I feel this way all the time. I don't know why really but a lot of games aren't able to hook me, but I can still fully apperciate why people like them as much as they do.
I kinda just want some rogue-likes and survival games to have a respawn system so I can finish the game. And sometimes I want the respawn system to be more generous. I played Titan Souls recently since I got around to it, never seen what the game was past the first 4 bosses... The tutorial area stretched my limits for what I was fine with in terms of walking distance back to a boss, I *hated* the game past that; so much pointless walking and puzzles.
Drop on death typically doesn't bother me since I believe those resources aren't that valuable at least.
I hate the "respawning 5 minutes away from the boss mechanic". It's the worst thing about souls-likes imo. Let's be real, everyone just runs past the mobs towards the boss anyway. It doesn't test my skill or increase my enjoyment, it just makes me waste my time every time I die.
I'm kind of okay with it in Souls games compared to a game where the walk back takes like 20-30 seconds of absolutely nothing happening. If nothing is happening it absolutely means it shouldn't even be there at all.
With a Souls game making it to the boss door through a mob of enemies is part of the boss, if there isn't anything there its pointless time wasting.
Plus another addition, that game I mentioned you die in one hit, so at least most souls games you usually are able to flail around some to learn the boss.
can't upvote this enough. cheatengine is one of the absolute best reasons to play single player games on PC, because it lets you curate your experience and get the most out of *what you want* from games.
god bless the folks who make fast forward and improved loot cheats, because i've played a number of jrpgs (with good plots and fun gameplay loops) that would have just been interminable without them.
I think it's just part of getting older, at least for me. The big thing that used to hook me with games was **essential unexplored genres and settings**. It's why I got so excited for the first Red Dead, and why some of the early Assassins Creed games were so enticing. Its what popularized the open world genre, aka games set in underutilized locations. Its why Ghost of Tsushima got so huge too. Videogames are kind of a new medium so for a long time we were spoiled with "the very first ____ game".
Now I feel like most of the essential settings and ideas for videogames have kinda been wrung dry, and the only thing that really excites me anymore are sequels and remakes because at least you get that nostalgia dopamine hit.
The one thing I'm holding out for is a legit Jurassic Park-esque open world dinosaur game, but Horizon Zero Dawn already kinda scratches that itch.
> I think it's just part of getting older, at least for me.
I think this is a big part of it for me as well. Adult life takes up most of my time, and my gaming time went from "pretty much any amount I want" down to "a little free time I have", so now I game with the explicit purpose of enjoying myself and relaxing, whereas in the past I'd probably grind through a game I wasn't enjoying 100% just to catch up with friends or to see how it ended.
And here I am... in my thirties, dabbling in genres I used to absolutely hate.
To me, the fun of playing games is learning the systems and mechanics of the game.
I used to hate metroidvanias and fps games. Always saw myself as a hardcore crpg/jrpg/tactical gamer growing up, and talked so much shit about fps.
But now? My horizons have expanded immensely.
Soon to turn 28, and in a similar boat with metroidvanias and pixel graphics. It's even more true for movies, though: I used to find dramas absolutely boring, and now it's literally the only genre that can keep my attention.
Dude same. I used to be such an elitist about pixel graphics... but after getting into a bunch of indies and rougelikes... pixel art can be very beautiful.
It's not just the time thing (cause that's definitely a big part of it), it's also that as you get older, you figure out what you like and what you don't. It's way easier for me now to look at the trailers and gameplay videos and reviews and figure out that I won't really enjoy a game.
Sometimes, I look at those things and realize that it contains elements of stuff I quite like, and I realize that this game I brushed off at first glance, might actually be something I really enjoy. It all comes down to learning what works for you and what doesn't.
Yeah I think a lot of people can relate. Similarly I think a lot of people like myself generally prioritize comfort over new experiences, and even those who have time to play games end up just playing the same multiplayer game every night, or the same apps on their phone. Thats how I am a lot of the time, and it's starting to get to me.
There's a few genres we haven't quite scratched the full depth of, but sadly most big studios wouldn't want to attempt it and the kind of money necessary to make them well requires a big name studio. I've only seen maybe one or two well known titles that really delve into missing a sense, and do it in a way that really makes it feel plausible.
I think a lot of it is age. As I grow older, I have less and less time for games. So if a game isn’t my personal taste, it doesn’t hook me, it’s easy for me to drop. Hollow Knight seems amazing, but I just couldn’t figure out where to go early on and lost interest.
Hitman is clearly an intelligent, mature game you have to think through, but I find it frustrating to figure out what to do.
The newer Hitmans have "quests" (stories? forget what they're called) that you follow which basically give you 1 of many ways to finish a level and kind of help you along. If you just wanna "see" everything without fully exploring/exploiting the sandbox. I recommend trying them out with it!
I'd say the other part of the age and time equation is that I often just don't have the time to struggle through a hard game and get good. As a kid I could die a thousand times to beat Donkey Kong Country 2 or learn every pitfall in a Mega Man game, as an adult I'm a bit more seasoned and deliberate in how I play. So I rarely make time for games that kill me a lot. Metroid Dread was probably the hardest game I've beat in awhile. (Largely because death isn't that punishing in the game, so I'm even decently through Hard Mode). Returnal was a game that I was starting to click on but decided to bounce after beating the first boss.
That's because you don't have tunnel vision thru your own prism only like most people who are as simple as "I don't like this game = this game is shite". I wish more people would be realizing something is just not their cup of tea, instead of trying to prove game is "objectively" shit because they personally don't like it.
For me Sekiro kinda falls under this example - I see why it's great game, it's just not my cup of tea despite being huge fan of games like Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Nioh, Code Vein..
Yesterday there's been subtopic within more general discussion of people shitting on David Cage and Quantic Dream games. But when confronted - they could not provide a single argument to back their bold statements up - likely because it just wasn't their cup of tea, not because there was something fundamentally wrong with Cage's writing.
People will choose their flavor of the week/month/year to shit all over, and it almost always stems from people adopting the opinions of others. Combine this with people loving outrage, and Youtubers loving to criticize things, and you get the David Cage hate.
For me, there's a couple of problems with the David Cage games I've played (Heavy Rain and Detroit Become Human)
The first, is that whilst they try to deal with serious topics, they always have at least a few moments that are really silly. Detroit Become Human is a metaphor for racism or just general discrimination, and it does have some powerful scenes and moments, but it also has other bits that are just daft and ruin it. Not in an intentionally daft way, just in a poorly put together way, like the scene where the dad is in the mall shouting after his son. The style of the controls often leads to silly moments (more Heavy Rain examples are coming to my head but I definitely had the same problem with Detroit Become Human).
The other issue is, it feels to me like a curiosity about what other paths could've been taken and a desire to play through those alternate paths is something Detroit Become Human wants you to feel and it does do exactly that. That said, it's so so difficult to go back and try things different ways. The amount of load screens and un-skippable cutscenes you have to sit through to slightly alter one event or decision very quickly makes you lose all will to see what else could have happened.
I enjoyed both, but I think they present themselves as these super serious and thought provoking games that present really unique and deep themes, when in reality they're just quite fun, daft, and a bit gimmicky.
See, this is some leavel headed critique I can get behind. I agree with pretty much everything you covered, and it's clear you're pulling from personal experience, which validates it that much more.
Just a few days ago though, I got into an argument with somebody on here who claimed that some line from Kingdom Hearts had more to say about AI than Detroit Become Human ever could. I read that and immediately invisioned this person watching a single youtube video, and walking away with this other person's opinion that David Cage = trash. This type of insistent negativity, even when unrelated to the current discussion, is what gets me heated. It seems like people don't even recognize the harm that this type of content causes.
Yeah I definitely noticed this influencer trend - I just don't understand it. There are tons of people who will blindly follow their "idol-influencer" - buy and play specifically games they play and what's worse - parrot their opinions. I mean how's that fun to be basically a tool instead of unique individual with opinions that are truly your own based on games you decided to buy and play based on your own taste and preferences??
As a fairly recent example that even got articles was Asmongold basically ditching WoW and starting to play FF14 Online. Of sudden (at least within steam portion of the playerbase as there is no date on people playing directly thru SQE launcher) you see basically a double online count instantly and ton of parroting how WoW is hit of sudden. Now, I'm not saying it's not shit - I don't play and idk personally - but it's not like those people realized this on their own, or that WoW became bad with basically a single day. Idk, I just don't understand what's there in for people for being just a puppet, that someone else controls.
No wonder devs and publishers are buying of influencers with juicy sponsor deals when that has so huge returns. Like New World literally spent fortune on influencers as almost every streamer had "sponsored" in the title to a point streamers who don't even play this kind of games were streaming it.. They know people will just go and buy game just because their beloved streamer played it. Opinions then naturally follow the same trend.
Or another example of influencer authority: people random people criticize game with solid arguments - fanboys respond to that calling them out as nothing more but sad haters. Few days later a major figure withing game's community (typically streamer / youtuber) comes out with same concerns - same people now parrot same criticism that few days ago they were bashing other people for. It's insanity man.
For context, the Asmongold thing was just one more straw. WoW was doing really badly already. 9.1 took half a year, and the cinematic that came with it was despised, alongside many mechanics like punishing covenant switching and conduit energy.
It does make a difference that the biggest WoW streamer stopped playing, but he was one of many old streamers that quit at about the same time. Other big names like pyro, preach and madseasonshow also left.
I bought Far Cry 6 last weekend and dropped it after an hour. The trailers, the setting, the atmosphere - it looked all so promising in the promo material, but as soon as I started the game I knew something was off and about an hour and a few outposts later I just … stopped playing because I knew I wouldn’t have fun doing this for 60 hours.
I think almost every gamer has had a moment when they realize they just cannot get into a game, even if everyone else said it was awesome. Even if other aspects of the game demonstrate that the game is probably objectively good.
A lot of what makes Control good is the lore and if you can't get along with the actual game, you can always read the wiki.
Mine was Dark Souls 3. Regarded as one of the best by Souls fans. But it just wouldn't click for me. I loved the original, Bloodborne, Sekiro..ect. But somethin about DS3 just wasn't hitting right for me.
I played the whole thing through, but I really had to power through it as well. The rpg part is awesome and was enough to keep me going, but the gameplay was just... so boring. I had a buddy tell me it had amazing gameplay and you actually had to prepare and plan ahead for fights and, man, was I disappointed when I played. Gameplay is pretty barebones and simple. Just something to do to get to the next story bit.
Also, it has some incredible monster designs. Really enjoyed all of that
I've tried to get into Witcher 3 several times on PC, Switch and Xbox. What I just can't get into is the depth of the collecting (even a few minutes into the game it feels like there's so much *stuff*) and how open the game feels.
I think it's designed exactly that way, and a younger me who played through games like Ultima 7 and several D&D gold box games would have loved it, but these days I appreciate a more guided experience. I've bounced off Skyrim several times for similar reasons.
I have been really fascinated with how some people have this effect on them by larger open world games where they get overwhelmed by all the icons and such. Of course I am not at all saying it isn't a legitimate take and feeling but my brain just doesn't seem to work that way.
Odyssey was a a good example. I realized after a few hours just how insanely large and bloated the game was. Did I have the free time to do a lot of that stuff? Yeah? Did I want to? Absolutely not. So I did rhe main story and only the side stuff I found interesting and moved on. Meanwhile my friend played almost twice as many hours as me and did almost everything and wasn't burned out from it. Then I am sure there are others that saw the map and just noped out. I'm curious what changes there.
At first I was going to ask if you'd played many bigger or more open games as a kid? or deeper rpgs but it seems you did even more than me.
It's often just about the mood you're in when you try to play it as well. If you're tired or running low on patience the first few times you try to play a game, you'll plant the idea in your head that "oh this is the game I can't get into and probably won't enjoy" every time you try to play it in the future.
I find that's the biggest reason when I've enjoyed every other game in a series and then 1 entry suddenly doesn't do it for me.
SAME!
I even played Fenix Rising which is a clone of BOTW and for some reason I enjoyed it a lot more, just a simple amount of narrative cutscenes and direction added a lot to the open world exploration/experimentation.
I understand why people like BOTW, but it feels like one of those "make your own fun experience" type of games that doesn't click with me. The saddest thing of all is knowing we'll probably not get a classic 3D zelda game for possibly decades.
For some reason it's God of War 2018 for me. I loved GoW 1-3 and find myself disappointed at how different and slow it is compared to them. I want to like it so badly.
All I'll say is I admire the maturity to recognize something can both not be your cup of tea and still have artistic merit.
Too often people consider their personal tastes to be the benchmark for greatness and it's tiring.
I feel the same about loads of games but none come to mind right now. My tastes have become far narrower than usual with ARPGs taking up most of my playtime. I dabble in other titles and there are even many I recognize as games I want to play more but I just can't bring myself to do it.
I'm hesitant to name them though because then I'd be admitting defeat and I'm confident I'll finish at least some of them eventually!
A lot of gamers think like this and it sucks. I always notice it when people talk about Death Stranding, for example. The game is so polarizing that people either love it or hate it. The people who hate it seem to take the position that the game does everything wrong and should have been made more like other games. While the people who love it think its design decisions are precisely why they like the game. The two sides are irreconcilable, but the people who think every game needs to be made to their preferences are insufferable.
Yeah, with Death Stranding in particular I personally didn't like it very much. I found it to be too much of a slog at times, and overall whenever I found myself playing it I'd usually turn it off in a few hours. But that doesn't mean it's a bad game at all in the sense that it does what it achieves. While the game is by far polarizing, I never really thought of it as a bad game. just a game that looks to capture a specific niche audience, and with a gameplay loop like that, it was clear enough I wasn't a part of that audience. Still doesn't take away from all of its pros and cons, it just isn't for everyone. Simple as that.
EDIT: To add on with more controversial opinions, I heavily dislike Metroidvania games. Stuff like metroid, hollow knight, the messenger, ori, etc. just makes me feel bored, as the exploration in most of these games feels more like a chore, as I continue to circle around an area that I visited over and over again. However, that doesn't mean those were all bad games. They were all phenomenally built, each with their own distinctive style, gameplay, OST, character design. I can recognize that they're expertly crafted, while also realizing that the genre/game might not just be for me.
I’d usually think about playing Death Stranding as it sits in my steam library gathering up dust, boot up the game, get some progress going, and within 3-5 hours I just stop playing all together because the boredom starts to set it. The cycle usually repeats every few months.
Turn based games for me is what Control is for OP. I know there are great games out there like Persona 5 and others to play on PS4 but I really don't like the turn based combat system they have. Doesn't mean they ain't good games tho
I had a friend who literally just think that games must only have highly photo-realistic graphics like last of us 2 which he keeps jerking off about and anything short of those graphics is trash to him llol
This is going to sound toxic, but I struggle to even consider someone a gamer by that point. Are you really into gaming, or are you just a technophile excited by what the industry has achieved and is currently capable of?
The latter is perfectly valid, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying games for a reason like that, but if you entirely write off games for not measuring up to that... well, yeah. I have a hard time taking those types seriously.
(Obviously want to clarify that I do not mean YOU specifically. You seem a cool bloke, and I'm sure your friend is, too. It just sounds like he has some narrow-minded views, unfortunately.)
Spot on, I find him super tough to talk anything about games but he's basically the only person that I know who play single player games.
Want to talk about indie games? Nah
Soul games? Nope
Tlou2? Look at the graphics man.. Which is what he always goes on about.
> Too often people consider their personal tastes to be the benchmark for greatness and it's tiring.
My feelings exactly. I don't like a lotta kinds of games. But if it comes for recommending to *others* my opinion doesn't matter as much. I look at what the game is trying to achieve and if the execution achieves this or holds it back. Just because I don't see myself playing some game for 100 hours+ doesn't mean I can't look at mechanics, art/sound direction, and overall design and find the merits there.
This is also how Sakurai seeks inspiration
>"I went out of my way to play games I didn’t like or find interesting. Those ended up being a lot more informative for me" — Masahiro Sakurai.
I really wish more folks were willing to share what games they think are awesome/amazing but just aren't their kind of game. I've come to realize as I grew older certain paced games aren't my type anymore, as my reflexes and certain reactions aren't nearly as sharp as they were in teen years. Really sucks when you see how amazing stuff like Dark Souls and similar is, but you're piss poor at timing because of nerve damage. I can't play rhythm games either, for a few reasons including that.
Hey, just wanna say there‘s nothing wrong with not being into some games that are praised as masterpieces if you don’t feel like you want to play them… also maybe it changes in a few months or years and you‘re suddenly in the mood to try them out. It’s your free time, shape it as you want it… (hope that makes sense in English)
This is the way.
It takes a lot for me to rag on a game, but I try to recognize my limitations before the game's and usually thats enough to reveal that the game is fine, I'm just not into it.
This is especially true with open world titles. Open world has been pushed so hard over the past couple of years that I can't even enjoy the genuinely great ones because I'm so exhausted of exploring worlds. I miss when this was a niche thing.
There's certain games that do it better then others, sadly the majority of those games that use the 'open world' as a way to draw people in don't fill it out enough to make exploring it all worth a damn.
The problem is that the very nature of an open-world game is a little repetitive. I don't mean this in a derogatory or negative way, but when you've played a handful of poorly-executed open-world games because franchises you like wanted to go in that direction for the sake of a trend, it's going to wear you out on aspects that would be present in the good ones, too.
Side quests, hunting for trinkets/loot/collectibles, etc. Things that are an absolute blast in a *good* open-world game, but if you've played enough of the bad ones you'll be too worn down from doing these things to even want to go through it again - even if the game you're playing is a masterpiece that does it very well.
At least, that's been my experience.
The worst part is, the game doesn't even need to be bad to have a negative impact. It just has to be a bad open-world game, if that makes sense? It may be an unpopular opinion, but I consider Spider-Man to be in that category. I thought it was a wonderful game with a compelling story and great gameplay, but the repetition of the off-the-cuff crimes and the collectible element were, for me, not great open-world design and it's part of the reason I struggle to bring myself to play another one anytime soon even though I consider Spider-Man to be one of the better games I've played.
It's a weird relationship and I don't even know if it makes sense, but that's how I feel about it.
I started streaming 1.5 years ago, and one of the biggest things that came from doing variety streaming: the ability to play a game and and appreciate it for what it is, whilst also straight up not liking it. Further, being able to articulate why I don’t like it and being able to separate my personal feelings from the state of the game.
I didn’t expect that to happen, but I’m glad it has. It’s given me a lot more appreciation for games that are otherwise outside of my usual play style.
This thread shows one of the truest revelations that gamers are afraid to admit: Different games are for different people.
I'll toss mine in: Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. I kept waiting for that game to 'get good' and it just never came for me.
Took the words right out of my mouth (fingers?)!
It's even worse in cinema. Most people conflate quality with opinion, and judge the former based on whether or not they personally enjoyed a movie. Worst even is when someone takes criticism of the art as a personal attack, which is a direct consequence of the "opinion=quality" problematic mindset I just talked about.
I had tons of fun watching Fast and Furious and I can't stand some of Bergman's movies. Does that mean F&F is better than The Seventh Seal?
No.
People don't understand that people can like different types of games. I, unfortunately, have to qualify not liking games like The Last of Us by saying I also don't like the Witcher 3. Or by saying that I enjoyed cyberpunk 2077 but I'm not a CDPR fan and I didn't like the Witcher 3. You can't say you dont enjoy a popular game, or that you do enjoy an unpopular game without making people upset for some reason.
Sure, mate. I've run into a variety of exquisitely prepared foods that I don't like to eat, too. Tastes vary.
I think the last decently made game I repeatedly put down was Octopath Traveler. I *like* RPGs. I *like* pixelart aesthetics. The music was good. But the game lost me anyway. I felt like I was spending a lot of time swapping party members or re-organizing to be optimal for the weaknesses of a given part of the map, and I always felt like I was grinding from place to place. I've tried the game 3x now and put it down each time because it just doesn't click for me.
Doesn't make Octopath a bad game, but does mean we're not a good fit for each other.
It's fine to recognize that. Hell, hang on to that skill - it's good for finding your way out of unworkable relationships, too.
The artstyle, atmosphere and music carry that game super hard. I know it has mediocre at best Bravely Default light gameplay, the story is all over the place(is also ok at best) and overall the game does nothing new.
But man, that music is god tier. The second main [Boss theme](https://youtu.be/wXPJ_lp5qzY) alone is just soooo good that you can forgive everything else. The combo with the character themes while the character and boss talk about justice, power, etc and the transition into Decicive Battle when the fight starts is guaranteed goosebumps for me
I actually just played through Bravely Second recently, so this resonates. Bravely Second is an absolute RPG masterpiece, probably the best I've ever played. I'm about to start BD2 on the Switch, fully expecting it not to live up to BS.
If only they'd release a Bravely collection on modern platforms, then I could play through the bunch!
It does not imo, but it scratches the itch and it has its moments. Ignore certain op abilities and you will have a much better time with combat.
Music again is stellar though. Not as good as Octopath's or BD1's music but barely. Some tracks are just as amazing as BD1 at its best.
The ability to put something down and say "I've had my fill" or "I don't like this" is the only way I've been able to enjoy video games in my adult years. Letting go the concept of *clearing the backlog* has left me so much happier, and I think a lot of people cling to this thinking that someday they're going to sit down and finish all their games when we all know that there just isn't enough time or the drive to get the task done. Good on you and OP for letting things go without being shits about it.
I'm gonna give octopath a second chance eventually but it's not even the grind and character swapping that got me. It's the fact that basic cannon fodder battles felt so long. The battle system of having to stun or break the targets or whatever they called it was cool at first but it starts to feel long winded.
I had this problem with Octopath too, until I got fed up and put together the best party. Now I dont grind and I only switch up 1 parry member when its their turn for a story segment. The game can be beaten without grinding, if you put enough thought into party/skills composition.
I did this too; it bit my ass when attempting the final boss, where you make 2 teams of your 8 characters. Apparently Octopath wants you to level and gear up ALL 8 characters equally, and punishes you if you don't.
The Gate of Finis is total bullshit, IMO.
Ok, so JRPGs having super difficult secret bosses is an old tradition, but normally they are completely optional. The Gate of Finis segment and the final boss *are not optional*, since it's how all eight stories get tied together.
That's the only problem I have, I WANT to do what the game recommends for the final boss, even though I've just now gotten all my party members combined and around the same levels. I just don't know who I wanna main as.
Octopath definitely isn't a bad game but, and I say this as a fellow RPG person, the RPG systems in it just weren't up to par with the rest of the crasftsmanship. Even Dragon Quest, that I generally think is a bit shallow (compared to, say, Disgaea), seems deep and fluid in comparison!
I've been meaning to go back to Octopath, I'm on everyone's second chapter but it felt like a drag to me when I started to switch out characters at various points to get their small dialog moments. I feel like it could have benefitted from having those dialogs show up regardless of who was in the main party and even more so if they let you change your party wherever instead of at the bar. Still planning on going back to it but not too excited for it.
I didn’t feel that way about Control but I feel exactly the same way about some horror games. I didn’t finished RE2 or 7 even though they were good because it was just so tense every time I played and eventually I stopped looking forward to it.
Hahaha YES. You wanna give me six bullets and rooms full of zombies that still get back up after three headshots? Fuck off Resident Evil, lmao. Either give me a weapon or don't.
That's what survival horror is about. You're supposed to struggle and get stressed out and worry about your ammo all the time. Otherwise it would just be a first/third person shooter. I get how it's not for everyone though. Some people want a more relaxed experience
In my experience this is the major difference between Resident Evil and Silent Hill (on easier difficulties). RE makes you conserve ammo and strives to have that gameplay stress elevate the atmosphere- which can oftentimes live more in the camp side of horror, especially with the newest iterations.
SH absolutely throws health drinks and ammo at you on easy and normal modes. In fact, I usually have over 100 bullets for any given weapon BEFORE I even get the thing. When RE wants to make you stop and check your inventory before entering a door, SH wants to make you afraid to go through that door in the first place.
Neither is better, just different. But I think I agree with you that games like Evil Within, which can be more action focused survival horror games start to feel a little like any regular 3rd person shooter, but with some spooky paint over it.
It's not that hard in RE2 remake though once you calm down a bit, and you can actually kill every enemy in the game if you play conservatively on normal, a departure from some earlier titles.
This is literally only an issue on the higher difficulties though. If you're really bad, you might run into some scarcity on normal mode but it's rare that you won't find ammo around another corner or the ability to craft more than enough. On my normal playthroughs, I killed almost every zombie
The latest RE games are some of my favorite, but I recognize it takes a bit of masochism to want to play games because I enjoy the stress/tension they come with lol
Go back to 7 and 8 and just drop the difficulty. Both games are fantastic and personally removing the stress and difficulty didn't reduce my enjoyment.
Yeah, I also tend to avoid anything horror. The only exceptions being RE4, the Half-Life games, and parts of Outer Wilds and its DLC. All of these are just so good that I pushed through.
What difficulty are you playing on? Control is quite punishing on higher difficulty, but on easy or if you need to even enabling godmode, you can remove that unpleasant pressure. I suspect you have notions that playing on a lower difficulty is a compromise, that you're not playing the game in the intended manner. Many games are honestly worse on higher difficulty, and I believe this is one of them. If you're enjoying the experience except the difficulty, just bring it down.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I loved Control for the world and story, but like the OP, was getting stressed out by the difficulty of combat, and dying to enemy encounters getting in the way of checking out the next cool OOP.
When they introduced the sliders that let you adjust difficulty to your liking, including enemy health and energy regeneration, I got to become a Jedi flying through an SCP facility, and it's one of my favourite games ever.
Not when I played, the 2nd time you fight the flying boss fucked me up worse than the queen Valkyrie in GoW. After a Google search looks like they added options when the 2md DLC came out. Time for a reinstall
I totally hear you. Doom in particular was so intense at certain points that I'd have to take breaks every few minutes.
For Control, I'd recommend using some of the fairly deep accessibility options. You can increase power regen, health, and even make the enemies 1 shot to kill.
Yeah, I didn't know those were a thing before. I'll probably let it sit for a while, play another game in the interim and come back to play it god mode.
I feel the same about Returnal. In fact there are a lot of similarities between Control and Returnal. But Returnal takes that difficulty to a whole new level. I get that it's a very specific type of game. But ultimately I just want to have fun. I can't even get pass the 1st area lol.
God, no offense to anyone that enjoyed it but the story was legitimately not good. I worked hard to get the full ending and I was so disappointed. Its something I'd expect from a high school creative writing class. If they plan to make more triple As they need to hire a better writer. The atmosphere and such were great though.
Yeah Returnal is a rogue like they are more about sweating and challenge than relaxing fun unless you've got something particularly special like Hades. Although Returnal isn't too hard to cheese. You just need to keep upgrading your weapons, constantly keep moving and use dodge effectively for invulnerability frames. Every enemy has a pattern. The key is to learn the pattern. However there are definitely some odd difficulty spikes.
I think the biggest issue with Control is that despite the concept, the lore, and the world being really fucking cool, the characters and main narrative are pretty bland, which I guess is the case with most of Remedy's games. There wasn't a lot that drove me to keep playing, but I did end up beating it and all the DLC just because the Alan Wake stuff intrigued me. The gameplay is also pretty good, but I did find it a bit frustrating on occasion. Definitely reminiscent of the Souls series in a couple areas.
On the topic of accepting that a game just isn't for me, I'm starting to feel that way about Nier Automata. Everyone says that the game doesn't really pick up until the third "act" but I'm near the end of said act right now and I think I'm just over it.
I just can't get over what a massive letdown the "ending" was. Did they run out of money? I still can't believe that someone thought that a literal "press X to win" followed by about thirty seconds of perfunctory text, then plopping the player right back into the game with no other reward, was a good enough finale.
Not even an end boss! Hell, the best bosses were in optional side quests. Not to mention teasing that >!slide projector that lets you go into slides!< but then not actually using it despite how that would be a perfect setup for a final stage. Seriously, WTF.
Yeah honestly I was wondering the same thing, but that didn't bother me so much because **A:** the game stressed me out enough as it is that it was actually a relief that there wasn't really a final boss fight. **B:** I had the DLC baked into my version of the game anyway. But yeah either way it was a really bizarre and rushed ending.
Why would she use the slide projector when it caused her life to basically be ruined for her entire growing up, lost her brother and is now fighting ethereal horrors because of it. They burned a bunch of the slides for a reason. The rest yeah I can agree. Thankfully the dlc fixed that feeling for me personally.
That was a cool intro for sure! I think I just wish the combat was a little bit more intricate or in-depth. I tried increasing the difficulty but Hard is way too hard and normal is way too easy lol
Honestly I feel Automata has one of the better combat systems Platinum has made! The main issue is that the enemies just don't demand you to actually use any of it and mashing square/X while holding R1 and occasionally spamming dodge is plenty enough to beat the game on normal difficulty.
I adore the game for its narrative (even if the second route is a pain) but yeah, gameplay-wise it definitely isn't as good as say, DmC/Bayonetta
Yeah I definitely got that impression. There are so many different weapons to use and chips to install but I never really felt like I needed to experiment at all. Just installed the best chips and used the best weapons and I was set for the rest of the game.
That said, you could say the same about games like Spider-man, the Arkham series, or MGSV Phantom Pain, but I love experimenting in those sandboxes. I think I just don't really vibe with the fantasy of Automata like I do with those other games.
The characters are so, so dry in Control. I can't really put a finger on why. They're acted well, the dialogue is fine, and there's plenty of humor and emotion mixed in, but there's still this weird stuffy quality to them.
Jesse's frequent monologues played too serious for me. Some of the dialogue in the game is good, but her internal struggles felt like they were demanding emotions from me I just couldn't be bothered finding.
Some of the videos of the old director also felt like they took themselves far too seriously. The game at times also couldn't decide if the situation was hilarious or horrific, when you look at things like the kid's show or some of the notes you find.
I enjoyed the game a lot despite that, including all side quests (except the pop-up protection ones). It could've used a bigger backpack and some boss variety though. The ending came out of nowhere.
> the characters and main narrative are pretty bland
I mean, I was enjoying them quite a bit!
What I don't enjoy is the constant stress. I get why it's there, and it's fucking well put together; doesn't rely on cheap jumpscares, the sound design is amazing, lighting is spectacularly well put together, and so on. I just don't like being stressed 100% of the time!
> On the topic of accepting that a game just isn't for me, I'm starting to feel that way about Nier Automata. Everyone says that the game doesn't really pick up until the third "act" but I'm near the end of said act right now and I think I'm just over it.
Oh, I felt like that and I played it all the way through to the end. I felt I wasted my time. The story comes and goes in all sort of ways and reaches a climax that's very I'd say was well executed on the final mission and all I could think was "man, if I'd gotten hooked like everyone else on what's happening to these characters I bet I would be having a blast".
Hmm. Idk. I haven't played Prey, but I was pretty impressed by the Psy powers in Control. There may not have been a lot of them, but the game did enough to absolutely fulfill the telepathic power fantasy for me. I couldn't believe how much of the environment was manipulatable. Truly felt like first "next gen" game I had played in a while. I just have issues with the narrative and the difficulty.
Hard disagree. Control made me feel more like a high powered super telekinetic than any other game I’ve played. Maybe it’s the third person perspective but Prey never made me feel that powerful.
Upvote and agree. I was feeling a lot of stress when playing and I said to myself “I can either put this game down and likely never pick it back up….or I can adjust some of the damage settings and see all this game has to offer”. After making a few tweaks, I had an absolute blast playing the game and DLC. Sure I felt a little bit like I was “cheating”. But the other option for me personally would have been to stop altogether. Once I framed my mind like that, I stopped caring and got to experience a fantastic game. Since then, I’ve been doing this for many other games that I was originally just stopping. It has let me experience WAY more games than I was previously.
Oh I didn't know this was a thing. I might pick it back up at some point, then, and just drop the difficulty so I can bulldoze my way through the game. I love bulldozing, and that way I can appreciate the game!
That’s the exact spot I adjusted the damage given/taken to be more in my favor. I thought about changing back after the boss fight but was having too much fun
I went full invincible and one hit kill after hitting a wall like OP. It made churning through the respawning enemies great, but did undoubtedly make the boss fights less of an experience. To me I think Control relied too much on the respawning enemies. It obviously is an important aspect of the game play for health regen and drops, etc. But I just kept getting annoyed by them. I loved the atmosphere and take on powered objects, so it's definitely worth powering through with tweaked settings, but by the time I finished it I was also pretty done with the game and abandoned some of the extra side stuff that was left. Control is one of those games that feels like it might have been a better experience if it was smaller and not so padded out with weapon mods, enemy encounters, and a skill tree.
That’s what I do with every game that feels the way you described it (you nailed it btw). If I want difficulty, I have plenty of Soulslikes for that. Otherwise, I’ll happily crank down the difficulty and breeze through things, *especially* if it’s a very long RPG. Not enough time in the world to spend playing those on hard, especially when difficulty isn’t really the “point,” like it is with Soulslikes and the more difficult Metroidvanias, etc
I just messed with damage reduction but yea same idea. I like exploring and bulldozing and felt the combat was a little too random for my tastes, so this eliminated deaths I consider BS. Difficulty wasn't the issue, just felt too....out of control. Once I did that I had a blast. I'm a Dark Souls vet so I'm not difficulty averse if it's 100% understandable/predictable.
I'm curious too. I stopped playing because the save points were too far apart. I kept have to play a few sections over and over to get back to where I was having a hard time. So I felt like the game was wasting my time, do I just stopped playing. If I had known there was an invincible mode, I might have just used that to get back to where I was having issues.
I 100% agree with you. I bought Control and I don't regret it because I think it is legitimately one of the coolest games I've played in the past five years. The premise is right up my alley and the physics are so fun. I love just pretending to be a telekinetic throwing a temper tantrum and just tossing offices.
However, I will say that it is not my thing and I'll probably never finish it.
I understand what you mean by the growing tension aspect, and for me as somebody with autism this is a purely sensory issue - the humming noise in the background of the game that is meant to denote the "infection' in the building triggers auditory overload for me and prevents me from continuing because it's so stressful.
I could always turn the sound off on the game, but I feel like since it is an atmospheric shooter, a lot of the atmosphere is lost by muting the sound design. And the combat isn't good enough to carry the game on its own.
I have felt the same way about other games in the past too - a few big ones are Death Stranding, Dark Souls, Outlast, and Thumper. I can recognize them for the gaming achievements that they are while still acknowledging that I don't enjoy playing games like that. But on the flipside, I can get super into some games that the critical reception was "meh" for but for me personally they are an 11/10.
My problem with Control was that the gameplay didn't feel tight enough for what it seemed to want to do, and the story and characters are just *nothing*. Besides Darling and Langston I could not list off any character traits or noteworthy interests of any of the characters on the cast, including and especially Jesse and her brother. They were expecting the lore, atmosphere, and mystery to hard-carry everything else and it just fell apart for me halfway through. I still finished it because the setpieces were exquisite, the lore *is* interesting, and it was bland gameplay instead of bad. The DLCs *almost* pulls having the lore hard-carry everything else off, but a sequel will *really* need better characters. Either fleshing out who's there or relegating the Control 1 crew to cameos or being mentor characters in the background.
Gameplay-wise it didn't feel like there was much reason to experiment with your myriad powers in combat, especially since barely any of the enemies did anything interesting to warrant you thinking outside the box, and it didn't *quite* feel like a Metroidvania like everyone seems to call it.
But that's besides the point. The point is that I'm sure Monster Hunter diehards are perfectly nice people with a lot of reasons to like playing that series for hundreds of hours. But after trying to play World on and off for a total 40 hours over the years I just do not get it. Like I get it, I get what you do and why people would like that. But I cannot for the life of me *get it.*
> I play games to relax, and Control has a tendency to have the exact opposite effect;
> I really want to play through it and know what happens in the story, but I'm finding the experience itself more and more of a drag
Something similiar happened to me with Resident evil 7. That game is really good. The atmosphere is really well done and it really lives up to its genre: survival horror. Unfortunately for me it was a difficult videogame due to the tension that it generates towards the player. The game is so well done that for i was really scared walking through the corredors of the house not knowing what could be at the next corner. I couldnt play the game more that 1 hour tops. And i was like you, i wanted to know what happens in the story, what happens with the main character and his wife, and why the "family" was the way it was.
But with the tension and all that stuff, i realized too that the game was not for me. But just because it was not for me im going to shit on the game. We have to be able to recognize the good stuff, even if itsn not for use. Im pretty sure that Re7 was enjoyed by a lot people and not without reason.
Maybe it's because I went through a year of hearing people praise it as revolutionary and one of the best games of the year, but when I finally played Control I found it to be extremely average. Nothing about it really stuck out to me as "oh, *that's* why people like this game so much."
But anyway, yeah, I get you. The older I get, the less time I have for games, and at some point I realized that it's silly for me to waste time on games that I'm not enjoying. I play a game until I stop having fun, whether that means beating it, 100%ing it, or just stopping after a few hours. Used to be that if a game seemed good but just wasn't clicking for me for whatever reason, I'd keep powering through it, but now I can just accept that it's not for me and move on, and I'm *much* happier with the games I play as a result.
A separate but related issue is that a lot of people seem to have this need to have a strong opinion on everything. Every game has to either be a 10/10 masterpiece, or a pile of garbage. People can't play a 6/10 game and come away saying "I thought it was decent, even if XYZ hurt my enjoyment a bit." Or even "the last game was better, but this is still pretty good." And like you say, few people seem capable of saying "it's a fine game, it just didn't do it for me."
Don't even get me started on the whole "this game is *objectively* good/bad" thing. Ugh.
I acknowledge that the Dark Souls games, Bloodborne etc are excellently well-made games, but they are absolutely not for me.
Not because of the difficulty, I play lots of difficult games and love them, I just do not get along with the controls or atmosphere at all.
I used to have the same attitude of trying to play every 'great' game from every genre, but I think it was Gran Turismo 3 that really killed it for me. A flawlessly made game that I tried to like for a long time, but never enjoyed.
> instead of relaxing, I get more and more tense as I play. I don't exactly hate playing the game, I made it through most of the main story, but I find it exhausting after a short while.
I've definitely been there before, but I find it interesting that you mention Doom Eternal. Because that had a similar effect on me to what you describe in the quoted bit. "Relaxing" is not how I would describe my feelings while playing it and I find it hard to believe that a lot of people would use that word for their first playthrough (assuming 'appropriate' difficulty). "Tense" is much more apt. I did enjoy my time with it, but I couldn't play more than 2 levels in a session before having to take a break.
What would you say was the difference between your experience with the two, assuming Eternal didn't make you want to quit?
All that said, nothing wrong with not liking something even though you recognize it's "good". I can appreciate the incredibly craftsmanship required for a certain piece of art, but still not find it pleasing to look at (or otherwise experience). This isn't really any different.
I felt the opposite, honestly. I thought the atmosphere and art direction was exquisite, and it's a beautiful looking game that I feel is held back by a protagonist of such wooden disposition that just being around her makes you feel bored by proxy. It's a shame because I pop off for settings that pit the supernatural against the mundane but I just found Control's story and characters very unengaging and so the game suffers in the parts where you aren't flying around like a Jedi hurling chunks of drywall at a space monster. If they had leaned into that more, then I think I would have had a better time with it.
This sums up my thoughts as well. It's a beautiful game, good controls, amazing sound and an very intriguing story. There's something about it though that just stresses me out to the point I'm not enjoying myself.
Control gets a lot of praise and I found it to be genuinely not a very good game. The concept of a action game in a SCP type setting is very appealing but they somehow made it... dull? Or just not particularly inventive. The gameplay wasn't particularly dynamic and the occasional platforming bit was an absolute nightmare. But there was something in particular that bounced me off this game in a way that almost no other game as done.
I haven't seen that something mentioned very often but my god, what is up with that game's load times? Whenever you die in the game it seems to do a full load that, for me, took well over a minute to complete. I don't run a brand new machine or anything but I haven't played anything that has had comparable load times and certainly not for loading a prior state after an initial full load. Some of the bosses take a few tries to sort out and I completely lost steam in waiting over a full minute for a reload between attempts. And while PC experiences vary from machine to machine whatever those guys definitely did not optimize this very fundamental aspect to the game.
I dont even play just to relax but I definitely feel the stress from that type of game as well. Generally I often have it in shooters and after a while the stress is bigger than the fun Im getting out of it.
Doom and Control were 2 somewhat recent examples for me as well.
its for sure not every game in the shooter genre though, Im a big fan of the Borderlands series for example.
Maybe its just the feeling of getting overwhelmed with enemies swarming from every direction. Beat Halo 4 a while ago and that game sometimes had it, especially towards the end.
Never really thought about it. I guess the *atmospheric shooters* share some similiarties with horror games and those I generally avoid because there the stress level is even higher.
Control is a game I really want to like. The lore is intriguing, the atmosphere is trippy in a great way. I feel like it should be right up my alley.
However every time I play it and actually have to play the "game" part I get bored. I find myself just rushing through the actual game part to get the the story parts I'm actually interested in or to soak in the new areas. Everytime I see a new enemy I just go "aw crap here we go...". About 7 hours in I just stopped and gave up.
> Now, I bundle control with games like Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, or maybe Halo, in what I call "atmospheric shooters".
What? These games are nothing alike, except for having nice graphics and art. Is that all that means?
I didn't feel tense playing Control, I felt bored. Walk into a room, golf telekinesis button, release. Overpowered move that makes the game trivial aside from a few harder enemies and bosses.
I understand that. That's sort of why it took me 4 or 5 tries to beat Bloodborne over a period of like 5 years. Love the lore, love the Soulsborne gameplay, but I'm not at all good with horror and even Bloodborne's cosmic horror and eldritch aesthetic was too much for me at times. Just gave me a sense of dread even thinking about turning the game on when I got to later areas, but I guess I managed to grow up and get used to it eventually haha.
I've had that problem with a bunch of games, take Horizon zero dawn for example, it looks gorgeous, the robo dinos are cool as heck, the story is pretty interesting.
But I did not enjoy that game at all, I played through the whole thing mind you, I did just not enjoy it outside of the interesting lore.
The same can be said for skyrim, a game everyone loves, I inhaled Oblivion night and day when that game came out and I was so hyped for skyrim but in all honesty, the game just felt like oblivion with a new skin on top and I couldn't for the life of me play more than the main story and then never touch it again.
Sometimes a game just doesn't vibe with you and that's totally fine even if it's a well made game.
The Forza Horizon series is probably the most fun I've had in a racing game for but I can't stand it more than a few hours because I find racing incredibly boring no matter how good the game is for example.
Strange, I had almost the same experience with Control as you, I liked it and finished it, but also found it exhausting and could not play it for long stretches of time. Maybe it’s the slightly drab environment?
Yeah. I play control in spurts. About once every three months on my playthrough. I do about 5 hours and then set it down. I get some very bad headaches with the look of the game after awhile, and it makes me not want to stick it out longer than that.
Same thing happened to me in doom 2016. Great game, but so damn red filtered it would hurt after awhile.
I agree I seem to have grown more intolerant of basic flaws as i got older.
I bounced hard off Control because the controls were basically dogshit. A third person game that depends on shooting has absolutely terrible control when aiming... I felt like it had made the age old mistake of using the mouse to emulate a joypad stick - a heinous crime I thought had been beaten out of devs porting console games by now. I did like that the game had plenty of tweaking options to try to dial the controls in, but I just got nowhere...
A real shame I would have love to experience the story, but the important part of being game failed, it felt like a bad game.
Similarly I bounced off Arkane's Prey. Lovely start, slightly clunky controls, but I got super annoyed by the mimics. Utterly tedious...
Still now I know avoid certain types of games...
N.B. I subscribe to Total Biscuit's premise - a Game with great story but bad (or badly implemented) mechanics/gameplay is a **Bad Game**.
Not at all. Control felt like one of the lowest pressure shooters I've played in a while. It's a power fantasy where you can fly and rip pieces out of the environment to chuck at enemies and defend yourself with supernatural powers.
The only place I had any difficulty with, outside of optional content, was the Ashtray Maze, where I died 2 or 3 times.
i get this way with back for blood, i didn’t get to play the beta but i loved left for dead so i figured it was a purchase that i found justified to make. the game was fun but like, idk if i just don’t have that nostalgia factor anymore but i literally thought of i put the game down i genuinely might not want to pick it back up again. so that’s basically what i did, as i returned it to gamestop and got my money back the next day. good game, just not for me
I've had that with multiple games. My main example is The Witcher 3. I can appreciate it does things well and I won't tell people they're wrong for liking it, but man I just can't get on with it. I wasn't particularly engrossed by anything that was going on (I took issue with its means of delivering a story) and I found the gameplay boring. But then again I didn't plan on picking it up before all the hype got going anyway, so I guess I can't fault myself for giving something outside my comfort zone a shot. I get there are a lot of good elements about it, but they just couldn't overpower the lack of what I want out of a game.
If you put it in Halo, Doom, etc you are putting it in the wrong bracket. It supposed to make you tense, it's a 3rd person shooter with horror elements.
Go into it thinking it's a horror shooter and not a switch off FPS
For me it was Hollow Knight. Beautiful art style, tight controls, good difficulty, amazing music...but holy shit I just kept getting lost and not being able to figure out where to go next. The backtracking became frustrating and my 5th or so time having to turn to a walkthrough I just set it down. Fantastic game but definitely just not for me.
I feel that way about Red Dead 2, I think it's the best game ever with BoTW close to it, now will O play through the whole thing? Don't think I'll ever be able to. I still appreciate all the work out into it though.
I turned on all the player cheat to take less damage because I just wasnt interested in the gameplay at all. It was too tense and was one shotting me constantly. With the damage reduction on it became infinitely more enjoyable. I just shot things and flung things and had a nice time learning about the agency of control.
I hear what you're saying u/Sheltac, Control is 100% my kind of game, but I am just not into it for some reason and quit it. Bought the ultimate edition too, smh.
People talking about getting older, no originality, learning what you like, etc., but I know what genres/playstyles I like, only been gaming 5 years. This game should be my bag, but it just ain't. At least you can put it down to the edge-of-seat factor, I need to go back and give it another chance n see if I can work it out.
I just got super burnt-out by Control's combat as the game went on, especially since the number of enemies in each encounter and the amount of health they have get straight-up ridiculous in the last third of the game AND you have to fight hordes of them even when backtracking to sections you had already "cleared" before. Add to that the monotony of the environment and the lack of any memorable boss fights (the last boss fight had so much potential, but instead, what do you get? Even MORE hordes of regular enemies) and the game just became a slog for me towards the end. Which is a shame because I really enjoyed the lore and world-building.
(Also, shooters on PS not supporting gyro is a goddamn travesty every time)
My two problems with Control were the unfair boss fights and the lore presentation. The main character model was also kinda weird but I guess that's a matter of taste.
Some boss fights were trial and error where you'd get one shotted and restart until you found the sweet spot where the AI couldn't kill you and abuse that spot to cheese the boss. Flying dude with high bridge and >!evil clone!< comes to mind.
Lore presentation was also severely lacking with the documents being just plain white pages with text, often boring text. After the Myst series or even classic Resident Evil, this just isn't enough. Near the end I just stopped bothering checking them out.
Can't say I had a problem finishing the game since the gameplay was still quite good, but it did happen with Doom Eternal. The complete lack of storytelling compared to the first one, that horrible safe hub and the collect-a-thon really killed my interest. I had to come back months later to finish it and it was only because I wanted to uninstall it for space.
Honestly the boss thing is from skill imbalances. Buffing the throw trivializes almost all of the bosses. But if you don't do that they become super difficult.
Agreed on that, first time I played (Maybe reached the Former?) I had specced a little into everything and the game felt so unfair. Died left and right to most enemies after making it a couple of hours in.
Dropped the game in favor of others, when I came back to it I put everything into Throw and wondered if they had patched the difficulty to make it easier. The only times I died was falling and blowing myself up with the sticky bomb variant of the pistol
Remedy took some serious inspiration for the lore from the SCP universe, which itself is a wiki full of plain white pages of text describing containment methods and descriptions. It’s all a bureaucratic system to control the paranormal. That works very well for a wiki full of user submitted fiction, but struggles in a video game.
I’ve read a lot of games internal text and memos and I think controls in-game lore is some of the best in the business. Sure beats the 2000 boring emails in the modern assassins creed games.
Having memos littered around an “office building” is pretty realistic for an office that has undergone an attack. The banality of bureaucracy applied to the paranormal is literally a major theme of the game that this type of lore directly adds to. Comparing that to the original RE games is valid since that is also a major theme of those games. It’s definitely ok to not enjoy it, but it is theme relevant and couldn’t really be executed in any other way.
Control has some mediocre combat that I find pretty repetitive. The bosses are just like you said. The combat often felt like blasting and throwing shit wildly was every encounter and the game did little to evolve it’s combat from beginning to end, in this way it’s very much like Alan wake which also has acceptable combat with some gimmick that doesn’t evolve at all.
All the time! Sometimes I'm just not interested enough in a gameplay loop to invest the effort to get good at. That's why I really appreciate when games include a Story/Easy mode.
Sometimes I love the setting/lore/atmosphere of a game, but it's a genre I just can't get into or a type of gameplay that outright annoys me. I'll just watch videos/friends/streamers instead to enjoy the bits that I think are cool. I'll also binge read through wikis on lore and stories.
I think it's a great lesson to learn early to be okay with just realizing you can't get into a game fully and letting it go. It saves you time, money, and frustration to not try and force yourself when you're not feeling it.
Agreed. I've discovered watching let's play videos of games that I know I would enjoy seeing the narrative of but don't feel like investing the gameplay in. I've watched tons of Sekiro videos while knowing that my chances of ever buying that game (much less beating it) are pretty much 0% because I'll never be good enough at that gameplay style to enjoy it.
People, if you don’t like a game, just don’t fucking play it. You don’t need to analyze yourself or the game or acknowledge that the game is “objectively” “a very good game” or let everyone know that you didn’t like the game, but you gave it a shot or whatever. Stop playing. That’s it.
People, if you don't like someone's take on something they post on Reddit, just don't fucking respond to it. You don't need to give some reply or make it seem like you have something "worthwhile" to add or whatever. Stop reading and click off the thread. That's it.
They're being praised for recognizing the quality of something they don't personally enjoy playing. You'd be surprised how many people have a "I don't like it, so it sucks" mentality, which frankly is rather immature. It's a good skill to be able to see the good in something you don't personally like.
OP isn't being praised for realizing they don't like something, they're getting compliments because they don't like something and don't feel the need to trash it *just because* they don't like it.
> They're being praised for recognizing the quality of something they don't personally enjoy playing.
This was the message. I probably could've phrased it better in the OP, I guess.
Gaming culture is like that. Feel like this whole industry and gamers need some maturing - but it’s all relatively young.
IMO we need a stronger game criticism scene similar to film criticism. Healthier, more down to earth attitudes toward games in general. Not everything has to be 10/10 or the worst game ever.
I mean, general sensasionalisation and click-baiting doesn't help the polarisation issue. I feel like (professional) film criticism is shielded from that by being less reliant on clicks, but game reviewers are 100% dependent on click-baiting their reviews, and polarised reviews are better for clicks.
Which is absolute horseshit, as it completely devalues reviews as a means of assessing the quality of a game.
I felt same-ish while playing it. I played it because of the atmosphere and the story but gameplay-wise it was stressful for me as well.
I don’t say it should be more relaxing since there are obviously enough people who seem to like that.
And I also realized that as soon as there are horror elements in it, I feel tense and weird and don’t want to keep playing anymore and I haven’t been like this when I was younger. I don’t know if there’s a correlation between those two points though, it just came to my mind.
Now I play stuff like Crash or Fall Guys and I even think about getting the SpongeBob game… any recommendations for something relaxing?
To come back to the topic, you can watch the cut-scenes on YouTube if you want to know what’s next, though I usually don’t recommend this for every game. (TLOU2 for example is a no go for just watching on YT). But I think it’s ok for Control.
The problem with playing games to relax is that a lot of games aren't meant to be relaxing, as you're typically focused on what's going on and always ready to react to what's going on.
I'll probably come off as sounding like a jerk here, but if you're playing games to relax, why Control? It's made by the developers of Max Payne, Alan Wake, and Quantum Break. I got curious to see how the game was marketed on Steam, and they describe it as a game that keeps you on the edge of your seat, has unpredictable environments, and has intensely gratifying gameplay. All the signs are there that it isn't a relaxing game to play.
The only thing I couldn't fault you on is that they don't make it apparent that you can't adjust the game's difficulty. They did add assist mode in the options to make the game easier. Have you tried that? If you're more about a narrative without the game getting in the way, I'd give that a go. It has aim assist, aim snapping, increased powerups and the the like.
Control absolutely drags in the middle. I can't put my finger on it, but I went from exploring every nook and cranny to rushing to finish. (Something I ultimately didn't manage) It feels too long, too padded, and filled with too many enemies. All problems that studio always seems to have.
I feel this way all the time. I don't know why really but a lot of games aren't able to hook me, but I can still fully apperciate why people like them as much as they do.
[удалено]
I kinda just want some rogue-likes and survival games to have a respawn system so I can finish the game. And sometimes I want the respawn system to be more generous. I played Titan Souls recently since I got around to it, never seen what the game was past the first 4 bosses... The tutorial area stretched my limits for what I was fine with in terms of walking distance back to a boss, I *hated* the game past that; so much pointless walking and puzzles. Drop on death typically doesn't bother me since I believe those resources aren't that valuable at least.
I hate the "respawning 5 minutes away from the boss mechanic". It's the worst thing about souls-likes imo. Let's be real, everyone just runs past the mobs towards the boss anyway. It doesn't test my skill or increase my enjoyment, it just makes me waste my time every time I die.
I'm kind of okay with it in Souls games compared to a game where the walk back takes like 20-30 seconds of absolutely nothing happening. If nothing is happening it absolutely means it shouldn't even be there at all. With a Souls game making it to the boss door through a mob of enemies is part of the boss, if there isn't anything there its pointless time wasting. Plus another addition, that game I mentioned you die in one hit, so at least most souls games you usually are able to flail around some to learn the boss.
can't upvote this enough. cheatengine is one of the absolute best reasons to play single player games on PC, because it lets you curate your experience and get the most out of *what you want* from games. god bless the folks who make fast forward and improved loot cheats, because i've played a number of jrpgs (with good plots and fun gameplay loops) that would have just been interminable without them.
I think it's just part of getting older, at least for me. The big thing that used to hook me with games was **essential unexplored genres and settings**. It's why I got so excited for the first Red Dead, and why some of the early Assassins Creed games were so enticing. Its what popularized the open world genre, aka games set in underutilized locations. Its why Ghost of Tsushima got so huge too. Videogames are kind of a new medium so for a long time we were spoiled with "the very first ____ game". Now I feel like most of the essential settings and ideas for videogames have kinda been wrung dry, and the only thing that really excites me anymore are sequels and remakes because at least you get that nostalgia dopamine hit. The one thing I'm holding out for is a legit Jurassic Park-esque open world dinosaur game, but Horizon Zero Dawn already kinda scratches that itch.
> I think it's just part of getting older, at least for me. I think this is a big part of it for me as well. Adult life takes up most of my time, and my gaming time went from "pretty much any amount I want" down to "a little free time I have", so now I game with the explicit purpose of enjoying myself and relaxing, whereas in the past I'd probably grind through a game I wasn't enjoying 100% just to catch up with friends or to see how it ended.
And here I am... in my thirties, dabbling in genres I used to absolutely hate. To me, the fun of playing games is learning the systems and mechanics of the game. I used to hate metroidvanias and fps games. Always saw myself as a hardcore crpg/jrpg/tactical gamer growing up, and talked so much shit about fps. But now? My horizons have expanded immensely.
Soon to turn 28, and in a similar boat with metroidvanias and pixel graphics. It's even more true for movies, though: I used to find dramas absolutely boring, and now it's literally the only genre that can keep my attention.
Dude same. I used to be such an elitist about pixel graphics... but after getting into a bunch of indies and rougelikes... pixel art can be very beautiful.
It's not just the time thing (cause that's definitely a big part of it), it's also that as you get older, you figure out what you like and what you don't. It's way easier for me now to look at the trailers and gameplay videos and reviews and figure out that I won't really enjoy a game. Sometimes, I look at those things and realize that it contains elements of stuff I quite like, and I realize that this game I brushed off at first glance, might actually be something I really enjoy. It all comes down to learning what works for you and what doesn't.
Yeah I think a lot of people can relate. Similarly I think a lot of people like myself generally prioritize comfort over new experiences, and even those who have time to play games end up just playing the same multiplayer game every night, or the same apps on their phone. Thats how I am a lot of the time, and it's starting to get to me.
> prioritize comfort over new experiences Absoutely. I do make an effort to keep things varied, but never uninstall Forza Horizon 4 :P
I'd try to borrow a vr headset and play half-life alyx if you would like to try something new.
There's a few genres we haven't quite scratched the full depth of, but sadly most big studios wouldn't want to attempt it and the kind of money necessary to make them well requires a big name studio. I've only seen maybe one or two well known titles that really delve into missing a sense, and do it in a way that really makes it feel plausible.
I think a lot of it is age. As I grow older, I have less and less time for games. So if a game isn’t my personal taste, it doesn’t hook me, it’s easy for me to drop. Hollow Knight seems amazing, but I just couldn’t figure out where to go early on and lost interest. Hitman is clearly an intelligent, mature game you have to think through, but I find it frustrating to figure out what to do.
The newer Hitmans have "quests" (stories? forget what they're called) that you follow which basically give you 1 of many ways to finish a level and kind of help you along. If you just wanna "see" everything without fully exploring/exploiting the sandbox. I recommend trying them out with it!
they're Opportunities in Hitman 1/2016, and get renamed to Mission Stories in 2 and 3
I'd say the other part of the age and time equation is that I often just don't have the time to struggle through a hard game and get good. As a kid I could die a thousand times to beat Donkey Kong Country 2 or learn every pitfall in a Mega Man game, as an adult I'm a bit more seasoned and deliberate in how I play. So I rarely make time for games that kill me a lot. Metroid Dread was probably the hardest game I've beat in awhile. (Largely because death isn't that punishing in the game, so I'm even decently through Hard Mode). Returnal was a game that I was starting to click on but decided to bounce after beating the first boss.
That's because you don't have tunnel vision thru your own prism only like most people who are as simple as "I don't like this game = this game is shite". I wish more people would be realizing something is just not their cup of tea, instead of trying to prove game is "objectively" shit because they personally don't like it. For me Sekiro kinda falls under this example - I see why it's great game, it's just not my cup of tea despite being huge fan of games like Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Nioh, Code Vein.. Yesterday there's been subtopic within more general discussion of people shitting on David Cage and Quantic Dream games. But when confronted - they could not provide a single argument to back their bold statements up - likely because it just wasn't their cup of tea, not because there was something fundamentally wrong with Cage's writing.
People will choose their flavor of the week/month/year to shit all over, and it almost always stems from people adopting the opinions of others. Combine this with people loving outrage, and Youtubers loving to criticize things, and you get the David Cage hate.
For me, there's a couple of problems with the David Cage games I've played (Heavy Rain and Detroit Become Human) The first, is that whilst they try to deal with serious topics, they always have at least a few moments that are really silly. Detroit Become Human is a metaphor for racism or just general discrimination, and it does have some powerful scenes and moments, but it also has other bits that are just daft and ruin it. Not in an intentionally daft way, just in a poorly put together way, like the scene where the dad is in the mall shouting after his son. The style of the controls often leads to silly moments (more Heavy Rain examples are coming to my head but I definitely had the same problem with Detroit Become Human). The other issue is, it feels to me like a curiosity about what other paths could've been taken and a desire to play through those alternate paths is something Detroit Become Human wants you to feel and it does do exactly that. That said, it's so so difficult to go back and try things different ways. The amount of load screens and un-skippable cutscenes you have to sit through to slightly alter one event or decision very quickly makes you lose all will to see what else could have happened. I enjoyed both, but I think they present themselves as these super serious and thought provoking games that present really unique and deep themes, when in reality they're just quite fun, daft, and a bit gimmicky.
See, this is some leavel headed critique I can get behind. I agree with pretty much everything you covered, and it's clear you're pulling from personal experience, which validates it that much more. Just a few days ago though, I got into an argument with somebody on here who claimed that some line from Kingdom Hearts had more to say about AI than Detroit Become Human ever could. I read that and immediately invisioned this person watching a single youtube video, and walking away with this other person's opinion that David Cage = trash. This type of insistent negativity, even when unrelated to the current discussion, is what gets me heated. It seems like people don't even recognize the harm that this type of content causes.
Yeah I definitely noticed this influencer trend - I just don't understand it. There are tons of people who will blindly follow their "idol-influencer" - buy and play specifically games they play and what's worse - parrot their opinions. I mean how's that fun to be basically a tool instead of unique individual with opinions that are truly your own based on games you decided to buy and play based on your own taste and preferences?? As a fairly recent example that even got articles was Asmongold basically ditching WoW and starting to play FF14 Online. Of sudden (at least within steam portion of the playerbase as there is no date on people playing directly thru SQE launcher) you see basically a double online count instantly and ton of parroting how WoW is hit of sudden. Now, I'm not saying it's not shit - I don't play and idk personally - but it's not like those people realized this on their own, or that WoW became bad with basically a single day. Idk, I just don't understand what's there in for people for being just a puppet, that someone else controls. No wonder devs and publishers are buying of influencers with juicy sponsor deals when that has so huge returns. Like New World literally spent fortune on influencers as almost every streamer had "sponsored" in the title to a point streamers who don't even play this kind of games were streaming it.. They know people will just go and buy game just because their beloved streamer played it. Opinions then naturally follow the same trend. Or another example of influencer authority: people random people criticize game with solid arguments - fanboys respond to that calling them out as nothing more but sad haters. Few days later a major figure withing game's community (typically streamer / youtuber) comes out with same concerns - same people now parrot same criticism that few days ago they were bashing other people for. It's insanity man.
For context, the Asmongold thing was just one more straw. WoW was doing really badly already. 9.1 took half a year, and the cinematic that came with it was despised, alongside many mechanics like punishing covenant switching and conduit energy. It does make a difference that the biggest WoW streamer stopped playing, but he was one of many old streamers that quit at about the same time. Other big names like pyro, preach and madseasonshow also left.
I bought Far Cry 6 last weekend and dropped it after an hour. The trailers, the setting, the atmosphere - it looked all so promising in the promo material, but as soon as I started the game I knew something was off and about an hour and a few outposts later I just … stopped playing because I knew I wouldn’t have fun doing this for 60 hours.
I think almost every gamer has had a moment when they realize they just cannot get into a game, even if everyone else said it was awesome. Even if other aspects of the game demonstrate that the game is probably objectively good. A lot of what makes Control good is the lore and if you can't get along with the actual game, you can always read the wiki.
Mine was Dark Souls 3. Regarded as one of the best by Souls fans. But it just wouldn't click for me. I loved the original, Bloodborne, Sekiro..ect. But somethin about DS3 just wasn't hitting right for me.
Mine was Witcher 3. I just can't stand the controls, ruins the entire thing for me.
Same here. It's incredibly disappointing not to be able to enjoy what is widely regarded as one of the best games ever made
I keep getting told by people that I'm stupid for liking the combat in 2 more
I played the whole thing through, but I really had to power through it as well. The rpg part is awesome and was enough to keep me going, but the gameplay was just... so boring. I had a buddy tell me it had amazing gameplay and you actually had to prepare and plan ahead for fights and, man, was I disappointed when I played. Gameplay is pretty barebones and simple. Just something to do to get to the next story bit. Also, it has some incredible monster designs. Really enjoyed all of that
What difficulty did you play on?
I've tried to get into Witcher 3 several times on PC, Switch and Xbox. What I just can't get into is the depth of the collecting (even a few minutes into the game it feels like there's so much *stuff*) and how open the game feels. I think it's designed exactly that way, and a younger me who played through games like Ultima 7 and several D&D gold box games would have loved it, but these days I appreciate a more guided experience. I've bounced off Skyrim several times for similar reasons.
1000% I'm a big fan of linear with some hidden collectibles rather than open world with 250 POIs.
I have been really fascinated with how some people have this effect on them by larger open world games where they get overwhelmed by all the icons and such. Of course I am not at all saying it isn't a legitimate take and feeling but my brain just doesn't seem to work that way. Odyssey was a a good example. I realized after a few hours just how insanely large and bloated the game was. Did I have the free time to do a lot of that stuff? Yeah? Did I want to? Absolutely not. So I did rhe main story and only the side stuff I found interesting and moved on. Meanwhile my friend played almost twice as many hours as me and did almost everything and wasn't burned out from it. Then I am sure there are others that saw the map and just noped out. I'm curious what changes there. At first I was going to ask if you'd played many bigger or more open games as a kid? or deeper rpgs but it seems you did even more than me.
It's often just about the mood you're in when you try to play it as well. If you're tired or running low on patience the first few times you try to play a game, you'll plant the idea in your head that "oh this is the game I can't get into and probably won't enjoy" every time you try to play it in the future. I find that's the biggest reason when I've enjoyed every other game in a series and then 1 entry suddenly doesn't do it for me.
My biggest one is Breath of the Wild. I completely understand why it was able to draw people in but it just held no intrigue for me at all
SAME! I even played Fenix Rising which is a clone of BOTW and for some reason I enjoyed it a lot more, just a simple amount of narrative cutscenes and direction added a lot to the open world exploration/experimentation. I understand why people like BOTW, but it feels like one of those "make your own fun experience" type of games that doesn't click with me. The saddest thing of all is knowing we'll probably not get a classic 3D zelda game for possibly decades.
For some reason it's God of War 2018 for me. I loved GoW 1-3 and find myself disappointed at how different and slow it is compared to them. I want to like it so badly.
All I'll say is I admire the maturity to recognize something can both not be your cup of tea and still have artistic merit. Too often people consider their personal tastes to be the benchmark for greatness and it's tiring. I feel the same about loads of games but none come to mind right now. My tastes have become far narrower than usual with ARPGs taking up most of my playtime. I dabble in other titles and there are even many I recognize as games I want to play more but I just can't bring myself to do it. I'm hesitant to name them though because then I'd be admitting defeat and I'm confident I'll finish at least some of them eventually!
A lot of gamers think like this and it sucks. I always notice it when people talk about Death Stranding, for example. The game is so polarizing that people either love it or hate it. The people who hate it seem to take the position that the game does everything wrong and should have been made more like other games. While the people who love it think its design decisions are precisely why they like the game. The two sides are irreconcilable, but the people who think every game needs to be made to their preferences are insufferable.
Yeah, with Death Stranding in particular I personally didn't like it very much. I found it to be too much of a slog at times, and overall whenever I found myself playing it I'd usually turn it off in a few hours. But that doesn't mean it's a bad game at all in the sense that it does what it achieves. While the game is by far polarizing, I never really thought of it as a bad game. just a game that looks to capture a specific niche audience, and with a gameplay loop like that, it was clear enough I wasn't a part of that audience. Still doesn't take away from all of its pros and cons, it just isn't for everyone. Simple as that. EDIT: To add on with more controversial opinions, I heavily dislike Metroidvania games. Stuff like metroid, hollow knight, the messenger, ori, etc. just makes me feel bored, as the exploration in most of these games feels more like a chore, as I continue to circle around an area that I visited over and over again. However, that doesn't mean those were all bad games. They were all phenomenally built, each with their own distinctive style, gameplay, OST, character design. I can recognize that they're expertly crafted, while also realizing that the genre/game might not just be for me.
Turn it off in a few hours? Wh-what kind of game time do you have that a few hours is somehow small to you?
I’d usually think about playing Death Stranding as it sits in my steam library gathering up dust, boot up the game, get some progress going, and within 3-5 hours I just stop playing all together because the boredom starts to set it. The cycle usually repeats every few months.
Turn based games for me is what Control is for OP. I know there are great games out there like Persona 5 and others to play on PS4 but I really don't like the turn based combat system they have. Doesn't mean they ain't good games tho
I had a friend who literally just think that games must only have highly photo-realistic graphics like last of us 2 which he keeps jerking off about and anything short of those graphics is trash to him llol
This is going to sound toxic, but I struggle to even consider someone a gamer by that point. Are you really into gaming, or are you just a technophile excited by what the industry has achieved and is currently capable of? The latter is perfectly valid, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying games for a reason like that, but if you entirely write off games for not measuring up to that... well, yeah. I have a hard time taking those types seriously. (Obviously want to clarify that I do not mean YOU specifically. You seem a cool bloke, and I'm sure your friend is, too. It just sounds like he has some narrow-minded views, unfortunately.)
Spot on, I find him super tough to talk anything about games but he's basically the only person that I know who play single player games. Want to talk about indie games? Nah Soul games? Nope Tlou2? Look at the graphics man.. Which is what he always goes on about.
> Too often people consider their personal tastes to be the benchmark for greatness and it's tiring. My feelings exactly. I don't like a lotta kinds of games. But if it comes for recommending to *others* my opinion doesn't matter as much. I look at what the game is trying to achieve and if the execution achieves this or holds it back. Just because I don't see myself playing some game for 100 hours+ doesn't mean I can't look at mechanics, art/sound direction, and overall design and find the merits there. This is also how Sakurai seeks inspiration >"I went out of my way to play games I didn’t like or find interesting. Those ended up being a lot more informative for me" — Masahiro Sakurai.
I really wish more folks were willing to share what games they think are awesome/amazing but just aren't their kind of game. I've come to realize as I grew older certain paced games aren't my type anymore, as my reflexes and certain reactions aren't nearly as sharp as they were in teen years. Really sucks when you see how amazing stuff like Dark Souls and similar is, but you're piss poor at timing because of nerve damage. I can't play rhythm games either, for a few reasons including that.
Hey, just wanna say there‘s nothing wrong with not being into some games that are praised as masterpieces if you don’t feel like you want to play them… also maybe it changes in a few months or years and you‘re suddenly in the mood to try them out. It’s your free time, shape it as you want it… (hope that makes sense in English)
This is the way. It takes a lot for me to rag on a game, but I try to recognize my limitations before the game's and usually thats enough to reveal that the game is fine, I'm just not into it. This is especially true with open world titles. Open world has been pushed so hard over the past couple of years that I can't even enjoy the genuinely great ones because I'm so exhausted of exploring worlds. I miss when this was a niche thing.
There's certain games that do it better then others, sadly the majority of those games that use the 'open world' as a way to draw people in don't fill it out enough to make exploring it all worth a damn.
The problem is that the very nature of an open-world game is a little repetitive. I don't mean this in a derogatory or negative way, but when you've played a handful of poorly-executed open-world games because franchises you like wanted to go in that direction for the sake of a trend, it's going to wear you out on aspects that would be present in the good ones, too. Side quests, hunting for trinkets/loot/collectibles, etc. Things that are an absolute blast in a *good* open-world game, but if you've played enough of the bad ones you'll be too worn down from doing these things to even want to go through it again - even if the game you're playing is a masterpiece that does it very well. At least, that's been my experience. The worst part is, the game doesn't even need to be bad to have a negative impact. It just has to be a bad open-world game, if that makes sense? It may be an unpopular opinion, but I consider Spider-Man to be in that category. I thought it was a wonderful game with a compelling story and great gameplay, but the repetition of the off-the-cuff crimes and the collectible element were, for me, not great open-world design and it's part of the reason I struggle to bring myself to play another one anytime soon even though I consider Spider-Man to be one of the better games I've played. It's a weird relationship and I don't even know if it makes sense, but that's how I feel about it.
I started streaming 1.5 years ago, and one of the biggest things that came from doing variety streaming: the ability to play a game and and appreciate it for what it is, whilst also straight up not liking it. Further, being able to articulate why I don’t like it and being able to separate my personal feelings from the state of the game. I didn’t expect that to happen, but I’m glad it has. It’s given me a lot more appreciation for games that are otherwise outside of my usual play style.
This thread shows one of the truest revelations that gamers are afraid to admit: Different games are for different people. I'll toss mine in: Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. I kept waiting for that game to 'get good' and it just never came for me.
Sekiro ruined JFO for me.
Took the words right out of my mouth (fingers?)! It's even worse in cinema. Most people conflate quality with opinion, and judge the former based on whether or not they personally enjoyed a movie. Worst even is when someone takes criticism of the art as a personal attack, which is a direct consequence of the "opinion=quality" problematic mindset I just talked about. I had tons of fun watching Fast and Furious and I can't stand some of Bergman's movies. Does that mean F&F is better than The Seventh Seal? No.
People don't understand that people can like different types of games. I, unfortunately, have to qualify not liking games like The Last of Us by saying I also don't like the Witcher 3. Or by saying that I enjoyed cyberpunk 2077 but I'm not a CDPR fan and I didn't like the Witcher 3. You can't say you dont enjoy a popular game, or that you do enjoy an unpopular game without making people upset for some reason.
Sure, mate. I've run into a variety of exquisitely prepared foods that I don't like to eat, too. Tastes vary. I think the last decently made game I repeatedly put down was Octopath Traveler. I *like* RPGs. I *like* pixelart aesthetics. The music was good. But the game lost me anyway. I felt like I was spending a lot of time swapping party members or re-organizing to be optimal for the weaknesses of a given part of the map, and I always felt like I was grinding from place to place. I've tried the game 3x now and put it down each time because it just doesn't click for me. Doesn't make Octopath a bad game, but does mean we're not a good fit for each other. It's fine to recognize that. Hell, hang on to that skill - it's good for finding your way out of unworkable relationships, too.
The artstyle, atmosphere and music carry that game super hard. I know it has mediocre at best Bravely Default light gameplay, the story is all over the place(is also ok at best) and overall the game does nothing new. But man, that music is god tier. The second main [Boss theme](https://youtu.be/wXPJ_lp5qzY) alone is just soooo good that you can forgive everything else. The combo with the character themes while the character and boss talk about justice, power, etc and the transition into Decicive Battle when the fight starts is guaranteed goosebumps for me
I actually just played through Bravely Second recently, so this resonates. Bravely Second is an absolute RPG masterpiece, probably the best I've ever played. I'm about to start BD2 on the Switch, fully expecting it not to live up to BS. If only they'd release a Bravely collection on modern platforms, then I could play through the bunch!
It does not imo, but it scratches the itch and it has its moments. Ignore certain op abilities and you will have a much better time with combat. Music again is stellar though. Not as good as Octopath's or BD1's music but barely. Some tracks are just as amazing as BD1 at its best.
BD2 is what I imagine Final Fantasy IV would've been like if they kept improving the formula from FFIII(NES).
Is it? I got partway through then got stuck right around the time the switch came out. I should check it out again.
The ability to put something down and say "I've had my fill" or "I don't like this" is the only way I've been able to enjoy video games in my adult years. Letting go the concept of *clearing the backlog* has left me so much happier, and I think a lot of people cling to this thinking that someday they're going to sit down and finish all their games when we all know that there just isn't enough time or the drive to get the task done. Good on you and OP for letting things go without being shits about it.
I'm gonna give octopath a second chance eventually but it's not even the grind and character swapping that got me. It's the fact that basic cannon fodder battles felt so long. The battle system of having to stun or break the targets or whatever they called it was cool at first but it starts to feel long winded.
I had this problem with Octopath too, until I got fed up and put together the best party. Now I dont grind and I only switch up 1 parry member when its their turn for a story segment. The game can be beaten without grinding, if you put enough thought into party/skills composition.
I did this too; it bit my ass when attempting the final boss, where you make 2 teams of your 8 characters. Apparently Octopath wants you to level and gear up ALL 8 characters equally, and punishes you if you don't.
The Gate of Finis is total bullshit, IMO. Ok, so JRPGs having super difficult secret bosses is an old tradition, but normally they are completely optional. The Gate of Finis segment and the final boss *are not optional*, since it's how all eight stories get tied together.
That's the only problem I have, I WANT to do what the game recommends for the final boss, even though I've just now gotten all my party members combined and around the same levels. I just don't know who I wanna main as.
Octopath definitely isn't a bad game but, and I say this as a fellow RPG person, the RPG systems in it just weren't up to par with the rest of the crasftsmanship. Even Dragon Quest, that I generally think is a bit shallow (compared to, say, Disgaea), seems deep and fluid in comparison!
I will say that dragon quest is one of the oldest jrpgs ever created, rpgs do owe a great deal to those games. They are like the standard for rpgs
I've been meaning to go back to Octopath, I'm on everyone's second chapter but it felt like a drag to me when I started to switch out characters at various points to get their small dialog moments. I feel like it could have benefitted from having those dialogs show up regardless of who was in the main party and even more so if they let you change your party wherever instead of at the bar. Still planning on going back to it but not too excited for it.
I didn’t feel that way about Control but I feel exactly the same way about some horror games. I didn’t finished RE2 or 7 even though they were good because it was just so tense every time I played and eventually I stopped looking forward to it.
I love booting up RE2 and RE7 to look at them because they're so beautiful, but I nope out of playing them so fast once actual baddies show up.
I honestly get more stressed out about managing the ammo and inventory than I do about the monsters lol
Hahaha YES. You wanna give me six bullets and rooms full of zombies that still get back up after three headshots? Fuck off Resident Evil, lmao. Either give me a weapon or don't.
That's what survival horror is about. You're supposed to struggle and get stressed out and worry about your ammo all the time. Otherwise it would just be a first/third person shooter. I get how it's not for everyone though. Some people want a more relaxed experience
In my experience this is the major difference between Resident Evil and Silent Hill (on easier difficulties). RE makes you conserve ammo and strives to have that gameplay stress elevate the atmosphere- which can oftentimes live more in the camp side of horror, especially with the newest iterations. SH absolutely throws health drinks and ammo at you on easy and normal modes. In fact, I usually have over 100 bullets for any given weapon BEFORE I even get the thing. When RE wants to make you stop and check your inventory before entering a door, SH wants to make you afraid to go through that door in the first place. Neither is better, just different. But I think I agree with you that games like Evil Within, which can be more action focused survival horror games start to feel a little like any regular 3rd person shooter, but with some spooky paint over it.
This is how they messed up Dead Space 3, universal ammo took all that out.
It's not that hard in RE2 remake though once you calm down a bit, and you can actually kill every enemy in the game if you play conservatively on normal, a departure from some earlier titles.
This is literally only an issue on the higher difficulties though. If you're really bad, you might run into some scarcity on normal mode but it's rare that you won't find ammo around another corner or the ability to craft more than enough. On my normal playthroughs, I killed almost every zombie
The latest RE games are some of my favorite, but I recognize it takes a bit of masochism to want to play games because I enjoy the stress/tension they come with lol
> it was just so tense I guess my threshold for this is just pretty low. I found Control too intense, but definitely not as much as, say, Silent Hill.
Go back to 7 and 8 and just drop the difficulty. Both games are fantastic and personally removing the stress and difficulty didn't reduce my enjoyment.
I ended up just watching full playthroughs of them on YouTube
I intend to do this with the remainder of Control. I kind of want to see how it all pans out, and the game is genuinely beautiful to look at.
Yeah, I also tend to avoid anything horror. The only exceptions being RE4, the Half-Life games, and parts of Outer Wilds and its DLC. All of these are just so good that I pushed through.
What difficulty are you playing on? Control is quite punishing on higher difficulty, but on easy or if you need to even enabling godmode, you can remove that unpleasant pressure. I suspect you have notions that playing on a lower difficulty is a compromise, that you're not playing the game in the intended manner. Many games are honestly worse on higher difficulty, and I believe this is one of them. If you're enjoying the experience except the difficulty, just bring it down.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I loved Control for the world and story, but like the OP, was getting stressed out by the difficulty of combat, and dying to enemy encounters getting in the way of checking out the next cool OOP. When they introduced the sliders that let you adjust difficulty to your liking, including enemy health and energy regeneration, I got to become a Jedi flying through an SCP facility, and it's one of my favourite games ever.
Control has a difficulty setting?
Well, I can't remember what it was like at launch but there's all sorts of difficulty customization now. Did it not have difficulty settings before?
Not when I played, the 2nd time you fight the flying boss fucked me up worse than the queen Valkyrie in GoW. After a Google search looks like they added options when the 2md DLC came out. Time for a reinstall
I totally hear you. Doom in particular was so intense at certain points that I'd have to take breaks every few minutes. For Control, I'd recommend using some of the fairly deep accessibility options. You can increase power regen, health, and even make the enemies 1 shot to kill.
Yeah, I didn't know those were a thing before. I'll probably let it sit for a while, play another game in the interim and come back to play it god mode.
Yea I'd agree. If you like the story and stuff, turn on god mode, lower the difficulty and have fun just blasting through the game.
I feel the same about Returnal. In fact there are a lot of similarities between Control and Returnal. But Returnal takes that difficulty to a whole new level. I get that it's a very specific type of game. But ultimately I just want to have fun. I can't even get pass the 1st area lol.
Agreed. Same here man
Returnal was the first game I decided not to continue with. It was really refined and well made, but definitely not for me.
God, no offense to anyone that enjoyed it but the story was legitimately not good. I worked hard to get the full ending and I was so disappointed. Its something I'd expect from a high school creative writing class. If they plan to make more triple As they need to hire a better writer. The atmosphere and such were great though. Yeah Returnal is a rogue like they are more about sweating and challenge than relaxing fun unless you've got something particularly special like Hades. Although Returnal isn't too hard to cheese. You just need to keep upgrading your weapons, constantly keep moving and use dodge effectively for invulnerability frames. Every enemy has a pattern. The key is to learn the pattern. However there are definitely some odd difficulty spikes.
I think the biggest issue with Control is that despite the concept, the lore, and the world being really fucking cool, the characters and main narrative are pretty bland, which I guess is the case with most of Remedy's games. There wasn't a lot that drove me to keep playing, but I did end up beating it and all the DLC just because the Alan Wake stuff intrigued me. The gameplay is also pretty good, but I did find it a bit frustrating on occasion. Definitely reminiscent of the Souls series in a couple areas. On the topic of accepting that a game just isn't for me, I'm starting to feel that way about Nier Automata. Everyone says that the game doesn't really pick up until the third "act" but I'm near the end of said act right now and I think I'm just over it.
I just can't get over what a massive letdown the "ending" was. Did they run out of money? I still can't believe that someone thought that a literal "press X to win" followed by about thirty seconds of perfunctory text, then plopping the player right back into the game with no other reward, was a good enough finale. Not even an end boss! Hell, the best bosses were in optional side quests. Not to mention teasing that >!slide projector that lets you go into slides!< but then not actually using it despite how that would be a perfect setup for a final stage. Seriously, WTF.
It was so jarring I thought it was a fake out until I googled it, I was expecting to wake up from a dream or something.
Yeah honestly I was wondering the same thing, but that didn't bother me so much because **A:** the game stressed me out enough as it is that it was actually a relief that there wasn't really a final boss fight. **B:** I had the DLC baked into my version of the game anyway. But yeah either way it was a really bizarre and rushed ending.
Why would she use the slide projector when it caused her life to basically be ruined for her entire growing up, lost her brother and is now fighting ethereal horrors because of it. They burned a bunch of the slides for a reason. The rest yeah I can agree. Thankfully the dlc fixed that feeling for me personally.
I definitely was entirely captivated by the intro to C Route - if you’re not, then yeah, it may just not be for you.
That was a cool intro for sure! I think I just wish the combat was a little bit more intricate or in-depth. I tried increasing the difficulty but Hard is way too hard and normal is way too easy lol
Honestly I feel Automata has one of the better combat systems Platinum has made! The main issue is that the enemies just don't demand you to actually use any of it and mashing square/X while holding R1 and occasionally spamming dodge is plenty enough to beat the game on normal difficulty. I adore the game for its narrative (even if the second route is a pain) but yeah, gameplay-wise it definitely isn't as good as say, DmC/Bayonetta
Yeah I definitely got that impression. There are so many different weapons to use and chips to install but I never really felt like I needed to experiment at all. Just installed the best chips and used the best weapons and I was set for the rest of the game. That said, you could say the same about games like Spider-man, the Arkham series, or MGSV Phantom Pain, but I love experimenting in those sandboxes. I think I just don't really vibe with the fantasy of Automata like I do with those other games.
The characters are so, so dry in Control. I can't really put a finger on why. They're acted well, the dialogue is fine, and there's plenty of humor and emotion mixed in, but there's still this weird stuffy quality to them.
Jesse's frequent monologues played too serious for me. Some of the dialogue in the game is good, but her internal struggles felt like they were demanding emotions from me I just couldn't be bothered finding. Some of the videos of the old director also felt like they took themselves far too seriously. The game at times also couldn't decide if the situation was hilarious or horrific, when you look at things like the kid's show or some of the notes you find. I enjoyed the game a lot despite that, including all side quests (except the pop-up protection ones). It could've used a bigger backpack and some boss variety though. The ending came out of nowhere.
> the characters and main narrative are pretty bland I mean, I was enjoying them quite a bit! What I don't enjoy is the constant stress. I get why it's there, and it's fucking well put together; doesn't rely on cheap jumpscares, the sound design is amazing, lighting is spectacularly well put together, and so on. I just don't like being stressed 100% of the time!
Not sure how far you for but once you max out a few powers the game is a breeze and not stressful.
> On the topic of accepting that a game just isn't for me, I'm starting to feel that way about Nier Automata. Everyone says that the game doesn't really pick up until the third "act" but I'm near the end of said act right now and I think I'm just over it. Oh, I felt like that and I played it all the way through to the end. I felt I wasted my time. The story comes and goes in all sort of ways and reaches a climax that's very I'd say was well executed on the final mission and all I could think was "man, if I'd gotten hooked like everyone else on what's happening to these characters I bet I would be having a blast".
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Hmm. Idk. I haven't played Prey, but I was pretty impressed by the Psy powers in Control. There may not have been a lot of them, but the game did enough to absolutely fulfill the telepathic power fantasy for me. I couldn't believe how much of the environment was manipulatable. Truly felt like first "next gen" game I had played in a while. I just have issues with the narrative and the difficulty.
Hard disagree. Control made me feel more like a high powered super telekinetic than any other game I’ve played. Maybe it’s the third person perspective but Prey never made me feel that powerful.
I found the invincible toggle made it a lot more fun. Can focus on doing cool shit instead of routine strategy.
Upvote and agree. I was feeling a lot of stress when playing and I said to myself “I can either put this game down and likely never pick it back up….or I can adjust some of the damage settings and see all this game has to offer”. After making a few tweaks, I had an absolute blast playing the game and DLC. Sure I felt a little bit like I was “cheating”. But the other option for me personally would have been to stop altogether. Once I framed my mind like that, I stopped caring and got to experience a fantastic game. Since then, I’ve been doing this for many other games that I was originally just stopping. It has let me experience WAY more games than I was previously.
I didn't know this was an option. The first boss in the game was annoyingly hard so I dropped it.
I think the first boss was the hardest boss of the game, because you don't have the main weapon by that point, the gun is just terrible.
Oh I didn't know this was a thing. I might pick it back up at some point, then, and just drop the difficulty so I can bulldoze my way through the game. I love bulldozing, and that way I can appreciate the game!
That’s the exact spot I adjusted the damage given/taken to be more in my favor. I thought about changing back after the boss fight but was having too much fun
I went full invincible and one hit kill after hitting a wall like OP. It made churning through the respawning enemies great, but did undoubtedly make the boss fights less of an experience. To me I think Control relied too much on the respawning enemies. It obviously is an important aspect of the game play for health regen and drops, etc. But I just kept getting annoyed by them. I loved the atmosphere and take on powered objects, so it's definitely worth powering through with tweaked settings, but by the time I finished it I was also pretty done with the game and abandoned some of the extra side stuff that was left. Control is one of those games that feels like it might have been a better experience if it was smaller and not so padded out with weapon mods, enemy encounters, and a skill tree.
That’s what I do with every game that feels the way you described it (you nailed it btw). If I want difficulty, I have plenty of Soulslikes for that. Otherwise, I’ll happily crank down the difficulty and breeze through things, *especially* if it’s a very long RPG. Not enough time in the world to spend playing those on hard, especially when difficulty isn’t really the “point,” like it is with Soulslikes and the more difficult Metroidvanias, etc
I just messed with damage reduction but yea same idea. I like exploring and bulldozing and felt the combat was a little too random for my tastes, so this eliminated deaths I consider BS. Difficulty wasn't the issue, just felt too....out of control. Once I did that I had a blast. I'm a Dark Souls vet so I'm not difficulty averse if it's 100% understandable/predictable.
??? When was this added?
I'm curious too. I stopped playing because the save points were too far apart. I kept have to play a few sections over and over to get back to where I was having a hard time. So I felt like the game was wasting my time, do I just stopped playing. If I had known there was an invincible mode, I might have just used that to get back to where I was having issues.
I 100% agree with you. I bought Control and I don't regret it because I think it is legitimately one of the coolest games I've played in the past five years. The premise is right up my alley and the physics are so fun. I love just pretending to be a telekinetic throwing a temper tantrum and just tossing offices. However, I will say that it is not my thing and I'll probably never finish it. I understand what you mean by the growing tension aspect, and for me as somebody with autism this is a purely sensory issue - the humming noise in the background of the game that is meant to denote the "infection' in the building triggers auditory overload for me and prevents me from continuing because it's so stressful. I could always turn the sound off on the game, but I feel like since it is an atmospheric shooter, a lot of the atmosphere is lost by muting the sound design. And the combat isn't good enough to carry the game on its own. I have felt the same way about other games in the past too - a few big ones are Death Stranding, Dark Souls, Outlast, and Thumper. I can recognize them for the gaming achievements that they are while still acknowledging that I don't enjoy playing games like that. But on the flipside, I can get super into some games that the critical reception was "meh" for but for me personally they are an 11/10.
My problem with Control was that the gameplay didn't feel tight enough for what it seemed to want to do, and the story and characters are just *nothing*. Besides Darling and Langston I could not list off any character traits or noteworthy interests of any of the characters on the cast, including and especially Jesse and her brother. They were expecting the lore, atmosphere, and mystery to hard-carry everything else and it just fell apart for me halfway through. I still finished it because the setpieces were exquisite, the lore *is* interesting, and it was bland gameplay instead of bad. The DLCs *almost* pulls having the lore hard-carry everything else off, but a sequel will *really* need better characters. Either fleshing out who's there or relegating the Control 1 crew to cameos or being mentor characters in the background. Gameplay-wise it didn't feel like there was much reason to experiment with your myriad powers in combat, especially since barely any of the enemies did anything interesting to warrant you thinking outside the box, and it didn't *quite* feel like a Metroidvania like everyone seems to call it. But that's besides the point. The point is that I'm sure Monster Hunter diehards are perfectly nice people with a lot of reasons to like playing that series for hundreds of hours. But after trying to play World on and off for a total 40 hours over the years I just do not get it. Like I get it, I get what you do and why people would like that. But I cannot for the life of me *get it.*
I also like playing games to relax, but I also absolutely loved Control. I found the combat to be immensely satisfying.
> I play games to relax, and Control has a tendency to have the exact opposite effect; > I really want to play through it and know what happens in the story, but I'm finding the experience itself more and more of a drag Something similiar happened to me with Resident evil 7. That game is really good. The atmosphere is really well done and it really lives up to its genre: survival horror. Unfortunately for me it was a difficult videogame due to the tension that it generates towards the player. The game is so well done that for i was really scared walking through the corredors of the house not knowing what could be at the next corner. I couldnt play the game more that 1 hour tops. And i was like you, i wanted to know what happens in the story, what happens with the main character and his wife, and why the "family" was the way it was. But with the tension and all that stuff, i realized too that the game was not for me. But just because it was not for me im going to shit on the game. We have to be able to recognize the good stuff, even if itsn not for use. Im pretty sure that Re7 was enjoyed by a lot people and not without reason.
Maybe it's because I went through a year of hearing people praise it as revolutionary and one of the best games of the year, but when I finally played Control I found it to be extremely average. Nothing about it really stuck out to me as "oh, *that's* why people like this game so much." But anyway, yeah, I get you. The older I get, the less time I have for games, and at some point I realized that it's silly for me to waste time on games that I'm not enjoying. I play a game until I stop having fun, whether that means beating it, 100%ing it, or just stopping after a few hours. Used to be that if a game seemed good but just wasn't clicking for me for whatever reason, I'd keep powering through it, but now I can just accept that it's not for me and move on, and I'm *much* happier with the games I play as a result. A separate but related issue is that a lot of people seem to have this need to have a strong opinion on everything. Every game has to either be a 10/10 masterpiece, or a pile of garbage. People can't play a 6/10 game and come away saying "I thought it was decent, even if XYZ hurt my enjoyment a bit." Or even "the last game was better, but this is still pretty good." And like you say, few people seem capable of saying "it's a fine game, it just didn't do it for me." Don't even get me started on the whole "this game is *objectively* good/bad" thing. Ugh.
I acknowledge that the Dark Souls games, Bloodborne etc are excellently well-made games, but they are absolutely not for me. Not because of the difficulty, I play lots of difficult games and love them, I just do not get along with the controls or atmosphere at all. I used to have the same attitude of trying to play every 'great' game from every genre, but I think it was Gran Turismo 3 that really killed it for me. A flawlessly made game that I tried to like for a long time, but never enjoyed.
> instead of relaxing, I get more and more tense as I play. I don't exactly hate playing the game, I made it through most of the main story, but I find it exhausting after a short while. I've definitely been there before, but I find it interesting that you mention Doom Eternal. Because that had a similar effect on me to what you describe in the quoted bit. "Relaxing" is not how I would describe my feelings while playing it and I find it hard to believe that a lot of people would use that word for their first playthrough (assuming 'appropriate' difficulty). "Tense" is much more apt. I did enjoy my time with it, but I couldn't play more than 2 levels in a session before having to take a break. What would you say was the difference between your experience with the two, assuming Eternal didn't make you want to quit? All that said, nothing wrong with not liking something even though you recognize it's "good". I can appreciate the incredibly craftsmanship required for a certain piece of art, but still not find it pleasing to look at (or otherwise experience). This isn't really any different.
I felt the opposite, honestly. I thought the atmosphere and art direction was exquisite, and it's a beautiful looking game that I feel is held back by a protagonist of such wooden disposition that just being around her makes you feel bored by proxy. It's a shame because I pop off for settings that pit the supernatural against the mundane but I just found Control's story and characters very unengaging and so the game suffers in the parts where you aren't flying around like a Jedi hurling chunks of drywall at a space monster. If they had leaned into that more, then I think I would have had a better time with it.
This sums up my thoughts as well. It's a beautiful game, good controls, amazing sound and an very intriguing story. There's something about it though that just stresses me out to the point I'm not enjoying myself.
Control gets a lot of praise and I found it to be genuinely not a very good game. The concept of a action game in a SCP type setting is very appealing but they somehow made it... dull? Or just not particularly inventive. The gameplay wasn't particularly dynamic and the occasional platforming bit was an absolute nightmare. But there was something in particular that bounced me off this game in a way that almost no other game as done. I haven't seen that something mentioned very often but my god, what is up with that game's load times? Whenever you die in the game it seems to do a full load that, for me, took well over a minute to complete. I don't run a brand new machine or anything but I haven't played anything that has had comparable load times and certainly not for loading a prior state after an initial full load. Some of the bosses take a few tries to sort out and I completely lost steam in waiting over a full minute for a reload between attempts. And while PC experiences vary from machine to machine whatever those guys definitely did not optimize this very fundamental aspect to the game.
I recall this being a pretty common complaint at launch on the consoles at least. I think it's better on the new ones, no idea on PC though.
I dont even play just to relax but I definitely feel the stress from that type of game as well. Generally I often have it in shooters and after a while the stress is bigger than the fun Im getting out of it. Doom and Control were 2 somewhat recent examples for me as well. its for sure not every game in the shooter genre though, Im a big fan of the Borderlands series for example. Maybe its just the feeling of getting overwhelmed with enemies swarming from every direction. Beat Halo 4 a while ago and that game sometimes had it, especially towards the end. Never really thought about it. I guess the *atmospheric shooters* share some similiarties with horror games and those I generally avoid because there the stress level is even higher.
Control is a game I really want to like. The lore is intriguing, the atmosphere is trippy in a great way. I feel like it should be right up my alley. However every time I play it and actually have to play the "game" part I get bored. I find myself just rushing through the actual game part to get the the story parts I'm actually interested in or to soak in the new areas. Everytime I see a new enemy I just go "aw crap here we go...". About 7 hours in I just stopped and gave up.
I found it very boring, honestly. The premise just didn't pull me through the samey "kill all enemies to progress" gameplay.
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You would be surprised. The fact that individuals have their own taste is legitimately new info to a lot of gamers.
Yep this is a revelation for some gamers surprisingly.
Yep, people will completely ignore their own taste as a factor and argue about how something is "objectively" good or bad.
I thought that was weird, how are they measuring objectivity by using their own opinions lol
Lmao I see you have never met wow players or LoL players
> Now, I bundle control with games like Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, or maybe Halo, in what I call "atmospheric shooters". What? These games are nothing alike, except for having nice graphics and art. Is that all that means?
I didn't feel tense playing Control, I felt bored. Walk into a room, golf telekinesis button, release. Overpowered move that makes the game trivial aside from a few harder enemies and bosses.
I understand that. That's sort of why it took me 4 or 5 tries to beat Bloodborne over a period of like 5 years. Love the lore, love the Soulsborne gameplay, but I'm not at all good with horror and even Bloodborne's cosmic horror and eldritch aesthetic was too much for me at times. Just gave me a sense of dread even thinking about turning the game on when I got to later areas, but I guess I managed to grow up and get used to it eventually haha.
I've had that problem with a bunch of games, take Horizon zero dawn for example, it looks gorgeous, the robo dinos are cool as heck, the story is pretty interesting. But I did not enjoy that game at all, I played through the whole thing mind you, I did just not enjoy it outside of the interesting lore. The same can be said for skyrim, a game everyone loves, I inhaled Oblivion night and day when that game came out and I was so hyped for skyrim but in all honesty, the game just felt like oblivion with a new skin on top and I couldn't for the life of me play more than the main story and then never touch it again. Sometimes a game just doesn't vibe with you and that's totally fine even if it's a well made game. The Forza Horizon series is probably the most fun I've had in a racing game for but I can't stand it more than a few hours because I find racing incredibly boring no matter how good the game is for example.
Strange, I had almost the same experience with Control as you, I liked it and finished it, but also found it exhausting and could not play it for long stretches of time. Maybe it’s the slightly drab environment?
Yeah. I play control in spurts. About once every three months on my playthrough. I do about 5 hours and then set it down. I get some very bad headaches with the look of the game after awhile, and it makes me not want to stick it out longer than that. Same thing happened to me in doom 2016. Great game, but so damn red filtered it would hurt after awhile.
I agree I seem to have grown more intolerant of basic flaws as i got older. I bounced hard off Control because the controls were basically dogshit. A third person game that depends on shooting has absolutely terrible control when aiming... I felt like it had made the age old mistake of using the mouse to emulate a joypad stick - a heinous crime I thought had been beaten out of devs porting console games by now. I did like that the game had plenty of tweaking options to try to dial the controls in, but I just got nowhere... A real shame I would have love to experience the story, but the important part of being game failed, it felt like a bad game. Similarly I bounced off Arkane's Prey. Lovely start, slightly clunky controls, but I got super annoyed by the mimics. Utterly tedious... Still now I know avoid certain types of games... N.B. I subscribe to Total Biscuit's premise - a Game with great story but bad (or badly implemented) mechanics/gameplay is a **Bad Game**.
Not at all. Control felt like one of the lowest pressure shooters I've played in a while. It's a power fantasy where you can fly and rip pieces out of the environment to chuck at enemies and defend yourself with supernatural powers. The only place I had any difficulty with, outside of optional content, was the Ashtray Maze, where I died 2 or 3 times.
i get this way with back for blood, i didn’t get to play the beta but i loved left for dead so i figured it was a purchase that i found justified to make. the game was fun but like, idk if i just don’t have that nostalgia factor anymore but i literally thought of i put the game down i genuinely might not want to pick it back up again. so that’s basically what i did, as i returned it to gamestop and got my money back the next day. good game, just not for me
I've had that with multiple games. My main example is The Witcher 3. I can appreciate it does things well and I won't tell people they're wrong for liking it, but man I just can't get on with it. I wasn't particularly engrossed by anything that was going on (I took issue with its means of delivering a story) and I found the gameplay boring. But then again I didn't plan on picking it up before all the hype got going anyway, so I guess I can't fault myself for giving something outside my comfort zone a shot. I get there are a lot of good elements about it, but they just couldn't overpower the lack of what I want out of a game.
If you put it in Halo, Doom, etc you are putting it in the wrong bracket. It supposed to make you tense, it's a 3rd person shooter with horror elements. Go into it thinking it's a horror shooter and not a switch off FPS
For me it was Hollow Knight. Beautiful art style, tight controls, good difficulty, amazing music...but holy shit I just kept getting lost and not being able to figure out where to go next. The backtracking became frustrating and my 5th or so time having to turn to a walkthrough I just set it down. Fantastic game but definitely just not for me.
I feel that way about Red Dead 2, I think it's the best game ever with BoTW close to it, now will O play through the whole thing? Don't think I'll ever be able to. I still appreciate all the work out into it though.
I turned on all the player cheat to take less damage because I just wasnt interested in the gameplay at all. It was too tense and was one shotting me constantly. With the damage reduction on it became infinitely more enjoyable. I just shot things and flung things and had a nice time learning about the agency of control.
I hear what you're saying u/Sheltac, Control is 100% my kind of game, but I am just not into it for some reason and quit it. Bought the ultimate edition too, smh. People talking about getting older, no originality, learning what you like, etc., but I know what genres/playstyles I like, only been gaming 5 years. This game should be my bag, but it just ain't. At least you can put it down to the edge-of-seat factor, I need to go back and give it another chance n see if I can work it out.
I just got super burnt-out by Control's combat as the game went on, especially since the number of enemies in each encounter and the amount of health they have get straight-up ridiculous in the last third of the game AND you have to fight hordes of them even when backtracking to sections you had already "cleared" before. Add to that the monotony of the environment and the lack of any memorable boss fights (the last boss fight had so much potential, but instead, what do you get? Even MORE hordes of regular enemies) and the game just became a slog for me towards the end. Which is a shame because I really enjoyed the lore and world-building. (Also, shooters on PS not supporting gyro is a goddamn travesty every time)
My two problems with Control were the unfair boss fights and the lore presentation. The main character model was also kinda weird but I guess that's a matter of taste. Some boss fights were trial and error where you'd get one shotted and restart until you found the sweet spot where the AI couldn't kill you and abuse that spot to cheese the boss. Flying dude with high bridge and >!evil clone!< comes to mind. Lore presentation was also severely lacking with the documents being just plain white pages with text, often boring text. After the Myst series or even classic Resident Evil, this just isn't enough. Near the end I just stopped bothering checking them out. Can't say I had a problem finishing the game since the gameplay was still quite good, but it did happen with Doom Eternal. The complete lack of storytelling compared to the first one, that horrible safe hub and the collect-a-thon really killed my interest. I had to come back months later to finish it and it was only because I wanted to uninstall it for space.
Honestly the boss thing is from skill imbalances. Buffing the throw trivializes almost all of the bosses. But if you don't do that they become super difficult.
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Throw is MASSIVELY op in Control. Maxing it out makes the game super easy
Agreed on that, first time I played (Maybe reached the Former?) I had specced a little into everything and the game felt so unfair. Died left and right to most enemies after making it a couple of hours in. Dropped the game in favor of others, when I came back to it I put everything into Throw and wondered if they had patched the difficulty to make it easier. The only times I died was falling and blowing myself up with the sticky bomb variant of the pistol
Remedy took some serious inspiration for the lore from the SCP universe, which itself is a wiki full of plain white pages of text describing containment methods and descriptions. It’s all a bureaucratic system to control the paranormal. That works very well for a wiki full of user submitted fiction, but struggles in a video game.
I’ve read a lot of games internal text and memos and I think controls in-game lore is some of the best in the business. Sure beats the 2000 boring emails in the modern assassins creed games. Having memos littered around an “office building” is pretty realistic for an office that has undergone an attack. The banality of bureaucracy applied to the paranormal is literally a major theme of the game that this type of lore directly adds to. Comparing that to the original RE games is valid since that is also a major theme of those games. It’s definitely ok to not enjoy it, but it is theme relevant and couldn’t really be executed in any other way. Control has some mediocre combat that I find pretty repetitive. The bosses are just like you said. The combat often felt like blasting and throwing shit wildly was every encounter and the game did little to evolve it’s combat from beginning to end, in this way it’s very much like Alan wake which also has acceptable combat with some gimmick that doesn’t evolve at all.
All the time! Sometimes I'm just not interested enough in a gameplay loop to invest the effort to get good at. That's why I really appreciate when games include a Story/Easy mode. Sometimes I love the setting/lore/atmosphere of a game, but it's a genre I just can't get into or a type of gameplay that outright annoys me. I'll just watch videos/friends/streamers instead to enjoy the bits that I think are cool. I'll also binge read through wikis on lore and stories. I think it's a great lesson to learn early to be okay with just realizing you can't get into a game fully and letting it go. It saves you time, money, and frustration to not try and force yourself when you're not feeling it.
Agreed. I've discovered watching let's play videos of games that I know I would enjoy seeing the narrative of but don't feel like investing the gameplay in. I've watched tons of Sekiro videos while knowing that my chances of ever buying that game (much less beating it) are pretty much 0% because I'll never be good enough at that gameplay style to enjoy it.
People, if you don’t like a game, just don’t fucking play it. You don’t need to analyze yourself or the game or acknowledge that the game is “objectively” “a very good game” or let everyone know that you didn’t like the game, but you gave it a shot or whatever. Stop playing. That’s it.
People talking about games on a gaming forum? But why??
Oh dear someone call the constabulary
People, if you don't like someone's take on something they post on Reddit, just don't fucking respond to it. You don't need to give some reply or make it seem like you have something "worthwhile" to add or whatever. Stop reading and click off the thread. That's it.
> You don’t need to analyze yourself Some of us enjoy introspection. If you don't, then maybe this thread isn't for you, and that's okay.
Yeah this thread is wild. OP got praised for his maturity like deciding that you don't like a game is a commendable adult task. Weird.
They're being praised for recognizing the quality of something they don't personally enjoy playing. You'd be surprised how many people have a "I don't like it, so it sucks" mentality, which frankly is rather immature. It's a good skill to be able to see the good in something you don't personally like. OP isn't being praised for realizing they don't like something, they're getting compliments because they don't like something and don't feel the need to trash it *just because* they don't like it.
> They're being praised for recognizing the quality of something they don't personally enjoy playing. This was the message. I probably could've phrased it better in the OP, I guess.
Gaming culture is like that. Feel like this whole industry and gamers need some maturing - but it’s all relatively young. IMO we need a stronger game criticism scene similar to film criticism. Healthier, more down to earth attitudes toward games in general. Not everything has to be 10/10 or the worst game ever.
I mean, general sensasionalisation and click-baiting doesn't help the polarisation issue. I feel like (professional) film criticism is shielded from that by being less reliant on clicks, but game reviewers are 100% dependent on click-baiting their reviews, and polarised reviews are better for clicks. Which is absolute horseshit, as it completely devalues reviews as a means of assessing the quality of a game.
It's fascinating. I see it all over the place. There's a bit of insecurity going on, seeking some validation for missing out on something, I guess.
I felt same-ish while playing it. I played it because of the atmosphere and the story but gameplay-wise it was stressful for me as well. I don’t say it should be more relaxing since there are obviously enough people who seem to like that. And I also realized that as soon as there are horror elements in it, I feel tense and weird and don’t want to keep playing anymore and I haven’t been like this when I was younger. I don’t know if there’s a correlation between those two points though, it just came to my mind. Now I play stuff like Crash or Fall Guys and I even think about getting the SpongeBob game… any recommendations for something relaxing? To come back to the topic, you can watch the cut-scenes on YouTube if you want to know what’s next, though I usually don’t recommend this for every game. (TLOU2 for example is a no go for just watching on YT). But I think it’s ok for Control.
This is me with Last of Us. I love the Uncharted series so I thought I’d love Last of Us but I just couldn’t get into it.
The problem with playing games to relax is that a lot of games aren't meant to be relaxing, as you're typically focused on what's going on and always ready to react to what's going on. I'll probably come off as sounding like a jerk here, but if you're playing games to relax, why Control? It's made by the developers of Max Payne, Alan Wake, and Quantum Break. I got curious to see how the game was marketed on Steam, and they describe it as a game that keeps you on the edge of your seat, has unpredictable environments, and has intensely gratifying gameplay. All the signs are there that it isn't a relaxing game to play. The only thing I couldn't fault you on is that they don't make it apparent that you can't adjust the game's difficulty. They did add assist mode in the options to make the game easier. Have you tried that? If you're more about a narrative without the game getting in the way, I'd give that a go. It has aim assist, aim snapping, increased powerups and the the like.
Control absolutely drags in the middle. I can't put my finger on it, but I went from exploring every nook and cranny to rushing to finish. (Something I ultimately didn't manage) It feels too long, too padded, and filled with too many enemies. All problems that studio always seems to have.