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Most games I play these days. Not that I really "give up" on them, I just never get around to finishing them

The only game I really gave up on is StarCraft.

I was playing Marines but not really feeling the love because they moved slow. I decided to stick with it and see what things were like in the end game. Well, it came time to finally build my big ship and send it to destroy the enemy base. I gave the order to move and a Prussian looking fellow popped up in the UI and said, "Take it slow." The Marines I also sent to the enemy base ran a very convoluted and indirect route but still beat the ship there by a good five minutes. I promptly stopped, uninstalled, and sold the game to a co-worker.

Between actual good TV, model painting and the like I've found I just really don't have time for games where you just kind of wander around for hours. Generally I won't stick with a game unless its got fairly engaging gameplay that mostly exists in platformers and the stuff Platinum makes.

The only Bethesda game I haven't given up on is Fallout 3 and that one ended in the rage quitting refusal of my rad immune NPC to solve a simple rad based problem. It's kind of a shame, because there's games I LOVE but don't have the time to devote to finishing. I really love Dark Souls but in each of them there's just a point where I can't spend a full evening's worth of game time failing to find a new save point.

Cuphead.

Amazing art direction, but damn it, this game is unforgiving hard.

I don't think the jumping is quite tight enough for as difficult as the game is, but I appreciate that failure attempts only take a couple minutes despite the lack of checkpoints. It's the kind of challenge I'm likely to stick with, because the game rarely feels like its wasting my time. There are tedious bits where an awkward late fight pattern change can almost instant kill you that get really frustrating simply because you eventually learn everything leading up to them well enough to never get hit though.

I should also mention it is not my genre, but I was eager to try regardless. We tried it on normal first, but got destroyed way too many times, so we tried it on easy, but still had to work for it, only for the game to call you a mug (har har, see what you did there) and say that you needed to play it on normal to properly finish the game.

And yes, this is the sort of game that with enough time sunk into it and good memory skills, can be played without ever taking damage.

Not sure if it counts as I did complete it, but FNV's Dead Money DLC. Hell, that was a slog.
Basically, you are kidnapped and transported to this new place, minus all your gear, armour and weapons. Your armour is replaced with a crappy paper suit, your weapons with a gakky (at first, its nearly broken) rifle and your HP items, stimms, etc with a bomb collar around your neck. You are then greeted by the main antagonist throughout this DLC whom gives you the options of either helping him or literally losing your head.
Welcome to the Sierra Madere people.
The DLC is bad for several reasons:
-Firstly, the bomb collar. The thing is faulty, so if you stay near a radio or speaker for too long (read: "a couple of seconds") it blows up, taking you with it. Sure, radioscan be turned off and speakers shot out, but some of them are in incredibly awkward places which makes disabling them really difficult, and some speakers are shielded and essentially immune to attacks.
-The environment. Its samey throughout the first half and bad through the final. But the real killer is the HP sapping effect on the first part, coupled with its really dark floors and cloud effects that make spotting traps (see below) near impossible
-The map. Its essentially a maze of streets, but a really small maze
-Traps. Haha fething ha. Traps everywhere, and most of them bear traps. Unless you have the Lightfoot perk you are guaranteed to walk into them at least a few times, and thanks to the environment (see above) they are near impossible to spot. Have fun.
-The Cloud. If the generic environment slowly killing you wasnt bad enough try a souped up version with virtually no visibility that you are forced to traverse a couple of times.
-Enemies. Come in two flavours. Flavour 1 is essentially a zombie that can only be killed by coupe de grace'ing them after you have killed them the normal way or by blowing them up/crippling a limb unless you want them to get right back up behind you. These come in three sub flavours consisting of the Jihad, the Kebab and the Trap. The Kebab is the most common and will throw spears at you with unerring accuracy until you get close at which point he comes at you with his trusty knife spear, said spears doing a lot of damage and even more limb damage. You will suffer crippled limbs. The Trap is the next most encountered. This monster is a pure melee fighter and is often found around beartraps, which he seems to have a massive fetish for as he also attacks you with one which he has strapped to his fist. Once again, massive limb damage plus the bonus of knowing there are traps nearby. The Jihad is thankfully the least encountered, and is the alpha striker of the trio. Once he is spent he becomes what is essentially a throwing-spear-less Kebab, but his alpha strike is a very nasty gas cylinder bomb which does area effect damage (potentially killing companions - see below) and once again does massive damage + limb damage. All three have amazing senses and can (if you put no points into Perception) detect you before you detect them. Unless you maxed out on stealth skills expect sneaking to be hard.
The second type is arguably even worse, being effectively unkillable. Holograms, whilst avoidable, are terrifying as they can only be destroyed/disabled by either hacking the correct terminal or destroying/disabling the projector. And they attack with lasers that deal stupid damage. At least their perception is low and they have set routes.
-Companions. You have to get each of the three of them from point A to point B, but if they die enroute you die too as your bomb collars are linked. Enjoy.
-Close range. Type 1 enemies love close quarters. Guess hat the map promotes?
-Platforming. I really hope you enjoyed Mario as platforming across the roofs is often the only way to avoid the ghost people in the first section of the game, and the final section is pretty much a platformer with the added bonus of unkillable holograms and collar-triggering radios.
-The end reward. You get to the vault and therein lieth the gold.... Except it is so heavy you can never take it with you. And ironically the Pre-War money that you can win upstairs is arguably better, weighing nothing but being worth a lot. It is possible to get the gold out, but it requires a lot of pre-empting and getting your timing exactly right. Or just using cheats. Yes, the whole point is to be about seeing the reward and giving it up, but you have just survived however long of HELL to get there and you want your damned reward. To be told you cannot carry it out because you need to run fast is a real dick move on behalf of the devs, speaking of which.....
-MOAR PLATFORMING. To escape after the final boss battle/trap you have to run back through the not! platformer you just cleared to get there. Unless you managed the legitimate method of getting the gold out of course, in which case you only need walk to the exit. But if you have to platform then remember to quicksave a lot because it just got even harder.
-Catering to certain builds at the expense of others.Unless you have a good melee/unarmed you might want to turn back...
-The Gala Event. Hell. No. You are essentially trapped in a very small room and have to escape along a long series of rooms, courtyards and streets chock full of type 1 enemies. It is really not fun.

All in all, I do play through it for completion, but I really hate it. Especially after my forst character suffered so because he was a shooty character.

That DLC is an extreme form of my problems with FO NV as a whole. Lot of enemies, traps and nonsense, and very little to interact with in any way but killing, for very little point or purpose.

I like the concept of Dead Money, and the general theme around it, but the execution left a lot to be desired.

The cloud was manageable when you could tell where the game was manifesting it, but there are plenty of times where it's a complete guess as to whether there's cloud or not.

The speakers and radios activating your collar simply promoted save-scumming if you didn't want to spend ages running into range, quickly looking around, running out, and repeating until you found what was causing it. Since some areas of the Sierra Madre were almost maze-like, it simply turned what could've been a cool mechanic for raising tension and stress into a pure annoyance, not least because the only way through some of them was finding the one arbitrary safe-spot to stand, which was accomplished wholly through trial and error.

As with NV DLC and NV a bit in general, there were a few too many "suddenly, enemies" moments, too.

I want to like it, but there are too many issues that kill it for me, and the concept, theme, and characters can't make up for it.

In all honesty Dead Money would have been a lot better if they had made the map a bit more open and reduced the number of speakers by a good chunk.
And if they had unterstood their own engine.
Actually, that is a big part of why I really hate the Ghost People. Originally they where set to have a low Perception so that one could easily sneak around them. However Bethesda apparently did not understand their own engine and set the Perception stat at 0, which the engine can not understand and thus reads as infinite, allowing Ghost People to detect you whilst you are sneaking in the shadows wearing the Assassin Suit on the other side of a brick wall.

The missions where also rather stupid, amounting to fetch and carry quests for the most part, with the gala event I mentioned before being a horrific nightmare of a meatgrinder which outright forces you into a head-to-head confrontation with the Ghost People.

The Bunker was also very underwhelming with the stupidity of a platformer combined with the Hologram maze section, then the entire return journey as well, basically requiring a lot of patience or save scumming to get through.

All in all though Vegas itself lacked that post-apoc feel that 3 had, something which really bugged me. I loved the setting of Fallout 3 and how one could see the destruction, how it felt like a nuclear wasteland. In Vegas it felt like some Old West cyberpunk setting a lot of the time.
That said, Vegas had the guns. So many, such variation and the modding ability too, all of which make for an amazing experience. Its also less buggy and less likely to require meto fully reset my PC every hour or so, so there is that.

@Avatar 720, I agree with you about the "Suddenly enemies" theme. There where a good number of moments when you would be walking around and find yourself attacked, or run into traps for no apparent reason (the Viper Gang ambush just past Nipton, sweet gak, why did they think that was a good idea for low level characters?), but sometimes that really was needed to add a break to the travelling.The lack of wasteland spawns really means you have to journey a lot, with minutes of running from one place to another and no breaks.

One thing.. Obsidian did New Vegas and all the DLC for the game, not Bethesda, who merely supplied a piece of gak game engine.

Final fantasy 13. I had just gotten to the open world area, which I was told was 'the good part of the game', but I just couldn't take it anymore. It was so bad.

I also couldn't finish republic commando recently. Found it incredibly dull, despite it being quite well-reviewed. Felt like a cheap halo clone.

too many games still gathering dust - I used to complete games but very rare now.

Recently Total War: Warhammer - I so so wanted to love this, but I am just finding the game confusing and the battles massively and horribly finicky - so likely this will get forgotten.

Total war: warhammer had one hell of a learning curve. I had to restart the ork campaign 3 times, but once I figured it out, it was hard to put down.

 BrookM wrote:
One thing.. Obsidian did New Vegas and all the DLC for the game, not Bethesda, who merely supplied a piece of gak game engine.

Yup, and Obsidian were rushed to get the project done "on time" as opposed to getting it right. Despite all the horrible bugs and flaws with NV, I still rate it over both 3 and 4, even if 4 is more mechanically solid, and even though 3 had a more Fallout-y feel to it.

I dont think Ive ever said screw it and quit a game. I originally did that with Dark Souls. I just stopped playing shortly into the game and hated the game. Then like 6 months later I found it on my xbox still and thought ahhh fudge it Ill try it again and after a solid week of killing and being murdered a lot, I beat it. Then beat it again.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
Total war: warhammer had one hell of a learning curve. I had to restart the ork campaign 3 times, but once I figured it out, it was hard to put down.

I've only just started playing it, and I've restarted the Vampire Counts campaign about half a dozen times. I think my current campaign, that's up to about turn 50, probably isn't going to go anywhere but I finally feel like I'm getting into how it works.

 nels1031 wrote:
I absolutely love everything in the franchise, but if I had a nickel for every Total War campaign that I gave up on/ got bored with, I’d buy everyone in this thread a Warlord Titan.

At some point you’ll have destroyed all threats, your armies are dominant, your agents are everywhere, and only a few minor factions remain. Its pretty much a given that you’ll roll them over, its just going to take a long trek from one end of the continent(s) for a half ass battle against some backwater kingdom. It just gets to be a slog at a certain point.

If DLC dropped that added a faction, sure as gak I’m going to stop the campaign I’m doing and try that faction out, never to return to the previous campaign. If I did go back to the previous faction, I’d rather start a fresh campaign.

The thrill for me has always been in the first 50-100 turns, when things are truly precarious. WH2 seems to have added a mechanic to help this a bit, but I haven’t got too deep into the end game just yet.

SO much this.

I love the total war games, but after turn 100 or so when everything starts stabilizing, it just turns into for the next 20 turns I'm going to steam roll this faction, then after that I'm going to steam roll this faction, while you check the boxes for the eventual victory.

Only ever completed the grand campaign once.

The start is always most fun.

It's yet another reason I prefer versus campaigns, as well.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
Final fantasy 13. I had just gotten to the open world area, which I was told was 'the good part of the game', but I just couldn't take it anymore. It was so bad.

I also couldn't finish republic commando recently. Found it incredibly dull, despite it being quite well-reviewed. Felt like a cheap halo clone.

Man, Republic Commando is one of my all-time favorite games - it's a shame you couldn't get into it.

As for me, there were a few more:

Supreme Commander - Love this game. Don't love the 3 hour fights required per mission.
The Banner Saga - Truly beautiful game but I can't get around to finishing it. I think it might be because I really want a perfect game with no deaths and I'm just horrid at the grid-based RTS'.
Valkyrie Chronicles - Again, another beautiful game with a story that I find really interesting. But after getting gunned down by a tank three feet from the escape area, it kinda soured.

Valkyria Chronicles is one of those games where I binged it, did really well and got really into it, got all the way to the last level and then put it down and haven't played it since.


I don't know why either, I'm about 1 hour away from finishing the whole thing. And I loved it too.

 welshhoppo wrote:
Valkyria Chronicles is one of those games where I binged it, did really well and got really into it, got all the way to the last level and then put it down and haven't played it since.


I don't know why either, I'm about 1 hour away from finishing the whole thing. And I loved it too.

This, except I put down the game because I got annoyed when my tank got 1 shotted at the end of the 2nd last (?) mission. 6 months later, I decided to try it again. I loved every bit of it, until the EXACT same thing happened. Needless to say I haven't picked it up again. I wholeheartedly recommend it though, it was a great game!

Another game I dropped for no apparent reason, Final Fantasy 15. I got all the way to the last Chapter, I even slogged though the infamous chapter 13 (turns out you can skip it now), but then I decided to grind for the final boss. I basically got to the point where I did all the possible high EXP side quests, and was about to turn the whole thing in for 3x EXP. Yet, I never got there. I loved the game, the characters were good, but I never finished it. I should get round to it.

First one I want to mention for me is Minecraft. One of my best friends introduced the game to me and was full of praise for it (as was half the internet), but I found it just incredibly, extensively, massively BORING. Overrated as well, yet I don'T think that I am an objective judge, so take that as you will. But yeah, boring boring boring. And I did try it many times, did try some custom campaign type game modes, but, not a chance.

The next ones are quite interesting, as my favorite games should basically guarantee that I liked these games, but no. for example: I am a huge, and I mean HUGE Witcher fan. I actually started with the first game I bought during a Steam summer sale about 5 years or so back, just because it was something like 2 € and looked interesting.Once started, I just couldn't stop. I found it so incredibly interesting and fun that I pretty much immediately picked up the books as well as the second one. Also, Witcher 3 is one of my absolute favorite games of all times. Probably place 2 or so.
But Assassins of Kings... for me, it was just 'meh'. I did not like the story (it just felt so un-Geralty), I did not like the setting, I hated Flotsam (the first major region), I overall did not like a lot. I did play it, sure, but except the Loc Muinne-chapter, it was just a tedious game (and I did choose both Roche as well as Iorveth and played through the whole game with each). So, while I could play Witcher 1 and 3 without end, everytime I start up 2, I am just bored.

And, last but not least: Overwatch. My favorite game is Team Fortress 2, the cartoony class-based shooter by Valve. I adore this game, it is just fantastic. So, naturally, I was very intruiged by Overwatch. I bougth it quite early after if came out and, at the beginning, really enjoyed it (well, the group I played with back then was also awesome, but thats not the point). Ok, playing alone was really frustrating and also boring, but in a group, it was just dandy.
But then... it was around the first olympic games/summer event, I just lost interest. It felt really bland, people mostly (i played both casual as well as comp quite equally) chose the same ~9 heroes and it became really repetitive. I uninstalled it about a year ago and never really looked back.

Has anyone here ever played Unreal Tournament? I have never been able to get past the final boss fight and I have always ended up giving in on it, despite attempting it several times.
The boss is essentially unkillable, being faster than you, having more HP then yu and always spawns with a full suit of amazingly good armour which he can improve by picking up armour and shield belt items.
The battle is really close, preventing you from using any long ranged weapons or hit and run tactics and it basically comes down to a losing grind every single time.

I love the game for what it is but I hate that boss fight with a passion.

 Frankenberry wrote:
Supreme Commander - Love this game. Don't love the 3 hour fights required per mission.

I've actually gone back to Forged Alliance, and spent tonight remembering just how slow-paced the campaign missions can be when you're a turtler.

50 Minutes in...
Mission Guys: "You STILL haven't taken out those bases, Commander." "We can't rendezvous until those bases are destroyed." "Are you taking the world's longest dump or something?"
Me, still on the starting island, building my hundredth SAM installation: "What?"

 master of ordinance wrote:
Has anyone here ever played Unreal Tournament? I have never been able to get past the final boss fight and I have always ended up giving in on it, despite attempting it several times.
The boss is essentially unkillable, being faster than you, having more HP then yu and always spawns with a full suit of amazingly good armour which he can improve by picking up armour and shield belt items.
The battle is really close, preventing you from using any long ranged weapons or hit and run tactics and it basically comes down to a losing grind every single time.

I love the game for what it is but I hate that boss fight with a passion.

Like, the old 1999 Unreal Tournament vs Xan? Holy flying... thing, that was a hard battle. I honestly didn't think he had better "stats", but just had the advantage of knowing exactly when/where the item spawns are. Combine that with close quarters fighting, and the guy with the shield belt probably wins. I beat it after many, many tries by really learning the layout of the level, and basically camping the shield belt and body armour spawns. Even then it was very, very hard...

 Goremaul wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
Has anyone here ever played Unreal Tournament? I have never been able to get past the final boss fight and I have always ended up giving in on it, despite attempting it several times.
The boss is essentially unkillable, being faster than you, having more HP then yu and always spawns with a full suit of amazingly good armour which he can improve by picking up armour and shield belt items.
The battle is really close, preventing you from using any long ranged weapons or hit and run tactics and it basically comes down to a losing grind every single time.

I love the game for what it is but I hate that boss fight with a passion.

Like, the old 1999 Unreal Tournament vs Xan? Holy flying... thing, that was a hard battle. I honestly didn't think he had better "stats", but just had the advantage of knowing exactly when/where the item spawns are. Combine that with close quarters fighting, and the guy with the shield belt probably wins. I beat it after many, many tries by really learning the layout of the level, and basically camping the shield belt and body armour spawns. Even then it was very, very hard...

Thats the one! Got to it o an old PC that I no longer have, got there again on one of my towers and am nearly there on my laptop and hahahaha, NOPE. Xan i stupid good and basically stomps me every time.

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 Frankenberry wrote:
Supreme Commander - Love this game. Don't love the 3 hour fights required per mission.

I've actually gone back to Forged Alliance, and spent tonight remembering just how slow-paced the campaign missions can be when you're a turtler.

50 Minutes in...
Mission Guys: "You STILL haven't taken out those bases, Commander." "We can't rendezvous until those bases are destroyed." "Are you taking the world's longest dump or something?"
Me, still on the starting island, building my hundredth SAM installation: "What?"

That sounds like me playing Starcraft or any other RTS game. I tend to play waaaaaay too defensively, which keeps me from winning. I'm afraid of overcommitting my forces and getting wiped by the inevitable counterattack.

I know I should give up on a game if I feel the need to get to the ending as soon as possible, instead of going at a slower pace and enjoying it.

I’ve probably started and re-started Morrowind four times now, and found it way too slow for me. I can see why people would like it though. Probably not going to give up on it entirely, but I’ll need time to find the right inspiration to keep at it.

Every Fire Emblem game made after the Gameboy advance ones. I feel like I'm not playing a strategy game but a dating sim. Which is a shame because I am an advance wars fanatic and have easily over 2000 hours in those games.

Minecraft, my favorite part is the initial bit of exploration and trying to survive, like a Robinson Crusoe simulator. After everything stabilizes it just becomes so much mining and work that I just get bored and turn it off. It basically gets everything wrong in my opinion that Subnautica got right. Subnautica feels like an adventure around every turn and with headphones is probably one of the best horror games I've ever played I've stopped playing it till they finish since I've hit the point where the story kicks in like 5 times now, but I can't wait to finish it properly.

A weird personal one for me is Far Cry 2. I absolutely loved the game, loved the maps and the gorgeous vehicles, but you couldn't drive 20 feet without triggering an enemy checkpoint. You could pass through one, kill everything in sight, pick up a weapon from a shack or something, and drive back through not 3 minutes later and I'd swear they'd be back. I got to the point where I was spending half my time just trying to cross the map. Very frustrating. The final straw though was when my favorite partner, this old grumpy Russian guy, died on one of my missions. I tried 20 different times to save him, even running through a hail of gunfire, but nothing work. That was kind of the final straw and I haven't picked it up since. I also don't remember anything of a story to the game, all I remember was doing random missions and caring far more about my fellow mercenaries than anything else going on. At least the gunplay felt nice and the game was gorgeous.

Oh yeah and Fallout 3's main story was absolutely terrible, I loved the game's sidequests but never actually got around to beating it even after a good 300 hours wandering the wasteland. I just loved the sidequests and exploration but the main story was a joke and I remember only doing one mission because I accidentally stumbled onto it. Fallout New Vegas had a way better main quest in that you could actually decide what happened, but even there I quickly went off to do my own thing and complete sidequests. I will say Old World Blues was awesome and probably my favorite thing in a Fallout game ever. The voice acting, the logs, the weapons, everything was just top notch and I didn't want the ride to end. But like Fallout 3 I had no interest in completing the main story and basically just treated it as an adventure game.

Final one and then I'll shut up, XCOM 2. I absolutely loved the original XCOM games and the first reboot Fireaxis did, they're great games and hold up pretty well, especially with mods. However, XCOM 2 just felt less focused and a bit too, I don't know, a bit too "easy" for lack of a better word. Instead of having a massive secret base with the best science and weapons money could buy, in XCOM 2 you were pulling even more advanced stuff with a scruffy resistance in the backseat of a glorified space delivery truck. Not to mention the game had a lot more "plot" moments and set pieces that get old after the first playthrough, which hurts replayability. I just had very little desire to go back and play it again when it was all said and done, something I never had an issue with other XCOM titles.