Dropped games

[OsaX Nymloth]

Sometimes we buy a game on a sale and kinda forget it only to give it a chance some time later. Sometimes maybe it was a more thoughtful process of buying specific game or maybe even risking checking something out in the world where demos are rarity.

And well, sometimes we wish we didn't spend that money. What games made you drop them and why? Why were you disappointed?

Example from me that actually made me write these words: Darkness II. From the get-go it was annoying how console-lish it was. Actually the first thing that annoyed me was super loud intro with company logos that almost blew my head - seriously, why made the decision to have this play at 100% volume?.
In-game I tried to be patient and just seeing how the game goes. Finished tutorial trying to get used to the controls and the idea that I have "4 arms". I chilled in the mansion, explored it and then went to next mission.
Boss fight made me stop. Not because it was hard. Not because it was badly designed. Not because I was totally not interested in story and characters. I dropped it because instead of fighting a boss and other enemies on the area I had to fight controls. Oh you want to use E to eat hearts of dead enemies to get health back? Sweet, you need to be at super certain angle and distance or not luck. Want to switch to specific weapon? Have fun with that! Oh also at random we will activate your double wielding ability and laugh as you manually try to switch it off or when you frantically try to put one empty gun away.

In short: controls on PC were HORRIBLE.
I also dropped Druidstone recently, but only because I was looking for a tactical game and got a puzzle one. That's my bad

 

[Frindis]

I can't think of a game I bought that I completely dropped, but (and I hope this is ok) I instantly dropped Watch Dogs 2 after getting it for free yesterday from Ubisoft. I noticed it getting good reviews and a lot of people praising it for being vastly better than its predecessor. I booted it up and the introductory scene was good enough to leave me optimistic. Then I was put in the open world and asked to get to a point of interest.

I jumped into the nearest car; drove for some minutes, and uninstalled the game. Some of the most horrible driving mechanics I have ever seen; on par (if not worse) with the Just Cause games. I can't understand why they decided to STILL have such a horrendous mechanic in the game. So, while the hacking part looked good, what is the point when you can't move around without having your soul leaving your body at every turn the car does.

 

[Johnway]

Ah ha! a topic close to my heart games that i fail to complete.

Personally i enjoyed the darkness 2 i beat the game on hard first and then on easy for the achievements. I agree, whoever thought that 2k logo thing was a good thing should have been shot. it was terrible and raped my ears. It had issues, but it was ok i guess.

So what games did i NOT finish? The recent one was Kholat. As a walking simulator it was pretty boring. It lacked story or proper direction and the minor niggles like unable to jump and it killed my enthusiasm to play on.

Jones on fire stopped playing after a few rounds. Meh game.

Endless legend - i had high hopes for this game but this one was so bloody difficult even on easy i conceded defeat not even halfway through my campaign.

theres probably many more i could discuss but heres just the first few.

 

[drunkpunk]

I can relate to incredibly loud splash screens. It's one of my biggest beefs with PC game developers: many of them do no apply your profile settings to a game until you hit the main menu, which means if you run your games at a lower sound setting with a high PC volume, you're going to get ear raped. Games that do that tend to lose a point towards me completing it, as petty and stupid as it is. It's just a bad design that may only be encountered when booting a game, but it's one that affects me every time I do launch a game.

I drop more games than I complete. But even so, I'm having a hard time thinking of recent examples, probably due to the abundance of live service games that have no real end to them anymore as well as early access games that I burn out on before release.

On the topic of driving in games, GTA4 probably had that affect on me. To this day it's the only GTA game I have no completed. I got decently far, but one mission had me doing some intense driving and I just hated how it felt so much. I ended up dropping it for that and a variety of other reasons.

Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire is another one. I have tried and tried to get into that game, because it seems like something I should love. But I just can't get into it. I've probably made it halfway before dropping it. Just everything about it feels so..... bland, I guess? And the way storytelling and lore is dumped on you just feels so inorganic. I like some of the mechanics and the story is a little interesting, but I just can't seem to stay engaged in it.

 

[Sarafan]

I dropped Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag very quickly. The game was praised for its sea battles, but I found this element to be very repetitive. Especially annoying were the animations after every battle, which you can't skip. I disliked watching the same cut scene dozens (hundreds?) of times. The gameplay was also too repetitive for my liking. I mean every single battle looked the same.

Besides that I dropped Divinity: Original Sin 1 after reaching late game (still trying to finish D:OS2). I missed some content while playing and the game started to be too hard. My characters were heavily underleveled and I struggled hard. There was no reason to push forward as I didn't stand a chance with the things the game threw on me.

Morrowind is also another game which I wasn't able to finish. This time my patience was put on the test because of lack of waypoints. I know this mechanic is quite new in RPGs and I don't mind if it's not implemented in isometric RPGs, but when it comes to open world 3D representatives of the genre it's a little problematic for me. The maps are usually not only horizontal, but also vertical. The lack of isometric perspective makes it harder to navigate and find things. That's probably why I didn't finish the game. It was very hard to find the appropriate items and characters in this open world.

 

[Oussebon]

Lords of the Fallen.

Dropped that like a hot sack of the proverbial.

The controls feel absolutely awful. It was just a fundamentally unpleasant experience. I have a standout memory of sheer disgust with it. I bought it as part of a bundle with Superhot though, which was the most innovative shooter I'd played in years, so that more than made up for the money spent.

I've dropped lots of games, some intending to come back to, others with no firm plans. I'd come back to No Man's Sky (dropped it Nov 2019) if they could just please fix the darn bugs instead of adding new toys. Maybe they have by now, who knows.

 

[McStabStab]

XCOM 2. Too many timers.

 

[Pifanjr]

Just looking through my Steam games, there's a couple of games I dropped:
Leviathan: Warships. The trailer was amazing, but I just didn't care about the gameplay.

Bastion: same idea, I really liked the narrator but disliked the gameplay.

Bioshock: finished the first level on hard and got bored.

 

[Zloth]

There's a lot of games which I play for a while and are pretty fun but I just putter out eventually. It's looking like Bards Tale 4 is going to be in that category, awesome music or not.

Games I'm not happy I bought are pretty rare, though. Eastshade is a recent one: it's simplistic and, with all the animal people, seems way more like a kids' game to me. I kept trying to make Pillars of Eternity 2 fun to play but it never happened - I just could not bring myself to care at all about anything that was going on. Alpha Protocol was fun enough but I didn't have a controller at the time and the mouse/keyboard made the minigames either far too easy or nearly impossible, depending on the minigame. They eventually drove me off the game completely.

 

[Dakkon]

XCOM 2. Too many timers.

Don't say that, I just started and so far having fun with it but do hate time limitations in game.

Bioshock: finished the first level on hard and got bored.

I do agree that gameplay can be tedious but try immersing yourself into the world of Rapture and you might find new enjoyment.

 

[Pifanjr]

I do agree that gameplay can be tedious but try immersing yourself into the world of Rapture and you might find new enjoyment.

I doubt I'll ever get back to it. I have very little time to play nowadays and there's plenty of games with good gameplay left for me to enjoy.

Then again, I've found myself playing Skyrim again, so who knows.

 

[McStabStab]

Don't say that, I just started and so far having fun with it but do hate time limitations in game.

Someone told me there's a menu option to double the length of all timers - try that if they get tedious.

 

[Johnway]

Don't say that, I just started and so far having fun with it but do hate time limitations in game.

The good news is that there are mods in place to increase the timer or disable them entirely. In fact I think WOTC has an option to increase the timer. Personally i like true concealment mod as the timer doesn't begin until you break cover and you can increase the timer so that its a minor distraction at best.

But i agree, defending an object thats being attacked can get increasingly stressful when you're up against some high level aliens and the ruler aliens come into play.

But i still love xcom2 All those customization mean i can make it even more appealing. Spent a fair few hours customising my rookies some you can find on the PCG forums in fact...

 

[Zloth]

They ain't timers, gorrahm it!! They are turn limits! <grumble grumble>

But yeah, you can tone them way down. I wouldn't suggest doing so. In my recent play-through, I found one or two missions that really couldn't be beaten inside of the limit but its trivial to either load a save from before the drop or just run away and take the loss. Having the turn limit makes you actually take some risks instead of just inching along with nearly everyone on overwatch. There's plenty of missions where you can do that!

 

[Dakkon]

Thank you all for the feedback on the *ahem* turn limits.
I'll prolly take @Zloth advice and see how it goes since I do like that risky play where I end up facepalming myself.
If it all goes sour I can always extend or mod the turn limitations

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

I recently played XCOM 2 and at first the turn limit was off-putting, but decided to give it a try and it was a good decision. Having that limit surely made me change my tactics and habits from XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which is a good thing since there I could abuse overwatch ad infinitum.

There were a couple of missions tho where time limit nearly killed me. First was a mistake of mine that I decided doing a DLC mission without realizing it's DLC mission - the robot factory one. Yes, with rookies. Lots of reloads and 1-2 (can't remember exactly) dead party members in the end. Other missions were with either one of the "kings" showing up to mess my day and/or discovering a pack of strong enemies just waiting in the corner of the map till my squad is almost at the objective.

 

[Zloth]

The newest DLC relegates the kings to guarding installations (though there's an option to do them and the robot factory the old way). You get to play with Hunters instead. One of them shows up on the third scripted mission!

 

[OsaX Nymloth]

I don't have War of the Chosen so I can only imagine a Hunter spawning in 3rd mission is not a nice thing to have

 

[Johnway]

Just remembered another recent game i dropped. jalopy. I had hoped it was going to be a relaxing simulator similar to the likes of eurotruck simulator but instead it was more basic then that and not to mention more down right boring.

First it was the basic graphics. fair enough, art style. Except there is absolutely no scenery and its just becomes white noise and there is very little to see or do. The second part was the bugs. Somehow i managed to stuff 2 wheels on the same spot and the lousy ai of other drivers just made me realize how basic it was. But the amount of backtracking, the limited space in your hands (FFS, holding the wallet? Why not just keep it as a permanent feature and say i carry my uncles wallet everywhere i go) and/or vanishing mysteriously drove me insane.

if this was what driving was like in eastern europe this might be a circle of hell for me.