that isn't pronounced)
-3D = 3rd person distal noun suffix ('that video game')

Funny for me it was RDR2. I still think I probably would have liked it if I stuck with it, but 20 minutes in I was told that I would have to regularly clean my gun and hunt to feed my camp etc. and it just felt like doing a bunch of chores and I noped straight out.

Silksong it's a great game but way too hard for me. :(

Ho boy! Don’t buy RDR2 in that case. Worst (and last) full price game I’ve bought. Goddamn disappointing

Right know for me is Baldur’s Gates, it really don’t scratch my hitch. I have to play it in baby difficulty because I’m no tactician and I’m not a min maxer playing DnD so this game is really not for me

The Last Guardian.

I basically never got a PS3 because I was adamant about waiting for that game to come out. It didn't even release for the PS3 when it finally came out in 2016.

I finally played it on PS5 and holy shit was it a sluggish, buggy mess. Even after almost 10 years from the original releaee date.

Baldurs Gate 3 for me. I like the game mechanics and everything like that, but the story and characters put me off. The characters in general because of how unlikeable they all are, and the story I think my main problem is mostly that I know nothing about D&D and the game doesn't try to introduce anything. So I can't even follow the conversations properly because half the time I have no idea what they are talking about.

Control. stuck in an office with dull attack options. I played about half way through then looked up my progress and walked away. Way too dull for me. Friends were raving about it.

Sable. At first it was amazing... the music, the world and the characters were all so well done. It was such an immersive experience. I'd probably still be playing it right now even after completing it (also the only game I would have bothered to get all the cheevos); however, nearer to the end of the game there's a huge glaring bug the devs never bothered to fix: the best hover bike in the game bugs out whenever you drive over a sand dune and there are sand dunes everywhere in the game. That's like the main feature of the world; it's a desert planet. Every time you ride over a sand dune at top speed you'd spin every which way, your character would disappear, you'd stop moving and end up upside down halfway outside the map. One of the main selling points of the game was riding your hover bike around the world exploring places and just chilling out to the excellent music... well, this bug ruins the first two so all that's left is the music.

It's too bad... I really loved the game up to that point, which just so happened to be near the end where I couldn't refund it... I don't like badmouthing devs because there's a LOT of work that goes into making a game that I don't understand; however, no matter the reason, that's a shitty thing to do. Such a massive bug that ruins the game should be fixed... but they were incapable of doing so and likely never will. My final words on this topic are: Incompetent assholes.

God of War: Ragnarok.

I don't have a console so I had to wait for it to port to PC, then wait til it went on sale and I could snag it at a more reasonable price. I loved the one before it and was so excited to play. The first couple hours were good, and then I felt like it was an endless repetition of fight a boss, talk about our feelings while we walk to fight another boss, talk about our feelings some more, and repeat. The part where you have to play as Atreus helping that giant girl do her daily chores made me want to weep from boredom and it just went on forever. I think I gave up shortly after Freya met her brother again, but I don't really remember the storyline because it was just so mind numbingly exhausting, like listening in on a bunch of therapy sessions (and I'm super pro "take care of your mental health and go to therapy if you need it", but if I have to listen to a literal god whining and acting willfully helpless for an entire video game I'm out).

I have been told that it is actually a good game that gets better and I should give it another go, but I'm not sure if it's good for MY mental health.

South Park: Snow Day! I loved Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole, so I really wanted to like Snow Day, but unfortunately it's just not very good. I wouldn't even call it bad, it's just middling in almost every way. Now to add insult to injury, it was also pretty short.

If they make another South Park game it won't be a day one purchase for me, I've learned my lesson. I can wait for a sale.

World of Warcraft.

I didnt get to play it when it came out because I was still in school and couldnt afford the subscription. I was a huge Warcraft fan when I was younger. Eventually I forgot about it, until about 10 years later when I found a post online talking about WoW and I learned that they had a 14 day free trial. I immediately downloaded the game and made an account.

I uninstalled the game two days later. It wasn't even remotely close to the Warcraft that I grew up with. And sure part of that is on me. I had made the expectations that it was going to be like Runeacape but in the Warcraft universe. A top down, point and click, open world version of Warcraft 3.

The fetch quests was what really killed it for me though.

I’m a busy dad of two kids, so my play time is often fragmented and sporadic. There is a definite theme to mine.

Red Dead Redemption 2. There is so much I really love about it, but there are just too many systems to deal with. Hygeine, hunger, fashion, crafting, camp chores, random ambush attacks by too many enemies, stealth, tracking, etc. If it was a bit more streamlined I’d probably love it.

New Vegas. It’s the only Fallout I’ve played and I love it, up until inventory management takes more time than actually playing the game. I’ve made it to about the same point fiveish hours in three times.

Skyrim. I really want to love this one as well, but has both the inventory management issues that New Vegas does, and the controls are just wonky enough that I have to relearn them when I get back to it.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I really enjoyed it, up until I spent a precious uninterrupted hour and a half on a mission, only to die to something stupid just before the next save point. I know that it being Teh SupEr HaRdCorE is supposed to be part of the appeal, but I don’t have time for that shit.

Skulls and bones. Sailing in black flag is probably my favorite gaming experience ever. Ubisoft announced a sailing game right after. All they had to do was add some upgrade paths so people could set up their ships for different playstyles. Like 10 years later, the game finally came out. It's the only game I've ever refunded. Everything about it was terrible.

I never wanted to play any specific games but I did avoid playing Dave the Diver for months thinking it was boring. I could bet money that I would hate it. Gave it a try one day out of boredom and could not sleep until I finish it a week later. 70 hours. (yes I have a full time job)

fucking great game

Witcher 3. Absolutely hated the sluggish movement, only made it a few hours

Monster Hunter(World & Rise). I have played over 1k hours of Dark Souls 1&2 and my mate has 5k+ hours in the MH series. I gave it multiple tries but I can't get into the combat mechanics. It feels too slow, while being pretty complex. And then there's also quite some cutscenes, which is something that quickly turns my dumb brain off. :(

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

It's so damn boring, all of it.

smash bros melee. i was sooooo hyped. but the game felt way too fast for me compared to n64 smash, and the litany of clone characters was a massive letdown.

Breath Edge. I was looking for a new subnautica-like experience, having given up on any expectations from the sequel currently in development when the new owners got rid of the original devs (imo just pirate the original so they don't get money from owning that, too).

Maybe I dropped it too soon, but Breath Edge didn't give that sense of making progress. I was stuck having to go back to the same starting point after every trip. Those trips are longer, but I found progressing and exploring to just be annoying and frustrating rather than fun and rewarding and what you do find underwhelming. I stopped when it looked like it wanted me to set up "path extenders" for kms with effects that frost the helmet to 0 visibility. There's probably some mechanisms I'm about to unlock that will make those easier but I just don't want to.

Maybe I'll try looking at a walkthrough to see what the next steps are and decide if it's worthwhile (maybe I'm missing something important that makes the rest of it much less of a pain), but there's plenty of other games to play so I'm not worried.

Dang, I wish you had played the second one first. Still might not be your thing, but it was a much better story and much better gameplay.

There was a game called Batallion that was super hyped about making an updated version of CoD 2. They were going to do real areas in WW2, use real weapon sounds and some other stuff. It sounded great but in practice it was awful... You had long halls where a guy would jump up and barely see his head and bang dead... shot through the wall. Couldn't even attempt to fire back.

What fun is that? I mean honestly your in mid jump and you can hit someone on a regular basis?? Aim should be completely wild and maybe have a 5% chance to actually hit what you are aiming at. The physics of things were either all wrong or they had a rampant hacking problem.

It was so bad they ended up refunding all the purchases and giving it away. https://store.steampowered.com/app/489940/BATTALION_Legacy/

I have over 50% of the achievements in Death Stranding (can't find my play time on the stupid Epic site) and am a breath away from stopping altogether due to the control issues.

Trying to play this fucking game with a controller is an exercise in frustration. For some fucking reason, the game can't handle using a controller without sending phantom inputs after a short time.

If I hadn't gotten the game for free on the Epic store I'd be pissed for giving my money for broken shit.

I like to go back to old games that were well regarded in their time but I missed. It's neat to see what holds up and what doesn't, but the biggest disappointment to me has to be Secret of Mana. So many people love that game, so I went in with high expectations. I instead found the combat way too simple when it even lets me play, far too often, it takes control away from your characters through annoying status effects. I could not stand it and dropped it fairly quick.

Cultist Simulator was a disappointment after being hyped about it for a while. From the outside it looked like an addicting roguelike power fantasy type of game but it wasn't. It's a purposefully obscure game with no clear goal, which would be alright if there was some kind mystery to unfold or if the journey was enjoyable. The gameplay was interesting in the first few runs when I was still learning mechanics but after that it's just tedious. It's also really punishing if you don't play carefully all the time. Other than the vibes/atmosphere I have no idea what anyone enjoys about it.

Persona 5, disco Elysium, outer worlds, divinity original sin 2