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 loota boy wrote:

 The Foot wrote:
Also if the programers can't program in AI that can't find its way out of a paper bag with out incredible amounts of cheating (Civilization 5) then I get bored there too.

off topic: What does the AI do in Civ 5? Because it does pretty well in civ 4, besides having no clue how to put armies in ships.

on topic: Games with a really crazy-cool story that i can't partake in or add to in any way. If there's a big cool plot, i want to make my own decisions that further it. I don't like playing games where i feel like an observer, or where i feel like what i do doesn't make a difference to the ending.

Pretty much what dementedwombat said. The game never gets better at playing, it just gets awesome bonuses and gives you more penalties. At a certain point I totally understand that the human mind will be better with strategy. If you make a difficulty that is called unfair and the game cheats constantly then I'm not angered because I'm playing unfair difficulty. Civ 5 has the problem of allowing the computer to full on cheat at difficulty 3 of 10. That is just silly.

Oh yes, you just reminded me of another one. A game with an unnecessary number of difficulty levels

I'd roll with "normal", "hard" and a special "extra hard" for people who beat the game. Good enough for me.

 The Foot wrote:

 loota boy wrote:

 The Foot wrote:
Also if the programers can't program in AI that can't find its way out of a paper bag with out incredible amounts of cheating (Civilization 5) then I get bored there too.

off topic: What does the AI do in Civ 5? Because it does pretty well in civ 4, besides having no clue how to put armies in ships.

on topic: Games with a really crazy-cool story that i can't partake in or add to in any way. If there's a big cool plot, i want to make my own decisions that further it. I don't like playing games where i feel like an observer, or where i feel like what i do doesn't make a difference to the ending.

Pretty much what dementedwombat said. The game never gets better at playing, it just gets awesome bonuses and gives you more penalties. At a certain point I totally understand that the human mind will be better with strategy. If you make a difficulty that is called unfair and the game cheats constantly then I'm not angered because I'm playing unfair difficulty. Civ 5 has the problem of allowing the computer to full on cheat at difficulty 3 of 10. That is just silly.

It loves to become your best friend and then declare war on you within two turns for no apparent reason. And I always seem to end up next to the most powerful nations...

For me things that make me put down a game are poor voice acting/poor writing, lack of story and length. The latter especially is a problem for me because I love RPGs, especially JRPGs, but with stories that can go for 40+ hours it's difficult to go away and come back and remember what was going on, unlike Western RPGs where you can just check the quest log to see which individual quest you need to do. I must have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the first half of most Final Fantasies and a passing knowledge of the second half.

Games where there are 'one best way' strategies.

It's why I hate the Supreme Commander franchise so much, it's bascially 'first to experimental tech wins the game'.

In other RTSs with super-units, you can still win with your low-tech stuff, it just requires a bit of finesse, but any game that has game balance where 'do x, then y, then z = WIN' is no-go for me.

Plus anything with lots of grinding, I don't think I've ever played a JRPG (and I'm including Pokemon in this) for longer than 3 hours total because there is always a point where you have to stop and do hours upon hours of endless easy combats just to be at a sufficient level to progress the story.

 Leigen_Zero wrote:
It's why I hate the Supreme Commander franchise so much, it's bascially 'first to experimental tech wins the game'.

Run for your life while you still can! (Not from me, but there are people that will kill for talking about SC like that )

I've been playing Skyrim and just got to the end of the "The Forsworn Conspiracy" quest. The good news is that

 Macok wrote:

 Leigen_Zero wrote:
It's why I hate the Supreme Commander franchise so much, it's bascially 'first to experimental tech wins the game'.

Run for your life while you still can! (Not from me, but there are people that will kill for talking about SC like that )

I'll be fine, by the time they have waited ~20 real-world minutes that is takes for them to finish building their best experimental robot I'll be long gone.

Games that rely on one style of play for far too long, it just get's boring to me. A game that did it right was earthworm jim for genesis. You walk around in a suit, walk around without the suit, pilot a submarine, bungie jump while smashing some sort of snot creature into a wall while trying to avoid this monster lurking in a ponder at the bottom of the level (best part of the entire game. I would quite literally start the game up if only for the brief amount of time you get to do it), helicopter float down a tunnel of thorns, etc. etc.

Games that do it wrong are like halo. Throughout the whole game, you're just running, and shooting. I really don't feel like getting in a vehicle and moving faster while shooting is different enough to mean anything.

Piss poor scripting...like making enemies randomly pop out from somewhere just for the sake of being difficult. And reaching a certain zone that voila! Enemies disappear and are reset in the new zone. Endless respawn of enemies from nonsensical spawn points. And this is why I've never touched a Call of Doodie since the first Modern Warfare....

Bloat/Padding. I lose interest very quickly when a game is building towards a nice conclusion, and suddenly lurches off in to some whole other thing just to drag out the playing experience for another hour or two before the end of the game. The last time I put up with this was in Baldur's Gate II, where the story was moving along to an interesting conclusion, and then they just announced my boat sunk, I was in an underground kingdom and had to fight my way through an hour or so of shark dudes before the story would continue. I hacked through that and continued to the end of the game, but in hindsight I'd lost interest and was just doing it in order to finish the game. Since then

Now, I don't mean a game has to be all story all the time, I love side quests and just screwing around. But there's a flow to these things - let me explore the world and screw around and see how detailed and imaginative this place is, and then in the end when the story has kicked in to the last act and we've just revealed who the major villain is and what his plan to blow up the world consists of, let that play out.



The other thing I can't stand in games is chores. Running back to the store to sell gak I looted off of people. Actually having to walk from one store to another to find out who's got an item I need. Figuring out where the person I have to talk to to finish a quest is. Grinding through boring fights that just eat up time and aren't challenging or fun. Just let me spend my time in the game doing the fun stuff, dammit, and resolve all that stuff with easy accessed screens, or maybe even really think about whether there's actually any fun at all to be found in clicking on a corpse, taking stuff, running or portalling back to town to sell it, before returning to that same spot to carry on the game.

Multiplayer only. Soon as I see this, the box goes right back on the shelf.

Me and my friends started world of warcraft when it just came out. We played through level 80. 1 of my friends was grand marshal on a major server, for those of you who know what that was. We raided constantly and had every piece of tier gear as it came out, and were always one of the "top" guilds. Basically i lost my life to that game, and had to repeat many college courses because of it. So i've pretty much sworn off games since then, thats why i've joined this hobby. Which i can put down at any time and doesn't interfere with my family life.

I know of several midterms I failed thanks to Master of Orion 2, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and Advance Wars 2...

Generally I'll complete the games I buy...even if they're frustrating. But there are a few I've flipped the bird to.

Dantes Inferno - Probably the most frustrating action game I've ever played...next to the original Prototype. The controls and insane mini-game requirements were infuriating.

Tomb Raider - The newest incarnation was very well done, great graphics, overall gameplay, story, etc. For some reason, every time I played it, I wanted to punch someone in the face.

Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty - On Insane, or whatever the hardest difficulty setting was. Jesus, skate-boarding off a cliff and transforming into a pterodactyl, CHRIST. This game made me rage beyond belief.


Edit 1, because I didn't bother to actually answer the OP's question: So I guess overall the things that make me put down a game would be the difficulty level boarding on asian-skill level required or stupidly designed requirements to move on to the next portion of the story.


Edit 2: Metal Fatigue. LOVED this game growing up. AI cheated like a dirty whore. Instant building construction, unlimited resources...games that were supposed to take an hour took whole days because of this.

That's wierd, I played Metal Fatigue a ton back in the day, and I don't remember the AI cheating...as far as I could tell, that is!

@ Gearhead: I was reading a PC Gamer one day that reviewed the game and they went on at length about how they watched the AI build instantly and at the same time never have any resources to actually build anything.

Checked it out myself...I think there's a no Fog of War cheat or something thereabouts I used. Sure enough instant buildings even after I'd smashed their resource gathering. Weird.

On a side note, AWESOME! Someone else who's played that game. Thought I was the only one.

Oh god do I have some complaints in this department >.>

First up is a focus on multiplayer. Yes I get it, some people like playing games together, I don't. If I'm playing a game i'm likely in it for the escapism or story, not to listen to 12 year olds screaming about how they did X with my relative Y. If the game has a focus on multiplayer and lets the single player down, I likely won't touch it.

The game not turning out to be what the developers originally claimed for whatever reason. Take Alien:CM as a fairly obvious example, or Dead Island. Oh god did I want to like dead island, before it actually came out there was talk about how it'd be the Elder Scrolls of zombie games. What we got was Borderlands with zombies, and well...see above partially. Borderlands (and dead island) are multiplayer games that I happen to be able to play alone on.

Needless screwing up sequals/padding the game with fake difficulties. Ok, this ones a little more specific. I was excited as all hell when 3rd Birthday got announced, I freakin love Parasite Eve. Got my hands on the game and...whoo, a fairly generic 3rd person shooter that I beat in what, 2 hours? Just to find the only extra crap there was to beat it on like 7 different difficulties....whoopey...

 Fafnir wrote:
Quicktime events.
[snip]
"PRESS X TO NOT GET RAPED!"

I hate quicktime events.

But even more than that, I hate tasteless, stupid, immature storytelling. That example was just one extreme. On the other extreme though, are those annoying JRPGs that make you start as a kid in high school, a problem that is common in anime, too. Japanese entertainment seems to have a fetish about high school at times...

Or worse, games that make me want to sympathize with those kinds of characters. Like, say... FFXIII. Hope.... I just wanted to strangle him and toss his corpse in to a ravine.

Well lets face it, there are just some things we should avoid about Japanese story telling in general. Things such as schools, fighting tournaments(they are usually just crappy filler) and singing. I haven't played FFXIII so I can't personally comment on it but my friend said the game doesn't "start" until about 20 hours in. That is ridiculous.

 The Foot wrote:
Well lets face it, there are just some things we should avoid about Japanese story telling in general. Things such as schools, fighting tournaments(they are usually just crappy filler) and singing. I haven't played FFXIII so I can't personally comment on it but my friend said the game doesn't "start" until about 20 hours in. That is ridiculous.

Ah yes, I have too jokingly said to several people "The tutorial lasts for 20 hours" Until that point, your party is constantly "Plot-divided". You have access to character X,Y and Z until a certain point, than you switch to A,B and maybe C and after 20 hours, the whole party is reunited.

I really do understand why there's so much hate for FF XIII . For me, my biggest hate was Snow and Vanille. Oh Snow, how I wanted to murder you. Vanille, how I wanted to strangle you until you finally shut up. Lightning, Fang and Sazh saved that game for me.

Which brings me to another point: Far too obnoxious and annoying main characters.

My computer, really. Everything about it is not designed for gaming at all. The Witcher 2 dropped to about 2 frames a second, and then I just dropped it.

Also, I don't like it when things change in established franchises. I couldn't get into Empire Total War because they changed the way you built buildings. Everything else was fine.

I tried playing tekken vs street fighter - I realised I had more luck with the game when I just started mashing all the buttons at once.

I turned my back to the screen and mashed all the buttons.
I won.
I sold it the next day.
Any game where what I do appears to be entirely random/irrelevant annoys the crap out of me.

PS:For the record, I've loved fighting games since Street Fighter 2 on the snes and have played pretty much all of the versions of every major franchise. But SF has been dead to me since alpha 3.

Instant death mechanics on parts of the game with huge gaps between save points or during lengthy boss battles.

It sucks when you just spent 10 minutes dodging all sorts of shenanigans and the boss is at 0.000001% life when you get caught and instantly die.

On the original crysis the end battle is basically you vs this flying ship that is invulnerable 80% of the time. There are also a bunch of flying aliens shooting at you. The alien ship then has a frost beam that freezes you for 10 seconds. 1 hit from anything while frozen (including the 10 flying aliens) will cause you to shatter and instantly die..... facepalm.

I hate looking for stuff.

I couldn't get too into Borderlands because there were too many junk piles to explore.

I always don't like needing to speak with people in the town to trigger an event. Especially when it's not obvious who that person is or where they are.

I really liked Assassin's Creed until I woke up in a lab and they wanted me to look around it. I never got past that point. I just turned it off.

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
Also, I don't like it when things change in established franchises.

Funny.

I hate it when things stagnate in established franchises. See: most Blizzard games.

A game remaining relatively unchanged and samey over three or more sequels is dull.

 Melissia wrote:

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:
Also, I don't like it when things change in established franchises.

Funny.

I hate it when things stagnate in established franchises. See: most Blizzard games.

A game remaining relatively unchanged and samey over three or more sequels is dull.

Funny enough when they changed the formula too much, they broke it :(

Since when has Blizzard EVER had a radical formula change?

(hint: the answer is never)

Only examples I can think of are the world-wide shakeup that Deathwing gave Azeroth in WoW (no, not that Deathwing!) and the RMT house in Diablo 3. I know the latter drew heavy criticism from the playerbase, but couldn't comment on the former.

I do know that the Warcraft series didn't change too much from its own formula, but that was more a case of putting out extremely finely crafted examples of a genre that was at the time still quite fresh and as such seemed experimental anyway. It's only in the light of all the clones since that Warcraft looks stagnant over its 3 entries.

Despite being a massive Splinter Cell fan I can't find the motivation to play Blacklist...

Not sure why, but it isn't compelling me. It just doesn't feel right. I loved the last game, so i'm not sure what it is.

1) Bad Stories
Bad story has never made me stop playing as long as the gameplay can still be fun and entertaining. How ever I picked up a second hand copy for Final Fantasy 13-2 for R100; and almost had a fatal heart attack from being to board. Even after I read through the summary of FF 13 I felt this way.

2) horrible online Clients.
While I love the steam networks on PC; and Xbox live on my xbox I hate a bad online client that I HAVE to sign up for. The only reason I have origin is because my friends all used to play Battlefield 3, now all they play is Dota 2. Its Clients like Uplay made me not buy a PC copy of Far Cry 3 but rather wait till one of my other, (sane) friends bought it on Xbox where having Uplay just means I can play online.

3) Multiplayer Only Gameplay
I understand that many games are focused on their multiplayer sections but still have something that I can enjoy by myself or offline when my South African 2mg line cuts out. If the multiplayer is fun and not repetitive then I might let it slide but its games like Dota 2 that I can see the appeal in it that some people, (everyone of friends) have in it but don't have fun playing it. However all I see when watching my friends watch replays is 5 players running up and down 3 lanes, destroying towers, invade a base, crush base - repeat.