General Gaming Games that left a strong first impression that you soured on

[crispy4000]

Playing through pixel art games for the other thread and reading reviews got me thinking, what games did you enjoy a lot at the onset, but fell off a cliff?

 

Not just the expected tedium of repetition and of general fatigue.  But stuff as the game gets going, where you question how they could fumble it so hard.

[Bacon]

Brutal Legend. The first hour or so was a perfect Zelda game. And then RTS shit happened.

 

Dark Souls 2. Once the excitement of "WOW NEW SOULS GAME" wore off I became physically repulsed from ever playing it again. Even thinking about playing it makes me "ugh..."

 

Not exactly what you are looking for but Fallout 3. When it came out it was the best fucking game in the world. I loved it. I spent hundreds of hours playing and beat it multiple times including the DLCs. Now I can't stand to play it. But honestly, I think it's a Bethesda Formula thing cuz I can't stand TES anymore either, but Fallout NV gives me the same feeling.

[Xbob42]

Skyrim. I really loved it for the first few hours. I remember laughing my ass off thinking the giants killing you and sending you a thousand feet in the air was a glitch, then realizing it was actually intended. How fucking cool the fire stream spell was, and how double cool it was using it in both hands (even though the damage sucked.) That kind of thing.

 

But man, I don't think I've ever soured on a single player game quite as hard as Skyrim, it was so bad it actually greatly damaged my opinion of Bethesda as a whole, whom I had previously liked. While a lot of issues in Skyrim I could've attributed to that single game and accepted for "pushing boundaries," (when it was actually reigning boundaries in, in hindsight) -- the fact that their later games showed absolutely ZERO ambition completely floored me, and that has culminated in Starfield being this complete gaming black hole in my memory, just the vague blur of the passage of time while lots of nothing happened. Ugh.

 

Another would be World of Warcraft. I adored it when it first came out, but I've never been big into playing one game for extreme periods of time. So I'm always a fairweather MMO player. I enjoy the content, and happily leave when I get bored, coming back when I hear something interesting. But with Wrath of the Lich King, we were raiding on a schedule (I can't fucking stand gaming on a schedule, quickest way to make it feel like a job and suck the entertainment out of it. I don't mean "hey let's go do this Destiny 2 raid on Monday," I mean "hey let's do this WoW raid for 4 hours a night twice a week for 8 months") and dealing with the drama (not nearly as bad as others I've seen) and the complaints and people dropping out and whatnot over and over and over, casting the same spells and using the same abilities week in, week out was absolutely destructive to my enjoyment of the game.

Then came Cataclysm, which I was initially excited for, and enjoyed right up until we started raiding again. In the very first month I realized the game was now actively miserable to me. My head started to feel a little funny any time I even looked at the UI. Like a pulled muscle, but for my brain. I honestly have no idea how to describe it besides maybe base revulsion? It was a stronger negative reaction to a game than I've had before or since. It wasn't until years later, near the middle of Legion that I'd give it another shot, and found that whatever damage was done had finally worn off, and I could appreciate the game on its own terms again. And I've been very happy to go back to being a fairweather player. BFA and Shadowlands sucked? No problem ducking out. Dragonflight is fun? Hey great time to roll a new class!

 

Can't think of anything else off the top of my head, those were the standouts for me, though I'm sure I've got one or two more if I keep thinking about it.

[Biggie]

About 90% of them. If I finish a game it’s a true testament how good I thought it was. 

[Firewithin]

1 hour ago, Bacon said:

Brutal Legend. The first hour or so was a perfect Zelda game. And then RTS shit happened.

 

 

my man!  everything so was so good.  jack black, the setting, the metal soundtrack.  and then BAM fucking RTS bullshit 

[LazyPiranha]

2 hours ago, Bacon said:

Brutal Legend. The first hour or so was a perfect Zelda game. And then RTS shit happened.

 

Dark Souls 2. Once the excitement of "WOW NEW SOULS GAME" wore off I became physically repulsed from ever playing it again. Even thinking about playing it makes me "ugh..."

 

Not exactly what you are looking for but Fallout 3. When it came out it was the best fucking game in the world. I loved it. I spent hundreds of hours playing and beat it multiple times including the DLCs. Now I can't stand to play it. But honestly, I think it's a Bethesda Formula thing cuz I can't stand TES anymore either, but Fallout NV gives me the same feeling.

What was so bad about Dark Souls 2?  I actually liked it quite a bit.

[skillzdadirecta]

Bioshock. I loved the game at first then had to force myself to finish it. Same with the 3D Fallout games. Oh yeah, Outer Worlds too.

[best3444]

Can't really think of anything atm. It was FF16 but I just recently played and beat it and it's really good all the way through. 

[Bacon]

1 minute ago, LazyPiranha said:

What was so bad about Dark Souls 2?  I actually liked it quite a bit.

I don't like how controlling your character feels. It is distinctly different from literally all of their other soulsbornesekiroring games. It just feels bad. I don't like. I hate it. It also translated into how your weapons swing. I hate how melee weapons feel. It's the only Souls game where I used magic. I have never used magic in the rest of the soulsbornesekiroring games. I also dislike the graphics and art style. It is generic-looking. I didn't care for its humanity system. I don't care for the bosses of the base game, never played the DLC. I hated the level design. Dark Souls 1 was master class, and DS2 dropped the ball hard. I'm sure there is more, but I just hate DS2. Oh, and it was the first souls game to change PvP to be honor-focused and have a strong host advantage. It took away being the dangerous invader. Most PvP happened because two people queued up for it in an arena and that is lame.

[Paperclyp]

This is a great topic idea. 
 

Sadly I think BOTW and TOTK have a little bit of this effect on me. I’m trying to wipe up a bunch of stuff late ish game TOTK and it’s a bit of a slog. I should probably just finish it and be done with it. 
 

Persona 5 was (is?) like this for me too. 

[Kal-El814]

Bioshock and motherfucking Heavy Rain.

[best3444]

Persona 5 is a good one for me. 

[crispy4000]

Looking back at the games that I've beaten, I think Beyond Good & Evil is a great example.  The first dungeon is a competent Zelda clone in its own right.  But then the game insists its a stealth game, but wait, its now a mini-game collection.  By the end, you're at the final boss and trying to remember what basic combat feels like.

 

For those I haven't, Baba is You and The Witness.  They're so clever, until they're too clever, then esoteric to the point of being actively not fun.

[crispy4000]

3 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

Sadly I think BOTW and TOTK have a little bit of this effect on me. I’m trying to wipe up a bunch of stuff late ish game TOTK and it’s a bit of a slog. I should probably just finish it and be done with it.

 

I can see it.  But for me, it was mainly with fighting guardians over and over in BoTW, and ToTK's:

 

Spoiler

underworld being so one note, with so little to find outside of farming materials and picking up worthless cosmetics.

 

But most of the exploration, puzzles, systems, etc in those games kept me engaged, even if repetitive once you became familiar with the template.

[Ghost_MH]

10 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

For those I haven't, Baba is You and The Witness.  They're so clever, until they're too clever, then esoteric to the point of being actively not fun.

 

I absolutely adore Baba is You, but I'm apparently too dumb for this game because halfway through it just lost me. Once I find myself staring at a single screen of puzzle for like an hour straight, no closer to solving it, I just had to move on. I still wholly recommend everyone give the same a shot. It's one of the most unique, fun, and clever logic/puzzle games ever made. Like you said, just, maybe, a little too clever after a while.

[TheLeon]

31 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

I absolutely adore Baba is You, but I'm apparently too dumb for this game because halfway through it just lost me. Once I find myself staring at a single screen of puzzle for like an hour straight, no closer to solving it, I just had to move on. I still wholly recommend everyone give the same a shot. It's one of the most unique, fun, and clever logic/puzzle games ever made. Like you said, just, maybe, a little clever after a while.

Usually with a puzzle game, if I get stuck, I’ll put it down for a day or two and try to come back with a fresh perspective. That didn’t help much with Baba is You. I kept coming back to the same 3-4 puzzles I was stuck on every day during my lunch break, and I never made any progress. It made me feel insane after a while. I wasn’t even that far in, I think this was the third zone. 

[gamer.tv]

Donkey Kong 64 - it was a mega start but the need to excessively collect to progress made it harder to enjoy. 

[ShreddieMercury]

This is how I feel about the majority of modern AAA games.  It's hard not to be blinded by the production values and visuals of some of these titles, and initially I have a great time.  But it's not long before I start to see the cracks and realize that the production values are coming at the expense of interesting and fun game design.  Lots of Sony stuff falls into this category for me.  Alan Wake II is a more recent example - I do still think it's a great experience, but the way it's designed makes me unlikely to ever revisit it like I do Remedy's other games.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I have a bad habit with most games I get where I start off very excited and then just kind of stop playing well before the ending. Maybe it is burnout maybe it’s just a mechanic in the game that isn’t feeling as fun as I’d hoped. Sometimes it is where I just kind of get fed up with so many things that just feel lacking. The bar for which can vary by game for a number of a reasons. 
 

I fairly recently stopped playing Palworld because of the grind and nothing really new to explore. So I’m not really soured on it so long  as more content comes out later. Otherwise I may never go back. 
 

The most recent example of a game that really soured on me though was Starfield. The more I played the more it felt like a game where artists were held back, and due to poor leadership the final product felt hastily thrown together. 
 

Before that probably Diablo IV. I at least beat this game, But the open world nature of the areas felt so much less creative and interesting just so they could be interconnected. And maybe the game was always going to be laid out this way, but I can’t help but feel that it and so many other decisions made in the making of the game was for the express purpose of it being easier to have a boring, monotonous, half as interesting live service game. Including the post release patching to make the game even more grindy. The arrogant assholes that making these decisions at Blizzard weren’t even the ones in the emergency podcast apologizing.  

 

[Biggie]

Dragon's Dogma 2. Piece of shit game

[Dre801]

The Outer Worlds.  Loved it initially, then just wanted to wrap it up; this is why I'm not hyped for the sequel.

 

Hellblade.  Meh, other than the fabulous use of audio and atmosphere, it was a short walking simulator with shallow combat that I didn't enjoy all that much, again, I'm not hyped for the long awaited second game.