Abandoned Games

[Mogster]

7 hours ago, Jamie John said:

there must be more to a game than pressing one button and moving the analog stick, surely?

 

7 hours ago, Jamie John said:

everyone is set to 'fight wisely'

I'm probably starting the obvious, but you're criticising the game for playing itself when you've explicitly set it to play itself. If you set the characters to "follow orders" you get full control over every action.

 

I'm playing it at the moment too, and while it's still quite easy I've definitely had the odd challenging fight. Even when they're easy, I've still found myself picking actions with some thought rather than just simply attacking every turn.

 

You can always turn on Draconian Quest of whatever it's called if you want to make things harder.

[Jamie John]

6 minutes ago, Mogster said:

 

I'm probably starting the obvious, but you're criticising the game for playing itself when you've explicitly set it to play itself. If you set the characters to "follow orders" you get full control over every action.

 

I'm playing it at the moment too, and while it's still quite easy I've definitely had the odd challenging fight. Even when they're easy, I've still found myself picking actions with some thought rather than just simply attacking every turn.

 

You can always turn on Draconian Quest of whatever it's called if you want to make things harder.

 

Setting the tactics to 'fight wisely' is just automating what I would be doing anyway, though - it doesn't do anything to make the game more challenging or interesting. If I set the tactics to 'Follow orders', it would still be easy and boring, but tedious as well.

[Junker]

Gorogoa - was playing it with my daughter and she loved it but I was struggling to understand how the game expected me to work out what to do. 
I was getting through it but sometimes not really knowing how.

 Had a couple of weeks off it, went back to it on my own and just couldn’t get back into it.

 It’s weird because I love games like The Room, Monument Valley, The Witness but this just didn’t click.

[Sane]

8 hours ago, Jamie John said:

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (Switch)

 

Forum, I tried. Once on PS4, then on Switch, then on Game Pass and now again on Switch, but I just can't do it. It's just so easy, and so boring. I go into battles, where everyone it set to 'fight wisely', press A to get things started, and then that's it. The game plays itself while I check my phone. After the battle ends, I run up to another enemy, press A to get the drop on it, and then the cycle starts again, even against bosses. I haven't died, or come anywhere close to dying, in 15 hours of play. The enemies are charming, the writing is endearing, and the characters, while cliched, are inoffensive, but there must be more to a game than pressing one button and moving the analog stick, surely? There's just nothing to it, no friction or drama whatsoever. It's like playing a very expensive clicker game. I suppose you could say it's 'relaxing', but there's a fine line between that and soporific, and this falls into the latter for me.

 

Anyway, after ditching Radiant Historia earlier this year, and now this, I've still got Xenoblade Chronicles and FFX remastered on the Switch in my JRPG pile of shame. Perhaps they'll rekindle my spark for the genre, but I fear that @Sane and @ChewMagma may be right when they mentioned on the previous page that this sort of game is simply no longer for me 

It's too bad, but life's too short to spend it on trying to like things you don't enjoy. 

 

One thing I do want to respond to, not to try to convince you to keep trying but maybe for other people reading this: you can control the actions of your entire party. That, combined with the harder difficulty setting, made the game much more engaging for me. It's still not very difficult but much more challenging with a few proper difficulty spikes that require you to fully utilise the entire party's skills.  It's arguably also how the game is 'meant to be played' I'd say (controlling all the party members, not the higher difficulty). 

[Jamie John]

2 minutes ago, Sane said:

It's too bad, but life's too short to spend it on trying to like things you don't enjoy. 

 

One thing I do want to respond to, not to try to convince you to keep trying but maybe for other people reading this: you can control the actions of your entire party. That, combined with the harder difficulty setting, made the game much more engaging for me. It's still not very difficult but much more challenging with a few proper difficulty spikes that require you to fully utilise the entire party's skills.  It's arguably also how the game is 'meant to be played' I'd say (controlling all the party members, not the higher difficulty). 

 

I think I might have fucked the Draconian Quest thing. I turned it on to begin with, then turned it off for some reason (probably because I had to grind), and now I don't think there's a way to turn it on again.

 

Even then, though, the battle system seems ultra-simplistic. There's hardly any nuance or complexity to it, that I've been able to discern, anyway. I might as well be playing a 20 year-old JRPG. I understand that that's Dragon Quest's M.O. - tradition at all costs - but in the absence of an interesting story or deep characters, these sorts of games live or die on their battle systems for me, and this one isn't cutting the mustard.

 

I'll have a look later and see if I can turn hard mode on again. I really do want to like this game.

[Mogster]

1 hour ago, Jamie John said:

 

Setting the tactics to 'fight wisely' is just automating what I would be doing anyway, though - it doesn't do anything to make the game more challenging or interesting. If I set the tactics to 'Follow orders', it would still be easy and boring, but tedious as well.

You could say that about any game to a certain extent, especially turn based games where quick reactions aren't a thing. However, it's worth noting that on the regular difficulty setting it's not really necessary to fight every monster you come across. I tend to just go for monsters in my path, or monsters I haven't seen before, and I've yet to find myself significantly underlevelled. 

 

I played through FFXII for the first time a few years ago, and got very bored indeed by the time I'd set my party's gambits up properly. Most of the game was literally just pushing an analogue stick while my party took care of itself, and it was incredibly dull. Even holding X while grinding in the old FFs was more engaging than that, and I've yet to resort to that for any fight in DQXI. It's still a very traditional turn based JRPG combat system, but every character has their own unique quirks to make things a little more interesting. Even when you could theoretically just mash "Attack" there's always a more efficient option.

 

One other tip I have is an aesthetic one, but I'd highly recommend switching to the DQVIII overworld music. I found the DQXI version ridiculously overbearing, and often completely out of place depending on the environment. The DQVIII music fits much better for me.

[Jamie John]

1 hour ago, Mogster said:

You could say that about any game to a certain extent, especially turn based games where quick reactions aren't a thing. However, it's worth noting that on the regular difficulty setting it's not really necessary to fight every monster you come across. I tend to just go for monsters in my path, or monsters I haven't seen before, and I've yet to find myself significantly underlevelled. 

 

I played through FFXII for the first time a few years ago, and got very bored indeed by the time I'd set my party's gambits up properly. Most of the game was literally just pushing an analogue stick while my party took care of itself, and it was incredibly dull. Even holding X while grinding in the old FFs was more engaging than that, and I've yet to resort to that for any fight in DQXI. It's still a very traditional turn based JRPG combat system, but every character has their own unique quirks to make things a little more interesting. Even when you could theoretically just mash "Attack" there's always a more efficient option.

 

One other tip I have is an aesthetic one, but I'd highly recommend switching to the DQVIII overworld music. I found the DQXI version ridiculously overbearing, and often completely out of place depending on the environment. The DQVIII music fits much better for me.

 

See, I really enjoyed the Zodiac Age version of FFXII when I played it on PS4 a few years ago. It was the first FF game I'd completed at that point since X on the PS2. The Gambit system was different and interesting, and I found it supremely satisfying to see my party lay waste to enemies as a result of the different loadouts that I'd spent a long time perfecting. I don't get any of that satisfaction in DQXI, unfortunately.

 

But I'll take your tip on the music - that overworld theme definitely starts to grate.

[glb]

Deleted AC Valhalla from my HD to free up some space. Put about 80 hours in, but it had long since started to feel more of a slog than it was enjoyable. Not a bad game by any means, it's really good in places, but it's also excessively long. May reinstall at some point but depends on time and what else comes along.

[spanx]

Super Mario 3D World

 

It’s Mario, I should love it, but I really dislike the controls. It’s not precise enough to be a great 2D Mario game, but the 3D aspect doesn’t give you much freedom. It just feels like the B team threw this out really. Much much preferred Mario Odyssey. 

 

Abandoned in the 3rd world, I was just playing because I spent money on it but it’s just getting on my nerves now. Shame. 

[Unofficial Who]

A few here. Bear with me. Signs of the Sojourner is about to leave GamePass. I don't feel pressured to run through this now as I have it on itchio but I gave it a go in part due to John Walker's excellent write up here. https://buried-treasure.org/2020/05/signs-of-the-sojourner/

 

Quote

Joining caravan leader Nadine, and a collection of other characters, you set off on weeks-long journeys out of town to find treasures to bring back, as well as form relationships with the residents of these nearby small towns. All of this is conducted through the card game, and how you balance your deck of ten cards will determine how well you can communicate with different characters. Because, and this is where Sojourner becomes magical, the further you travel, the more frequently you’ll encounter characters who play cards with unfamiliar symbols.

 

He goes on to explain what makes the design of this so magical. It's a bit of a spoiler so I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not to spoil it. And it is incredibly clever.

 

Alas the rest of the game just didn't gel with me, the mechanic just makes conversations drag. I have it in my collection to return to but I bounced off this hard despite trying several times. As with many of my picks this year you should all try it, I feel like I failed the game rather than the game failing me.

 

[Unofficial Who]

I'm blaming Spiritfarer having a demo which bounced me off it despite loving the art style. So I procrastinated and now it's leaving GamePass. Could I power through 20 hours of gameplay in two weeks? Normally yes. But I've had an intense two weeks due to my day job and so I'm not going to finish this in time. And it's a game that is all about taking time and meandering about its world. The few hours of the full game I've played have led me to falling in love with it but I'm not going to try and cram it in over the weekend. Another example of GamePass leading to a possible sale of the game.

 

[Unofficial Who]

Red Dead Redemption 2.

 

 

There's so much here. Almost too much. Too much to finish by September at least which is when it disappears off the Playstation sub. Which is silly, why have this on the service for only three months? Even several things have stopped me from playing more of this.

 

-I can't get with the controls. It reminds me of Driver. When you're on a horse it's good. Not on a horse, oh man. 

-There are so many systems. Perhaps too many. In this regard it feels like Rockstar looked at the myriad of systems weighing down Assassin's Creed 3 and said "Hold my beer."

 

And then there's the more practical issue of having to compete for time on the PS5 with my partner when new Final Fantasy 14 content has dropped. Unlike Spiritfarer I don't feel the need to buy this down the line. I never thought I'd say this after loving Assassin's Creed Origins but sometimes open worlds can be too open.

[Gabe]

Given up on a few games recently, Midnight Fight Express being the latest. The levels are short and snappy but even on the normal skill level (and stacking the meagre options in my favour) I got trashed repeatedly by the Rat King and friends (which is only level 8 or 9 out of 41?)

 

I don't have the reflexes, nor skills, to keep up with something that is only going to get harder, so there was no point banging my head against a wall trying to push on. 

[JamesC]

On 28/08/2022 at 04:32, Unofficial Who said:

Red Dead Redemption 2.

 

 

There's so much here. Almost too much. Too much to finish by September at least which is when it disappears off the Playstation sub. Which is silly, why have this on the service for only three months? Even several things have stopped me from playing more of this.

 

-I can't get with the controls. It reminds me of Driver. When you're on a horse it's good. Not on a horse, oh man. 

-There are so many systems. Perhaps too many. In this regard it feels like Rockstar looked at the myriad of systems weighing down Assassin's Creed 3 and said "Hold my beer."

 

And then there's the more practical issue of having to compete for time on the PS5 with my partner when new Final Fantasy 14 content has dropped. Unlike Spiritfarer I don't feel the need to buy this down the line. I never thought I'd say this after loving Assassin's Creed Origins but sometimes open worlds can be too open.

This game wa sjust too much for me too. 

Certainly too much travelling from A-B which wasn't fun and I didn't enjoy the camping/home base set up either.

[Unofficial Who]

18 hours ago, JamesC said:

This game was just too much for me too. 

Certainly too much travelling from A-B which wasn't fun and I didn't enjoy the camping/home base set up either.

 

We're not alone.

 

https://www.pcgamer.com/john-carpenter-quit-red-dead-because-he-couldnt-get-on-the-damn-horse/?

 

Quote

in an interview with The New Yorker, the master of horror revealed that he couldn't bring himself to make it all the way through Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2, which currently sits pretty at #5 on our list of the top 100 PC games(opens in new tab). The reason? He "couldn't get on the damn horse".

Carpenter says he's pretty good at games, but "with that one I was terrible". "The controls weren't intuitive, at least for me," he says, explaining his equestrian troubles. He's not alone: several writers here at PCG took Red Dead to task recently for handling "like absolute dogshit"

 

[JamesC]

Once you get on the horse you have to wait 20 minutes while it walks you to your objective.

[Hewson]

After trying to get into the series a few years back with Yakuza 0, I tried again this week with Like a Dragon. I've always been intrigued by the love the series inspires but the simple fact is that I no longer have the time or patience for this much exposition in a game. I found myself very quickly getting bored by the cutscenes, then starting to advance dialogue and finally skipping whole scenes. And when you realise you've spent 10 minutes simply skipping a series of cutscenes with no other interaction and you now have no idea what's going on... you kind of have to realise that you're missing the whole point of the game.

[df0]

From memory, Like A Dragon takes many hours before it truly starts. The Yakuza series has always been slow, but LaD really takes it to the next level. I'd say stick with it because eventually it becomes great but you'll have to sit through like 15 hours of exposition, hand holding and cutscene after cutscene.

[Vimster]

Whilst I'll probably give it another go at some point I've abandoned Cyberpunk 2077. It's a superb game, the presentation is stellar, the world looks amazing and is full of life. I found the prologue leads you in nicely and by the time it ends you're ready to take the rest of the game on. Or at least that's what I assumed. I was getting wiped out by standard street encounters, or would get lost trying to find objectives, get frustrated trying to navigate. My desire to play it ebbed away and it got to the point I just thought let's leave it and try again some other time. It almost felt like the killer aesthetics were hampering the immediacy of the game for me. I can't remember if there was an easier difficulty level, might try that instead.  

[Mogster]

18 minutes ago, Vimster said:

Whilst I'll probably give it another go at some point I've abandoned Cyberpunk 2077. It's a superb game, the presentation is stellar, the world looks amazing and is full of life. I found the prologue leads you in nicely and by the time it ends you're ready to take the rest of the game on. Or at least that's what I assumed. I was getting wiped out by standard street encounters, or would get lost trying to find objectives, get frustrated trying to navigate. My desire to play it ebbed away and it got to the point I just thought let's leave it and try again some other time. It almost felt like the killer aesthetics were hampering the immediacy of the game for me. I can't remember if there was an easier difficulty level, might try that instead.  

It's one of those games that becomes easier as you develop your character, to the point where there was almost zero challenge for me by the end of the game. It's definitely worth taking on side missions as you go, as they're very well developed and give you a bunch of XP.

 

As for getting lost, the game should show you the path to your objective on the minimap.

[roberthazelby]

On 23/08/2022 at 00:31, Jamie John said:

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (Switch)

 

Forum, I tried. Once on PS4, then on Switch, then on Game Pass and now again on Switch, but I just can't do it. It's just so easy, and so boring. I go into battles, where everyone it set to 'fight wisely', press A to get things started, and then that's it. The game plays itself while I check my phone. After the battle ends, I run up to another enemy, press A to get the drop on it, and then the cycle starts again, even against bosses. I haven't died, or come anywhere close to dying, in 15 hours of play. The enemies are charming, the writing is endearing, and the characters, while cliched, are inoffensive, but there must be more to a game than pressing one button and moving the analog stick, surely? There's just nothing to it, no friction or drama whatsoever. It's like playing a very expensive clicker game. I suppose you could say it's 'relaxing', but there's a fine line between that and soporific, and this falls into the latter for me.

 

Anyway, after ditching Radiant Historia earlier this year, and now this, I've still got Xenoblade Chronicles and FFX remastered on the Switch in my JRPG pile of shame. Perhaps they'll rekindle my spark for the genre, but I fear that @Sane and @ChewMagma may be right when they mentioned on the previous page that this sort of game is simply no longer for me 

I enjoyed Dragon Quest. The battles were a bit crap, but I loved the characters and the story. I did play it through to completion (100 hours), but couldn’t bring myself to continue playing through the epilogue.

[Jamie John]

18 minutes ago, roberthazelby said:

I enjoyed Dragon Quest. The battles were a bit crap, but I loved the characters and the story. I did play it through to completion (100 hours), but couldn’t bring myself to continue playing through the epilogue.

 

I thought the characters were quite endearing, but the 'story' wasn't enough to pull me through.

[Jamie John]

Getting though the backlog one abandoned game at a time!

 

Mortal Shell (XSX)

 

 

I posted a few comments in the dedicated thread, but this did not paint a good first impression at all. Grungy, moss-coloured visuals, imprecise combat, glitchy damage detection and a wilfully obscure narrative setup, presented in an irritating rather than enticing way. I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but I was done after two sessions.

 

The Cat Lady (Steam)

 

 

Woof. This was not good. I didn't even really know what it was before I started playing, or why I bought it. It's sort of a point and click visual novel about a woman who commits suicide and then gets stuck in purgatory, which, on the surface, sounds quite intriguing, but this has obviously been made on a shoestring and is just very, very rough - the writing, the visuals, the design and the voice acting, especially. A bit too raw for me, I'm afraid.

 

Tekken 7 (XSX)

 

 

Seeing as I don't really go in for fighting games as a rule, this was another one that I couldn't remember the reason for buying. Apparently, I got it for £7 from the forum over a year ago, and I'd read it was supposed to be good. Anyway, I couldn't find out if I liked it or not as it flatly refused to install. I tried three times, resetting the console each time, performing clean installs and uninstalls, trying a few things recommended online, but no, it got stuck at around 50-60% each time. I got far enough into the install that I could play bits of it, but only the arcade mode and training modes, neither of which told me how to actually play the game. And what I played was pretty rough-looking, too, and full of microtransation prompts. Possibly this has had a Series X update and a graphical overhaul, but I suppose I'll never know now. There's probably a way to fix it, but I can't be arsed. The search for a fighting game with a proper tutorial continues.

[Gambit]

Mirrors Edge

 

I can only think there must have been some sort of mass hypnosis in 2008. It's the only reason I can think of that this game got decent review scores. Pure fucking shite.

[Protocol Penguin]

Can't say that I've outright abandoned it, yet, but I reached the thirty hour mark on Pokemon Legends Arceus and stopped, and haven't gotten the motivation to go back and play it. I got to the icy, mountainous area of the game, and the repetitive gameplay and poor quality presentation just sapped my enthusiasm in a way that the main line Pokemon series hasn't, despite also suffering similar issues (admittedly in different ways and on a different scale).

[Unofficial Who]

06/09 I Am Fish (PC) I love the look of this. It looks like a Pixar movie and I love most rolling games.

 

 

For some reason I couldn't get on with this. The level design reminded me of PS2 games with some poor signposting (at least for me, maybe I've gotten too used to having my hand held?) And when they introduced alternate container shapes they lost me.

 

Below is exactly where I stopped playing.

 

[Quest]

That fucking bridge.

 

Is it still really buggy? It was pretty rough when it came out.

[James Lyon]

11 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

Below is exactly where I stopped playing.

 

 

Ah, that's definitely a fun-stopper right there first time you play it. It makes sense when you realise that the developer's last couple of games were all about taking pleasure out of mastering tricky controls.

 

If it helps, I really enjoyed it. Once you get past this bit, you get to choose between three other fish with different abilities. Levels have a nice polish with a good deal of variety, I thought.

 

There's a skip to next checkpoint option for frustrating bits. Would be nice not to need to use it, but checkpoints aren't too far apart and there's not too much of the bottle in there.

[James Lyon]

10 hours ago, Quest said:

That fucking bridge.

 

Is it still really buggy? It was pretty rough when it came out.

 

I don't think I had any problems. Seemed quite solid to me.

[Unofficial Who]

Sable (PC)

 

 

This broke my heart. I love the art style. I love the music. I love wandering around this vast desert world.

 

But it makes me sick. As in physically. For some reason an hour in I feel violently ill and need to lie down for hours. I've tried travel sickness pills. I've tried playing it at 30fps, 60fps and 24fps. It makes no difference. There's something about how the screen updates which is just completely incompatible with me biologically. I've only had this twice before. Once with Descent on the PSOne in the 90's, and once with Call of the Sea (something that was fixed with a patch.)

 

Sable, this is definitely a case of it's not you it's me.