Critically acclaimed games that you don't like

Midnight · **on:** January 10, 2015, 11:46:00 AM

You know what I mean... those games that everybody seems to be crazy about, but when you finally have a chance to play them, you find out that they are simply average (or good but not that good).

I have many examples to share, but the one that easily tops my list is ´The Secret of Monkey Islandª.

I know, I know, it’s a great classic and all, but I honestly don’t know why most people seem to have such a high praising towards it. The game is funny and the story is clever (not to mention that great intro music that it’s still stuck on my head) but there are so many games that are far better than this one and neither of them seem to have gotten the same level of recognition. Maniac Mansion came out earlier and I find it more enjoyable, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis features a stronger story with multiple paths to choose, but it's still getting less attention than the pirates game. Not to mention... Shadow of the Comet came out a couple of years later and very few people (that I know, at least) seem to have acknowledged its existence.

I only played Monkey Island from beginning to the end once, and that was because the first forum that I joined was full of people discussing it in every other thread, so I figured that I needed to play it to... you know... post? (yeah, they were that obsessed about it).

Another one was ´Crysis 2ª. They assured me that it was going to be good, and the only conclusion that I could draw at the time was ´I’m so glad that this have come as a giftª. The game took forever to download from my Steam library, and I didn't find it all that good to be honest.

The Legend of Zelda games are usually a missed cause to me, but I ended up loving both "A Link to the Past" and "Wind Waker".

Also, I'm not that crazy about Duke Nukem 3D.

How about you, guys?

bushwacked · **Reply #1 on:** January 10, 2015, 12:46:57 PM

Pretty much any Nintendo game, but I'm mainly thinking about the Mario and Zelda games. They've always seemed a bit too cutesy to hold my attention for long.

I don't really get the hype behind Halo either. It's not bad, but I think some other shooters are a lot better.

Midnight · **Reply #2 on:** January 10, 2015, 01:42:34 PM

You know? Someone got me a premium account for Minecraft (impossible to afford for me) and I still can't find the global appealing to that game. I can play it for two weeks straight if I want to, but then I end up needing two MONTHS of recess from it.

aabicus (LettuceBacon&Tomato) · **Reply #3 on:** January 10, 2015, 01:47:02 PM

I get what Spec Ops:The Line was trying to do, but it really didn't seem to accomplish its goal in any meaningful way. The moral choices people said were so heart-wrenching suffered because the "noble" choice was always hidden from the player or deliberately counter-intuitive.

Take the infamous white phosphorous portion. I fight my way onto the wall overlooking the next base and see swarms of baddies assaulting my position in a huge 180 degree sweep. Next to me is a console with targeting system, so I target the bad guys and kill them all. The game proceeds to lambaste me for using white phosphorous against my enemies, saying "you could have totally just sniped each badguy one-at-a-time for thirty real-world minutes until they were all gone instead of resorting to such a violent solution!" Well, I fail to see why one base full of dead guards is worse than another, plus it was a new game mechanic brazenly indicated to the player. It's like saying the player makes a moral choice when they find a new type of gun on the ground and pick it up to test it out for a while.

Not to mention they just stole the plot from Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now. I can't give SpecOps' emotional aspects any real credit when its just reusing them wholecloth from another story.

bushwacked · **Reply #4 on:** January 10, 2015, 02:46:35 PM

For Spec-Ops, I don't think the focus was on the moral choices themselves but more on the fact that you're playing a game that lets you do that stuff to begin with. I remember some of the loading screens sometimes say stuff like 'You don't have to be playing this", or "Do you feel like a hero yet?".

Midnight · **Reply #5 on:** January 10, 2015, 03:01:36 PM

Did anyone here had the chance of playing "Rush Bros?" The Art in that game is fantastic, and so are some of the songs but... the game itself left me with a pretty bad taste. Too unforgiving, too frustrating.

Also... My girlfriend was amongst the first people that bought PokÈmon X and Y when they first came out... the only thing that I have to say about them is that, I'm so GLAD that I didn't have to spent MY money on either of them.

This has been my favorite franchise ever since I played PokÈmon Yellow back in 1999... that was one of the very first games that could successfully prevent me from going to sleep for several days in a row (in fact, I didn't return to my regular schedule until AFTER I finished the entire thing). I have played pretty much every installment on the series and with every new one that came out, I felt a little less attracted to the whole thing: PokÈmon Diamond felt like a chore during the majority of it and it was downright unfunny, PokÈmon Black insisted on hold my hand thru every step of the way (I kid you not) and PokÈmon Black 2 improved a LOT over those two, but still felt bland.

I would love to know why critics keep being so enthusiastic towards this series when it is obvious that it had reached it's limit a long time ago. New PokÈmons? That's a disadvantage really, as it is really hard to keep track AND most of them are horribly uninspired.

... And to think that every new Sonic game that comes out it's received like a wounded seal on a shark tank

vonboy · **Reply #6 on:** January 10, 2015, 03:37:58 PM

This is probably just me, but when my sister got me Skyrim for my birthday last year, I just couldn't get into it.

I remember playing the game for a few hours. I got through that little tutorial bit with the execution/excape from the dragon, and then I just got lost. I wondered around for a couple hours, fighting stuff and talking to people, but never figuring out what I was supposed to be doing. I remember I had to got some village to speak to somebody, but I could never find theme in that village.

I can go back and actually get through it, but I'm not really motivated to. I've got too many games to play through right now, other things to do, and I don't know if I'll ever get back to it. :/

F-14 Ace · **Reply #7 on:** January 10, 2015, 04:00:59 PM

For me it would have to be "5 Nights at Freddy's". This game got a lot of attention, and many people are calling it the "scariest game in years". My reaction was, meh. While it is mildly creepy, I think the scariness factor is overstated. I've seen much scarier games. I mean, Arkham Asylum was scarier than "5 Nights at Freddy's".

DarkHououmon · **Reply #8 on:** January 10, 2015, 04:01:06 PM

I don't necessarily think it's that big of a deal that they keep coming out with new Pokemon. It used to bother me, but I came to realize it was pretty silly to get upset over something like that.

Midnight · **Reply #9 on:** January 10, 2015, 06:12:35 PM

Quote from: DarkHououmon,Jan 10 2015 on 03:01 PM

I don't necessarily think it's that big of a deal that they keep coming out with new Pokemon. It used to bother me, but I came to realize it was pretty silly to get upset over something like that.

I agree, but isn't "catch them all" like the whole point of te series? Hard to focus on accomplishing that when you have no interest in grow your collection.

BTW: A few more:

I'm having big issues with the "Portal" series. I have heard so many times that these games were the new standard and the best thing that so many people have ever played but... you know what? I hate to admit it, but I found them really boring.

While everything seems to be fine about them (controls, graphics, music and sounds...) I just can't help but feeling them like a chore. I guess that I'm so used to the other releases by ValvE (ya know, the ones that involve pointing a gun at everything that moves until it stops doing it) to fully enjoy the series but... I don't know, I know I could pick up and play Left 4 Dead any day (even when I also found it to be really annoying at times -especially the second installment-) but that doesn't seem to be a possibility with Portal.

The first Diablo was also a top candidate to my "Are you serious?" list, but that one has won me over.

Yes, I'm hard to please

WeirdRaptor · **Reply #10 on:** January 11, 2015, 06:16:01 AM

The old Resident Evil games. Why? TANK CONTROLS. The on-screen character should NEVER be so difficult to move around. And don't you dare feed me that line about "it makes it scarier", because it doesn't It just makes it annoying. Plus, given the fact that most of the original cast of the RE are all ex-military and therefore would very agile and quick-footed, the reasoning falls even more flat to me. Give me Resident Evil 4 and onward anyday. At least I can play those games. Oh yes, I just said that I prefer the newer RE games to the older ones.

DarkHououmon · **Reply #11 on:** January 11, 2015, 11:20:00 AM

I tried playing the first RE game, but I ended up stopping. Never before had I play a game that was so limiting on saves. I know it's not exactly new (for instance, Enemy Zero does the same thing), but I wasn't prepared for it. I had to find these ink rolls or whatever they were calleda nd each time I saved, it used up one of those. It wasn't the only reason I stopped, but it was a contributing factor.

The controls didn't bother me too much, but that's only because I had long gotten used to similar controls in Dino Crisis 1 and 2. I don't mind them, but I can see how frustrating they can be, plus the fixed camera angles can be annoying. This is most problematic in Dino Crisis 3 for the X-Box. While the first two games were more forgiving and made it easier for you to deal with foes by only having the enemies on screen to worry about, in the third game, it's like a normal action game with enemies swarming around you....and it still has the tank controls and the fixed camera angles. Not exactly a great combination.

Midnight · **Reply #12 on:** January 11, 2015, 01:05:32 PM

To be fair, RE 3 control-skin didn't bother me as much (greatly because of the story of the game, that kept me hooked up) but every other installment of the series seemed to be a miss cause for me, as the "tank controls" were too frustrating to master and the story didn't won me over.

I managed to finished Code Veronica on the Dreamcast, but I honestly don't know how I did it, because that game added dizzy camera angles (for scary purposes, I guess) to the mix. Nothing like walking into a room with the guard all set, just to have the music changing and the camera finding itself pointing down a ladder.

WeirdRaptor · **Reply #13 on:** January 11, 2015, 03:40:22 PM

Well, they bothered ME. If you point the stick left, the character should go left relative to your position, not theirs'. Period. It left like trying to steer a drunk across a high wire.

Plus, the plots of the RE games are moronic at best. I could write a whole series detailing how stupid the people who work at Umbrella are.

bushwacked · **Reply #14 on:** January 11, 2015, 04:01:05 PM

I never had much of a problem with the tank controls either. That being said, I do think the story for RE is crap

I never understood why Final Fantasy is so popular. The storylines always seemed a bit boring to me

WeirdRaptor · **Reply #15 on:** January 11, 2015, 04:03:56 PM

I thought this topic was about expressing our less-than-impressed opinions of acclaimed games. Now that everyone please stop butting in with this "tank controls aren't bad" crap like they're trying to tell me something about my gaming ability?

bushwacked · **Reply #16 on:** January 11, 2015, 04:15:18 PM

It's a discussion. Nobody's butting in, and nobody's criticising you

Midnight · **Reply #17 on:** January 11, 2015, 04:15:24 PM

Quote from: bushwacked,Jan 11 2015 on 03:01 PM

I never had much of a problem with the tank controls either. That being said, I do think the story for RE is crap

I never understood why Final Fantasy is so popular. The storylines always seemed a bit boring to me

I know, right? I found them all boring at best... and God knows I tried to give them a fair chance.

And for the cherry on top... the Spanish translation to the seventh installment looks like it was made with an online translator from Japanese to Spanish... dude, it doesn't make any sense, plays around with upper case and lower cases as it pleases and the results are so bizarre that they are actually hilarious in a twisted way.

I kid you not when I say that is nearly unbeatable that way.

WeirdRaptor · **Reply #18 on:** January 11, 2015, 04:20:21 PM

bushwacked: Sorry.

I think it depends on which Final Fantasy game. Yeah, I don't get the popularity for FF7-onward at all. 4-6, though? Absolutely.

Mumbling · **Reply #19 on:** January 11, 2015, 07:25:28 PM

Just gonna move this topic over to the Gamer's Zone! If I find the time I'll get my list of games on here.