Dark Souls 2 - PC

I can't believe I'm writing this because the prequel is easily one of the best games I've ever played. But I bought DS2 on 2 May, the day it came out on PC. According to Steam, I played for 27 hours in 11 days. And although I keep meaning to resume, I haven't touched it since.

By the time I got to the Iron Keep, I was pretty fed up, finding wading through hordes of enemies more exhausting than challenging fun. You're ridiculously outnumbered from the earliest stages of the game. Anyone who's played Dark Souls knows that the difficulty increases exponentially with each additional enemy in a mob. DS2 constantly puts you into unavoidable 4 or even 5 v 1 situations. I don't recall DS1 doing this to you so early and it makes progress very tedious.

The most disappointing element is the area design. How I miss the brilliant, twisting, interconnected world of Dark Souls. The sequel replaces that masterpiece of game design with compartmentalised areas that are mostly uninteresting. Dark Souls' areas were distinctive with environments that were as unique and dangerous as the enemies that populated them. We all loathed yet loved Sen's Fortress, Anor Londo and the fantastic Painted World of Ariamis. I think I unlocked 17 areas in DS2 - all forgettable.

Biggest problem I have with DS2 is that it's too similar to its predecessor. I thought I'd be happy with more of the same but Dark Souls did everything DS2 does much better.

I'll probably still try and finish it off at some point but I'm enjoying playing the BG saga much more. I suspect that part of my frustration is that my Falchion-wielding Dex build needed so many hits to kill things. I'd upgraded it to +6 as I hadn't found anything better but it still felt weak. I'd just got my hands on a Blacksteel Katana when I stopped playing, which would do a lot more damage once upgraded. Maybe that will make the combat less tiresome.

Yeah, I've heard of SS2.

I thought DS2 was such a letdown too.

Diablo II

It still looks and sounds nice, the music is atmospheric and the sound effects are meaty and satisfying. Creeping around a dusty old ruin it's a genuine shock to encounter a new enemy type that runs gibbering straight for you.
The actual game play on the other-hand has its problems.

It's a straight dungeon crawler no puzzles no in-depth conversation trees but the combats governed by a D&D like series of calculations behind the scenes so your role in things is reduced to choosing which attack to spam and running away fast enough to neck a healing potion when you get surrounded.
Your other duty is inventory management. There are thousands of items to buff your character with but only limited space. While that leads to strategic decision making it also has you constantly micro managing your inventory, picking things up casting a spell so that you can see their buffs then throwing them away again because 90% of the stuff you finds not as good as what you already have. Every now and then you do get a new toy and suddenly you're more bad-arse and you get a little thrill.
That's kind of why I stopped playing I felt like I was playing a fruit machine the game plays mindless and mostly devoid of skill but the random loot drops are just frequent enough to keep you going. That and getting horribly stuck on the act 2 boss.

Pikmin 3

Plays pretty well, actually. Fun for what it is. Still, only played once and would be surprised if I ever went back to it.

If you enjoy controlling swarms of adorable things and sending them to their deaths, this is the game for you!

Castlevania Symphony of the Night (originally PSOne, played on Xbox 360)

It kind of pains me to write this, because this game was awesome and technically I DID get the most basic ending, but considering I didn't even see Dracula outside of the opening sequence it definitely feels like I left the game incomplete. I've never been into the whole Castlevania thing, but I got this game on a whim during Black Friday/Cyber Monday after reading that it was one of the best games of its generation. The graphics are dated and the voice acting is beyond terrible, but the rest of the game is quite well designed. The exploration and RPG-lite elements in this game were good enough that I'm inspired to play more Metroidvania style, but unfortunately I got sick of backtracking all over the castle to find areas I hadn't yet visited with each new skill I learned. Eventually, this lead to me checking online for hints, at which point the game lost its luster. This is the kind of game I could see myself going back to after I've mostly forgotten it and trying to make my way through again, but currently I don't have the patience for it.

How anyone would ever find out on their own how to properly beat the "last" boss of the normal castle is beyond me.

Agree 100%. It's a good thing the game got such awesomely high praise that I imagine almost all players heard about the extended game. For 95%+ of titles, if the game were designed like that I expect < 1/2 the players would have seen most of the game.

I haven't played through in like 10 years, would be fun to do so again. Of course it'll look dated, but the level design was just so good. Really one of my favorites of all time.

I remember playing it when it first came out in 1997, and I didn't need help in discovering the 2nd castle. That's not meant to be a brag, I honestly don't think it's all that difficult. If you just thoroughly explore the first castle you eventually come across both of the rings you need to wear to get access to the center room where you get the Holy Glasses, and the inscriptions on the two rings give you a pretty big hint what of what you're supposed to do with them. Achieving 200.6% of map completion is another story; not going to claim I never needed help with that.

nice spoiler

Just moved it further back in my backlog...

I eventually went back to this game to finish up the main storyline and was glad I did. It's not a masterpiece by any means but the story and characterization was above average; after a little break from the repetition, I was able to enjoy the mechanics all over again. Given the dearth of new IPs in the genre, Square gets a solid fist bump from me on this one.

I came in here to write about Devil May Cry 4 so your take is fairly prescient. It's not officially unfinished because there's a chance I'll go back and play it - it's still in my 360 but a host of PC and downloadable games have taken precedence (including Fez and this month's Games with Gold freebie, Battlefield BC 2). However, I couldn't tell if I was actually enjoying the game while I was playing it so will probably be a minute before I get back to it.

I remember playing the first one on my PS2 in college and thinking it was about the coolest thing ever. The succeeding games had always garnered high praise and solid reviews so I was excited to pick up a used copy of DMC4 for super cheap and finally get back into the series. The opening cinematic sequence had me fully drawn in, but unfortunately for me, the combat (which should be the main draw, obv) just isn't all that much fun. The fixed camera makes jumping and attacking multiple enemies super unprecise while the vaunted combo system just doesn't come together the way I imagined it would. Upgrading your skills efficiently is expensive and seems to take a lot more ability than I possess, so I end up button mashing more than anything. I wrote about this in another thread but Bayonetta rewrote the book on these types of games and othes feel sluggish by comparison (note: I last played Bayonetta 3+ years ago but it's still imprinted on my muscle memory).

Bayonetta should be regarded as the benchmark for the hack-and-slash genre. Somewhat seriously considering getting a Wii U just for the sequel.

Sunless Sea

I like most of the stuff in this game the setting, the story, the events in the ports you visit, the resource management. What I dont like and reason Im giving up is the sailing, its just way to slow and dull. I read a comment from one of the creators about how the ship's low movement speed increases the tension but for me it just makes me read 2+2 on my 2nd monitor. Im having about as much fun sailing in Sunless Sea as i have waiting in queue for league games, but since lol gives me a warning sound when the q pops while SS lets me run right into a cliff with no warning I think I prefer waiting in q.

Would probably love this game if it had a movement system similar to FTL or Renowned Explorers.

I loved MGS1 and thought MGS2, despite the idiotic storyline and characters, was still a fun game.

So Metal Gear Solid 3 had great reviews so I was like it's a no brainer to get.

Well, I tried and failed to get into it twice over the period of a few years.

The prologue is like 2 hours of cut scenes and 10 minutes of running around. Sure I could have skipped the cut scenes, but I kinda wanna know wtf is going on in the game.

And then the kicker, after the prologue is done, the game begins in the exact same area the prologue was, I mean wtf.

The whole camoflague system was useless and stupid, healing your wounds in between fights, having to catch and eat food? ugh. The whole game came across as completely boring, tedious and frustrating. I know they were going for a "survival" vibe but just didn't draw me in at all.

I'm assuming it gets much better later, I mean the reviews are all outstanding, but I seriously just hated the first few hours of it so much I gave up...

It's the only game I ever bought I never played through. I gave it away.

Conker's Bad Fur Day

I mean **** this game in the ass. It's rated super high on every game site out there but is steaming garbage. The controls are abysmal in the main game, and during specialty levels (bat level, shotgun zombies, drink club, etc.) are just the worst. The dialogue is decent, but the storyline is brutal and ******ed.

I mean seriously try playing this game on rare replay and you'll want to throw it in the fire. I've given up and retried the game no fewer than 5 times just to finish it and can't do it. **** this game so hard.

I only played through CBFD once, I liked it well enough at the time. I remember it being a pretty short game regardless.

Darkest Dungeon

I really like the simple but effective presentation, hand drawn characters minimal Southpark style animation and a Vincent Price like narrator combine to create a great atmosphere.

It's got a cleaver rarely seen mechanic in the sanity meter that forces you to try and keep your party sane as well as alive.

Unfortunately its a pretty shallow strategy game that's hugely frustrating, horribly unfair at times and very repetitious. There just isn't enough content. Not enough classes, not enough enemy types not enough mission types. The high difficulty means you soon see most of what the game has to offer and your left trying to grind through the same missions again and again making little if any progress. I just got into this loop of trying a harder mission to push towards the end, getting wrecked, retreating to the hamlet, put the best heroes into rehab go complete a low level mission to get gold repeat.

IM pretty sure I will receive some hate but the last game I did not finish is The Last of US, reached like 1/3 into it, never really got into the story/gameplay and just never played it again and return it (it was a loan from a friend)
Probably was just the hype since I have been wanting to play the game for years and after they release it on ps4 I bought it but never received it, then after some months I finally got the chance to play it but probably I was over the game before actually playing it.

You wont' receive hate from me, TLOU is one of the most overrated games of all time.

I've not finished TLOU yet either. I haven't given up yet either, but it didn't grab me like I thought it would.

Absolutely agreed. Likely the single most overrated video game of all time, definitely of the past decade or so.

Not a bad game, but fundamentally a pretty average survival horror game, just with a very slick presentation.

I've noticed this sentiment growing though, at least in the gaming circles I frequent. Whenever TLOU is brought up everyone just talks about how overrated and overhyped it was.

Glad AM not only one who thought bioshock was a chore, when you died you just started were you were up to and the baddies had same life taken of them meaning that getting killed just set you back a little, combat was awful and boreing , game was sexy to look at but it was ugly to play.

Skyrim - over 100 hrs played with no end in sight. Great game I give it 9/10, just hit my own personal limit of time put into one game

Yakuza 0 - I had never played a Yakuza game before. I will never play one again. It is beyond me why this got such great reviews. I like games to have a story but there's also got to be a, you know, game. A huge chunk of this 'game' consists of watching a succession of long, non-interactive cutscenes in which gangsters talk about stuff. In between these scenes, you get into fights. So many fights. You can barely walk down the street without some random idiots picking a fight with you. Unfortunately, the combat's stiff, awkward, and simply not fun. And after that there's another bloody cutscene. Oh, you might run into someone who gives you a side-quest. This will usually involve doing two things - watching another damn cutscene (you may have dialogue choices this time! But they don't really matter), and fighting.

And these problems aren't even the most objectionable thing about Yakuza 0. No, that would be the women. Or more accurately how this game treats women. 'Objectification' is putting it mildly. Pornography has greater respect for women than Yakuza. Incidentally, Yakuza's cities feature porn video stores and pornstar playing cards. Because according to the devs, this is a game for men. If by 'men' you mean horny 15-year old boys who get an erection when the wind changes direction. I progressed to the point when Majima (one of the two protagonists), takes over a cabaret club. Delightfully, a key strategy in enhancing this club's fortunes involves grooming the women working at the club. You can 'train' them on how to talk to clients, choose a dress (which are rated for their effects on cuteness, sexiness, humour, or something), give them a makeover, and otherwise manipulate these virtual Japanese Barbie dolls. How charming and progressive. At this juncture, suffering from a combination of boredom caused by the lousy combat and interminable, soporific cutscenes, and strongly feeling like I needed to take a shower to cleanse myself of the stench of Yakuza's misogyny, I pressed Alt-F4 and uninstalled.

Seriously, if you want to play an open-world game set in Asia with hand-to-hand combat, play Sleeping Dogs. It's better in every single way. Baffling that Yakuza 0 could receive such a strong reception when Sleeping Dogs came out a couple of years earlier.

Sleeping Dogs was great, it’s like GTA light but the combat and driving are better. Never played a Yakuza game and it appears I don’t have to.