Widely appreciated videogames that you hate.

halo series: casualized arena gameplay for console nerds, two weapon limit was already pioneered by dos shooter xs, terminator future shock had a grenade bind, there were cool shooters on consoles already, almost ruined fps forever
half life 2: worst sequel ever of an already overrated game
bioshock: levine is a jew
nu doom soundtrack: it's cancer like nu metal was in the early noughties

i guess gaming as a whole died after 2007 so...

Hate? I don't think I hate any games. However, two widely appreciated games that I just couldn't bring myself to enjoy are the first Bio Shock and the first Assassin's Creed. Because of that, I never played any sequels, even though I heard that they have addressed many of the flaws of the originals, while keeping the good parts (which, admittedly, are also numerous).

To some extent, the first Half-Life is one of these games, although there I believe it mostly had to do with me being a piss-poor keyboard+mouse FPS player at the time. And my PC was underpowered. I would like to give the game a fair chance at some point, but its visuals have aged so terribly, so I dunno.

P.S. Maybe this thread should be moved to the Console & PC Games subforum?

Skyrim - absolute dogshit on every level

I don't really like engaging with or discussing games I know I won't enjoy but I very much dislike Bethesda games. They've never really had any appeal to me, something about the way characters are written in those games annoys me to no end. They're all so one dimensional and uninteresting to talk to or hear about. As a whole open world games are very hit or miss for me, but the way Bethesda frames them makes their worlds feel so lifeless. I really don't understand the need to make your world so large when 90% of it is completely pointless beyond having a cool sword in it or something. It's not like the environments even look unique or interesting.

i won't make excuses for stalker being janky as shit when played vanilla, though pripyat is almost playable without mods and you can fix soc with mods just fine. overall it's one of the few "realistic" shooters i enjoy

Dark Souls.

Some friends years ago tried to get me into this game when I was just getting into Doom and was already obsessed with l4d2. So I played it for about 30 min then dropped it.

Fast forward years later and Elden Ring came out. Loved the game the first time through. Had to take a break from it because it just kept going and going then.. the final boss rush was the last straw and I needed a long break. I found I really liked my experiences with the environments/levels in the game and not so much the bosses.

I had a pretty hard time with Elden Ring at the start because I had no idea how to build my character.. that I could increase my potion count.. that I really needed to upgrade my weapons. It was interesting tuning into streams occasionally and watching people crush the game. Figured that people were just way better than me.

So fast forward some time and I finally decided to get back to Dark Souls 1 because people always talked about how great it was. So coming into Dark Souls again I knew how fromsoft games worked now. I knew that breakpoints are a thing and also that I should really put points into vitality earlier on and also upgrade my weapons asap. Also helped that I was spoiled in finding a ring that boosts all of your stats early on by 'this is Sparta' -ing a fool off of a ledge after you release him early on. I also found the black knight greatsword early on.

So combining my knowledge of how fromsoft games work and some items that I knew about because of spoilers from friends this game was really a walk in the park from a boss/enemy perspective. So that left the areas of the game. I read that people really don't like the second half of this game and I really fall into that camp. I LOVED blighttown, Sen's Fortress, and the first half of Anor Londo (everything after the bit where you have to run up a skinny ledge with two archers attacking you I hated).

Later areas like the Duke's Archives, the.. underground bit with the ghosts.. the entirety of the Demon area (save for the centipede boss which I liked because of the arena). All of these areas sucked to play because I was just running straight and one shotting everything because my weapon was carrying me (seriously even when that black knight greatsword was lvl3 I destroyed Ornstine and Smogh the first time (spelling)). Four Kings I just stood in one place, tanked all their hits, and destroyed them with that greatsword. So all of the stories about difficulty I just can't relate to. EXCEPT that shitty bed of chaos. I was thinking I would like that boss because of my taste for Doom maps but no.. that boss is literally the worst.. it also doesnt help that you just are just finishing running through this utterly forgettable lava area after dealing with the centipede.

I did like the tomb of the giants though - the zone only though, boss was utterly forgettable with that greatsword because I just took hits and smashed his face yet again.

There are other things I hated, such as fighting the snoozefest hydras with a sword and shield, but meh typing this up on mobile is tedious enough to where I will just leave it at that.

Not a fan of Dark Souls 1. And after beating Elden Ring a few times it is hard for me to play it again. I find it funny that all of the areas I like everyone else hates apparently (in Dark Souls 1).

I guess that I will say one more thing. After playing a few fromsoft games I really hope they change it up for their next one. Seeing how the games are basically.. the same idea rehashed over and over and with shared assets AND with shared UIs I will most likely be missing the next one if it is another Souls like game.

StodgyAyatollah

It's not popular in the mainstream way like Call of Duty, but it's definitely a cult classic. If you're not a cAsUAl GaMeR then the chances are you've at least heard about the series at least once.

Back to the topic, I think Morrowind and Oblivion suck too. I forgot to mention them because I've played them like 3 or 4 years ago. Anyway, I beat Oblivion once and couldn't beat Morrowind because its combat system sucks. Oblivion has a really fucking annoying auto-leveling system and the quests aren't that interesting. Plus they hired like 3 voice actors so I didn't care much about the world and main storyline. Morrowind sucks because you can't hit anything unless you start exploiting the game and trying to find quest items is tedious as fuck. I didn't play any other TES games after that.

Half-Life 1 can hardly be considered a story-driven game. The game gives you simple objectives to advance the plot like "go to the experiment room", "go to the surface", "go to lambda core", "go to Xen" etc. but the entire story can be simplified as "escape the techbase while monsters try to kill you". It is not that different from Doom. In fact, I think that Doom 2016 can be considered way more story-driven than Half Life.

in pripyat the armor doesn't matter mostly. Killing some bandits and stalkers gives loads of medkits, and no armor means nonstop running is possible. Have been running with knife to see if I could use that weapon for all cases, it turned out to be well for everything except evacuation.


(SoC)
For the first time I hear about this value. I never hoped there's an ability to hit anything accurately. The only good weapon I've found for mutants is spas-12. For humans pretty much anything except pistols and shotguns works, I wave vertically in place where head should be. I don't aim down, always ctrl+shift. Checking grenade button when see more than 2 enemies. Sell shit to npcs and then kill them

Quite a lot of stories can be simplified into a single sentence. And Half-Life isn't even that, you go to Xen for a reason, not just to save yourself(although my memory of it is quite foggy so I can't exactly remember the reason, I think it was to stop the gates and save everyone else, while knowing that you probably will remain on Xen.)

There are things that make it quite evident that it's a story-driven game, like the first two chapters, Black Mesa Inbound(tram ride) and Anomalous Materials. They don't have any combat in them. And G-Man's character is all about the lore.

You're also much more likely to discuss HL lore rather than any other boomer shooter's lore. It's just much deeper and developed.

Also, Half-Life can barely be picked up and played randomly, just like how you can't just pick up a random part of a movie or a story. You can pick up a random Doom or Quake or Duke Nukem 3D or Serious Sam level and start playing, but how often are you going to do that with an Half Life level? It doesn't just give you a set of weapons as soon as you start a level. Yes, the games I mentioned only give you a pistol(except SS, which gives you an entire arsenal if you want to pick up from the middle IIRC) but pistol start is definitely viable. In HL, you don't even have the HEV suit if you load a random map, lol.

I forgot all about cover shooters being a thing. Throw every one of those on my list.

Since I never actually answered op. If you name anything that was big past around the 2010s It would probably be on my list. The big ones for me though are the dead horse beating of franchises I enjoyed. Doom, Fallout, Diablo, Baldurs Gate, etc. Make new shit instead of shoehorning an ip over a game it doesn't fit please.

I also hate the current trend of modern "roguelikes" because 1. They are generally shit games and 2. Their devs are too dumb to know what a roguelike is. When a dev thinks their action platformer is a roguelike I get to dismiss their game as trash outright.

If it wasn't story-driven, why would they put so much effort into telling it in-game? Most players, at least most new players, don't even read Doom or Quake's story in the manual before playing it, maybe the same can be said for Duke Nukem because it's story is in the help screen which most people don't need. Half-Life cares about the story enough to actually narrate it in-game.

Also, look at this page: half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Half-Life_storyline You reveal small details every chapter. There is no story in an individual level for Doom, Quake or Duke Nukem3D. Their story is between entire episodes.

G-Man not having a name in-game further adds to his mysterious character. He does keep appearing throughout the first few chapters and that encourages playing the game for the possibility of finding out more about him. Yes, there may not be any other major characters but again I think that's more of a good thing than a bad one, because it aids the game's atmosphere. I don't see how the lack of major characters makes a game unable to be story-driven.