I’ll give my example and I think I’m going to get a lot of hate for it. I DESPISE Dark Souls 3. It is such a mediocre game when it comes to the actual gameplay. There is like zero build diversity, the combat isn’t indepth and, while the other souls games have at least decent RPG mechanics and exploration can make things easier, DS3 just demands you rolly polly your way to victory. There is no weight to like anything, you feel so floaty and light, and you fold like a peice of paper when you get hit. And so many attacks don’t care about your positioning, and instead only if you mashed the dodge button at the correct time, something Elden Ring kind of does too, but it adds a jump button to retain some offense and I find that I’m able to out position bosses and enemies more often in it without actually dodging.
Dark Souls 3 is such a mindnumbingly boring game for me, I feel zero excitement playing it.
Love DS1, DS2, Bloodborne and Elden Ring though, great games all around.
And the music for DS3 is amazing and I do love the Pontiff Sullivan fight.
Im not sure if witcher 3 was hyped but I recently played and did not get passed a few of the initial quests before I yawned out.
TW3, and The Witcher as a series in general, is one of those slow burn games. Its strong point is the characters and building story. That said, given the time investment required to get to that point, I can’t blame anyone for bouncing off if they weren’t already into the series.
Breath of the wild.
Complete disapointment as a Zelda game, it felt just like generic ubi-slop with a coat of nintendo paint, complete with a pointless crafting system and the ridiculous “swords can ony hit a dozen times before breaking”.
Disagree. Exploring the world of botw was fun, combat is fun, cooking is cool.
The problem is it’s a pretty big genre shift. Nintendo clearly thought it was time after Skyward Sword and the market agreed… But I personally couldn’t stand basically everything they did beyond the base idea of going all in on an open world.
There was, quite frankly, too much meaningless filler content for me to really care, and the disconnect in tone between the main story’s genuinely emotional attempt at creating a sense of urgency and the open world “take your time bro lmao Zelda’s already been doing this for a century” drove me up a wall.
I understand why people like it though, they absolutely nailed the exploration and mechanics… If you weren’t already tired of them.
I found the game a lot more approachable once I modded the toffee-tier equipment out of the game.
Hmm I think most rogue likes. But that’s probably a me issue. I just don’t enjoy having to restart and play the same gameplay loop again. Hades was the closest one that I seemed to enjoy more as I liked the story bits between each run. I recently started cult of the lamb and I enjoy the base building so that might help too.
It’s interesting that you mention DS3. I quite enjoyed my time with it(once I got my bearings. I had to restart a number of times) but I’m super curious if I would enjoy it as much if I went back and played DS1 again to compare.
I can completely understand the environment complaint. I really liked sekiro for all the varied environments and themes.
Did you ever give Slay the Spire a go? I was also quite sceptical about roguelikes, but now it is by far my most played game ever at a whopping 600 hours.
The beauty of it is that it is quite easy to understand, but with an incredible amount of depth to it. You’ll start out having trouble winning your first ever run, but that’s when the fun begins. There are 4 characters, each with their play style and cards, and there are 20 ascensions to unlock, each being a more difficult version of a standard run. In the end, you’ll gain such a deep understanding of the balancing and tradeoffs at play that you can’t not be amazed at this achievement in game design. Baalorlord is a great YouTuber and Twitch streamer who is also one of the best players in the world. He was able to do a consecutive winstreak of 20 wins on the highest ascension, showing that this game is RNG based but has a tremendous amount of skill involved too.
Is there a certain tactic to winning Slay the Spire? I’ve played a decent number of hours across multiple characters but I’ve never managed to beat the final boss on the standard difficulty. I remember reading once that binning your default cards is key?
I’ve heard of it and seen that people enjoy it, but outside of that, I don’t really know much about the game. I’ll have to maybe give it a try one day. I do really appreciate when games have a carefully crafted gameplay systems
Fuck, I don’t like most video games so I can throw a rock and hit one, but I’m gonna go with the genres I like just to make it interesting.
Fighting games: Mortal Kombat—I’m sorry, I like the hyper violence as much as the next guy, but the gameplay doesn’t do it for me at all. Entertaining to watch, but it stops there for me.
Action games: Suda51 overall. Like, play No More Heroes but steer clear of the rest. It’s mediocre combat wrapped in nonstop nonsense.
Shmups: ZeroRanger. I can’t stand that game.
Final fantasy 7 is the OG hype mediocrity.
All works of entertainment must be judged within the context of their time!
Okay, I was around when it was new and I thought it wasn’t great at the time. Incoherent story, game mechanics that often don’t do anything, it’s good at looking cool and not much else. It came out around the same time as Planescape: Torment, and I sure wish that had been the game that had an influence on the next decade of games instead.
That said, my opinion has evolved since then - FF7 is a hugely important game in the history of RPGs because the cinematic style of presentation it offered absolutely did blow everything else out of the water. I get it, it genuinely was important, it just didn’t really cater to the elements I personally care about.
Probably GTA V. I did enjoy it, but the story was all over the place and the multiplayer was never that fun (it wasn’t long before it became filled with cheaters and ridiculous DLC cars/weapons). Something about traversing the map just bored me in a way that GTA IV and San Andreas never did.
To me, Rockstar Games are cool as world simulators and storytelling engines. My issue is that they plop lazily-designed gameplay on top.
No one ever talks about the core gameplay loops of these games, the thing that makes you progress through the storyline.
They talk about the storyline, but they don’t talk about the mediocre gunfights you have to wade through to watch a cutscene or hear dialogue. Wave after wave of anonymous enemies, like videogames haven’t changed since shooting galleries.
They have to introduce essentially unexplained superpowers (slowing down time) to make it remotely interesting. And even then, I would argue most people are just trying to get through every single mission.
Or the terrible movement/driving/riding physics. I didn’t finish GTA4 (also a “10/10 game”) because some of the missions relied on the abysmal movement.
It’s like… a Rockstar game is like going to IKEA. You’re going to be led through a lot of stupid crap, just because they want to keep you there longer.
Omg, the helicopters especially in GTA4 controlled abysmally.
I do agree with your observations here, especially when it comes to GTA V.
One Rockstar game that I thought did a good job with the gameplay loop was Max Payne 3. Near-death, running low on ammo and diving to the side of an enemy’s shot in slow-motion whilst you line up that last headshot and see the animation as the final bullet hits it’s target. THAT felt satisfying. It’s not a perfect game by any means, but I loved the gameplay.
GTA V on the other hand did feel like a chore at times with its uninspiring gunfights. I think it actually shined most during the unscripted moments - being chased when a stray bullet pops a tyre, forcing you to fight your way out of a battle on the side of the road before running for your life, stealing another car and getting away. I guess that’s what you mean when you say a storytelling engine.
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I remember finishing the story and going “That’s it?”. Even now when I try to remember what the actual plot was I have no fucking idea. And I didn’t really get into GTA Online because by the time I got around to it sharkcards were already ruining online and I just didn’t want anything to do with that.
But I have a hard time saying it’s overrated. There’s just nothing else like it in the world. Every other game that has tried to copy GTA has ended up being noticeably inferior to GTA.
I suppose it’s overrated in the sense that there are better games in the series (in my opinion at least).
I think Rockstar did an incredible job with RDR2, so I’m hoping GTA VI is an improvement over V.
It was the first time I played a GTA game.
The dialog and social satire was what sold it for me. As a game, it’s just OK. There’s a lot of mechanics that it trains you to do for one mission, and then it never comes up again. Once you do the first big heist, money is no longer anything to worry about. Which is good, because buying a business for income is almost never worth it unless you’re going to have a very long playthrough.
The torture scene was a bit much. In-universe, even fucking Trevor thought it was a bit much.
The final mission should have been the big three-way shootout between various corrupt organizations. Have Franklin have to make his choice on who to kill during that mission, and then wrap it all up. The story clearly climaxes there, and the rest is dragging things out.
I’m surprised it got so many 10 out of 10 reviews back in the day. I guess having an open world game with draw distances like that on an Xbox360 was a big deal, but once that technical achievement is no longer noteworthy, it’s a 7 out of 10 experience. Which is fine, it’s just not amazing.
I found it very strange how unfinished parts of it seemed.
Elder Scrolls games but specifically Skyrim.
I have tried it multiple times but I just don’t understand how so many people can put so many hours into a game when an element you are going to be engaging in for a lot of your play through is one of the worst in the genre, the combat. It is floaty, imprecise and has zero feeling of impact. It is just horrible. I felt the same about Oblivion but Skyrim seems to be held in even higher regard.
Elder Scrolls games by and large suck out of the box. The prolific mod community is what makes them worth buying / playing. I’ve got a few hundred hours in Skyrim and I’ve never actually finished the main storyline. Don’t know how it ends, don’t care.
Oh man, yeah the hit reg and combat physics in Bethesda games are awful. At least Morrowind had good RPG elements, I would rather have that DND style of combat than what Oblivion and Skyrim have done with theirs.
To be fair I never played the older games so I was more specifically referring to the new ones. At this point as well I think the older ones are too old to go back and try out for me having never played them and I doubt I’d get on with them without the nostalgia element.
Skyrim does have a lot of combat overhaul mods to make it feel like you want it to. Of course ideally you shouldn’t have to, but the option is there at least.
That’s why we all play archers!
The ragdoll physics still felt novel at the time. Nothin quite like headshotting a goblin and they go tumbling away from the force of your arrow
Ghost of Tsushima is touted by some as a “game of the decade” candidate when in reality it’s just a somewhat more polished Ubisoft open world game, that’s also highly monotonous and repetitive for its very long playthrough length.
I have to agree with this. The game is gorgeous and I enjoy the general setting and plot but I absolutely loath the navigation system that just about everyone and their pet turtle says is amazing and I thought it went on for too long. By the end of the main story (and having done most of the side stuff alobg the way) I was so done with it I didn’t even bother touching the DLC.
I had been told to just play Sekiero or one of the AC remasters.
YES thats what I thought whenever someone tried to get me to play it!
So you didn’t play it at all?
So you agree, emphatically, that a game that you’ve never even played is overrated?
Huh. Ok.
I mean, I’ve watched gameplay of it, watched friends play it and it doesn’t look appealing to me. It looks like Assassins Creed with somewhat better combat.
OMG, I just watched a streamer do an all bosses runs of DS3 yesterday and was reminded of how much I dislike that game. I played Demon Souls and DS1 right before it(also ER), and found my prefered build(magic) heavily nerfed to the point of having to min max my most mana efficient spells to even get through areas.
Also watching the playthrough I was reminded how there is not a single area in that game I looked at fondly or found beautiful or enjoyable to be in. I understand why thematically, but everything is so dead and drab and lifeless compared to even DS1 which has plenty of lush green areas or bold alien crystal caverns. It really feels like DS3 wants you to hate your time with the game, throwing enemies in locations that are as infuriating as possible for no reason(dlc is even worse about this somehow). The runs to get back to bosses are also infuriating and such a time waste(I am so glad Elden Ring mostly removed these)
Now I want to try DS2 to see if I actually like or dislike it more than DS3. Overall, it just feels like DS3 wants to make you suffer with no payoff or reason, just because its “hardcore” or “edgy” and in 2025 I don’t really care for that mindset anymore.
Skyrim
The hype building up behind CP2077 made me curious, but I couldn’t care about it after ten hours in. I’m still not sure if it’s not my type of game/storytelling, or that I wanted too much from it (or was prepared to hate it as an ordinary reddit contrarian), but I feel like I don’t understand why people liked it or want to replay it now.
In contrast I do know Doom: Ethernal was definetely not my type. I’m a huge Doom/Quake fan, and jumping puzzles, gimmicky mapmaking, maraudeurs, resource farming routine, the fact you can’t kill stuff without constant QTEing were frustrating. The way they constantly show you how awesome and brutal you are in the cutscenes is just damn cheap. For me it was a downgrade from short but breathtaking Doom 2016. I’m happy it makes money to do great remasters with new episodes though.
As a counter example, as I played Like a Dragon games back to back, I’ve seen the sentiment that the third game, the first unremastered game in a chronological order, is the worst one for a modern gamer, even called Blockuza for enemies behavior. While I can understand that, I find it’s bearing one of the greatest emotional moments for the main character, as well as the less confusing storyline that 4 and 5 tried to pull. The 6th game revisits the same vibe space, but does so in a more technologically advanced and experienced way, and it means a lot. So I think the antihype there can be unfair too.
I’ve dumped 300 hours into Cyberpunk 2077, I played it on launch, loved it, and periodically through to the end of Phantom Liberty.
I just like the gameplay. Especially after the perk overhaul, which made melee builds sensational. It’s so fun to quicksave before entering an area and just go wild.
Doom Eternal was such a freakin disappointment to me. It was fine, thats all to me.
I’m pissed most youtubers cherished it like a God’s own baby. It led me to finally unsub from Angry Joe I forgot I followed from earlier years. There were just a few bloggers who said they didn’t like it or pointed any problem with it.
I think Yakuza Kiwami 3 is coming out early next year
Whaaaaa…?
That’s wild. And an instant buy too.
The cyberpunk thing rested completely on player choices, autonomy and an “alive” city. That was sort of hyped up and then the game was a very traditional linear RPG with an OK background.
An OK game but nothing genre redefining.
And there was hope that it would be, because CDPR had proven their competence and they had enough cash and autonomy to do something crazy and new and exciting and good. And they “merely” made a good game.
Oh I loved Cyberpunk, I thought it was fantastic but I played it after 2.0. I can totally see why someone wouldn’t get into it though, especially before 2.0.
I finally bought the Claire Obscure hype after seeing tons of group cosplays of it at DragonCon. I thought I had bought a turn based RPG, but it’s actually a rhythm game in disguise. I do not like the dodge or die mechanics.
I felt the same way. I turned it to easy mode and enjoyed the visuals and story. Good riddance to the combat frankly.
- Tomb Raider (2013) - I want to like that game and even tried the mindset of “Try treat it as just a standalone game” like I did with Resident Evil 4 but unlike that game, the game is boring. The constant hold-handling which the combination of the reboot trying to be cinematic feels jarring. “Survival” mechanics feels like a gimmick and felt in late-game, it went just being generic shooter game.
- Doom 3 - I only putting it here as there’s fan saying it underrated but to me, it feels like a tech demo at best (a really good one as love the shadows) and at worst, it’s a poor-man’s Half-Life. It was at first, scary the jumpscare but that’s more just emeries’ placement which felt there for cheap scare which ruins the atmosphere a bit they just set up. Personally, I think Dead Space is everything what Doom 3 wishes it could of be. One thing I do like is you can listen to logs and read emails to try find out PINs for various lockers around the place which I thought that was cool.
Doom 3 was historically overwhelmingly panned
Trust me, I know. Like I said, I only added it as there’s ton people saying it underrated and act like it’s a universal liked game and TOTALLY not disliked by many and said why it isn’t good.
I love Doom 3, but I totally get what you’re saying. Dead Space is for sure like a better version of Doom 3. But I have a soft spot for personally and I love the sci fi environments and world building.
D*sco Elys*um
I feel like I’ll need to try it again sometime. I found it annoying that I couldn’t seem to self insert lol. Might have been how my character was set up.
One thing I will say: Disco Elysium is not a self-insert or blank slate RPG. You are playing as a very defined and distinct person, and you discover more and more things about him as you go. You can choose to emphasise certain traits that he already possesses, but you can never completely reshape him. He will always be who he is. A lot of people who want to “pick dialogue options that they would say IRL” end up bouncing off the game. I recommend trying to accept that you’re playing as an insane, depressed failure and commit to it.
Hmm insane depressed failure you say? Maybe he’s closer to me than I thought lol!
In that case maybe I just need to lean into him being a much more defined stereotype like being dumb and strong or something haha
Thank you for letting me know, that’s good to keep in mind
Hah! I also actually related to him a lot actually. As someone who has struggled with mental health, depression, addiction, failure and clinging to the past I ended up resonating a lot with the protagonist as well, and Disco Elysium overall was a very emotional and impactful experience for me.
But even so, I never really felt like I was playing me like I do in self insert RPGs. But that was fine - the main mystery of the game is discovering your protagonist’s backstory and history and everything he is and has been through anyway.
I can see why it would be good. I wasn’t willing to endure more of its self indulgence to find out.
Fantastic response tbh.
It’s a good game, and very unique in what it does, but it’s not the objectively best written masterpiece it gets praise for.
My friend who thinks it is also thinks the same o Shakespeare, which I think explains a lot. I tend to be impressed with works that say more with fewer words rather than say little with very many. If the author could pull his head out of his own ass and get to his points, I think it would be a better game, but I suspect Disco Elysium fans would argue that that would ruin the best part of the game, so I just accept I’m not the target audience.
It is a good implementation of RPG mechanics. The worldbuilding setpieces were fun to engage with. The writing is insufferable.
I understand theoretically why people love Control… but I think its objectively a very bad game
i dislike the story, voice acting, animation, level design, music, enemy pathfinding, visual identity, sound design
there’s better games where you can wield powers and such
I actually really liked the setting and artstyle, but god yeah I do not understand why that combat system needed to be the way it was. It put me off playing the sequel, because I just didn’t want to suffer through the most godawful shooting combat of any game I’ve played this decade for another 40 hours.
Wasn’t this the same studio who gave us Max Payne? How have they been making third person shooters for like two decades and still mess it up?
