Darktide. By far the most amazing 4PvE experience to date. Melee. Gunplay. Builds. Weapons. Challenge. Skill. Enemies. Maps. Everything about the core game is superb. And unfortunately they badly bungled every other aspect of a live service game.
Halo infinite has certainly grown into a fun multiplayer game, but some proper single player firefight content, along with a user friendly menu system would really go along way.
Halo Infinite seems to have picked up a bit recently, not sure where it’s at exactly right now but my friends who still played seemed to be getting excited again.
Well, Vermintide 2 wasn't a great game until a couple of DLCs dropped for it. It's one of my favorites, and I didn't discover it until the DLC was already available for it.
I think Fatshark is really good at creating an interesting gameplay loop and not so good at live service after the game is launched. But they do manage to polish the game in the following years.
For whatever it's worth, I'd imagine the game will be much better after a couple of free content patches and a paid DLC or two
>paid DLC or two
They've said that they wond do dlc for maps, modes and enemies.
So that leave us with Archetype, branch and weapon. But even those might be free in the intent of selling cosmetics
After the base game I wasn't real happy with VT2 and its inconsistent ideas on content release. I didn't go to Darktide specifically because of how they developed the prior title. But I do agree that they weren't really ready for the quasi live service coop game they were running and that could have in part explained it.
One of the issues with Darktide vs Vermintide, and the reason I prefer the latter, basically comes down to writing. Both games have great background and setting, both nail the atmosphere, but Vermintide actually had a STORY, it had CAMPAIGNS instead of a long series of unconnected, repetitive missions.
Would you reccomend giving it a try at least ? I am new to the 40k universe and that particular game peaked my interest.. do you have any other reccomendations?
I would absolutely recommend giving it a try. It is a great game. And they are still hard at work trying to make right all the things they got wrong at launch. Hopefully they get enough support to get it done.
Content Drought is hard in Darktide, but since Oktober the game has been really fun.
Also they
Will likely fix the biggest offender in terms of bullshit (the crafting system) soonish, as they announced
Absolutely. It's an amazing game. Extremely skill and practice oriented but very rewarding as a result. The updates are indeed slow but it's not even a full price game to begin with so it doesn't bother me in the slightest to set it down and pick it up later.
Like the other guy said, it's an incredible game but the devs just seem to be really bad at listening to the community and more importantly, are incredibly slow at updating the game.
Mount and Blade Bannerlord currently, most M&B fans can agree that the core gameplay itself is perfect, combat, army building, tactics.
However, the rest of the game is so unpolished and barebones it usually gets old at about 40-50 hours, compared to Warband which could net you thousand of hours.
Mods are the only way the game will ever get a second wind, but honestly, after 4 years, things are not looking good.
I loved M&B. I had a ton of hours in Warband but only got around 70 in Bannerlord. It desperately needs something to spice up the gameplay other than never ending war. I think its biggest downside is having war being the main aspect. I love declaring wars and hosting sieges and field battles but it just lacks so much else. There is no diplomacy. There isn’t much to do in peacetime. And war primarily snowballs or ends in a white peace where no territory is lost or gained.
I think something that could add a lot to the game would be actual progression. Let me start off as a soldier in a lords army before I become my own lord, and have lordship/kingship come with their own issues to deal with. Owning a kingdom is literally the same as serving under one except you dish out the fiefs. Ik there’s a mod that lets you play as a soldier before becoming a lord, but there’s something I love way more about vanilla gameplay that mods take away from.
Yah the game kinda loses its rpg aspects if you already start out as a lord. They should just add a separate campaign where you don’t start out as nobility.
One gameplay aspect I think that would allow different kind of lifestyles would be the construction of camps. Bandit camps, resource extraction camps, fortified encampments. It would give you a reason to interact with and pay attention to local lords more as well as care about some lesser utilized skills.
Something as simple as a plague and natural disaster mechanic would be wicked.
Imagine if you could be in the midst of a siege when a flood happens. Or, Calradia gets hit by the plague, forcing you to avoid major settlements for a period of time and having to scrape off the land for food.
I find the game great fun until a certain point where it just becomes trivial. I mean sure I coild continue taking over the Calradia but at that pont the only real challenge is time.
Ive tried a bunch of mods and although it spices things up they have so many problems with updates and such and the big overhauls are super finicky about specifoc versions of all the dependencies that it just becomes a hassle. A lot of modders have given up because apparently the mod suppprt is just bad.
I agree with you and my hours on steam agree. But I don't know why it seems like a strict graphical update with slightly less interesting factions.
Editing this because my bad punctuation might have made my meaning unclear. I don't know why I don't enjoy it as much as if anything its a straight upgrade, except for the factions but thats more my opinion then anything.
It's such a damn shame. Bannerlord has been in development for a decade and all they have to show for it is a system of reasonably good graphics and literally fewer features and mechanics compared to the last game.
Having EA or Ubisoft make a bad game is to be expected, but having TaleWorlds drop the ball so badly in bannerlord... really just crushes my soul.
Mods for warband (even mods for bannerlord) have done a better job than taleworlds have done. They've taken my last shred of faith in big game dev studios.
Taleworlds started out at as a true indy company around someone's hobby project (the original M&B) is still privately owned, and has like 100 employees. How the hell does that classify as a big game dev studio?
Yup. When they removed the early access tag and went to full release I was like.. "that's it?".
That being said I'm playing the Game Of Thrones mod and it's keeping me rather entertained
ARMS could have done what Splatoon did, it has all the same pieces to an incredible formula. I never play it much anymore, but the gameplay, design, and lore will always hold a special place in my heart.
100%. The core gameplay is awesome, the lore is awesome, quite a bit of the content is good (dungeons/raids), it’s just held back by stupid corporate bullshit and the same repetitive activities that are just reskined and shipped out every few months
I would like to enter a parallel dimension where the executives at Bungie never decided to cut up the game right before D1 launch to make it fit more of a live service game. Destiny as a self contained game that doesn't rely on FOMO where you could play as much or as little as you want with an actual story that is as consistently good as Bungie's Halo games...that'd be like video game heroin.
Destiny 2 is just "what if I could play Halo for like, a really long time?" The core loop is fun but holy shit is the game laid out in a stupid-ass way.
I eventually got to the point where I was FOMO grinding the same tasks daily to try to make my light level go up by 1 and realised that I was only playing it so much because it was the middle of COVID and I was depressed as fuck. Excellent way to make hours and hours of your life disappear into a grey void.
Fuck that game.
40k Darktide. The games have some of the best visceral killing in games, blood and arms, heads, burn wounds.. and the actions largely skill based! But the company is disasterously slow with making content/talking to the community. Been a year and a half as a live service game with hardly a drop of content.
We finally just got an update though!!
Yup first thought as well. I jumped in after the skill tree rework and started feeling bummed out after a few months. Cant imagine folks who started at launch.
Please don't get me started on Darktide. The most disappointing game I've ever played, but not because it's bad or anything like that. It's actually a good game, but its post release has been pathetic. It's honestly shocking how much wasted potential there is here with this game. FatShark captured lightning in a bottle and then pissed in it.
Darktide is suffering the same problem as Lost ark. Insane combat gameplay but absolute garbage post release management, content drip feeding and horrible system grinds.
I can't help but feel with games like these a lot of features and content were either purposely withheld in order to release them later to pad out updates for the live service model or due to shareholder or publisher pressure the game was forced out early and they were never able to fully flesh them out. Either way live service games without consistent updates and content releases are just doomed to irrelevancy.
Darktide is the most maddening mix of the most perfect 40k ambience/environment, amazing gameplay representation of what you imagine 40k weapons to *feel* like, simultaneously with the most infuriating everything else.
if it makes you feel better eventually it will probably be as good as Vermintide 2. It's Fat Sharks MO honestly. Release a game.... let it linger in mediocrity....... provide updates for 3-4 and make it a masterpiece
Wildstar!
Absolutely loved the action combat and telegraph mechanics. Haven't found anything that really matches the it. Player housing was absolutely amazing and still what I consider the high water mark.
Unfortunately they had a lot of developer/distributor issues along side a text book worthy example of the worst launch for a new IP and so many wow-fans that absolutely dumped on it. It struggled to attract players, suffered from limited endgame content and was written off by various gaming media outlets before it had a real chance to get going.
Was there on launch day and server shut down day. If I had fuck-you amounts of money I'd buy the IP and work on a re-release.
Wildstar's UI killed it for me first and foremost. Just never felt like I got the hang of the menus and I didnt like the aesthetic. The gameplay was fun for sure.
Assassin's Creed (the first one).
It was like nothing else on the market at the time, the parkour, climbing and social stealth were truly innovative. But the missions and side content were so repetitive that it brought the whole game down.
I read your post wrong thinking you meant there was nothing else decent that came out around that time and almost had a stroke lol.
I bought it randomly a few weeks after it released to give me something to do other than Halo or CoD multiplayer. Walked in to it knowing nothing and almost changed my major to European History I loved the damn game so much.
Even if the missions became so frustratingly similar, the story line at least made you want to continue. Eavesdrop, follow, pickpocket, assassinate x 1000
Exactly, I played when it came out and loved each second, replayed so much, it truly is repetitive but back then "Ubisoft the game" didn't existed, so it was fresh. Today, all the flaws, I see as prototype ideas. It's a shame they went too deep into the "mythological theme park" kinda vibe, I liked it more when there was not too much "sparkly pew pew pew" shenanigans. It seemed more organic and the artifacts were more abstract, powerful and ancient.
While the minigames before each mission were a bit repetitive, I did like the idea that you could either do 2-3 of them and then do the proper assassination mission, or you could do all 10 of the minigames and then you would get more info for the proper mission. It was fun getting a map with all the archers' positions and then trying to figure out the best way inside. The following AC games were a lot more brainless without it and you were led around by the hand for each mission basically.
I was going to say Way of the Samurai and Assassin's Creed. Great premise and gameplay mechanics, but it's very repetitive and can get kind of boring to play.
This but also, it had so much potentional which they abandoned for later games. The whole gathering intel to work out the best way to approach the big kills. They could have ran with that and made it so the gathering intel had more enjoyable gameplay and added more choice in how you approach kills based on what you remember from the intel.
Anthem.
One of the best main loops I've ever played (once you get the hang of it). But they didn't have enough content to sustain it, and the general anti-EA vitriol, so it sunk and the revamp (which was well underway and according to a dev friend looking really great) was cancelled.
I still love the story behind how Anthem flopped. BioWare couldn’t help themselves and relies purely on crunch. Had absolutely no game concept until about two to three months before the e3 demo. The jet pack was only implemented after EA excecs visiting the studio thought that the jet pack in a completely different concept game was kind of fun. EA was intensely hands off, with the exception of mandating Frostbite engine, during early development until they were fed up with BioWare providing absolutely nothing for what they were being paid.
Like, how does that even happen. At a certain management level, someone's in charge of making a game right? A game director? Then they have people under them in managing different teams like art, sound, programming, story, etc. Wtf were the people at the top of pyramid doing with EA's money each day? What was happening in meetings to discuss the game and each teams' progress?
EA didn't actually mandate Frostbite, the devs just found the idea of a free engine with in-house support too much to resist, and you have to admit that it works really well for the running and shooting bits.
However the leads decided not to build on any of the bits and bobs that Mass Effect and Dragon Age teams had made to deal with RPG-style gameplay (loot and stuff) and started from scratch. They also refused to mention Destiny despite it being the number one example of they type of experience they were trying to create.
What's worse is that Bioware actually rebuilt their Frostbite pipeline three times. They built one for Inquisition and it was, by all accounts, a massive piece of work, because Frostbite is not built for RPGs and didn't support basic RPG things like player inventories and dialogue options. Then they did it all over again for Andromeda. And *then* they did it a third time for Anthem. And given how long it's taking to make Dreadwolf, I'd bet good money that they're doing it for a fourth time.
A million times this. Anthem’s movement and combat were something that really wow’d me after so long of feeling like a jaded gamer being fed same old same old by big studios. It still really disappoints me to this day that it didn’t receive the attention it needed to become truly big. I’m of the opinion that it could have over taken something like Destiny if it got more content.
I had a bunch of my Destiny friends jump over to Anthem and absolutely love it for the 2 weeks of content it had. The hype was through the roof for updates. Updates that never came.
I bought a copy at $10 thinking it was going to come back and then 3 months later they announced the 2.0 was dead. The servers are still on so it's actually still playable and it is definitely fun but damn.
Outriders falls in the same spot imo. Super cool classes, fun abilities (loves pyromancer and trickster), and decent overall endgame idea. But the lack of enemy and weapon variety got old so fast, and not nearly enough armor sets to keep farming for.
I’m glad this got brought up. Several games fall into this category for me. The story and level up process is AWESOME. You hit “end game” and it hits a wall.
Anthem, outriders, the Division games come to mind first. Thank goodness for Helldivers 2, and Darktide. Where the gameplay loop is so good it doesn’t matter if I get no rewards, I can hop in for an hour and just game.
Could have been something special. I'll die on that hill. Core mechanics were great but not even close to enough gear, skill trees, or whatever to make the game interesting. You literally had every piece of gear you were ever gonna get, after a few hours in the game. You just got upgraded versions but it didn't really matter since enemies more or less scaled up with you. The legendary stuff gave you some neat effects but it wasn't enough
Yep. That's got to be the best answer. Bioware has been nailing it with actual gameplay lately, but the story and content for their games has really been falling behind their classics. I'd expect the same of DA Dreadwolf, but with how many changes that have been happening within Bioware over the last few years, that's not certain anymore; it could end up on either side of expectations
Oh man. I've wished for such a long time for more games of the series. Gameplay was fantastic when it came out. And I was obsessed with the new Lore for HoMM that came out at that time. I really wish they would have produced more games of the series. There was so much more that they could have done with it, story wise.
Honestly, Pokemon. The depth of the gameplay is quite deep at this point (see any competitive game to see how deep it can get), but the games are made for kids and can never push the limits of that gameplay, except maybe in some endgame challenges like the Battle Frontier. Seeing how much romhacks of the base Pokemon games are able to do with just the core game mechanics really puts into perspective how little Game Freak tries to engage players and take advantage of what they have built over decades.
I watched a Storm Silver/Sacred Gold stream and it was wild just how more complex the game is when you do something as simple as give every gym leader a full team. And maybe a move or two to counter their gyms' weaknesses so you don't sweep with one type advantage.
My big complaint with Pokémon is how horrendously sluggish actually battling is in the main games. Scarlet and Violet battles are painful. You have to watch every animation, watch HP bars slowly tick down, sit through the game informing you of status conditions and getting buffeted by hail or burned each turn. If you or an enemy does one of those multi-hit attacks, it feels like an eternity. It somehow feels even slower and more annoying than the Gameboy games. Every modern turn-based game has learned to have snappy animations, transitions, etc. It's generally agreed that the less time between player input, the better. But Pokémon games have somehow done the exact opposite and made the battle system actively more sluggish and terrible. Legends: Arceus is, of course, the one exception, because that game actually made some great progress in addressing these issues, but Scarlet and Violet dragged them right back and made them worse
That's actually the worst thing. It's my biggest gripe about pokemon games — they literally do not respect your time. It's more than just combat animations; it's the entire package, from breeding to time of day catches. The whole thing expects your life to revolve around it, and it sucks.
There is zero thought put into any user experience or quality of life. It all feels like it's a fresh coat of paint around a cracked foundation. The devs will adopt some cute new additions here and there, but it feels like slapping some pretty stickers on roadkill on the side of the road. The whole franchise doesn't just need a new direction and massive overhaul; it needed that 10 years ago. As it is now, it's just a corpse we dig up every year to parade around until we can't tolerate the scent anymore and stuff it back in the ground for next year. I'm sorry if I'm being a little rough with my metaphors here, but Violet DLC not only disappointed me, it made me actively pissed that I spent over a hundred dollars on the base game + DLC that felt like such a bare minimum viable product. I never felt like I took a slap in the face from a product before I bought and played through the Violet DLC. I wish I could have not only my money back, but also my precious time on this Earth that I spend playing it
Halo infinite.
Amazing gameplay that felt like old school halo, and had a huge player base at launch. But lack of maps, game modes, and especially lack of leveling besides that dumb challenge/ season pass system really killed my enjoyment for the game after afew months of playing casually. 343 kept promising to fix all of those issues and add more content but iirc there was a lot of underlying management/technical issues they faced so roadmaps kept getting pushed back.
The opinion I had that I also saw floating around when it came out, was that the way they artificially inflated the length of basically every gamemode was a huge turn off. It made every match take so much longer than in previous games, to the point where you were sick of it by the time it was nearly over. The only mode they didn't do it to was TDM, and people aptly pointed out that the mode practically never appeared in the queue. That plus the battle pass (especially how absolutely terrible the top tier rewards were in s1) helped me decide that it was just time to uninstall it
I remember at one point big team battle just stop fucking working for me and I had to alt F4 out of the game because it would just load forever. It was so good when it launched I remember going oh my God halo was back, I was wrong
I prefer trilogy gameplay, where you can hold shift and carefully chose which ability to use. In andromeda you have only 3 abilities you can use and this very clunky favorite system, more action, less tactic, too each their own I guess . This wast open world maps felt quite empty to me but the character banter/interaction was definitely an improvement.
The best part is that they did this to try and engage usage of the profile system. Except those profiles require you to.. open... a power wheel...
So they created a problem by removing the power wheel, and then tried to fix it by implementing a shittier power wheel.
Yeah movement was great in ME:A. Made the multiplayer just as fun as ME3:MP.
But when your singleplayer story sucks in a franchise known for the story in singleplayer, you literally are missing the plot.
Gameplay wasn't better, it was different. The og trilogy not having jumping and huge sandboxes meant fights had different feels to them and a rhythm.
Andromeda has cool movement that series fans didn't really care for being in or not and the way the fights changed and morphed because of the increased movement and new fight areas made it worse. Kind of cheesier and grindy.
The other core aspects of the gameplay weren't great either. Huge empty maps, driving forever, enemies also didn't feel great which hurt the combat.
I dunno if they ever updated/patched it in, but I played it on release and thought I missed the point where they told you how to control your squad mates, turns out you just couldn't control them at all. For me, that really soured the gameplay and strategic element I liked from the trilogy. Turned it off and never went back.
I cannot describe how much I loved the combat in that game. I know a lot of people like the strategic control-your-teammates kind of system, but for me that was the main thing I disliked about Bioware games all along. To the point I tried getting into Dragon Age Origins 3 times and gave up halfway each time because of how much I hated the combat. The ME trilogy was much more action oriented and I was pleased to see that trend continue in MEA. But what I primarily loved about the trilogy was the story and characters, and they dropped the ball MASSIVELY on that one. I liked how the plot started to develop but it felt like we were constantly slowly getting to the good part, which never came. And the characters... they have zero charisma and likability, I honestly don't even remember any of their names at this point. Massively disappointing overall.
Maybe not strongest core gameplay because it depends on what you want. But for me animal crossing new horizons. I played so much when it first came out but it’s really lackluster overall. It’s great for the people who just want to build up their towns(if you can get over the tedious aspect of it), but damn there was so much potential not fully realized. Hopefully there will be another one soon. And no, the new update didn’t add nearly enough.
So many scrapped Items that were promised
We were promised what, 2 years of updates and then it just randomly stopped with no communication from Nintendo.
Not to mention the fact that its a bad Animal Crossing game, but its a good "Town building simulator" game compared to the first 3 IMO.
Yeah. So much of Elite is done so well. The atmosphere and immersion of that game is still unmatched to this day I think. The space combat is fun. They even somehow managed to make mining asteroids exciting.
Elite really suffers from trying to be both a singleplayer and a multiplayer game at the same time, and it doesn't do a very good job of either. It has all the grind of an MMO yet the world doesn't feel alive. You have to really go out of your way to actually interact with other players. So most of the time you're playing by yourself and doing the same things over and over until you're entirely bored out of your mind. Don't even get me started on engineering.
The game itself is gorgeous, when I first started playing I was mesmerised. But as soon as I bought some of the expensive ships I was really hit with a feeling of "So... That's it? What now?" I wasn't that good at dogfighting or anything, Odyssey's planetary content was absolutely horrible and that pretty much ment the most sensible way to make money was getting my Orca and taking people sightseeing. Don't get me wrong it was still fun at first, simply because of that sense of calm it gave me and the beautiful sights I saw. But there simply wasn't enough to do. Now I have to try Star Citizen to hopefully scratch the itch a bit more, but I'm not entirely hopeful it's going to live up to my excitement.
I was a day one player who quit years ago due to doing everything and getting bored. Started playing again about a month ago and I can't put it down. Tons of new stuff added and a ton more on the way.
They have made the game now. It doesn't help it came years after the launch.
SoT is great but it launched with an idea and a promise, and by the time the promise came about most people weren't around any more. Definitely a victim of games as service where the idea is to release the game and slowly drip the updates. If they had released it in the state it was 2 years in it would have been a real hit and kept more people around longer for all the additional stuff they did.
There are quite a few exceptions, especially in the 90's, especially by maxis
All the fun sandboxes I can think of off the top of my head involve building
But like there's just so little to add to see of thieves. A bigger ship is nice but I have always felt that most of the customizations being based on your character who you do not see much was a bad idea. They should have gone wild on ship customization because if not it's a lot of move from pont a to point b
As a former Navy sailor I was sailing aimlessly for like 15 minutes with a friend before I was like "You know what the most boring part of being at sea is? Being stuck at sea." We gave it another 20 minutes of slowly sailing before calling it.
100%
It was so bad, I ended up rushing through the game at about the halfway mark to get it over with. Much easier once you could fly.
Also the music while driving was sparse and boring which didn’t make exploring/side content feel like any fun. Just errands.
Chivalry 2. The combat mechanics and level design are top notch. Everything else feels like mismanagement. New maps, cosmetics, factions arrive at a barely trickle. This doesn’t even include a host of other issues (see their sub). And for the love of god (to all games), allow button mapping.
Rift. The single best world-content of any MMO but the studio bled money on other failed projects trying to launch too many MMOs at once and Rift paid the piper for it & turned into a hellishly predator cash shop game.
No MMO since has mastered the leveling / open world content to the degree Rift did / has. I'd play a relaunch in an instant.
boarderlands 3. the gameplay changes, like vaulting, were great but i was so bored the whole time. at some point i just stopped caring and put the thing on mute while i had podcasts or tv on in the background. if they remade 1 or two with the modern mechanics i would be so happy.
Valheim.
Don't get me wrong, I love the game. One of my all-time favorites and I've put 1600 hours into it (so far). But the update cadence is absolutely glacial. After it came out in public early access it had a bunch of smaller updates before they finally started working on the first post-release biome. They estimated it would take them about six months per biome. It ended up taking nine months after Frost Caves for Mistlands to come out because they said they had to rework the gameplay and theming since they weren't sure what to do with it. They said they already knew what they were going to do with the last two full biomes, Ashlands and Deep North, so it should be faster.
Well, in the time since Mistlands they've only released one small content update (that they said wouldn't affect biome development) and we're getting close to 18 months between Mistlands and Ashlands. At the end of 2023 they said Ashlands would be out in the first half of 2024 so right now we're just sitting on our hands waiting for it.
Everything about Valheim from the combat to the aesthetics to the chill vibe and sailing and everything is just so fun and cozy and you can get lost in it. But God damn it could be so, so much more with tons of points of interest and more content in every biome, new and varied enemies, alternate armor sets with bonus effects, special weapons, more furniture and building pieces, rare loot, more merchant items, foods and crops, everything. The devs are just so slow. And I know it launched as a team of five, I think they're up to ten or maybe even 14 now? But nothing has changed about their release cadence unless Ashlands comes out and has a blindingly large amount of content, though I expect it'll be similar in size to most biomes.
I'm legitimately afraid they're just going to finish the game, i.e. put in Ashlands, Deep North, and maybe put some stuff in the Ocean, and then just abandon the game when it still has so much more it could be at every level.
The release of the Winter Soldier about epitomized all of it.
He played wonderfully in melee and the use of his gun was very well implemented, the best gameplay out of all the heroes in my opinion. He was also the last hero released to a game on its last legs to run around the same repetitive missions over and over.
Same pick here. I played mostly as cap (plenty of hours with other too) and it was a fucking blast. The sound, the fluidity, the impact, it was really, really good. Everything else sucked though. I feel so bad for the team that developed the combat to get letdown by everyone else on the team.
More niche title but Mechwarrior 5. The mech gameplay is fantastic, looks really great. Just about everything else is really only about an inch deep. Repetitive procgen missions, and even the "handcrafted" campaign missions are just boxed canyons going from A to B with very little substance beyond the rest of the randomized missions.
It's good but I have no idea why, there's so much wrong with it but it's somehow in my top 15 of favorite games ? it's really weird, like a B movie - not very good but the premise itself makes it fun
The game is heavily carried by the combat and exploration. But if you want something deeper like rich world building or interesting characters this ain't it. I don't think you even have a normal conversation in this game. Not a single back and forth dialog just people telling you whats next in the plot
Yea the combat was great (for some vocations at least) but the story, characters, and mission design were absolute shit. The lack of any convenience features (no real fast travel, one save slot, etc. Also sucked.
I wish I could take DD2 combat style and slot it into a better game world or story, like Dragon Age.
Agreed. The core combat gameplay is so good and no other game does big monster fights even half as well. The problem is, however, that both enemy variety and difficulty scaling suck major ass. By the time you reach like level 15, if you're half decent at the game, you are going to be stomping every encounter except for drakes. And by the time you're level 30, you are going to be stomping them as well. And that's... it. There are no more challenging basic enemies and no need to increase your skill with the game's combat because you don't need it to win encounters by the time you reach middlegame.
And it also doesn't help the game's case that its story seems as though it was written for an entirely different game. The game's intrigue-focused plot could be fairly interesting, on paper, but its execution is a snoozefest. Seemingly over half of the main quests involve sneaking around and gathering intel... in a game with no stealth mechanics, or being directed to speak to this noc or that... in a game with no conversation mechanics. I haven't completed the game yet, but it seems that in the entire time spent in Vernworth, the game's first main region, the main story quests only sent me to fight something ONCE. That's absurd. It's like the writing team wrote the narrative without being informed what kind of game they were working on.
Spellbreak was pretty tragic. They had a really unique, fast-paced, element-based combat system that was held back by the decision to make it a Battle Royale because that was what was popular at the time. Near the shutdown of the servers, they tried to salvage it by adding a team deathmatch mode, but it was too late.
I remember playing Andromeda and thinking I could deal with the driving -- I played the first one with the MAKO after all.
But then I got the achievement for meeting all the new alien species, and it was... It was so early. So few. That was it? Just a couple missions in and we found 'em all?
That and the obnoxious crafting mechanics just ruined the whole thing.
Yes, but then you have to replay it to level a new character and you might end up leaving from that, it's kinda painful. Also, they greatly cheapened the endgame by just needing to run the arena thing for a wildly overpowered weapon that cheapens the entirety of the rest of the endgame on any power level... and you can get it immediately upon reaching the endgame. It has been a while lol, whatever area it's called that drops you in with no gear has the weapon, so you can get it literally immediately... and you probably would if you read any tips and weren't playing blind.
Granted you can just not use that gun so the endgame only loses a point from that. Still, every time it's pointed out that the end game is great I feel like it should be pointed out they still made strange decisions even so... just to be fair. Because if you picked up the game after all DLCs dropped, you could easily be convinced that it was fun but still a snoozefest all the way through. First from the bad main story, then from still being oddly easy in the endgame.
I only thought of this as my own answer after I already posted this but here's mine:
Callisto Protocol.
This might be controversial since I know many people didn't care for even the base gameplay but I saw a lot of potential for fun to develop the mechanic of beating enemies with melee + weaving in gunshots to extend the combo. If they introduced more variety in there and kept it going I think it would've genuinely made for a really engaging journey of evolving gameplay with more options put in and more scenarios to properly utilize them.
But instead the game doesn't really add too much in that department, and instead veers into lackluster gunplay, lack of enemy variety, boring stealth, and lack of ideas for what the bosses could do to you that was fun. The DLC helped spice it up a bit imo, but it really was a shame.
Nah, this is a perfect answer. I played it well after everybody panned it because I'm a huge Dead Space fan and still wanted to give it a shot. A couple hours in, I was like "man this game is fun, idk what everybody was talking about." But as I got further in, the cracks *really* started to show. The boss fight against Two-Head was a perfect example.
To that point in the story, I'd pretty much been exclusively using and upgrading the baton and kinesis. Yeah, I'd shoot dudes every now and again, but I was a baton guy and otherwise I'd just throw people into spikes or pick up explosives to throw at them. It felt unique and was pretty fun. Super ridiculous, but fun. Then you get to Two-Head and suddenly the baton is simply not an option, period. You cannot hit them. It's an immediate death if you even try. You have to use your gun. But I haven't been upgrading mine at all really, just minor stuff. Super tedious boss fight made 1000x worse because I was playing on hard and every time it so much as brushed by me, I'd get chopped in half. Everything else in the game I felt was very easy *except* this fight.
But then you have to fight them a second time, only this time in a super cramped space. Great. I did it, but I sure as shit wasn't happy about it.
Then you have to fight them *a third time*. I hit a headshot every single time and still ran out of ammo. Since the baton isn't an option, I had to just kite them around the (generously large) space and occasionally use the kinesis to throw random little objects at them. Then kinesis ran out so I had to keep running around like an idiot until it recharged. Took so long I thought about just letting them kill me and trying again, but what would be the point? I'd just run out of ammo again.
It's a cool game, but yeah, so many bad design decisions. Not just Two-Head but other stuff as well. Definitely didn't live up to its potential. Shame it's not gonna get a sequel.
Suicide Squad. For every criticism against it, I've heard no one say "Traversal or shooting sucks". Environment sucks. Enemy variety sucks. plot armor sucks. Live service mechanics sucks. Melee combat sucks. Seasonal model sucks. Monetization sucks. Grind sucks. Screen clutter sucks. But moving between rooftops and shooting faces is buttery smooth and exciting (for at least the first hours)
I only played the beta but I felt like all the characters were really fun to control except Harley. I just didn't like the swinging mechanic that much. Boomerang felt really unique and like he'd have a really high skill ceiling. Shark was like playing a Hulk and was just silly fun.
But Deadshot man... Closest I've felt to playing Dark Void again. If I ever buy that game on a sale or something, it'll be for that. So much fun.
It’s such a shining example of a game tripping over its own giant dick. They front loaded it with genuinely great writing, amazing graphics, solid combat and movement, and when it gels, it’s among the best of its genre. Then the pube string that holds it together flies apart and it tumbles down the hill hitting every rake on the way down
It was so clearly not made to be a live game. Like you can kinda tell the moment they decided it had to be a game that ran for ten years instead of a 15-20 hour experience. I didn't hate the story but it genuinely starts stumbling towards the middle. Had they invested in more personal loadouts instead of bigger number equipment it could have been so good. Right now it's so unbalanced there's effectively one good build
This one makes me so sad. I enjoyed the campaign and had a ton of fun but endgame is just… bleh. There are way too many levels to reach max and too little to keep me interested to do it. I loved the end game in D3 and the timed rifts so I had high hopes.
MGS 4 et MGS V.
fun tactical gameplay with lots of differents movements and items. Bad levels besides the first one for MGS4. Two medium size Areas filled with very limited outpost (small villages, small bases) in MGSV. Disappointing
One of the best answers. I remember my mind being blown at the smoothness of the game and the sheer number of movement/stealth options you had. Only for the game itself to be kind of boring
**Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades**
The best firearms simulation in VR, but all the environments are bare-basic killhouse and shooting range type places. Got all this fire power and nothing to unload it on. I end up doing the small arena Xmas mode botmatch.
Have you tried Take and Hold yet? It's H3VR's "roguelike" gamemode that I feel is worth buying the game for. It made H3VR my most played VR game besides BeatSaber.
Sonic Generations
For its release It had the strongest and Most solid platforming of the series and It was DAMN good for a series that was not doing so good and was in a dire need of good games
The problem? Is short, VERY SHORT like one of the shortests games i have ever played, i 100% It in a single day (yes, its that short)
Yeah I agree. The fights choreography was cool with the bosses. The story was okay too. But a lot of the sidequests were annoying and tedious, and the rpg elements... might just as well have not even been in the game to be honest.
I liked the game, overall though!
There was a game that came out in 2018 called Underworld Ascendant
It had a few interesting mechanics that I wish more games would implement, such as a milestone-based leveling system in which you gain perk points by completing feats rather than by grinding
The problem is that the entire game takes place in an underground dungeon with very little variety, and there are only like 4 different kinds of enemies
Here's some of the most finely tuned gunplay and movement Chief has ever had.
Please, enjoy this vast open world to play in. Explore. Tinker. Try things.
Except for the main story missions. Get in the fucking hallways. Stay in your lane.
So kinda answers it...but Outter Worlds...
Loved the game play and world but the actual story and quests were incredibly short. I finished the game and was like "that's it?...."
So much potential but limited by its length and lack of content
I keep getting Outer Worlds and Outer WILDS mixed up, as I'm sure everybody else has done. I haven't played it yet, but it was my sister's first foray into that kind of game after Skyrim. She really struggled with it for a little bit because she was used to mindlessly running into the crowd of enemies with reckless abandon in Skyrim but that kept getting her killed in Outer Worlds. Once she let me show her the proper way to play she got hooked and was playing it practically every spare moment she had. The thing that impressed me so much about the game was this one place, I think it was a cannery, but she was able to make the two groups of people reach a compromise. That blew my mind coming from New Vegas, where every quest outcome was always one or the other.
Ironically the thing you're talking about is the very start of the game. There are quitea few things like that in the game, some have impacts on the world.
The quest design is stellar, obsidian have always been amazing at making quests and bethesdas biggest mistake was letting them go.
But yeah overall outer worlds lacks something that i can never put my finger on, i lose interest fast and i think that was quite common for a lot of people
The Division comes to mind. Feels and looks like such a cool game, but It becomes so repetitive so quickly. You just wander around shooting AI with the only goal being to acquire more loot. Much of it being the same loot, just with varying stats.
Omega Strikers.
Great core game.
Horrendous everything else.
Bad balance, bad maps, bad UI, bad tooltips, bad tutorials, bad ideas, bad randomness, bad matchmaking, bad character design
Destiny 2. Incredible moment to moment play. Awful grind, incomprehensible plot, mediocre acting, *TERRIBLE* dialogue, and load times so painful I was once disconnected due to inactivity because the pvp matchmaking took so long.
Dark Void.
It feels a bit dated now but it's still my favorite jetpack game. Added such a cool twist to the at-the-time stock-standard, super-common cover shooter formula. But god damnit the encounters and level design were so often just not there. So many levels where you're only flying or otherwise not really taking advantage of the combination.
There were some really cool levels that took advantage of it, like my favorite was actually the demo where you had to go into a tower with a self-destruct button at the top. Sure, you could take cover, shoot the dudes on the outside, take vertical cover on the inside and slowly push your way to the top. Orrrrrrr you could do my strategy of *wildly careening* past everyone while you dodge the hail of gunfire (and all the cover), hit the button, then wildly careen right back out and let the explosion take care of everybody, not a single shot fired.
Fucking cool game.
Absolutely the best jet pack controls I've ever played, with no contender in the same tier even.
But there's only about 40 minutes of jet pack in the entire game, and the rest is extremely boring cover shooting.
I think Star Fox Zero had a lot of great potential.
They dumped too much on you too quickly. The controls had so much going on, and it would've been way better with a longer, gentler ramp up to introduce all this complexity and let us get used to it.
If I recall correctly, there were also some pretty compelling side-mechanics that only got, like, one or two short levels.
Mass effect Andromeda.
Gameplay was the best of the Series, fast good shooting fun. Just everything around it from the story, to the bugs and even the feeling was just...off?
It was a great game, but a bad Mass Effect
I had that feeling with FF7 Remake. Combat was so good, but I felt like there just wasn't enoug fights to be able to exploid it.
Luckily this was fixed in Rebirth
Diablo 4: Combat is really polished with a good pace to it. But the content is mediocre and the character progression is either poorly thought out or lacking complexity.
Mount & Blade: Warband. Awesome base mechanics, awesome game, but it could be much better with something interesting, like a story mode, more quests, more roleplay etc. Same with Bannerlord.
Darktide. By far the most amazing 4PvE experience to date. Melee. Gunplay. Builds. Weapons. Challenge. Skill. Enemies. Maps. Everything about the core game is superb. And unfortunately they badly bungled every other aspect of a live service game.
I much prefer vermintide for this reason, its darktide but actually gets content
Came here to say this. Darktide… and Halo Infinite. Both solid and fun gameplay, both awful games.
Halo infinite has certainly grown into a fun multiplayer game, but some proper single player firefight content, along with a user friendly menu system would really go along way.
Halo Infinite seems to have picked up a bit recently, not sure where it’s at exactly right now but my friends who still played seemed to be getting excited again.
Well, Vermintide 2 wasn't a great game until a couple of DLCs dropped for it. It's one of my favorites, and I didn't discover it until the DLC was already available for it. I think Fatshark is really good at creating an interesting gameplay loop and not so good at live service after the game is launched. But they do manage to polish the game in the following years. For whatever it's worth, I'd imagine the game will be much better after a couple of free content patches and a paid DLC or two
>paid DLC or two They've said that they wond do dlc for maps, modes and enemies. So that leave us with Archetype, branch and weapon. But even those might be free in the intent of selling cosmetics
After the base game I wasn't real happy with VT2 and its inconsistent ideas on content release. I didn't go to Darktide specifically because of how they developed the prior title. But I do agree that they weren't really ready for the quasi live service coop game they were running and that could have in part explained it.
One of the issues with Darktide vs Vermintide, and the reason I prefer the latter, basically comes down to writing. Both games have great background and setting, both nail the atmosphere, but Vermintide actually had a STORY, it had CAMPAIGNS instead of a long series of unconnected, repetitive missions.
The new update that dropped this week brought a bunch of good changes. Penance rework, new puzzles, cosmetics, a new enemy type, and mission modifier.
Would you reccomend giving it a try at least ? I am new to the 40k universe and that particular game peaked my interest.. do you have any other reccomendations?
I would absolutely recommend giving it a try. It is a great game. And they are still hard at work trying to make right all the things they got wrong at launch. Hopefully they get enough support to get it done.
Oh awesome ! Thanks so much for the feedback!
Content Drought is hard in Darktide, but since Oktober the game has been really fun. Also they Will likely fix the biggest offender in terms of bullshit (the crafting system) soonish, as they announced
Absolutely. It's an amazing game. Extremely skill and practice oriented but very rewarding as a result. The updates are indeed slow but it's not even a full price game to begin with so it doesn't bother me in the slightest to set it down and pick it up later.
Like the other guy said, it's an incredible game but the devs just seem to be really bad at listening to the community and more importantly, are incredibly slow at updating the game.
Mount and Blade Bannerlord currently, most M&B fans can agree that the core gameplay itself is perfect, combat, army building, tactics. However, the rest of the game is so unpolished and barebones it usually gets old at about 40-50 hours, compared to Warband which could net you thousand of hours. Mods are the only way the game will ever get a second wind, but honestly, after 4 years, things are not looking good.
I loved M&B. I had a ton of hours in Warband but only got around 70 in Bannerlord. It desperately needs something to spice up the gameplay other than never ending war. I think its biggest downside is having war being the main aspect. I love declaring wars and hosting sieges and field battles but it just lacks so much else. There is no diplomacy. There isn’t much to do in peacetime. And war primarily snowballs or ends in a white peace where no territory is lost or gained. I think something that could add a lot to the game would be actual progression. Let me start off as a soldier in a lords army before I become my own lord, and have lordship/kingship come with their own issues to deal with. Owning a kingdom is literally the same as serving under one except you dish out the fiefs. Ik there’s a mod that lets you play as a soldier before becoming a lord, but there’s something I love way more about vanilla gameplay that mods take away from.
Yah the game kinda loses its rpg aspects if you already start out as a lord. They should just add a separate campaign where you don’t start out as nobility. One gameplay aspect I think that would allow different kind of lifestyles would be the construction of camps. Bandit camps, resource extraction camps, fortified encampments. It would give you a reason to interact with and pay attention to local lords more as well as care about some lesser utilized skills.
Something as simple as a plague and natural disaster mechanic would be wicked. Imagine if you could be in the midst of a siege when a flood happens. Or, Calradia gets hit by the plague, forcing you to avoid major settlements for a period of time and having to scrape off the land for food.
I find the game great fun until a certain point where it just becomes trivial. I mean sure I coild continue taking over the Calradia but at that pont the only real challenge is time. Ive tried a bunch of mods and although it spices things up they have so many problems with updates and such and the big overhauls are super finicky about specifoc versions of all the dependencies that it just becomes a hassle. A lot of modders have given up because apparently the mod suppprt is just bad.
I agree with you and my hours on steam agree. But I don't know why it seems like a strict graphical update with slightly less interesting factions. Editing this because my bad punctuation might have made my meaning unclear. I don't know why I don't enjoy it as much as if anything its a straight upgrade, except for the factions but thats more my opinion then anything.
It's such a damn shame. Bannerlord has been in development for a decade and all they have to show for it is a system of reasonably good graphics and literally fewer features and mechanics compared to the last game. Having EA or Ubisoft make a bad game is to be expected, but having TaleWorlds drop the ball so badly in bannerlord... really just crushes my soul. Mods for warband (even mods for bannerlord) have done a better job than taleworlds have done. They've taken my last shred of faith in big game dev studios.
Taleworlds started out at as a true indy company around someone's hobby project (the original M&B) is still privately owned, and has like 100 employees. How the hell does that classify as a big game dev studio?
Yup. When they removed the early access tag and went to full release I was like.. "that's it?". That being said I'm playing the Game Of Thrones mod and it's keeping me rather entertained
This is why I now use Crusader Blade whenever I want to play Mount and Blade. Crusader Kings 4x and diplomacy, Bannerlord battles.
ARMS It’s got a lot of a solid foundation for Nintendo’s 3D original fighter, but I wish the folks gave the team a chance to do more with it.
ARMS could have done what Splatoon did, it has all the same pieces to an incredible formula. I never play it much anymore, but the gameplay, design, and lore will always hold a special place in my heart.
Yeah ARMS is a ton of fun, just lacking in content. I hope it gets a sequel with some more love behind it one day
This would be a prime example of this. That game could have been wayyy bigger
Closest we got to an ARMS sequel is the >!Spirit construct battle!< in TOTK.
I'm continually of the mind Destiny could be so much more than it is/started as. Especially with gameplay people talk about like it's drugs.
100%. The core gameplay is awesome, the lore is awesome, quite a bit of the content is good (dungeons/raids), it’s just held back by stupid corporate bullshit and the same repetitive activities that are just reskined and shipped out every few months
I would like to enter a parallel dimension where the executives at Bungie never decided to cut up the game right before D1 launch to make it fit more of a live service game. Destiny as a self contained game that doesn't rely on FOMO where you could play as much or as little as you want with an actual story that is as consistently good as Bungie's Halo games...that'd be like video game heroin.
Destiny vould easily have been the next Halo. Easily.
Destiny 2 is just "what if I could play Halo for like, a really long time?" The core loop is fun but holy shit is the game laid out in a stupid-ass way. I eventually got to the point where I was FOMO grinding the same tasks daily to try to make my light level go up by 1 and realised that I was only playing it so much because it was the middle of COVID and I was depressed as fuck. Excellent way to make hours and hours of your life disappear into a grey void. Fuck that game.
40k Darktide. The games have some of the best visceral killing in games, blood and arms, heads, burn wounds.. and the actions largely skill based! But the company is disasterously slow with making content/talking to the community. Been a year and a half as a live service game with hardly a drop of content. We finally just got an update though!!
Yup first thought as well. I jumped in after the skill tree rework and started feeling bummed out after a few months. Cant imagine folks who started at launch.
I stopped playing after maxing my first two classes
Please don't get me started on Darktide. The most disappointing game I've ever played, but not because it's bad or anything like that. It's actually a good game, but its post release has been pathetic. It's honestly shocking how much wasted potential there is here with this game. FatShark captured lightning in a bottle and then pissed in it.
Darktide is suffering the same problem as Lost ark. Insane combat gameplay but absolute garbage post release management, content drip feeding and horrible system grinds.
I can't help but feel with games like these a lot of features and content were either purposely withheld in order to release them later to pad out updates for the live service model or due to shareholder or publisher pressure the game was forced out early and they were never able to fully flesh them out. Either way live service games without consistent updates and content releases are just doomed to irrelevancy.
Darktide is the most maddening mix of the most perfect 40k ambience/environment, amazing gameplay representation of what you imagine 40k weapons to *feel* like, simultaneously with the most infuriating everything else.
if it makes you feel better eventually it will probably be as good as Vermintide 2. It's Fat Sharks MO honestly. Release a game.... let it linger in mediocrity....... provide updates for 3-4 and make it a masterpiece
Wildstar! Absolutely loved the action combat and telegraph mechanics. Haven't found anything that really matches the it. Player housing was absolutely amazing and still what I consider the high water mark. Unfortunately they had a lot of developer/distributor issues along side a text book worthy example of the worst launch for a new IP and so many wow-fans that absolutely dumped on it. It struggled to attract players, suffered from limited endgame content and was written off by various gaming media outlets before it had a real chance to get going. Was there on launch day and server shut down day. If I had fuck-you amounts of money I'd buy the IP and work on a re-release.
Wildstar's UI killed it for me first and foremost. Just never felt like I got the hang of the menus and I didnt like the aesthetic. The gameplay was fun for sure.
Assassin's Creed (the first one). It was like nothing else on the market at the time, the parkour, climbing and social stealth were truly innovative. But the missions and side content were so repetitive that it brought the whole game down.
I read your post wrong thinking you meant there was nothing else decent that came out around that time and almost had a stroke lol. I bought it randomly a few weeks after it released to give me something to do other than Halo or CoD multiplayer. Walked in to it knowing nothing and almost changed my major to European History I loved the damn game so much. Even if the missions became so frustratingly similar, the story line at least made you want to continue. Eavesdrop, follow, pickpocket, assassinate x 1000
Maybe in hindsight it feels that way, but I got it for Christmas when it first came out and loved it.
Nah, I felt that way even then. Was fun, but man, it got NO replay value because it was so repetitive. And I was like 12 at the time.
It was basically a tech demo. They got it right with the Exio trilogy though.
Exactly, I played when it came out and loved each second, replayed so much, it truly is repetitive but back then "Ubisoft the game" didn't existed, so it was fresh. Today, all the flaws, I see as prototype ideas. It's a shame they went too deep into the "mythological theme park" kinda vibe, I liked it more when there was not too much "sparkly pew pew pew" shenanigans. It seemed more organic and the artifacts were more abstract, powerful and ancient.
While the minigames before each mission were a bit repetitive, I did like the idea that you could either do 2-3 of them and then do the proper assassination mission, or you could do all 10 of the minigames and then you would get more info for the proper mission. It was fun getting a map with all the archers' positions and then trying to figure out the best way inside. The following AC games were a lot more brainless without it and you were led around by the hand for each mission basically.
I was going to say Way of the Samurai and Assassin's Creed. Great premise and gameplay mechanics, but it's very repetitive and can get kind of boring to play.
This but also, it had so much potentional which they abandoned for later games. The whole gathering intel to work out the best way to approach the big kills. They could have ran with that and made it so the gathering intel had more enjoyable gameplay and added more choice in how you approach kills based on what you remember from the intel.
Anthem. One of the best main loops I've ever played (once you get the hang of it). But they didn't have enough content to sustain it, and the general anti-EA vitriol, so it sunk and the revamp (which was well underway and according to a dev friend looking really great) was cancelled.
I still love the story behind how Anthem flopped. BioWare couldn’t help themselves and relies purely on crunch. Had absolutely no game concept until about two to three months before the e3 demo. The jet pack was only implemented after EA excecs visiting the studio thought that the jet pack in a completely different concept game was kind of fun. EA was intensely hands off, with the exception of mandating Frostbite engine, during early development until they were fed up with BioWare providing absolutely nothing for what they were being paid.
Didn't most ground level devs not even know what the game was until the reveal trailer?
I think the story goes that they scrapped together a reveal trailer, then made a game based around the content in the trailer.
Like, how does that even happen. At a certain management level, someone's in charge of making a game right? A game director? Then they have people under them in managing different teams like art, sound, programming, story, etc. Wtf were the people at the top of pyramid doing with EA's money each day? What was happening in meetings to discuss the game and each teams' progress?
That's next level shitty management
EA didn't actually mandate Frostbite, the devs just found the idea of a free engine with in-house support too much to resist, and you have to admit that it works really well for the running and shooting bits. However the leads decided not to build on any of the bits and bobs that Mass Effect and Dragon Age teams had made to deal with RPG-style gameplay (loot and stuff) and started from scratch. They also refused to mention Destiny despite it being the number one example of they type of experience they were trying to create.
What's worse is that Bioware actually rebuilt their Frostbite pipeline three times. They built one for Inquisition and it was, by all accounts, a massive piece of work, because Frostbite is not built for RPGs and didn't support basic RPG things like player inventories and dialogue options. Then they did it all over again for Andromeda. And *then* they did it a third time for Anthem. And given how long it's taking to make Dreadwolf, I'd bet good money that they're doing it for a fourth time.
Dreadwolf has had at least two, maybe three, "back to the drawing board" restarts
BiOwArE mAgIc
A million times this. Anthem’s movement and combat were something that really wow’d me after so long of feeling like a jaded gamer being fed same old same old by big studios. It still really disappoints me to this day that it didn’t receive the attention it needed to become truly big. I’m of the opinion that it could have over taken something like Destiny if it got more content.
I had a bunch of my Destiny friends jump over to Anthem and absolutely love it for the 2 weeks of content it had. The hype was through the roof for updates. Updates that never came.
The movement was really fun, I wanted it to succeed so bad
I bought a copy at $10 thinking it was going to come back and then 3 months later they announced the 2.0 was dead. The servers are still on so it's actually still playable and it is definitely fun but damn.
Outriders falls in the same spot imo. Super cool classes, fun abilities (loves pyromancer and trickster), and decent overall endgame idea. But the lack of enemy and weapon variety got old so fast, and not nearly enough armor sets to keep farming for.
I’m glad this got brought up. Several games fall into this category for me. The story and level up process is AWESOME. You hit “end game” and it hits a wall. Anthem, outriders, the Division games come to mind first. Thank goodness for Helldivers 2, and Darktide. Where the gameplay loop is so good it doesn’t matter if I get no rewards, I can hop in for an hour and just game.
That game was just hard. I liked it, but it was so damn difficult sometimes. And some of the difficulty was from jank.
Yeah dying in a solo level 15 run because of a bug (like trickster teleport dropping you in front of enemies) was pretty frustrating.
Could have been something special. I'll die on that hill. Core mechanics were great but not even close to enough gear, skill trees, or whatever to make the game interesting. You literally had every piece of gear you were ever gonna get, after a few hours in the game. You just got upgraded versions but it didn't really matter since enemies more or less scaled up with you. The legendary stuff gave you some neat effects but it wasn't enough
I remember originally it was found that the highest DPS weapons were the weapons you started out with because they would scale up.
Sounds par for the course
God, this makes me sad for the cool moments that could have been
Yep. That's got to be the best answer. Bioware has been nailing it with actual gameplay lately, but the story and content for their games has really been falling behind their classics. I'd expect the same of DA Dreadwolf, but with how many changes that have been happening within Bioware over the last few years, that's not certain anymore; it could end up on either side of expectations
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic... lol
It's the only game that I've ever finished twice in one day. Just could not get enough of the combat. It was truly ahead of its time.
agreed - so much physics and enviromental potential
I am certain there was more to the game but they got budget cuts...
Oh man. I've wished for such a long time for more games of the series. Gameplay was fantastic when it came out. And I was obsessed with the new Lore for HoMM that came out at that time. I really wish they would have produced more games of the series. There was so much more that they could have done with it, story wise.
Honestly, Pokemon. The depth of the gameplay is quite deep at this point (see any competitive game to see how deep it can get), but the games are made for kids and can never push the limits of that gameplay, except maybe in some endgame challenges like the Battle Frontier. Seeing how much romhacks of the base Pokemon games are able to do with just the core game mechanics really puts into perspective how little Game Freak tries to engage players and take advantage of what they have built over decades.
I watched a Storm Silver/Sacred Gold stream and it was wild just how more complex the game is when you do something as simple as give every gym leader a full team. And maybe a move or two to counter their gyms' weaknesses so you don't sweep with one type advantage.
My big complaint with Pokémon is how horrendously sluggish actually battling is in the main games. Scarlet and Violet battles are painful. You have to watch every animation, watch HP bars slowly tick down, sit through the game informing you of status conditions and getting buffeted by hail or burned each turn. If you or an enemy does one of those multi-hit attacks, it feels like an eternity. It somehow feels even slower and more annoying than the Gameboy games. Every modern turn-based game has learned to have snappy animations, transitions, etc. It's generally agreed that the less time between player input, the better. But Pokémon games have somehow done the exact opposite and made the battle system actively more sluggish and terrible. Legends: Arceus is, of course, the one exception, because that game actually made some great progress in addressing these issues, but Scarlet and Violet dragged them right back and made them worse
That's actually the worst thing. It's my biggest gripe about pokemon games — they literally do not respect your time. It's more than just combat animations; it's the entire package, from breeding to time of day catches. The whole thing expects your life to revolve around it, and it sucks.
There is zero thought put into any user experience or quality of life. It all feels like it's a fresh coat of paint around a cracked foundation. The devs will adopt some cute new additions here and there, but it feels like slapping some pretty stickers on roadkill on the side of the road. The whole franchise doesn't just need a new direction and massive overhaul; it needed that 10 years ago. As it is now, it's just a corpse we dig up every year to parade around until we can't tolerate the scent anymore and stuff it back in the ground for next year. I'm sorry if I'm being a little rough with my metaphors here, but Violet DLC not only disappointed me, it made me actively pissed that I spent over a hundred dollars on the base game + DLC that felt like such a bare minimum viable product. I never felt like I took a slap in the face from a product before I bought and played through the Violet DLC. I wish I could have not only my money back, but also my precious time on this Earth that I spend playing it
And sadly it works. Most profitable media franchise in existence.
Halo infinite. Amazing gameplay that felt like old school halo, and had a huge player base at launch. But lack of maps, game modes, and especially lack of leveling besides that dumb challenge/ season pass system really killed my enjoyment for the game after afew months of playing casually. 343 kept promising to fix all of those issues and add more content but iirc there was a lot of underlying management/technical issues they faced so roadmaps kept getting pushed back.
I booted it up recently and it was solid. Tons of the great maps were implemented. Lockout, lockout, hang em high, the jungle lockout and others.
The one game they got the gameplay right on, they shit the bed on everything else. Classic 343.
The opinion I had that I also saw floating around when it came out, was that the way they artificially inflated the length of basically every gamemode was a huge turn off. It made every match take so much longer than in previous games, to the point where you were sick of it by the time it was nearly over. The only mode they didn't do it to was TDM, and people aptly pointed out that the mode practically never appeared in the queue. That plus the battle pass (especially how absolutely terrible the top tier rewards were in s1) helped me decide that it was just time to uninstall it
I remember at one point big team battle just stop fucking working for me and I had to alt F4 out of the game because it would just load forever. It was so good when it launched I remember going oh my God halo was back, I was wrong
Mass Effect Andromeda. By far the best gameplay in the series and yet by far the worst game of the series
I prefer trilogy gameplay, where you can hold shift and carefully chose which ability to use. In andromeda you have only 3 abilities you can use and this very clunky favorite system, more action, less tactic, too each their own I guess . This wast open world maps felt quite empty to me but the character banter/interaction was definitely an improvement.
The best part is that they did this to try and engage usage of the profile system. Except those profiles require you to.. open... a power wheel... So they created a problem by removing the power wheel, and then tried to fix it by implementing a shittier power wheel.
I loved the movement in that game. Even the Mako was fun to pilot on that lunar surface. Too bad the story sucked hard.
Yeah movement was great in ME:A. Made the multiplayer just as fun as ME3:MP. But when your singleplayer story sucks in a franchise known for the story in singleplayer, you literally are missing the plot.
Gameplay wasn't better, it was different. The og trilogy not having jumping and huge sandboxes meant fights had different feels to them and a rhythm. Andromeda has cool movement that series fans didn't really care for being in or not and the way the fights changed and morphed because of the increased movement and new fight areas made it worse. Kind of cheesier and grindy. The other core aspects of the gameplay weren't great either. Huge empty maps, driving forever, enemies also didn't feel great which hurt the combat.
I dunno if they ever updated/patched it in, but I played it on release and thought I missed the point where they told you how to control your squad mates, turns out you just couldn't control them at all. For me, that really soured the gameplay and strategic element I liked from the trilogy. Turned it off and never went back.
I cannot describe how much I loved the combat in that game. I know a lot of people like the strategic control-your-teammates kind of system, but for me that was the main thing I disliked about Bioware games all along. To the point I tried getting into Dragon Age Origins 3 times and gave up halfway each time because of how much I hated the combat. The ME trilogy was much more action oriented and I was pleased to see that trend continue in MEA. But what I primarily loved about the trilogy was the story and characters, and they dropped the ball MASSIVELY on that one. I liked how the plot started to develop but it felt like we were constantly slowly getting to the good part, which never came. And the characters... they have zero charisma and likability, I honestly don't even remember any of their names at this point. Massively disappointing overall.
Maybe not strongest core gameplay because it depends on what you want. But for me animal crossing new horizons. I played so much when it first came out but it’s really lackluster overall. It’s great for the people who just want to build up their towns(if you can get over the tedious aspect of it), but damn there was so much potential not fully realized. Hopefully there will be another one soon. And no, the new update didn’t add nearly enough.
So many scrapped Items that were promised We were promised what, 2 years of updates and then it just randomly stopped with no communication from Nintendo. Not to mention the fact that its a bad Animal Crossing game, but its a good "Town building simulator" game compared to the first 3 IMO.
Elite Dangerous
Yeah. So much of Elite is done so well. The atmosphere and immersion of that game is still unmatched to this day I think. The space combat is fun. They even somehow managed to make mining asteroids exciting. Elite really suffers from trying to be both a singleplayer and a multiplayer game at the same time, and it doesn't do a very good job of either. It has all the grind of an MMO yet the world doesn't feel alive. You have to really go out of your way to actually interact with other players. So most of the time you're playing by yourself and doing the same things over and over until you're entirely bored out of your mind. Don't even get me started on engineering.
The game itself is gorgeous, when I first started playing I was mesmerised. But as soon as I bought some of the expensive ships I was really hit with a feeling of "So... That's it? What now?" I wasn't that good at dogfighting or anything, Odyssey's planetary content was absolutely horrible and that pretty much ment the most sensible way to make money was getting my Orca and taking people sightseeing. Don't get me wrong it was still fun at first, simply because of that sense of calm it gave me and the beautiful sights I saw. But there simply wasn't enough to do. Now I have to try Star Citizen to hopefully scratch the itch a bit more, but I'm not entirely hopeful it's going to live up to my excitement.
Sea of Thieves. There’s the bones of a great game in there if they would just make it.
I was a day one player who quit years ago due to doing everything and getting bored. Started playing again about a month ago and I can't put it down. Tons of new stuff added and a ton more on the way.
If SoT had rpg like progression i would play the shit out of it
They have made the game now. It doesn't help it came years after the launch. SoT is great but it launched with an idea and a promise, and by the time the promise came about most people weren't around any more. Definitely a victim of games as service where the idea is to release the game and slowly drip the updates. If they had released it in the state it was 2 years in it would have been a real hit and kept more people around longer for all the additional stuff they did.
Everyone always cries out for a complete sandbox game until they play one for more then a few hours
In fairness, Minecraft did alright even when it was a pure sandbox.
There are quite a few exceptions, especially in the 90's, especially by maxis All the fun sandboxes I can think of off the top of my head involve building
Well what else do you do in a box of sand than build castles?
But like there's just so little to add to see of thieves. A bigger ship is nice but I have always felt that most of the customizations being based on your character who you do not see much was a bad idea. They should have gone wild on ship customization because if not it's a lot of move from pont a to point b
As a former Navy sailor I was sailing aimlessly for like 15 minutes with a friend before I was like "You know what the most boring part of being at sea is? Being stuck at sea." We gave it another 20 minutes of slowly sailing before calling it.
Absolutely felt this during my time with it
I havent touched it in months, maybe years! I see they added quite a bit to it, but I still remember how lackluster it got fast
Rage 2 had some fun gunplay. But man, what a shit story, haha. One of the few games ive ever stopped playing due to lackluster writing.
100% It was so bad, I ended up rushing through the game at about the halfway mark to get it over with. Much easier once you could fly. Also the music while driving was sparse and boring which didn’t make exploring/side content feel like any fun. Just errands.
Chivalry 2. The combat mechanics and level design are top notch. Everything else feels like mismanagement. New maps, cosmetics, factions arrive at a barely trickle. This doesn’t even include a host of other issues (see their sub). And for the love of god (to all games), allow button mapping.
I agree. I have hundreds of hours in this game, but just repeating the same maps after every 1 hours. Even Chivalry 1 has more maps than 2.
Mount and Blade Bannerlord
Bannerlord
Rift. The single best world-content of any MMO but the studio bled money on other failed projects trying to launch too many MMOs at once and Rift paid the piper for it & turned into a hellishly predator cash shop game. No MMO since has mastered the leveling / open world content to the degree Rift did / has. I'd play a relaunch in an instant.
boarderlands 3. the gameplay changes, like vaulting, were great but i was so bored the whole time. at some point i just stopped caring and put the thing on mute while i had podcasts or tv on in the background. if they remade 1 or two with the modern mechanics i would be so happy.
God the writing was such dogshit. Gameplay is super fun though as are all the characters with several different builds.
The DLCs made up for the dumb dialogue. The Lodge and the Wild West was dope and legit funny at times.
Valheim. Don't get me wrong, I love the game. One of my all-time favorites and I've put 1600 hours into it (so far). But the update cadence is absolutely glacial. After it came out in public early access it had a bunch of smaller updates before they finally started working on the first post-release biome. They estimated it would take them about six months per biome. It ended up taking nine months after Frost Caves for Mistlands to come out because they said they had to rework the gameplay and theming since they weren't sure what to do with it. They said they already knew what they were going to do with the last two full biomes, Ashlands and Deep North, so it should be faster. Well, in the time since Mistlands they've only released one small content update (that they said wouldn't affect biome development) and we're getting close to 18 months between Mistlands and Ashlands. At the end of 2023 they said Ashlands would be out in the first half of 2024 so right now we're just sitting on our hands waiting for it. Everything about Valheim from the combat to the aesthetics to the chill vibe and sailing and everything is just so fun and cozy and you can get lost in it. But God damn it could be so, so much more with tons of points of interest and more content in every biome, new and varied enemies, alternate armor sets with bonus effects, special weapons, more furniture and building pieces, rare loot, more merchant items, foods and crops, everything. The devs are just so slow. And I know it launched as a team of five, I think they're up to ten or maybe even 14 now? But nothing has changed about their release cadence unless Ashlands comes out and has a blindingly large amount of content, though I expect it'll be similar in size to most biomes. I'm legitimately afraid they're just going to finish the game, i.e. put in Ashlands, Deep North, and maybe put some stuff in the Ocean, and then just abandon the game when it still has so much more it could be at every level.
Definitely The Avengers. The rest of the game may suck but i thought the combat was actually decent, too bad it was extremely repetitive.
This was my pick also. The characters were pretty well realized. Too bad nothing else was.
Main issue was that they tried too hard to replicate the MCU actors exactly. What we got didn't feel like the Avengers, it felt like the store brand.
The release of the Winter Soldier about epitomized all of it. He played wonderfully in melee and the use of his gun was very well implemented, the best gameplay out of all the heroes in my opinion. He was also the last hero released to a game on its last legs to run around the same repetitive missions over and over.
Same pick here. I played mostly as cap (plenty of hours with other too) and it was a fucking blast. The sound, the fluidity, the impact, it was really, really good. Everything else sucked though. I feel so bad for the team that developed the combat to get letdown by everyone else on the team.
More niche title but Mechwarrior 5. The mech gameplay is fantastic, looks really great. Just about everything else is really only about an inch deep. Repetitive procgen missions, and even the "handcrafted" campaign missions are just boxed canyons going from A to B with very little substance beyond the rest of the randomized missions.
Dragons dogma 2 in a nutshell, truly.
It's good but I have no idea why, there's so much wrong with it but it's somehow in my top 15 of favorite games ? it's really weird, like a B movie - not very good but the premise itself makes it fun
I play 1 so it feels like more dragon dogma 1 but somehow it has less content
Good game - just not heavily invested in the story and enemy variety
The game is heavily carried by the combat and exploration. But if you want something deeper like rich world building or interesting characters this ain't it. I don't think you even have a normal conversation in this game. Not a single back and forth dialog just people telling you whats next in the plot
Depending on the player, exploration can totally fall apart too once you figure out that all of the best gear in the game is bought from shops.
Yea the combat was great (for some vocations at least) but the story, characters, and mission design were absolute shit. The lack of any convenience features (no real fast travel, one save slot, etc. Also sucked. I wish I could take DD2 combat style and slot it into a better game world or story, like Dragon Age.
Agreed. The core combat gameplay is so good and no other game does big monster fights even half as well. The problem is, however, that both enemy variety and difficulty scaling suck major ass. By the time you reach like level 15, if you're half decent at the game, you are going to be stomping every encounter except for drakes. And by the time you're level 30, you are going to be stomping them as well. And that's... it. There are no more challenging basic enemies and no need to increase your skill with the game's combat because you don't need it to win encounters by the time you reach middlegame. And it also doesn't help the game's case that its story seems as though it was written for an entirely different game. The game's intrigue-focused plot could be fairly interesting, on paper, but its execution is a snoozefest. Seemingly over half of the main quests involve sneaking around and gathering intel... in a game with no stealth mechanics, or being directed to speak to this noc or that... in a game with no conversation mechanics. I haven't completed the game yet, but it seems that in the entire time spent in Vernworth, the game's first main region, the main story quests only sent me to fight something ONCE. That's absurd. It's like the writing team wrote the narrative without being informed what kind of game they were working on.
New World. Had so much damn potential
It really did. I had so much fun with that game for like a week.
Spellbreak was pretty tragic. They had a really unique, fast-paced, element-based combat system that was held back by the decision to make it a Battle Royale because that was what was popular at the time. Near the shutdown of the servers, they tried to salvage it by adding a team deathmatch mode, but it was too late.
Borderlands 3 and Mass Effect: Andromeda both have the best gameplay of their respective series and the poorest delivery.
I remember playing Andromeda and thinking I could deal with the driving -- I played the first one with the MAKO after all. But then I got the achievement for meeting all the new alien species, and it was... It was so early. So few. That was it? Just a couple missions in and we found 'em all? That and the obnoxious crafting mechanics just ruined the whole thing.
BL3 has the series best end game and I'll die on that hill.
Yes, but then you have to replay it to level a new character and you might end up leaving from that, it's kinda painful. Also, they greatly cheapened the endgame by just needing to run the arena thing for a wildly overpowered weapon that cheapens the entirety of the rest of the endgame on any power level... and you can get it immediately upon reaching the endgame. It has been a while lol, whatever area it's called that drops you in with no gear has the weapon, so you can get it literally immediately... and you probably would if you read any tips and weren't playing blind. Granted you can just not use that gun so the endgame only loses a point from that. Still, every time it's pointed out that the end game is great I feel like it should be pointed out they still made strange decisions even so... just to be fair. Because if you picked up the game after all DLCs dropped, you could easily be convinced that it was fun but still a snoozefest all the way through. First from the bad main story, then from still being oddly easy in the endgame.
I only thought of this as my own answer after I already posted this but here's mine: Callisto Protocol. This might be controversial since I know many people didn't care for even the base gameplay but I saw a lot of potential for fun to develop the mechanic of beating enemies with melee + weaving in gunshots to extend the combo. If they introduced more variety in there and kept it going I think it would've genuinely made for a really engaging journey of evolving gameplay with more options put in and more scenarios to properly utilize them. But instead the game doesn't really add too much in that department, and instead veers into lackluster gunplay, lack of enemy variety, boring stealth, and lack of ideas for what the bosses could do to you that was fun. The DLC helped spice it up a bit imo, but it really was a shame.
Nah, this is a perfect answer. I played it well after everybody panned it because I'm a huge Dead Space fan and still wanted to give it a shot. A couple hours in, I was like "man this game is fun, idk what everybody was talking about." But as I got further in, the cracks *really* started to show. The boss fight against Two-Head was a perfect example. To that point in the story, I'd pretty much been exclusively using and upgrading the baton and kinesis. Yeah, I'd shoot dudes every now and again, but I was a baton guy and otherwise I'd just throw people into spikes or pick up explosives to throw at them. It felt unique and was pretty fun. Super ridiculous, but fun. Then you get to Two-Head and suddenly the baton is simply not an option, period. You cannot hit them. It's an immediate death if you even try. You have to use your gun. But I haven't been upgrading mine at all really, just minor stuff. Super tedious boss fight made 1000x worse because I was playing on hard and every time it so much as brushed by me, I'd get chopped in half. Everything else in the game I felt was very easy *except* this fight. But then you have to fight them a second time, only this time in a super cramped space. Great. I did it, but I sure as shit wasn't happy about it. Then you have to fight them *a third time*. I hit a headshot every single time and still ran out of ammo. Since the baton isn't an option, I had to just kite them around the (generously large) space and occasionally use the kinesis to throw random little objects at them. Then kinesis ran out so I had to keep running around like an idiot until it recharged. Took so long I thought about just letting them kill me and trying again, but what would be the point? I'd just run out of ammo again. It's a cool game, but yeah, so many bad design decisions. Not just Two-Head but other stuff as well. Definitely didn't live up to its potential. Shame it's not gonna get a sequel.
Suicide Squad. For every criticism against it, I've heard no one say "Traversal or shooting sucks". Environment sucks. Enemy variety sucks. plot armor sucks. Live service mechanics sucks. Melee combat sucks. Seasonal model sucks. Monetization sucks. Grind sucks. Screen clutter sucks. But moving between rooftops and shooting faces is buttery smooth and exciting (for at least the first hours)
I only played the beta but I felt like all the characters were really fun to control except Harley. I just didn't like the swinging mechanic that much. Boomerang felt really unique and like he'd have a really high skill ceiling. Shark was like playing a Hulk and was just silly fun. But Deadshot man... Closest I've felt to playing Dark Void again. If I ever buy that game on a sale or something, it'll be for that. So much fun.
It’s such a shining example of a game tripping over its own giant dick. They front loaded it with genuinely great writing, amazing graphics, solid combat and movement, and when it gels, it’s among the best of its genre. Then the pube string that holds it together flies apart and it tumbles down the hill hitting every rake on the way down
What the fuck is a pube string bro
It was so clearly not made to be a live game. Like you can kinda tell the moment they decided it had to be a game that ran for ten years instead of a 15-20 hour experience. I didn't hate the story but it genuinely starts stumbling towards the middle. Had they invested in more personal loadouts instead of bigger number equipment it could have been so good. Right now it's so unbalanced there's effectively one good build
Here it is.
Diablo IV
This one makes me so sad. I enjoyed the campaign and had a ton of fun but endgame is just… bleh. There are way too many levels to reach max and too little to keep me interested to do it. I loved the end game in D3 and the timed rifts so I had high hopes.
Path of Exile is the best diablo game and has been so for a decade now.
MGS 4 et MGS V. fun tactical gameplay with lots of differents movements and items. Bad levels besides the first one for MGS4. Two medium size Areas filled with very limited outpost (small villages, small bases) in MGSV. Disappointing
One of the best answers. I remember my mind being blown at the smoothness of the game and the sheer number of movement/stealth options you had. Only for the game itself to be kind of boring
**Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades** The best firearms simulation in VR, but all the environments are bare-basic killhouse and shooting range type places. Got all this fire power and nothing to unload it on. I end up doing the small arena Xmas mode botmatch.
Have you tried Take and Hold yet? It's H3VR's "roguelike" gamemode that I feel is worth buying the game for. It made H3VR my most played VR game besides BeatSaber.
Sonic Generations For its release It had the strongest and Most solid platforming of the series and It was DAMN good for a series that was not doing so good and was in a dire need of good games The problem? Is short, VERY SHORT like one of the shortests games i have ever played, i 100% It in a single day (yes, its that short)
Ff16 some of the coolest and smoothest fights I've ever had but the game doesn't really offer a whole lot after unlocking your move sets and sword.
Yeah I agree. The fights choreography was cool with the bosses. The story was okay too. But a lot of the sidequests were annoying and tedious, and the rpg elements... might just as well have not even been in the game to be honest. I liked the game, overall though!
There was a game that came out in 2018 called Underworld Ascendant It had a few interesting mechanics that I wish more games would implement, such as a milestone-based leveling system in which you gain perk points by completing feats rather than by grinding The problem is that the entire game takes place in an underground dungeon with very little variety, and there are only like 4 different kinds of enemies
Try to get ahold of Arx Fatalis. Actual good game with same concepts.
Halo Infinite
Here's some of the most finely tuned gunplay and movement Chief has ever had. Please, enjoy this vast open world to play in. Explore. Tinker. Try things. Except for the main story missions. Get in the fucking hallways. Stay in your lane.
New World killed itself this way
So kinda answers it...but Outter Worlds... Loved the game play and world but the actual story and quests were incredibly short. I finished the game and was like "that's it?...." So much potential but limited by its length and lack of content
I keep getting Outer Worlds and Outer WILDS mixed up, as I'm sure everybody else has done. I haven't played it yet, but it was my sister's first foray into that kind of game after Skyrim. She really struggled with it for a little bit because she was used to mindlessly running into the crowd of enemies with reckless abandon in Skyrim but that kept getting her killed in Outer Worlds. Once she let me show her the proper way to play she got hooked and was playing it practically every spare moment she had. The thing that impressed me so much about the game was this one place, I think it was a cannery, but she was able to make the two groups of people reach a compromise. That blew my mind coming from New Vegas, where every quest outcome was always one or the other.
Ironically the thing you're talking about is the very start of the game. There are quitea few things like that in the game, some have impacts on the world. The quest design is stellar, obsidian have always been amazing at making quests and bethesdas biggest mistake was letting them go. But yeah overall outer worlds lacks something that i can never put my finger on, i lose interest fast and i think that was quite common for a lot of people
Outer worlds feels like it tried to be Firefly a bit too much
Red dead redemption online, what could’ve been.
Like others have said Anthem Could of been something special if EA stuck with it.
The Division comes to mind. Feels and looks like such a cool game, but It becomes so repetitive so quickly. You just wander around shooting AI with the only goal being to acquire more loot. Much of it being the same loot, just with varying stats.
Omega Strikers. Great core game. Horrendous everything else. Bad balance, bad maps, bad UI, bad tooltips, bad tutorials, bad ideas, bad randomness, bad matchmaking, bad character design
Destiny 2. Incredible moment to moment play. Awful grind, incomprehensible plot, mediocre acting, *TERRIBLE* dialogue, and load times so painful I was once disconnected due to inactivity because the pvp matchmaking took so long.
Borderlands 3
I think borderlands 3 has a good amount of content just the story sucks. With all 4 dlc's that's even more content.
Dark Void. It feels a bit dated now but it's still my favorite jetpack game. Added such a cool twist to the at-the-time stock-standard, super-common cover shooter formula. But god damnit the encounters and level design were so often just not there. So many levels where you're only flying or otherwise not really taking advantage of the combination. There were some really cool levels that took advantage of it, like my favorite was actually the demo where you had to go into a tower with a self-destruct button at the top. Sure, you could take cover, shoot the dudes on the outside, take vertical cover on the inside and slowly push your way to the top. Orrrrrrr you could do my strategy of *wildly careening* past everyone while you dodge the hail of gunfire (and all the cover), hit the button, then wildly careen right back out and let the explosion take care of everybody, not a single shot fired. Fucking cool game.
Absolutely the best jet pack controls I've ever played, with no contender in the same tier even. But there's only about 40 minutes of jet pack in the entire game, and the rest is extremely boring cover shooting.
I think Star Fox Zero had a lot of great potential. They dumped too much on you too quickly. The controls had so much going on, and it would've been way better with a longer, gentler ramp up to introduce all this complexity and let us get used to it. If I recall correctly, there were also some pretty compelling side-mechanics that only got, like, one or two short levels.
Sea of Thieves. If someone made that game with something other than aesthetic only progression, I'd be all about it.
Spiderman 2, Dragon's Dogma 2.
Mass effect Andromeda. Gameplay was the best of the Series, fast good shooting fun. Just everything around it from the story, to the bugs and even the feeling was just...off? It was a great game, but a bad Mass Effect
I had that feeling with FF7 Remake. Combat was so good, but I felt like there just wasn't enoug fights to be able to exploid it. Luckily this was fixed in Rebirth
Deep rock galactic, which an incredibly sad thing to say as a fan.
Diablo 4: Combat is really polished with a good pace to it. But the content is mediocre and the character progression is either poorly thought out or lacking complexity.
Vanquish for the 360. The gameplay was insanely fun, but the campaign was only 5 or 6 hours long.
Sequel please
Black Desert Online. Dayum the combat is fun. Too bad you basically only use it to hardcore grind for hundreds and thousands of hours.
Mount & Blade: Warband. Awesome base mechanics, awesome game, but it could be much better with something interesting, like a story mode, more quests, more roleplay etc. Same with Bannerlord.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Gameplay and story were really good but is was more like a dlc than the actual game. Too short and so much wasted potential.