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So, i normally play a game and beat it, even if I hate it out of pure spite and not liking to get beaten.(Im looking at you Darksiders 2)
But recently, some games I give up on.
Recently I gave up on "Crown of the Ivory King" for Dark Souls 2 out of dislike of the final boss and his mechanics.
And Alien Isolation. Its nearing the end and the alien was fething everywhere, dropped down from EVERY hole, climbed into vent(It even got into a vent I was about to climb into and jumped out) I said "Im done"because i feel helpless and while I know I like the sneaking, the alien feels like it has every cheat on.
Maybe its more I have less time for gaming now, so I feel like frustration is not worth it.
So Dakka.
What was the game you gave up on.

Dark Souls 3. Not because of the difficulty or anything, I just found it empty, lonely and pretty darn weird.
Got about 45 minutes in and uninstalled it.

Honourable mentions tot he STALKER series (which I wanted to really like) but just couldnt.
Again about 45 mins and poof

I played Oblivion until the end game, and Quit. I built my own "Paladin" class at the start, and it turned out to be the most boring play style. I got to the end and was just so sick of grinding through bad guys that I stopped playing. Didn't care about finishing the game.

An old rogue-like game, ADOM keeps defeating me, but every few years I go back to it and try again.

PS: The game has a "graphics" option now!

I used to play online shooters competitively - but the one that finally made me quit first person shooters was Counter Strike: Global Offensive.
I had a great inventory, game was solid on a great rig I had - but spoilt by the players and mechanics.

Mechanics that annoyed me:
- certain pistols being able to 1 shot you at close range with a headshot even if wearing full armour
- a certain sniper being able to kill more or less in 1 shot to the body. Made worse that it invalidated a lot of guns. The kicker? Valve admitted adding it to the original CS was a mistake, and couldn't remove it due to the community.
- Bunny hopping. Stupid and in y eyes an abuse of game mechanics. Being 60% quicker than anyone else by hopping? feth that.

These could be OK by themselves. But the community is pure cancer. Stopped any friend requests unless I gave them due to scammer trying to steal my weapon skins or people wanting to trade EVEN THOUGH I PUT INVENTORY NOT FOR SALE ON MY PROFILE. Hackers being a big problem and good players on alt accounts literally blasting on newer, under skilled players, essentially blocking them from ranking. Play unranked if you want fun you gakkers.

All in all, got my rank after 10 games, decided I can't be dealing with this gak, so I sold my stuff, uninstall the game, and went to play DayZ, which was excellent (if a little rough)

X-com 2. Partly the timers, partly the feel of the already conquered setting, but it just did nothing to grab me. Too much random generation and 'but they're going to blow up <random thing> for no apparent reason if we don't stand next to it in an unspecified amount of time that amounts for a handful of turns'.

Not exactly pulling me in on the strength of the narrative.

I do my best to see single player games through to the end. I will try almost any game to see if I like it in the first few levels or hours. I walk away from a lot of them, because I don't find them fun or its just not my style of game. I don't really think I have given up on those games. Just never really started playing fully.

However, there are games I have played a lot of and just suddenly dropped because of one reason or another.

The Division - I was so excited about this game. My friends were all excited about it. We were on there on the day of release, making out agents and finding each other. Blasting through the campaign(which I thought was fun) and landing in end game pretty quick. That is when things went south, real fast. If I play a game where I have to gear myself up and fight enemies, I should never be one shot by trash mobs. Shotguns in the end game? Useless for players. Shotguns for NPCs? This is my boomstick! Nothing like getting charged by a guy, each squadmate emptying entire clips/magazines/whatever in to the guy and barely putting a dent in him. The game had great potential, but it was thrown away when they refused to change mechanics like that and fix game breaking bugs. Like duping.

Player Unknowns Battlegrounds - Great game, tons of fun still. My friends take it way too seriously and rage quite a bit. Ruined the whole experience for me.

I couldn't get on with Fallout: New Vegas at all. I came to it after Fallout 4 and it was just such a step down in mechanics (the shooting especially, clunky in the extreme) and graphics that the quality of the writing wasn't enough to carry it. After about 3-4 hours of walking through a world that is 90% brown things with the odd grey thing, and not managing to hit anything more than about 5 feet away, I ditched it.

Elder Scrolls Online also suffered from the same thing; being a much worse version of a much better game (obviously Skyrim, in this case). All the open-ended exploration and quests I expect from Bethesda replaced with endless rinse-and-repeat quests where you have to complete the same set of objectives 3 times and progression slowed to a snail's pace by comparison to Skyrim. And again, worse graphics and worse combat sealed it's fate.

I think of New Vegas as one of the most overhyped games of all time. There are barely any characters to interact with, and the 'story' is basically follow the pointless plot until it pushes you toward the horrible bullet sponge boss fight of no meaning or purpose. Obsidian is just terrible at Act 3 and endings in general.

To me it is isn't better than FO3, just more of the exact same. Except with extra nostalgia glasses for FO1.

The only game that comes close to its overhyped reputation among its fans is the horrible Vampire game by Troika. It teases you as an RPG with decisions and hints at consequences, but quickly mutates to a very basic and really bad shooter with horrible mechanics, lots of boss fights and an endless string of murder-porn.

I admit, not many games have broken me. Not that I'm an amazing gamer (I'm really quite bad), it's just a thing I have about spending money on games and not getting it back in play time.

But, that being said:

Vanquish - Great idea for a game. Great graphics, combat, hell - even the voice acting was good. The story...I dunno, it's been awhile but I feel like I couldn't understand what was going on (a theme I've noticed with some obviously imported games), which killed a lot of enthusiasm for it. Plus the difficulty was ridiculous - the game punished you for every misstep.

The Dark Souls series - Yeah, I know, I'm a pleb or something. But I tell you, I hate this series with a passion, not because of the fanbase being toxic as hell (played enough mmo's to be immune to that), but because of the design philosophy. Make a beautiful game, insert well done characters (Onion Bro, *sniffle*), create an entire world...and then make it buggy and impossible to navigate. I don't get why the whole 'it's painfully difficult and that's why its fun, remember how hard those NES games were? PAIN IS FUN' thing that accompanies the series. Depressingly I've purchased DS1-DS3 and their DLC in an attempt to TRY to understand - and I regret it every time.

Battlefleet Gothic Armada - God I wanted to love this game. I was so excited when it came out...and after playing 'capture the intel' a half-dozen times I uninstalled the game. It's like whoever designed that game mode KNEW that it was stupid and wanted to make it as lame as possible. I'm surprised they didn't introduce a limit to the number of times you could board the enemy vessel in an attempt to make the whole process seem 'fluffy'.

Darksiders 2, so dull and uninteresting after the original.

Prey, all that gravity inverting made my nauseous.

But the most disappointment came from Fable 3. They really knew how to strip away the best bits of a franchise, and overemphasize and complicate the worst.

 Frankenberry wrote:

The Dark Souls series - Yeah, I know, I'm a pleb or something. But I tell you, I hate this series with a passion, not because of the fanbase being toxic as hell (played enough mmo's to be immune to that), but because of the design philosophy. Make a beautiful game, insert well done characters (Onion Bro, *sniffle*), create an entire world...and then make it buggy and impossible to navigate. I don't get why the whole 'it's painfully difficult and that's why its fun, remember how hard those NES games were? PAIN IS FUN' thing that accompanies the series. Depressingly I've purchased DS1-DS3 and their DLC in an attempt to TRY to understand - and I regret it every time.

To be honest, I consider Dark Souls to be an example of genuinely poor game design. There's making a game hard, then there's filling a game with cheap shots badly tutorialising the core mechanics and providing the player with no guidance whatsoever. It's just lazy passed off as challenging. To be fair, it is challenging, but not because of good AI or clever level design or interesting mechanics, just because it sends you out with no idea what to do, then punishes you to an extreme degree every time you screw up. I also find the whole 'do the same bit over and over until you're better at it' stuff to just be boring, it becomes more of a grind than an MMO at that point.

Which is a terrible shame, as DS remains one of the most beautiful and aesthetically unique game series around, DS3 has some absolutely stunning visuals, just marred by what I consider to be very lazy game design on the mechanical end.

I'm quite the dark souls fan and I quite enjoy it.


Anyway this thread isn't about the pros and cons of souls.


But the one game I just can't get into is Doom. For some reason me and the new Doom just don't get on. Despite me playing and finishing the old doom, and being quite partial to fps games.

Paradigm wrote:

To be honest, I consider Dark Souls to be an example of genuinely poor game design. There's making a game hard, then there's filling a game with cheap shots badly tutorialising the core mechanics and providing the player with no guidance whatsoever. It's just lazy passed off as challenging. To be fair, it is challenging, but not because of good AI or clever level design or interesting mechanics, just because it sends you out with no idea what to do, then punishes you to an extreme degree every time you screw up. I also find the whole 'do the same bit over and over until you're better at it' stuff to just be boring, it becomes more of a grind than an MMO at that point.

Which is a terrible shame, as DS remains one of the most beautiful and aesthetically unique game series around, DS3 has some absolutely stunning visuals, just marred by what I consider to be very lazy game design on the mechanical end.

Well said! Essentially what I was trying to get out but was failing to.

welshhoppo wrote:I'm quite the dark souls fan and I quite enjoy it.


Anyway this thread isn't about the pros and cons of souls.


But the one game I just can't get into is Doom. For some reason me and the new Doom just don't get on. Despite me playing and finishing the old doom, and being quite partial to fps games.

Fair point and bummer about not being able to get into Doom 2016, I'm a massive fan of that game. Then again the whole last stand and mega violence mixed with a badass metal soundtrack meets every checkbox for a game for me, heh.

On topic:

There were a few NES games as a kid I just didn't bother with; one involved playing as this astronaut running around a planet picking up all these pieces of his star ship both in a small pod and as a dude. It was beyond frustrating. There was another game, a Rocky and Bullwinkle one (probably the only one) that was so badly done I couldn't get past level 1.

World of Tanks, because other people make me want to commit mass-murder.

The Witcher 3, because... I'm not really sure. I just have no motivation to play it. It's not a bad game, and I don't dislike it, but I see it in my library and think "maybe some other time".

Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, because I was 7 years old and the time mechanic got on my nerves.

The Witcher 3. Got 2 hours in but just didn't get hooked.

I also forgot the Witcher3.


It's a good game, but I keep putting it down for weeks at a time to play something else instead. The glitches are annoying (as a console player I don't get access to mods to fix problems) and something about it kept grinding me.


As for Doom, my biggest problem was that I found it boring.

Fallout 4 made me feel physically ill because the FOV was fixed at a stupidly low number. After an hour of what felt like shooting at things through a cardboard tube I had to stop and uninstall it.

I know there are some FOV mods about, but after spending hours trying to get the mods I wanted in place to play the game, I really didn't feel like spending any more time on it.


I've also tried to get into Skyrim 5 times since its release. Each time I've played it for about 5 hours then forgot about it. Not bashing the game mechanically but I really don't understand what all the fuss was about to this day.

I stopped playing Amnesia the Dark Descent, during the beginning of the prison level. I was all out of oil and I was hearing weird noises (new enemy introduced in that level), so I quit playing it. BRAVERY!!!

 Ashiraya wrote:
The Witcher 3. Got 2 hours in but just didn't get hooked.

I forgot about this one, mainly because I didn't try very hard. The narrative and main character are just such a road-block for me. The setting is fairly interesting (in that it tries to show how people would adapt to and deal with monsters and magic running around in the world), and I'd be OK with a make-your-own witcher or sorceress and just exploring.
But I don't care about Geralt, his harem or the bajillions of sidequests that distract from the supposedly important main quest.

I ran into similar problems with The Witcher 3 the first time I tried playing it, ended up dropping it after a few days as Geralt is just the most boring protagonist ever (his only redeeming feature the odd snarky one-liner) but picking it up again recently I got on a lot better.

Maybe that's just because I understood the mechanics, or knew what to expect from the plot and characters a little more, but I think a big part of it is that I actually went out and explored, systematically crossing off location and side-quest markers instead of just pinging from one main quest to another. The game world is so beautifully put together that you can't help but enjoy just exploring it, and doing that meant I was able to stay on top of the power curve and not run into impossible fights in the main quest.

I agree though that a game built on the same framework with similar combat, mechanics, scale and world design but where you had proper character creation and could pick actual classes ect would be amazing. I actually found the segments of the main quest where you play as Ciri a lot more interesting, at least she has a personality!

I have to disagree with everyone saying something bad about Dark Souls, because apart from a few exceptions, it's the game series that treats the player more fairly than everything else. If you die, it's your fault every time. The tutorials suck though, totally agree here. If you managed to get into it, it's not really that hard either.

My list:
- Witcher 3. I just can't keep on playing it. I pause for days, weeks even. But I want to get into it. Witcher 1 was okay, loved Witcher 2. I don't know if the build up is too slow or it's the open world, it's really... I don't know.

- Skyrim: every time I start playing it, I mod the hell out of it first, but after 10/20/30/... hours, I lose interest. The quests are shallow, fights are not challenging.

Can't think of anything else right now, because while I give up on a lot of games initially, I mostly come back around to them and finish them, even years later.

The Walking Dead season 2 from Telltale Games. I quit halfway through as I got tired of the characters constantly picking up the idiot ball and making things worse and worse for their selves.


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After going through my list of Steam games..

RAGE. Which I dropped after I got to the point that the faction allied to the player called THE RESISTANCE decided to make a stand against the big bad of the game, THE AUTHORITY. Ugh.

2064: ROM, which was already an okay adventure game, but trying too hard with some things. Then they patched in really dodgy voice lines (with some "actors" using really gakky mics) and well, not going to finish it ever.

Shadwen, which has a neat mechanic, but seems to go the same route as Dishonoured, where the assassin will be punished for DOING HER fething JOB. "Oh no assassin, what you do is bad and wrong. You are badong."

Game? Singular?

These days I give up on more games than I finish. My Steam list in a veritable graveyard of unfinished games.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood - enjoy the series but just stopped half way through this one.

Batman Games - Got through Arkham City but got bored with the others.

Bioshock - Excellent story wrapped in a terrible game. Got about a third the way through.

Borderlands 2 - Enjoyed the first and went straight on to the 2nd but got sick of it a few hours in.

Dead Rising 2 - Only played a few hours.

Dead Space - Was loving this game but it gave me motion sickness.

Fallout New Vegas - Bethesda games usually just get boring after a while, NV got boring before I finished it.

Far Cry 3 - Only played a few hours.

Half Life 2 - Probably going to get crucified, but only played a few hours. I probably came in to it to late, after it'd been so tremendously hyped up and I just couldn't get in to it.

Hard Reset - Only played a few hours.

Just Cause 2 - Played 7 hours before getting sick of it.

Metro2033 - Only played a few hours.

Shadow of Morder - Only played for about 2 hours.

Space Hulk Deathwing - Was actually enjoying it, went away on holiday, came back and couldn't get back in to it.

Star Wars KOTR2 - Probably started playing it too recently. Enjoyed the first but don't feel the 2nd one aged well enough for me to get in to it.

Star Wars Republic Commando - Only played a few hours.

Tomb Raider (recent one) - Only played a few hours.

That's not including a bunch of games I've played for under an hour before throwing in the towel

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Game? Singular?

These days I give up on more games than I finish. My Steam list in a veritable graveyard of unfinished games.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood - enjoy the series but just stopped half way through this one.

Borderlands 2 - Enjoyed the first and went straight on to the 2nd but got sick of it a few hours in.

Far Cry 3 - Only played a few hours.

Half Life 2 - Probably going to get crucified, but only played a few hours. I probably came in to it to late, after it'd been so tremendously hyped up and I just couldn't get in to it.

Hard Reset - Only played a few hours.

Just Cause 2 - Played 7 hours before getting sick of it.

Tomb Raider (recent one) - Only played a few hours.

That's not including a bunch of games I've played for under an hour before throwing in the towel

Been in the same situation lots of times, now that I think about it.
1) Anyways, Brotherhood I had quit playing at first, because I got somewhat bored of the tower burning and similar missions here and there, but I came back to finish it at a later time and I even got the Romulus armor, which was pretty cool.
2) Started playing Borderlands 2, but I couldn't get into it.
3) Far Cry 3 was pretty fun in my opinion and I loved Vaas as a character. Plus the ending felt great with the relaxed music playing on the background as the credits rolled. I would also recommend Blood Dragon, because it had that cool futuristic 80s style and crazy laser weapons coupled with cyborg soldiers and mechanical dinosaurs (nuff said)!
4) Half Life 2: Whether you believe it or not, the first time I played it I got scared and nervous by the Combine chase at the beginning, so I quit, but then I did a Half Life marathon and I beat every game in the series, excluding the first game expansions and I enjoyed them all.
5) Finished Hard Reset, but it became tedious very fast, since it just locked you in a room with annoying enemies, you died a couple of times before killing them, then you move some steps ahead and well, what do you know? ANOTHER ARENA FIGHT AGAIN!!! (it is the first time that I wasn't happy with free DLC, called Exile here, because I couldn't take more of that tedious gameplay)
6) Just Cause 2: It is fun for some time with the explosions, but having to fill the destruction meter, in order to progress the campaign was bs. And the gameplay is very samey.
7) Finished Tomb Raider and it was quite a nice game.

Now for some more games that I haven't finished yet (they just came to my mind):
1) Tomb Raider series (Tomb Raider 2, Chronicles, Legend, Underworld, iirc), because I found them really boring and the mood in the game was inducing boredom to me (I don't know why, but I didn't like those games much). And the first Tomb Raiders were god awful in terms of looks (I usually don't care about graphics, but having puke brown and puke green low poly models and textures everywhere is not nice).
2) Hitman Contracts: I wanted to like it, like with Blood Money, which I finished, but got stuck at the 2nd-3rd level and it wasn't fun searching for a route (it was hard for me).
3) Outlast: Was playing it with my friends, in my friend's computer and I got to the crazy doctor, but I couldn't find the elevator key, so I quit.
4) Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City: Got it for 5 euros, but it was awful in gameplay, story and generally every aspect of it. BEWARE DAKKA MEMBERS, STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME!!! THAT'S AN ORDER!!! YOU WILL REGRET BUYING IT, EVEN IF YOU GOT IT FOR FREE!!!
5) Wolfenstein 2009: I was going pretty well, but I got bored of it, at a point where enemies started becoming supernatural and very bullet spongey.
6) Fuel: Fun racer with nice physics and huge world, but I never liked racing games much, so I stopped playing it after doing 25-50%.

Also to all the people saying Witcher 3, Witcher 3 is basically the game that got me back in to gaming in recent years. It's one of the few single player games I've finished in the past 5 years and the only single player game I've spent more than 20 hours in ages.

Admittedly it does start a bit slow, I was probably ready to throw in the towel after an hour or two, but once I got out of White Orchad the game just opened up and sucked me in hook line and sinker. Including the expansions according to Steam I've played it for ~170 hours, which is way more than any single player game I've ever played (Skyrim probably comes in 2nd at 65 hours). The expansions; Blood and Wine is an incredibly rich expansion and could easily be a game in its own right, Hearts of Stone isn't as expansive but it's one of the best video game stories I've played through in recent memory.

Geralt does come across as a bit of a boring character on the outside, but the more you play him the more you figure out he's just unemotional on the outside but deeper once you get under the surface of him. I think the Witcher games would be far less interesting if they were a make-you-own character game. Skyrim for example is a very shallow feeling game after playing The Witcher 3.


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 KRIEGEEEEER wrote:
5) Wolfenstein 2009: I was going pretty well, but I got bored of it, at a point where enemies started becoming supernatural and very bullet spongey.

I always found Wolfenstein games fun right up until the supernatural bits then I'm just rushing to get them finished.

6) Fuel: Fun racer with nice physics and huge world, but I never liked racing games much, so I stopped playing it after doing 25-50%.

I actually skipped racing games on my list, I like racing sims, have a G25 steering wheel that I bought back in college. As such there's a bunch of racing games that I have played for a few hours, lol. Haven't pulled the wheel out in years though.

There are very few games I've truly "given up" on. Outlast was one of them. I wanted to play it, really did, but I just can't do the jumpscare style of horror game.
There are, however, a lot of games I've just lost interest in after playing awhile, but I think that's normal for everyone.
I worry Subnautica will be a game I give up on. I really love that game, but I haven't really progressed very far (story-wise), as it scares the heebie-jeebies out of me every time I even just look at the deep, dark areas, let alone actually go into them.

I downloaded Dark Souls 3 the other day, really thought I would like it but I just couldn't get into it. I love how Steam gives you refunds for games you hate. got Battlefield 1 instead, and loving the campaign so far.

Divinity - Original Sin. Just started over the weekend, I gave up on it about 4 times yesterday, after trying to complete just the most basic of missions beyond Cyseal town, and getting annihilated by absolutely everything.

I expect to give up on it again at least twice tonight, with my personal cooldown timer running between attempts.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KRIEGEEEEER wrote:
5) Wolfenstein 2009: I was going pretty well, but I got bored of it, at a point where enemies started becoming supernatural and very bullet spongey.

I always found Wolfenstein games fun right up until the supernatural bits then I'm just rushing to get them finished.

6) Fuel: Fun racer with nice physics and huge world, but I never liked racing games much, so I stopped playing it after doing 25-50%.

I actually skipped racing games on my list, I like racing sims, have a G25 steering wheel that I bought back in college. As such there's a bunch of racing games that I have played for a few hours, lol. Haven't pulled the wheel out in years though.

Well, I haven't played much of the Wolfenstein games. I was always more of a classic Doom fan, though I want to play Wolfenstein 3d sometime and I also got Return to Castle Wolfenstein on a Steam sale.

And are steering wheels easy to use on games? I know racing games become more interactive this way, but I have never tried one out, except in some arcade games.
Also, now I remembered the reason why I shouldn't have mentioned a racing game. I used to play Grand Turismo 4 and despite liking the game very much, I played so randomly that I got only at 25%. Vs battles with friends in that game were awesome though!

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Also to all the people saying Witcher 3, Witcher 3 is basically the game that got me back in to gaming in recent years. It's one of the few single player games I've finished in the past 5 years and the only single player game I've spent more than 20 hours in ages.

Admittedly it does start a bit slow, I was probably ready to throw in the towel after an hour or two, but once I got out of White Orchad the game just opened up and sucked me in hook line and sinker. Including the expansions according to Steam I've played it for ~170 hours, which is way more than any single player game I've ever played (Skyrim probably comes in 2nd at 65 hours). The expansions; Blood and Wine is an incredibly rich expansion and could easily be a game in its own right, Hearts of Stone isn't as expansive but it's one of the best video game stories I've played through in recent memory.

Geralt does come across as a bit of a boring character on the outside, but the more you play him the more you figure out he's just unemotional on the outside but deeper once you get under the surface of him. I think the Witcher games would be far less interesting if they were a make-you-own character game. Skyrim for example is a very shallow feeling game after playing The Witcher 3.

It isn't at all that he's unemotional, it's that he's emotional about the wrong (or random) things, and doesn't express it in a relatable way. He's got too many obsessions and too much baggage, all of which are inadequately explained and suddenly pulled out at the drop of a hat.
For me personally, the problem is the game is designed to provoke reactions out of Geralt, who has a very limited set of responses. But it prioritizes Geralt over the player- its a personal story about people I don't know, don't care about, and as it goes on, don't actually like as people. Which is a huge turnoff.


Skyrim is shallow, but it isn't because of the custom character. It's shallow because it's an exploration game, and the RPG and story elements are paper thin. Both the dragon thing and the civil war thing are a couple dozen lines of dialogue and there isn't much to interact with.