Specific Game Situations or Settings you don't like

[Brian Boru]

Companion thread: Specific Game Location or Setup you can't resist

I also really like settings like you would find in Thief or Dishonored games.

Not for me. Like with Bioshock over the years, I recently made my 3rd attempt to play Dishonored, and ditched it again after a few hours. An hour or two in a movie is about all I can tolerate depressed dreary diseased settings for.

I also avoid games with a lot of dark in them, and will look for a mod to change day-night cycle to day-day—or go sleep thru night at camp/base. Like most, my eyesight has deteriorated since ~40, which is many moons ago—nearly a Saturn, in fact—so darks and brights are a problem.

Era I don't mind, I've enjoyed 12K years ago, and many thousands in the future—but my fav is probably near future, so there can be sexy weapons without a big learning curve.

Fantasy just doesn't appeal in general—for example, I admired the mastery of the Lord of the Rings movies, but they're not on my rewatch list.

Other specifics on my Avoid list:

3rd Person Perspective ***
Boss Fight stupidity
Melee dominant **
Cut Scenes long-often **
DLC still dribbling thru *
Intro long and/or difficult *
Mods not possible **
Off-genre play **
Platforming ***
Quick Time Events **
Single-Play poor-absent ***
Weather missing

 

[Shodan_]

Generally speaking anything medieval is quite the turn off. I have never played a Witcher, Dark Soul or Elder Scroll game. I do enjoy Heroes of Might and Magic quite a lot though.

 

[Shodan_]

Companion thread: Specific Game Location or Setup you can't resist

I also avoid games with a lot of dark in them, and will look for a mod to change day-night cycle to day-day—or go sleep thru night at camp/base. Like most, my eyesight has deteriorated since ~40, which is many moons ago—nearly a Saturn, in fact—so darks and brights are a problem.

That just reminded me of The Forest. Everyone should play that game but man oh man are the caves DARK. You're fumbling around with your tiny zippo that cuts off all the time. Night time is also absolutely pitch black sometimes.

But it makes complete sense for what it is and I almost gave up on it, but the game itself is so good. In fact I liked it so much that instead of trying to zippo my way through the most important caves I ended up lighting them up with crafted skull lamps. Probably a hundred of them. To my surprise the caves look just as good lit up, the devs didn't cut corners.

Instead of trying to find my way down the crater using the other caves I painstakingly built a staircase that hugs the walls of the crater all the way down. I didn't make any cannibal friends with that massive scale deforestation but it was worth it and made the game more enjoyable in the end.

I don't want to mod or crank the gamma, I'll play whatever I'm given so that's what I did.

Doom 3 was also dark as hell and I understand why the purists were mad when they added the possibility of holding a weapon while using the flashlight, but I didn't think it detracted from the vibe too much and that Doom 3 looks so good it was cool to be able to see it.

 

[Pifanjr]

I'm not a big fan of horror games. Especially stuff like body horror is something I prefer to avoid. Control is already pushing it with the floating bodies and the chanting, though I appreciate it not having any jump scares, at least so far.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Not for me. Like with Bioshock over the years, I recently made my 3rd attempt to play Dishonored, and ditched it again after a few hours. An hour or two in a movie is about all I can tolerate depressed dreary diseased settings for.

You definitely wouldn't like A Plague Tale, then. Too bad. It's an amazing game, and I can't wait to try the sequel.

 

[DXCHASE]

Outside of genres i just cant get into (any sports, battle royale, pvp only, gacha and turn-based combat games) i can usually deal with situations and/or settings i dont like but some are worse than others.

To name some:

No team chat/general chat- This isnt a deal breaker because i can obviously deal with not talking to anyone in a game, but some games (again OUTRIDERS!!) are much more annoying to play when you dont have some type of communication with a random set up especially when the game has activities set up for teams.

Not having, or disabling (at higher difficulties) save-at-any-time mechanisms- Again, not a deal breaker, but i find it much harder to enjoy a game if i know that i can sink 20 minutes into something and lose it because i didnt reach a checkpoint that the game deemed necessary to autosave from. Let me save when i want to! (exception, resident evil because i grew up playing those games with the save mechanism it has)

Unskippable Cutscenes (even after watching them already)- Self explanatory

Long openings-3 pages of devs, 3 pages of the game introduction, 3 pages of warnings, then a darn darkness adjustment screen before i get to the menu

No Mod Support or Key binding settings - PC settings like this being omitted from games on pc, even if they are console ports is a bad move, i get that some games just cant have mods, but there are a few out there that are without them that have no reason to be missing them (especially key bindings)

 

[mainer]

There are certain types of games I have no interest in, whether they fall into certain game genres or have certain "tags" applied to them.

Game types or Tags that I avoid/dislike:
-Platforming type gameplay
-Aime games
-Sports games
-MMOs, Battle Royales, PVP, P2W, or any other online only type games*
(*asterisk because I occasionally have interest in the Elder Scrolls Online game*)
-Loot boxes or other in-game mechanics that cost the player money
-Souls-like, Rogue-like, Rogue-lite games/tags
-No mod support
-Ludacris, ridiculous, over-the-top, bullet-sponge boss fights
-QTEs (please just go away)

Game types/tags I dislike, but am a bit more flexible with:
-Parkour gameplay elements
-Unskippable cut scenes before a boss fight that you have to repeat every time you die
-Check point save systems

Those are my biggest dislikes in games, at least off the top of my head. While I definitely have my preferences, I'm a bit more adaptive to the various player perspective, combat mechanics, and game world environment.

 

[Pifanjr]

I feel like this thread, unlike its companion thread, is focused mostly on mechanics instead of situations or settings.

For which I only blame Brian, who started off well but then just added a list of mechanics to the bottom of the post.

 

[Sore But Whole]

I usually stay away from anything fantasy or even based on a true time, but grossly exaggerated. I don't know, I just never could get into that genre. Some of the games are beautiful though, which is normally a must for me.

As far as mechanics/gameplay settings? If it forces motion blur, I'm out. It doesn't make me lightheaded or sick, I just can't stand it.

 

[Brian Boru]

blame Brian

No, no—praise Brian for knowing unlikable mechanics would enter the fray pretty quickly anyway, so his kind heart went the extra mile to remove guilt trips from those who would otherwise be going off-topic!

 

[Zloth]

Well, I said my downer environments in the other topic, so I guess I'll aim for mechanics.

• Hentai - you're gone.
• Visual Novel and/or Walking Simulator - not much chance, though Death Stranding is somehow called a walking simulator!?
• Free to Play - very unlikely.
• Required co-op/multiplayer - nope, though I'm open to 'disconnected' style, like racing against friends' time in Just Cause 3 or the pawns of Dragon's Dogma.
• Roguelike/lite - only if I can cheat and re-load my saves instead of starting over again. (When I played NetHack, I thought you were supposed to do that, which is why they called it 'hack.' {shrug})

 

[Barukanen]

Situationally, I don't like having to grind something over and over again to create progress. Setting wise, a game that is littered with excessive amount of jump scares. I'd rather play something that plays on your mind or makes you think a bit, don't need to see mass amounts of random gore either.

 

[Pifanjr]

No, no—praise Brian for knowing unlikable mechanics would enter the fray pretty quickly anyway, so his kind heart went the extra mile to remove guilt trips from those who would otherwise be going off-topic!

Exactly what someone would say who gets blamed for stuff all the time.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Ah yes, those games with Hentai 'mechanics' @Zloth

I find horror games uncomfortable to play, especially when I cant fight back. I know that's kind of the point but they just make me overly anxious and I dont have a good time. I can watch a film like Hereditary at night and go to bed and sleep like a baby straight after, but in a video game, mostly nopes.

Oh yea race games are boring because cars are boooring. I used to like rally games a bit but havent played anything much since one of the Colin Mcraes on PS2 when I lived in a shared house and we used to pass the controller around. Golf games same.

 

[Johnway]

A few pet peeves of mine:

1. An FPS shooter with insufficient ammo. ok, i understand you want to control the flow and the combat scenario but good god, some games leave you little ammo for your staple weapons and it becomes irritating. Frequently this is caused by aggressively low ammo caps, enemies that are bullet sponges and or low ammo in general. doom 2016 kinda irks me the wrong way and its intentionally done to shoe horn the takedown mechanics. Constantly swapping weapons to the point i'm juggling them frequently becomes irratating.

2. Losing all your weapons/resources and starting over. At some point in the story you lose all your gear and start all over. So if i was being frugal or managing my stuff well, it screws me over. i suppose not so bad if i can recover the resources quickly, but when some games make gathering resources difficult its annoying.

3. Bullet sponge bosses with no energy bars to indicate you're doing the right thing or not. Part puzzle game, part annoying. The problem is that you might be doing the right/wrong thing and not realize it until you're out of resources. Wolfenstein did this for the final boss and at times i thought that the game was bugged as i was on the verge of running out of ammo.

4. Timed RTS missions. I'm not that great in RTS games but when you put pressure on me to get a mission done and i have to build a base from scratch as well, its bloody annoying. I run out of resources and the whole thing stalls but adding a timer on top of that elicits a sigh/groan. Starcraft 2 on normal was fine though, but thats because your units had benefits, the timers were generous or the missions offered units that were useful to the situation.

5. RTS super weapons. Last missions, you start with no/little base and they have everything. Stressful when they send waves of enemies AND use superweapons whilst you're still trying to build your base.

6. RTS games with limited resources. I don't mean missions where you only have a handful of units to complete a mission. I'm talking about normal missions and you have a finite pool of soldiers in the entire campaign to beat it. if i play the game like multiplayer/normally and send waves of soldiers it gets costly and punishing. COH2 ardenne assualt i'm looking at you. Even on EASY my patience snapped. Uninstalled the game and moved on.