How many and which bad games did you play this year?

Silvally
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Not really a “stinker” but I was disappointed with Tears of the Kingdom and have dropped it after 100 hours.

I don’t think it helps that I’ve been playing this whilst sat next to my fiancee playing the Witcher 3 on our Steam Deck. The difference between the two games is like night and day, despite the Witcher 3 being almost a decade older.

Tears of the Kingdom is just okay, in my opinion. I enjoyed it enough to get 100 hours out of it. I dropped Breath of the Wild after a similar amount of time too. They’re just not for me I guess, they don’t immerse me like other RPGs do.

100h is not a stinker game playtime but I see what you mean :))

sub_o
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I played a lot of great games this year, but also many that didn’t click with me.

There’s a huge spikes of games that I played this year, because I decided to start tackling my backlog by streaming them, these include games I’ve bought on sale, and those that are on PS+ Extre.

Can't finish because of difficulty spikes
  • Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown:
    • Dropped it after that mission where you need to protect a car, while manouvering between buildings in a city, as expected I kept crashing into buildings
  • Shantae: Risky’s Revenge
    • It was fun at first, but then there’s some precisioin platforming part, which I just wasn’t in the mood for
  • Super Mario 64
    • There’s a level where you’re first introduced to flying mechanic
Dropped it because of technical issues
  • Assassin’s Creed Origins
    • The game crashed within the tutorial area
  • Call of the Sea
    • I got motion sickness
  • Kena: Bridge of Spirits
    • Again, I got motion sickness, supposed to be an okay game.
  • Tardy
    • Weirdly because the game has lots of reading, but the fonts are way too small for me
  • The Ascent
    • Too much clutter on scene when you reached the first city / settlement. The first section feels okay, but again, some items / objects are just way too small for my failing eyes
Dropped it because it's not clicking
  • Gnosia
    • It was supposed to be fun at first, but then the rolls I got was not advancing the storyline
  • Grime
    • This feels like the moment I dislike souls-like metroidvania. It might be when I realized that I’ve picked the wrong upgrade path, and there’s limited resources for upgrading your character
  • Gungrave G.O.R.E
    • This is not a good game
  • Horizon Forbidden West
    • The combat feels worse than the first one. There’s so many more things to do that has way too many writings that I barely care enough. I’d rather have smaller number of sidequests with good writing, than a large number of them where everyone has so many stories to tell. This feels like it’s becoming a ‘forever game’, which might be good, but the combat is just not satisfying at all.
  • Mafia: Definitive Edition
    • Dropped after the racing section, was not feeling it.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda
    • Dropped while in the first area. Something about the movement not clicking.
  • MediEvil (Remake)
    • Dropped after the 3rd or 4th area.
  • Moon: Remix RPG Adventure
    • This is supposed to be great, but I just got tired of the slow pace
  • NEO: The World Ends with You
    • I talked about this before, the game keeps on interrupting you. Walk to a new area, fluff dialogues, walk to another area, more inconsequential fluff dialogues. This seems to be a (bad) trend among JRPGs or anime style game.
  • Oxenfree
    • Character dialogues just don’t gel with me. Also there’s a time limit when choosing replies.
  • Root Double: Before Crime * After Days - Xtend Edition
    • The slice of life part is atrociously slow, most of them are inconsequential ‘look at me, i’m a cute anime girl’
  • Sea of Stars
    • The combat is way too slow, and requires you to do timed button presses. Also for the part I was in, the story feels generic.
  • Shadow of the Beast
    • JUst not good
  • Star Ocean: The Divine Force
    • Arrived at port town, overtly anime character came in, dropped the game. THe combat was fun, but the character / story are not clicking
  • Tchia
    • This is supposed to be good, but I burned myself out for trying to collect everything available before advancing the story
  • The Adventure of Little Ralph
    • Feels kinda repetitive
  • The Wonderful 101: Remastered
    • I don’t think this game works well without touch screen
  • TUNIC
    • Sadly another indie trend that I dislike, difficult combat encounters that don’t feel satisfying. It’s supposed to be a very good game.
  • Unpacking
    • Played it on PS5, I dropped it after rotating object for quite a number of times. I think this game is probably better suited for mouse and keyboard
  • Vernal Edge
    • I wanted to like it, but the combat is not fun. You have a dedicated ‘Pulse’ button to heal, which throws your sword at the enemy, and you need to press attack + direction to launch an attack that could heal you, which is already a roundabout way of healing (the mechanic is not fun). Then you have enemies that need to be stunned by X number of charge attacks, and the game throws you into small combat area with 4 - 5 enemies that doesn’t get knocked back without 3-4 charge attacks.
Finished it, but it's kinda not good
  • Root Film
    • Root Letter was okay (but arguably ruined with the updated version with multiple endings), Root Film is just plain boring, especially the ending. The story was enticing at first, but nope, it became bad by the end of the game.
  • Shenmue II
    • Shenmue.
  • The 3rd Birthday
    • I like the combat, considering that it was on PSP.

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We finally got around to playing Gotham Knights this year since it was a few bucks on sale for a coop adventure. Certified stinker for sure.

Oh yeah, I forgot about this one. Good call, definite stinker. Shame, would have loved an Arkham spiritual successor.

I’m sure many would consider Redfall a stinker, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. And this was before the updates.

I have PlayStation Plus. Most of what I play are stinkers.

Hard for me to call any game a “stinker” because I am simply not into a lot of very popular games.

The only game that was kinda a bummer was Tears of the kingdom. The sky world was just copy/pastes with nothing but some robots. I wanted the hot bird people up there or something.

The underground was dead and had a few POIs but was basically just those same annoying ninjas from the first game who disguise themselves as civilians. I liked the story and characters in botw2 better. The map was largely unchanged from the first game. Some of the missions were better. Gannon actually getting a plot was cool. The enemies were better this go around. The gmod bits were cool, but caused the game to run like shit. The game also ran at like, 22 fps the entire time anyways. The shrines were as meh as the first game, which were already so dull I’d look up guides just to get more hearts/stamina.

…it should have been a $25 DLC instead of a $70 game.

It was a solid 4.5/10 for me, mostly just on the amount of rehashed stuff for a $70 game, which should have blown my balls off for waiting six years and $70 later. I hope the next Zelda game is more like Twilight Princess.

I was going to contest, but I actually emulated the game and didn’t have the framerate issues. Everything else held up for me though. In terms of the civiskyzation, it has been thousands of years. They all dead. I don’t disagree with the underground being empty, but it is an unknown underground. It made sense for the POI’s to mostly match up with the overworld elements.

I think these are fair lore reasons when it’s like this because of the hardware the game runs on. Maybe there could have been more underground but it affected the performance.

Disagree on the DLC though. It was a pretty fully fledged game. I also agree that it shouldn’t have been $70, though lol.

I think had they released it on PC, it would have been a bit better, since the vehicles could be built larger and have a further despawn distance without big frame drop penalties. (And frame drops in certain environments). I’m glad for the enemy variation and liked the bosses better in totk. But next game, I hope the gameplay is wildly different and they take some risks with the story. I’d love to see parts where you play as Zelda or something.

tygerprints
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If you’re talking video (not board) games, I think most the games I played were kind of a mix of good and bad. I mean they usually start out pretty well but then end up being repetitive and boring. If I ever have to play another farm sim where I’m required to craft things in some convoluted way that makes no sense, I’ll chuck my game system out the nearest window. Why does “Stardew Valley” get it totally right, and the rest not get it right at all? OK yes I play mostly casual games, but the real “gems” are few and far between. Still waiting for another good sim that isn’t more work than it is fun.

@t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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Why does “Stardew Valley” get it totally right, and the rest not get it right at all?

I am not an expert on SDV, but my wife plays basically every HM-like out there, and her take is that Barone focused so heavily on the ‘economy’ balance in SDV that all of the activities feel like they’re worth doing, so it doesn’t become “only farming”, or “only adventuring”, etc, like many others do. Even just picking up wild plants feels worth it when you drop them in the sale bin in the evening.

tygerprints
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I think that’s true and one reason I like SDV so much. There isn’t a lot of time spent on material gathering, and you don’t have to craft your own tools or make your own buildings. I think those things COULD be fun if they weren’t so complicated in so many sim games - I could not make heads or tails out of the crafting mechanics in “My Time at Portia,” for example. I think if you’re goingg to task the gamer with those things, they should be very easy to do, because most people don’t want to waste time on mundane chores and drawn out searches for rare materials or who knows what the game requires (in many cases I simply have no idea what the game is wanting from me!).

I think MTaP and to a lesser extent MTaS both really carried over a lot of the complexity from Planet Explorers, Pathea’s first game they released internationally. It’s a survival crafting game, with a LOT of complexity (e.g. manual, voxel-based weapon and vehicle designs). I don’t think it worked well in combination with other systems like farming being very underdeveloped (in MTaP especially).

tygerprints
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What is MTaP and MTaS? *(sorry for my ignorance). Are they available on Switch? Or just PC? Just curious.

My Time at Portia and My Time at Sandrock (sequel). They’re both on Switch.

tygerprints
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Oh OK - sheesh, I shoulda known that. I’ve seen My Time at Sandrock and it’s available on Switch, but I’m afraid to check it out because I hated MTaP so much.

Yeah, if you didn’t enjoy MTaP I wouldn’t recommend it. :)

OK yes I play mostly casual games…

You say that like it’s something to be ashamed of. “Casual” is an underrated genre, because sometimes, it’s nice to just take your time and enjoy the experience. Life has enough complexities that escaping to a world of simplicity and calm can be truly rewarding.

tygerprints
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Well to be truthful, it feels like people DO put casual gaming in sort of a “not really serious” category. And that’s somewhat true; I don’t like overly complicated games that have tons of drop down menus you can’t even read onscreen (tiny fonts). I’ve always been more into puzzle or even sim games because there is no platforming usually (I SUCK SO MUCH AT PLATFORMING!). I love casual games because they usually are easy going, I can play for 20 minutes or an hour, it’s up to me.

Oh, for sure. But so what if it’s “not really serious?” Isn’t that kind of the point of the Casual genre? Play the games you like; don’t listen to a bunch of tryhard, self-important gatekeepers.

tygerprints
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That’s a good point. I mean, why should games not be as unserious as possible? That’s one thing that always kind of bothered me about video game evolution. At first, it was this little square dot you swatted with a white “paddle”; my family bought that system and I was about eighteen.

I’ve been a video game addict since and probably have owned every system at one time. But I really hoped to see it grow in the direction of fun but other the top sim games and casual but engrossing puzzle games, not so much in the direction of let’s go shoot people and kill as many other sim-humans as we can.

Not that’s there’s anything wrong with that! I mean, I have a special love for the God of War games, but to me those are so crazy with mythological creatures and stuff that it really appeals to me more than, say, GTA type games.

The beauty of it is gaming is all of those things! There’s something for everyone, even down to revisiting old formats (see Moonring).

tygerprints
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That’s so true! It’s kind crazy to me how many new games are in the jagged style of old arcade games (pixelated). I think the old and new all have a place in gaming, but – I can’t keep up with all the new consoles. I mean, I really don’t want to have to get a PS5. But - i don’t want to be left in the pixelated dust of yesteryear either!!

bermuda
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Why does “Stardew Valley” get it totally right, and the rest not get it right at all?

I think it’s because Stardew has a lot of RPG elements. Developing relationships with the townspeople (romantic and friendship), figuring out the lore, etc. Lots of games that try to replicate Stardew do the farming / labor stuff and call it quits. I know there are probably some people that go into that game only doing farming, but most people I’ve met who are fans of it like the lore stuff.

tygerprints
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That’s one thing Stardew does right. But also, it gets the “labor mechanics” right; there aren’t a ton of drop down menus to navigate through, your tools are right there on the bottom tab. And also, amazingly - and astonishingly - it GIVES you the basic farm tools you need right off the bat! You can start a farm without much explanation and zero aggravation. If you need upgrades, you just pay for them and yes, there’s some material gathering to make buildings, but someone else does the actual construction. To me that’s great because then I can go fight blobs in the mines or fish or visit the other residents.

If you don’t want gaming to feel like work, maybe stop playing labor simulators. Like, isn’t the point of those games to make you feel like your working whatever job they’re “simulating”?

@Lunar@lemmy.wtf
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Clearly there are some games that do it better.

tygerprints
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Oh sure go and be all logical about it. :/ You’re right though, and I do try to stay away from labor simulators (which is a better name for them than gaming simulators, since there’s not much fun in them if you ask me). Even Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing get very tedious doing the same chores every day all day long - maybe it’s just my adult ADHD acting up.

autumn (she/they)
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this is such a mood. i’m still waiting for the next stardew valley.

tygerprints
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Me too! And why after all this time, isn’t there a Stardew 2? I know he’s busy with Haunted Chocolatier, which makes me salivate for many reasons - but I dunno if I’ll ever live long enough to see it come out for realsies.

The only one that really sticks out is Starfield. Most other games I played I knew what I was getting into. For some reason Starfield surprised me, probably because it was on Gamepass (so effectively free) and because I trusted Bethesda. Oh well.

Considering the number of great games this year, that’s not too bad.

Agreed and Starfield wasn’t even that bad. I just don’t have any time to play a mediocre game when BG3 is sitting right there.

Maybe it’s just me getting older, but since Skyrim, Bethesda games have failed to capture that magic for me. They’ve been leaning on the creation engine for too long, to the point that so many of the features, not the least of which being the goddamn shouts, are all carbon copies of one another, the base building is literally just a fucking resource sink, the gunplay sucks and the enemies are all bullet sponges unless you dip into late game planets and filch a late game gun, the jobs are 90% basic bitch fetch quests, and the core gameplay loop of “go place --> grab shit --> sell shit” has not evolved since Morrowind.

I stop playing games when they start feeling like a second job, and for me that point in Starfield was about three hours in when I was trying to complete survey data for the homesteading program and I was wandering around this deserted planet, looking for samples of flora and fauna, and I scoot back from my desk as I realize, for 20 minutes, I have done absolutely nothing meaningful or engaging. The closest I’ve come is, I’ve pointed a scanner at a bunch of procedurally generated animals hoping they don’t land a hit on me because they’re too spongy for me to kill, so I can fill a meter, so that when I’m done filling meters I can go back to BDG and tell him this place is suitable for people to live. That’s not fun. It barely qualifies as gameplay, and it is an aggressive waste of time.

ampersandrew
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Maybe it’s just me getting older, but since Skyrim, Bethesda games have failed to capture that magic for me.

It is not you. Standards for the genre have been raised since at least 2015, and Bethesda has not kept up, for all the reasons you stated.

For me it’d be Starfield and Diablo 4. I do have faith that Blizzard will turn the ship around and reel me back in to D4 later down the line. I have zero hope for Starfield ever being good, though. It is a fundamentally broken game I have no hope Bethesda will be able to fix, ever.

@Tosti@feddit.nl
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I personally really disliked the latest Far cry. Graphics where nice, story was ok-ish but the outlandish aspects of the gameplay (supremo’s… pets…) made it a snoozefest without any challenge. Setting the enemies to bulletsponge made it even more unbearable. I’ll be waiting for the bargain bin for the next installment.

bermuda
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How is it compared to 3 - 5? 3 - 5 are some of my faves and I was looking forward to 6 but I heard similar things from other people. If it’s a similar game experience then I might consider giving it a try.

I enjoyed 3 to 5, probably 3 and 5 more than 4. I did not enjoy 6 at all.

frog 🐸
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Not many. The obligatory 50% of all mobile games that I played for 5 minutes and went “I hate this”, obviously. But PC games? Hmmm. Probably “Lost Ember”, I guess. What really puzzles me about this is I played “Spirit of the North” and was utterly in love with it, to the point that it’s in my top 5, and “Lost Ember” is very similar in many respects. I ought to have loved it, and I cannot put my finger on what I didn’t like about it. I just didn’t like it.

bmaxv
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@Lunar Zero.

Against the Storm is amazing.

Phantom Brigade fulfilled my high expectations.

Mechabellum was a cool take on auto battling

Nebulous Fleet Command is cool, but not finished and maybe just not my cup of tea, but definitely very much knows what it wants to be and is very good at that.

And the rest are well known good games not released this year.

kindenough
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I got a lot of games with AMD hardware or other give aways, games I normally would not buy anyway. Imo Forspoken, Starfield, Redfall, Dead Island 2, Callisto protocol, AC Mirage and Harry Potter I did not like.

Glad there have been a lot of games I did enjoy recently, Dave the Diver, my time at Sandrock, Thalos Principle 2, Stray. I did like AAA Jedi Survivor although some technical glitches occurred.

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