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.
The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. I don’t get most of Zelda in general but these two in particular are so bland, so generic, so uninteresting I just cannot understand what people see in any of them. I swear if people didn’t play it as kids or teens they give a damn about Zelda, or Halo.
ion like CSGO/2 and ion like CS source either. I’ll also say ion like TF2 neither.
I tried to like all of them fr. I tried tf2 when I was 15 and it was the new hotness, but idk bro none of them clicked. Maybe I just don’t like valve games?
Fire Emblem. I respect that it’s a long-standing and beloved series, I generally enjoy tactical RPGs, and the way it ended up making its way to the West pretty much entirely on Sakurai insisting he wanted anime sword bois in his game is a great piece of lore. But the anxiety of perma-loss with characters in my stable just ruins the gameplay for me.
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.
Intentionally hard games. I get that people like a challenge, but play games to relax.
play games to relax
I play a lot of games with permadeath or would be called “grindy” which are seen as more difficult/obtuse, I find them relaxing. I think it’s differing mindsets.
I tend to find games too easy at times so I increase the difficulty. I wish more games had various options to tweak games going both ways so that people can tailor their experience because while I like being challenged I know not everyone does.
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)
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 anyoneDwarf 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.
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.
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’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.
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
Dark Souls. I’ve tried to love those games, but I can’t get into them, I end up walking around wondering what the hell to do every time I try to play them lmao
Oh I totally get it, first time I tried playing Dark Souls I was so damn lost. If you ever want to try it again you could use a walkthrough to see if it clicks with you then. I really love FromSoftware games so I’m super biased but I always love seeing people be able to get into them and have fun.
For me I was lost on the first Dark Souls because the Crestfallen guy you meet at Firelink Shrine tells you what to do, and for some reason I just didn’t pay attention so I just got lost and had to look it up, but once you get what you have to do and understand that the game tries to tell you where you shouldn’t be going by having strong enemies there like the cemetery in Firelink, it becomes much easier to navigate.
Dark souls clicked for me when I watched a glitchless any% speedrun, because it made it seem achievable and gave some structure for how they can be played. The soulsborne games are now my hands down all-time favourites. I can definitely see why they don’t appeal to everyone, though.
Not a series, but a genre. JRPGs. I don’t enjoy the turn-based gameplay. Pokemon as a child being the exception.
My “not my thing” genre is farming sims, eg Stardew Valley. Every experience I’ve had is really enjoying it the first few hours and then realizing I’m eighty hours in and I’ve been playing it like it’s a boring but necessary job for almost all of that time.
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
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
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.
The 7th generation was such a time and it’s only become worse. You should disrespect “grizzled white guy action games” more tbh.
For me it’s probably the Super Mario games, which on one hand probably seems like obvious contrarian bait and on the other hand Nintendo is the Disney of video games. I think it’s the way they control, I dunno what the problem is but I’ve slammed my head into mario games my entire life and it just never clicks.
also gta was never good :>
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are there any non-mario platformers you enjoy? i love platformers but mario’s always had some offputting physics, somehow feels too heavy and too slippery at the same time
I’m the world’s biggest enjoyer of Castlevania, and I’m also a casual enjoyer of many Mega Man games, Kirby’s Adventure is alright, & I have moderately-sized Sonic autism so there’d that too. Run and guns I’m split on, Intrusion 2 is so chill but Contra is super whatever.
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Dark Souls. Partly because fantasy worlds just don’t generally do it for me, but also the split second timing and memorising attack patterns and responses. I get why people find that style of gameplay rewarding, but it feels like too much effort to me.
And Minecraft, or really any other game where the primary mechanic is resource harvesting and crafting. Satisfactory, subnautica, etc. Even No Man’s Sky. I played enough Minecraft back when it was free that I get the appeal, but to me it just feels too much like work.
And that goes double for any game where the primary mechanic isn’t crafting but it’s had a system shoehorned in because of Minecraft’s success. That’s not gameplay, that’s busywork.
but also the split second timing and memorising attack patterns and responses
To be fair that’s mostly an issue on FromSoftware games from Dark Souls 3 onward. Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 1 and 2 are pretty slow games and you don’t need to play that way either, you could just play with a shield and defend most stuff just attacking when you feel like it or play a mage. But I totally get it, not everyone likes that style of gameplay.
(oldschool)RuneScape, I find the planning out of grinding fascinating but have no desire to commit hours to it myself.
