Abandoned Games

[Hodge]

On 07/08/2021 at 13:00, Unofficial Who said:

 

Same. I made it about an hour and....I'm not sure why I wasn't enjoying it.

 

It probably didn't help that the first level is literally a sewer level. I've had enough sewer levels to last me forever. And the screen is so busy and so packed with detail that I just couldn't parse what was on the screen. I would have adored this 20 years ago. Not for me now though. Glad it's not just me.

 

Made it out of the sewers and just wasn't feeling it.

 

 

 

Same.  Managed to carry on for a couple of hours longer, but wasnt feeling it at all.  Liked the visuals, but other than that there ain`t much going for it.  And when you get out of the sewers, omg the map and level design is terrible.  Feels like your constantly wandering through a multi-tiered maze.

 

Just to add to my abandoned titles, The Evil Within 2.  Wanted to like it as i heard it was a cross between silent hill and resident evil.  Upon doing 3 hours on this, i would disagree. The main character i can`t click with, graphics are abit rough round the edges.  Enemies are annoying as hell, its also lacking atmosphere what you get from the early silent hill games.

 

Didn`t like way the missions are laid out either.  I.E follow the signal, when you arrive there, you find out its not where you need to be and end up going somewhere else and repeat.

 

Anyway suppose thats the great thing about gamepass, giving games a try without putting a dent in your wallet 😀

[acidbearboy]

SoccerDie: Cosmic Cup [switch]

 

Shitty controls. 
Frustrating gameplay. 
AVOID!

 

 

[Hanzo the Razor]

14 hours ago, acidbearboy said:

SoccerDie: Cosmic Cup [switch]

 

Shitty controls. 
Frustrating gameplay. 
AVOID!

 

 

 

You'd never know from looking at it.

[acidbearboy]

I can’t even remember buying it. Hopefully it was an 89p impulse purchase. 

[Gambit]

Zelda: Skyward Sword HD

 

When this first came out I remember being one of the defenders, but something has happened in this intervening years and I've completely flipped to the other side.

 

I loathed my time with the Switch version. I made my way upto the Lanayru Mining Dungeon and that was enough for me. The controls are abysmal. I played mostly using buttons because I want to lay down while I play and not swing my arm like a twat and it seemed to increase the difficulty in certain sections and made them incredibly frustrating. So I dabbled with the motion controls and got tired of constantly recalibrating my pointer to the centre. Then I said fuck this and will be trading it in for Mario 3D World.

[Jamie John]

Carto

 

This was disappointing. For those who don't know, it's a top-down adventure game whose main gimmick is that at any time you can go to the map screen and move around different terrain tiles in order to progress. So, for example, early on a character asks you to take them home then says something like 'My house is west of the lake, on the coast'. Therefore, you have to edit the map to suit, then the character's house will suddenly appear.

 

I liked the sound of the premise, but in practice, you spend a lot of time walking around very similar-looking terrain, looking for additional map tiles, or arbitrarily interacting with everything in the vain hope that they appear. The requests and hints you get from the different characters are also irritatingly vague, and I often found myself trying to guess what the developers wanted me to do in order to progress, as opposed to what made logical sense. Overall, it was all a bit twee and boring, and, playing on XSX, there was a horrible judder whenever the screen scrolled from one side to another, which is a big problem as you spend a lot of time scrolling about from one screen to the next. Thankfully, it was on Game Pass, so I didn't lose any money.

[Mawdlin]

Murder by Numbers

 

I may possibly be the the only person in the world who doesn't rate this but after trying three times I have given in.

 

The strange thing is that I like Phoenix Wright and I love Picross so this should be right up my alley, but the endless chat, cringey characters and long delays in between each puzzle is infuriating. I've struggled to the end of the second crime but enough is enough. When I started constantly pressing A to skip the streams of text I knew it was time to end this relationship.

 

 

[thirstywiganer]

On 03/07/2021 at 08:46, dumpster said:

Didn't see this coming....

 

Resident Evil Village (Xbox Series X)

The first genuinely next gen game for my next gen console and as a big fan of the series it was always going to be the driver to getting a new console.

 

But Village is just boring. How many more games will they release where you put stone carvings in holes in doors, find handles that turn cranks, hunt for keys...  I understand that Resident Evil has always had these elements but in Village that's pretty much all you do.  You endlessly backtrack, talk to the merchant, upgrade the shotgun and theres nothing new. Not even the smallest tweaks or refinements.

It's literally the same game as the last one, done again.  The only enjoyment is from the story and characters because that's the only content you've not seen before. 

 

Also, for the vast majority of the time, there are no enemies.  And when there are, they all look the same.  Resi7 was guilty of this too.  

 

And it's so easy.  I don't think I've actually been killed yet. And I'm three quarters through it. None of the bosses were any sort of challenge and you can run past most of the enemies. 

 

And then, as you progress you realise that once again they front loaded all the content.  Halfway through the game you realise all the interesting characters are dead. You backtrack, you backtrack again, you solve easy and obvious puzzles and hope the next area has some enemies in it.  

 

It's just so formulaic, repetitive, and hugely disappointing. I can't be bothered finishing it, and it's another reminder to wait until games are less than £20.

 

 

 

This. Never played a Resident Evil before, but I had such high hopes for it on PS5. Sold it inside a couple of days.

[phillv85]

Dodgeball Academia - Xbox Series X

 

It started so well, but after about 5 hours and the realisation that I’ll never be able to grind levels I found I couldn’t be arsed to continue. The battles are great, the story is passable but easily skippable, it’s an RPGLite that was just a little too Lite for me.

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

12 Minutes Thank god for GamePass I guess. This looked right up my street but I found it just incredibly nasty. Having found that the way to progress seems to be to either 

Spoiler

witness or cause trauma

I noped right out.

[ChewMagma]

Luigi's Mansion 3

 

Played about a third of this a couple of years ago, came back to finish it off, got to about 3 or 4 floors from the end I guess. A lot of things to like about this but the boss fights are madly aggravating and not really what I am looking for in an otherwise fairly gentle environmental puzzle game.

[phillv85]

6 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

12 Minutes Thank god for GamePass I guess. This looked right up my street but I found it just incredibly nasty. Having found that the way to progress seems to be to either 

  Reveal hidden contents

witness or cause trauma

I noped right out.

You just made me read about it, Kotaku makes it sound absolutely beyond fucked, is it as bad as they made it out to be? Either way I think I’ll happily skip that one.

[Unofficial Who]

26 minutes ago, phillv85 said:

You just made me read about it, Kotaku makes it sound absolutely beyond fucked, is it as bad as they made it out to be? Either way I think I’ll happily skip that one.

 

I didn't make it as far as they did but one hour was enough for me and reading that article and the 12 Minutes thread here convinced me that at the very least it wasn't for me.

[Jamie John]

Grindstone

 

 

This is a very good mobile game, but I'm playing it on PC and it's just too repetitive for that sort of environment. I was treating it as a podcast game, but even then it's only really sustainable in 30 minute bursts. I might pick it up again when I get my Steamdeck, or if it ever comes to Android, or even Switch, as it's far more suited to handheld play and little but often sessions. It's the best example of one of these connect the colours puzzle games I've played, I think, and the music is fantastic, so it's a shame to leave it. If you have Apple Arcade then it's a must play.

[Calashnikov]

12 hours ago, Jamie John said:

Grindstone

 

 

This is a very good mobile game, but I'm playing it on PC and it's just too repetitive for that sort of environment. I was treating it as a podcast game, but even then it's only really sustainable in 30 minute bursts. I might pick it up again when I get my Steamdeck, or if it ever comes to Android, or even Switch, as it's far more suited to handheld play and little but often sessions. It's the best example of one of these connect the colours puzzle games I've played, I think, and the music is fantastic, so it's a shame to leave it. If you have Apple Arcade then it's a must play.

Pretty sure it is on Switch.

[spanx]

Virginia. Played and really enjoyed The Last Stop recently, and figuring this was a) by the same people and b) pretty well received, oh and c) could be another one for my fiancé and I to play through together, grabbed this for £1.70 off steam

 

We both fucking hated it. Lasted about ten minutes but it’s horrible IMO. Really weird vibe, cuts every five seconds. Just felt an utterly uninteresting start. We went back to Netflix. 

[Colonel Panic]

On 28/08/2021 at 08:13, ChewMagma said:

Luigi's Mansion 3

 

Played about a third of this a couple of years ago, came back to finish it off, got to about 3 or 4 floors from the end I guess. A lot of things to like about this but the boss fights are madly aggravating and not really what I am looking for in an otherwise fairly gentle environmental puzzle game.

I finished this, but hated it towards the end. I used to dread the “put button in lift section” because I knew there’d be some cat or whatever there to extend the game with another zero fun section. 

[Gabe]

46 minutes ago, spanx said:

Virginia. Played and really enjoyed The Last Stop recently, and figuring this was a) by the same people and b) pretty well received, oh and c) could be another one for my fiancé and I to play through together, grabbed this for £1.70 off steam

 

We both fucking hated it. Lasted about ten minutes but it’s horrible IMO. Really weird vibe, cuts every five seconds. Just felt an utterly uninteresting start. We went back to Netflix. 

You should've read my posts in the Game Pass and The Last Stop thread then, because I quite enjoyed the latter (though it still had problems for me) but hated Virginia.

 

Here's an old Polygon article that if you want to see what you are missing out on (it has spoilers and interpretations):https://www.polygon.com/features/2016/10/11/13196236/what-s-going-on-at-the-end-of-virginia

[Floshenbarnical]

MGSV

 

Lifelong MGS fanatic, I got disenchanted with the whole thing and uninstalled it halfway through Africa. It's a fucking pity, as it's the most "complete" MGS gameplay experience in terms of how if you practice and git gud you can be an unstoppable stealth machine in ways that the more linear nature of previous games didn't allow, but regardless, the lack of Hayter, lack of compelling story (imo), lack of structure didn't really do it for me. It felt more like a really good Ghost Recon: Wildlands than an actual MGS game, and we'll never see another Kojima MGS ever again.

[sandman]

16 hours ago, Floshenbarnical said:

MGSV

 

Lifelong MGS fanatic, I got disenchanted with the whole thing and uninstalled it halfway through Africa. It's a fucking pity, as it's the most "complete" MGS gameplay experience in terms of how if you practice and git gud you can be an unstoppable stealth machine in ways that the more linear nature of previous games didn't allow, but regardless, the lack of Hayter, lack of compelling story (imo), lack of structure didn't really do it for me. It felt more like a really good Ghost Recon: Wildlands than an actual MGS game, and we'll never see another Kojima MGS ever again.

Couldn't agree more with this. It simply isn't MGS

[deerokus]

On 06/09/2021 at 22:21, Colonel Panic said:

I finished this, but hated it towards the end. I used to dread the “put button in lift section” because I knew there’d be some cat or whatever there to extend the game with another zero fun section. 

There's a lot of mediocre elements to it that felt very un-nintendo and add up to quite a disappointment. The controls are a ballache.

[deerokus]

On 06/09/2021 at 10:08, Calashnikov said:

Pretty sure it is on Switch.

It is and I play it a lot on there. It's ideal for it.

[Vimster]

Test Drive Unlimited 2 (PS3)

Dug some PS3 games out that I'd hoarded down the years but not got around to and fired this 2011 game up, well when I say fired up I mean wait 20 minutes for a 1gb+ update to download then wait another 10 minutes for game data to be installed. It's pretty ropey anyway but in a world where Forza Horizon 4 exists I have to ask myself why I even bothered. Character models are laughably bad, the driving is unsatisfying, it has this sub-PGR system where you earn money by doing near misses and the like but it just doesn't feel good. A great example of a game that unless you have really strong associations with it, isn't worth going back to because it has been bettered by more modern games.

[Dudley]

Especially as Forza Horizon with 4 stole a big pile of stuff from TDU they'd previously not done.

 

But there is a reason I call TDU1 "my favourite game" of all time, not "The best game" of all time.

[acidbearboy]

Genshin Impact

 

I played this a few times when it first came out around a year ago and despite seemingly borrowing a lot of ideas from Zelda BotW, first impressions were fairly good. The music and graphics were very impressive too, especially considering it was a free download. However, I had a bunch of other stuff to play and have barely touched it since. I booted it up yesterday and the wealth of systems and information overload totally bamboozled me. Plus the story and dialogue is bobbins and a lot of the 'quests' are very linear. I figured if I can't devote the time to it, it's probably not worth bothering at all, and so I uninstalled it.

 

Castlevania Rondo of Blood

 

I have this as part of the CV Requiem Collection on PS4 but the game is so hard that I just could not enjoy playing it without the comfort of a rewind feature or at least save states, neither of which I could find on the PS4. 

[Unofficial Who]

Well here's one where the problem is not the game, it's me.

 

Katana Zero (PC) Is about to leave Gamepass and it's like Hotline Miami meets old Amiga platformers. And it's excellent! But it's not what I'm looking for currently, partly because my reflexes aren't just up to it anymore. Highly recommend others try it if the blend of the above sounds perfect.

 

 

[MattyP]

Ratchet & Clank (PS5)

 

Think I'm needing a break from gaming again. Spent another hour or so on this tonight (around 4 hours in total so far). Visuals and sound are top notch but its just tedious. Just got to another boss fight tonight and it feels like I'm playing a PS2 game at times in terms of game mechanics etc. The bits in between boss fights aren't that great either just wondering around buying upgrades and shooting the odd robot. Not really sure what I was expecting really. Glad I didn't pay the full £70 asking price for this.

[rafrasilecs]

7 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

Well here's one where the problem is not the game, it's me.

 

Katana Zero (PC) Is about to leave Gamepass and it's like Hotline Miami meets old Amiga platformers. And it's excellent! But it's not what I'm looking for currently, partly because my reflexes aren't just up to it anymore. Highly recommend others try it if the blend of the above sounds perfect.

 

 

 

This was my GOTY last year - I finally finished it but my god it wasn't easy. 

[MattyP]

On 05/10/2021 at 21:15, MattyP said:

Ratchet & Clank (PS5)

 

Think I'm needing a break from gaming again. Spent another hour or so on this tonight (around 4 hours in total so far). Visuals and sound are top notch but its just tedious. Just got to another boss fight tonight and it feels like I'm playing a PS2 game at times in terms of game mechanics etc. The bits in between boss fights aren't that great either just wondering around buying upgrades and shooting the odd robot. Not really sure what I was expecting really. Glad I didn't pay the full £70 asking price for this.

 

Well gave this another try tonight... spent another couple of hours or so on it. Its Friday after all and it was this or Returnal. Thought I'd give both another try before I move them on.

 

So its still very old school gaming here but finding the music and visuals are pulling it through for me - its a good demo of what the PS5 is capable off if nothing else. Just a shame the mechanics make the game feel a bit dated. But saying all this I'm actually enjoying it a bit more. The production values on this are pretty amazing - feels like you are playing a live cartoon at times. The controller also makes this a different experience and makes good use of the adaptive triggers.

 

Think at times its too easy to discount something before giving it a bit more time. Also a bit of "I've paid for this game so I will get some value out of it" was coming to the front of mind!  

 

So not quite abandoned. Just yet.  

[Jamie John]

54 minutes ago, MattyP said:

 

Well gave this another try tonight... spent another couple of hours or so on it. Its Friday after all and it was this or Returnal. Thought I'd give both another try before I move them on.

 

So its still very old school gaming here but finding the music and visuals are pulling it through for me - its a good demo of what the PS5 is capable off if nothing else. Just a shame the mechanics make the game feel a bit dated. But saying all this I'm actually enjoying it a bit more. The production values on this are pretty amazing - feels like you are playing a live cartoon at times. The controller also makes this a different experience and makes good use of the adaptive triggers.

 

Think at times its too easy to discount something before giving it a bit more time. Also a bit of "I've paid for this game so I will get some value out of it" was coming to the front of mind!  

 

So not quite abandoned. Just yet.  

 

With Ratchet and Clank, I think it helps if you think of it as a shooter rather than a 3D platformer with a mascot. It has those elements, obviously, but the more enjoyable gameplay comes from mucking about with all the weapons, swapping them frequently, chaining their effects together, and generally causing complete carnage. It's a very pretty, very solid 8/10 game, I think.