For me it’s a couple
First is GTA. I played a LOT of Vice City and and San Andreas as a kid, but mostly because everyone else played them at the time and there wasn’t really many games quite like it where you could mess around and explore a massive city and find cool vehicles just by exploring. But by the time GTA 4 rolled around other open world games did things just as good and the edgey humor has starting to wear thin on me so I had moved on to things like Elder Scrolls by that time.
Another is Minecraft. Minecraft is the exact kind of game I should be in to, it looks so fun! But I just found the artstyle so damn ugly. It’s so rare for me to avoid something for aesthetic reasons, usually low poly art is charming but for some reason Minecrafts style just looks really unappealing to me. This is coming from someone who likes a lot of games people think are ugly.
Lastly are what I’ll call “grizzled white guy action games” Uncharted, Red Dead, The Last of Us. They just feel too much like they’re trying to be be a blockbuster for for guys that don’t want to be made fun of for liking games rather than games. I know that that probably isn’t the case, but they just seem too normal to me.
However I respect that these are all good series but they just aren’t for me. Are there any game series where this is true for you?
Don’t be afraid to say a series you know I like, I won’t be offended.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get into monster hunter. It seems like the kinda game I’d love, I’ve sunk an unfathomable amount of time in similar games. But every time I try to play it, I end up bouncing off it.
Sorry owl you’ve got lots to read but I thought of one which is kind of counter intuitive:
Animal Crossing: i loved the gamecube one and played the hell out if, I loved my neighbours, fishing and catching bugs. I even liked the pocket camp one on the phone and building a cosy campervan. You could collect new items easily with your dailies and the campervan was small enough that you could kit it out really well really easily. I especially loved the clothes and trying out new daily fits.
However when the switch one came out and it became this huge ‘build your dream island’ game, all the clothes became custom designed with shareable qr codes, or vying to attract the coolest rarest villagers to their island, and I looked at my poxy little island and cruddy designed tshirts and how little money and time I had to realise a vision (let alone have a vision) for the island, I quietly stopped playing. I still loved going to the museum though to see the animals. Does that count? Like, I understood and appreciated the elements of the series but when they came together in the switch version it became overwhelming. I liked it when it was my small island, with all the villagers I adored and tried my best to keep, even grumpy hopper the
and I didnt have to worry that it came off second best to anyoneNot a series, but a genre. JRPGs. I don’t enjoy the turn-based gameplay. Pokemon as a child being the exception.
Did you ever try games like Secret of Mana or Star Ocean
The first three star ocean games are pretty great
Second Story is my favorite jrpg from the PS1 and the first game was borderline revolutionary for the battle system on the SNES
Intentionally hard games. I get that people like a challenge, but play games to relax.
I think it’s similar to people who like horror, it’s a way to experience stress or challenge while being perfectly safe and in control.
I absolutely love the souls games and the appeal for me isn’t so much the challenge as it is overcoming the challenge. Beating the Nameless King made me feel good (Malenia less so because I cheesed the shit out of that fight:p)
Rhythm games
Difficult games
Puzzle games
Very long visual novel games
I see now you asked for series, I gave genres because I misunderstood, I will not edit my comment further
Gta5 is slop so you’re not missing out. It’s depressing that GTA has the cultural capital that it does.
Im surprised you can’t get into Minecraft though, it seems like a game you’d love. You can install texture packs to make the game look smoother or however you want. Shaders also add dynamic lighting and the difference between playing with and without shaders is colossal.
I’m playing Baldurs Gate 3 at the moment, I’m 40 hours in, and about half of the time I’m thinking “yeah this is cool but maybe not for me”. It’s an exhaustive RPG with so many different storylines and well written characters, which in concept I should love. But the dialogue just doesn’t scratch an itch for me all the time, and sitting through dialogue can sometimes feel like a chore. It doesn’t help that it’s obviously based off of dnd, and I hate DND combat and find the lore to be uninspiring at times. The combat has been greatly improved in the transition to a video game, but it still feels repetitive but the second act. The lore varies in quality; the githyanki are fucking awesome, a soxiety of plane-hopping warriors that have a cultish worship for their queen and a lust for battle. Dwarves and elves, on the other hand, have been so diluted as to be meaningless. They live in human-style cities with human societies and human values. There is essentially no difference between a human, an elf and a dwarf.
That said, I do enjoy bg3 a lot of the time. Unironically one of my favorite things is the nudity. I love being able to play as a nudist and have it not matter at all. It doesn’t affect my stats and the other characters don’t comment on it. Nudity is just a fashion choice and I think that’s awesome.
I genuinely think that uncoupling genitals from gender in bg3 is cool AF. If you’re going to include genitals (which tbf is uncalled for) that’s the way to do it.
GTA 4was great though
I’ve heard much better things about 4, I’ve never played it myself though
I don’t respect people who like GTA infact anyone that does I think less of you.
My one is roguelikes. Like so many fun looking roguelikes (not binding of Isaac you suck on a fundamental level) but I just can’t ever find the time to play any or really understand how I’m supposed to play them. If they have meta progression it’s not so bad but if they don’t it just feels like a genre built around wasting my time through rng. If they have suspend and resume like Returnal then I find them infinitely more enjoyable because I can’t stand a game dictating to me how long I play it for. Risk of rain is brilliant though but that’s because I can be satisfied it has an “ending” without it actually being the end goal which is simply survive as long as possible. If story is locked behind getting to level 3 billion then I’m pissed but if it’s just a self made goal of unlock characters and get as far as I want then it’s brilliant.
The other is basically any Nintendo game. Largely because I grew up with sega and Sony but I did still have a Gameboy colour advance and DS at the time I just dislike almost every Nintendo title bar metroid. The only thing that doesn’t follow the rule is Yoshi’s Island which is the best platformer ever made and nothing will ever reach the same heights because everyone thinks mario is good.
Oh yeah fighting games. No I’m not going to spend half my life “training” to play a single game I’d rather do anything else including eat my own hands off. Only good fighting game is Hellish Qaurt because my brother can’t beat me at it. Get rekt guilty gear peasant.
The only thing that doesn’t follow the rule is Yoshi’s Island which is the best platformer ever made and nothing will ever reach the same heights because everyone thinks mario is good.
How do you feel about Kirby?
The platforming is a little easier than the yoshis but it’s so aggressively cute, I never fail to have a good time playing with 
I’ve never actually kerbed a by, what would you recommend starting with? I will admit the pink sphere creature is enticing
I loved canvas curse on the ds, it was one of the first games to use the drawing controls as a core mechanic, and super star ultra was. I played the n64 one crystal shards at a friends place when I was a kid but never owned it myself, and it was so much fun mixing and combining powers.
Canvas curse is so fun! The only downside is you kinda have to play it on original hardware but the game itself whips:)
I’ll give the DS one a go been looking for an excuse to use it again. But for drawing controls mechanic we have the goat
This game is so terrible but im obsessed with it for some reason
They just feel too much like they’re trying to be be a blockbuster for for guys that don’t want to be made fun of for liking games rather than games. I know that that probably isn’t the case, but they just seem too normal to me.
I personally think the moniker of grizzled white guy action game should be reserved to thinks like Haze or similar things but it’s not far off. I think it’s embarassing for video games as an art that these games regularly top every which list about best games. They’re functionally competent, even good, action / western / zombie movies with bouts of tetris in between. There’s a reason Hitman did not work at all as a movie and TLOU works perfectly fine as a netflix series
Out of curiosity why Haze specifically?
Could’ve been Wolfenstein (2009) for all it’s worth, allthough that has decidedly more colour.
Just the first one that came to my mind as the mid 2000s white bald stubbly guy with brown and piss filter on it that just has nothing else going for it. Red Faction Guerilla ticks all the boxes but at least that has an impressive physics going, even if it doesn’t manage to prop up the rest of the game. FEAR 2 rides the coattails the first ones before they really nosedived it with 3. But Haze? What’s the saving grace for Haze?
EDIT: I’d say Uncharted, RDR and TLOU are regularly called blockbuster games (positive) but I think they should be called blockbuster games (negative)
Hey, don’t diss Wolfenstein games. Yeah, lame shooter is lame shooter, but dead Nazis is at least funny for a few hours.
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My eyes are twitching at red faction slander, I would have picked gears of war myself.
Haze was actually supposed to be a criticism of gruff manly shoot man game although it was very hamfisted in it’s execution. The idea is you start off as the bad guys all acting dudebro cringe excited they’re gonna go kill all the bad guys but actually you’re all drugged up imperialist goons wiping out the native population. Your drug system breaks and you end up fighting for the natives and see the goons as this grotesque depraved thing. The gameplay ultimately sucks but it was supposed to be a critique of that type of game. I have a vague recollection that the marketing was aimed to appeal to that type of player to then deliver the twist later or something it’s been a while.
My eyes are twitching at red faction slander, I would have picked gears of war myself.
It’s not technically the first but it is kind of vibes based the first cover shooter, at least in a way that it started an entire genre of offshoots. Historically relevant I guess.
I don’t even dislike Guerilla but having played it a bit recently it just doesn’t hold up. The destruction physics are really good and especially for the time that was insane work but outside of that it’s a very, very 2000s brown shooter.
I have a vague recollection that the marketing was aimed to appeal to that type of player to then deliver the twist later or something it’s been a while.
yeah but it’s like far cry 3 levels of botching your satire imo
I’ve never met a deck builder game I’ve liked.
And I’ve never made it further than like Day 2 of Disco Elysium. It’s just so so dense and I need to be in a novel-reading mood to enjoy it properly, and those are far between so I end up forgetting what I did in between runs and restarting.
I’ve never met a deck builder game I’ve liked
I’m so sorry but we can’t be friends:(
Seriously though I totally get it. I love them but it scratches a very specific itch.
Same on Disco Elysium. Also it makes me sad
It is a very sad game. It also wouldn’t work if it wasn’t sad. The sadness is why people care about Harry. The sadness is why people care about Revachol. If Revachol wasn’t so bleak, La Revacholiere would just be self indulgence, Cindy the skull writing a hopeful message in fuel oil wouldn’t matter, the communists telling you “In the dark times, should the stars also go out” wouldn’t hit.
And it wouldn’t be so fucking funny for Harry to do the finger guns, try to do a matrix dive, and immediately hit a woman in a wheelchair.The sadness is why people care about Revachol.
It making me sad isnt a bad thing, just a reason I never finish it
I’d read a disco Elysium book, but I can’t get far in the game.
There actually is a Disco Elysium book, called Sacred and Terrible Air. I’ve never read it but it has a reputation for being a slog to read and much less digestible than the video game
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Dwarf fortress is one of the coolest concepts I’ve ever seen, and I cannot get into it.
Oh god, tell me about it. I max out at the city builder series on “very easy”, I ain’t getting anywhere with DF.
(oldschool)RuneScape, I find the planning out of grinding fascinating but have no desire to commit hours to it myself.
Dark Souls, I play games to have fun but I can understand other people may have different reasons
trying to be be a blockbuster
The more games try to be movies the more I’m adverse to playing them. I really don’t like the Sony stable of modern games. When everything became over the shoulder and mostly open world (the detritus of the 7th gen) Ever chasing realism most of the games look so similar in the environments, it’s become rather stale.
Minecraft
Would be one pick that I find too unstructured to enjoy and I don’t really engage in any multiplayer.
I really tried to like mobas. I put in like 500 hours on Dota 2 and I dunno how many into league, but I don’t feel like I ever had fun with them at any point. Really wanted to be into them because I had friends who played them and they have such broad appeal that it seems like an easy way to connect with people.
I’d add dark souls as well, but I really don’t understand the appeal.
I don’t think I “got” Dark Souls until the second I beat Dark Soul 3 and realized I had gotten good. I spent months playing through it, getting stuck in multiple bosses for weeks at a time, quitting multiple times, but kept coming back just to see what the hype was. Then I beat the final boss in about 30 minutes and realized I immediately wanted to replay it.
There’s a satisfaction to knowing that anything that goes wrong is your fault. You can learn and optimize and iterate on every attempt at a boss. It requires a level head and a want to to solve a problem, not just a drive to beat a game. It can’t be brute forced. If you fail, its your fault, and if you succeed, it’s also your fault, because you’ve learned and improved.
I’ve played a little of Elden Ring and it seems to be more accessible. If you can’t beat a boss, you don’t have to try and try again until you win. You can just fuck off and go to a different area, and return with far better gear at a higher level.
Mobas aren’t about having fun they’re about making other people mad, the people who have played League for thousands of hours probably hate it the most.
it’s cute that he thought mobas were for fun
Played dota 1, heroes of newerth, and dota 2 for hundreds of hours each, minimum.
You are absolutely correct and every time i get the urge to play a moba again it’s luckily immediately quashed before i install it
