I’ve just uninstalled and removed Balatro after yet a near, very close 8/8 ante finish. I have been failing and failing, I’ve only ever seen and gotten to 8/8 ante twice, this being the second time. Every other run has been just insulting me to where no strategy has ever worked, I feel like a lot of it is RNG and pre-determined outcomes based on seeded runs.
And I hate that way of playing. It always feels like I’m getting smacked down by a troll bully who I can never overcome. They’d kick me down every failed run I’d have, then they give me a false sense of security the further I get. “Awwww, getting tired of being owned? Here, let me help you by giving you a few seemingly lucky breaks. SMACK Oh! OWNED YOU AGAIN! FUCK YOU! LOLLOLOL! I BANGED YOUR MOTHER, GIT GUD, NOOB!1”
I just don’t understand why these kinds of games are around, even when I have a good idea who it is for.
For me it’s any roguelike (or roguelite) I try. I may find the premise of the gameplay interesting, but having to replay the run from the start (while very likely not learning anything new, because I can’t repeat the situation that gave me trouble before) ruins it pretty quickly. Even the ones I kinda like (Rabbit And Steel and One Step From Eden) can’t keep my attention for long and I end up playing them very rarely.
Metaprogression in roguelites makes it even worse because I know that the runs are gonna be unfair from the start to make the upgrades work.
Exactly. I really went all in on rogue lite/like games last year to see what the hype was about and I came out with mixed opinions. I don’t hate the genre like I did before but I also don’t love it. I played balatro, megabonk, ball x pit, etc. I enjoy the randomness but sometimes it starts giving me a headache.
I appreciate games that know what they want to be, and have an intended difficulty for you to experience/master (I also have nothing against adjustable difficulty and/or accessibility options, but I like knowing what the devs expected). I also appreciate roguelikes’ uncompromising approach, with the original concepts like non-modality, and expecting you to face challenges to get rewarded instead of bypassing them.
Metaprogression… Goes three ways. There are games which get easier as you upgrade across runs (which either get easier than they should or start too difficult), games where beating them at a difficulty unlocks harder difficulties (love that, as long as there aren’t too many things to separately unlock, since it lets you ramp things up to your comfortable difficulty while providing a ultimate challenge to reach), and games where you unlock content as you play (can be good for easing players into the game, but take it too far and you’re back to having to put X hours into the game to get the full experience)
Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, Luck be a Landlord do the second (StS has ascensions, Dead Cells has IIRC boss cells, LbaL has floors), but they do things differently in other regards. StS has you unlocking content based on accumulated score across runs with a specific character, but it doesn’t take too long. It also has a true ending that you can’t do on your first runs. Dead Cells seems to have a ton of content and upgrades that take a long time to unlock. LbaL doesn’t have any other metaprogression IIRC, but it does lock at least two important mechanics to specific floors (and up).
I hadn’t considered unlocking difficulties as metaprogression, but yea in that case I think it’s a fair mechanic (to be clear, I tend to drop these games when I get to the inevitable difficulty spike at the final area/boss, so I haven’t really experienced it, as the only one I can clear is Rabbit and Steel which has a traditional easy/normal/hard/harder selection).
Unlocking content to ease players in I think is weird and counter productive, as often even failing gets you further in the process and you might not have learned what the game was trying to teach you by delaying something. You might then be in a slightly harder game without having progressed as a player.
What I really don’t like are the permanent leveling/modifiers you find in games like Hades. I feel like they go against the basic idea of a rougelike/lite, since you can/need (depending on the game) to grind.
For me it’s Don’t Starve. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Early in the game I have to collect rocks and sticks and gold (IIRC) to make a “science machine” (WTF is that?) as a requisite for further crafting. And I found out the hard way that my character has to put flowers on their head to avoid dying from insanity. What were the devs smoking?
But it’s not a matter of “figuring it out” if there’s no logic to the items. I’m supposed to just combine random shit and hope something good happens? Seems pretty disrespectful of my time.
There is a tech tree, you unlock recipes by crafting newer machines or picking up new ingredients. It’s not random and it does make sense
It’s a type of game very similar to Dwarf Fortress: losing is fun. You need to die many times to learn how to manage survival. Learning basic recipes by heart, efficient cooking recipes, threats for a specific time of year etc.
I agree that it’s very punishing. I never made it past winter.
I understand how crafting and tech trees work, and I’ve played plenty of roguelikes and soulslikes. I’m saying this makes no sense (and I’m sure it’s not the only example):
Early in the game I have to collect rocks and sticks and gold (IIRC) to make a “science machine” (WTF is that?) as a requisite for further crafting.
Seriously, where did this BS come from? And how the hell would I know this necessary recipe without looking it up? It’s like the devs were like “I guess we need a crafting station. Uhh… throw together some rocks and sticks, whatever”.
EDIT: The recipe is apparently shown in-game. But it’s still astonishingly stupid that they didn’t call it a “workbench” or similar like every other game.
The components to build a science machine in Don’t Starve don’t strike me as much stranger than those to build crafting stations in other games. In my experience, they’re often unrealistic.
And how the hell would I know this necessary recipe without looking it up?
Did you miss the fact that the recipe is shown in the build menu?
Don’t starve is pretty hardcore if you don’t know what you’re doing. I love the game, and i absolutely suck at it. Every now and then you get lucky and the game seems pretty easy. Other times you starve and need food, but you’re also insane and can’t eat rabbits, and then it’s winter and you die.
I could never get into Don’t Starve but Don’t Starve Together is a blast with friends and mods. The game’s old and developed enough at this point that I wouldn’t try to figure anything out on your own. Just look it up. You’re not gonna miss out on the “discovery”. The game is crushingly hard already.
It apparently isn’t designed to your tastes, but to say it isn’t designed well would be to overlook decades of highly regarded roguelikes. Even Nethack, which is nearly 40 years old and still loved, requires lots of experimentation (and many deaths) to discover how things work.
I found nearly all of Disco Elysium’s characters so unlikable, (especially?) including the player character, that I could not enjoy it at all. I think I like the systems in it, and I’m happy when an RPG exposes its dice rolls; the voice performances were all very good; I just couldn’t stand it after 5 hours of trying.
You’re definitely not supposed to like Harry as a person. He is at best insane and at worst a racist, mysognistic, alcohic drug abusing piece of human garbage. It is also very easy to be put off by even the good people because Harry has already wronged most of them and they have already had enough of his shit by the time you take control.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just because I relate to him but I do kind of like Harry. Yes, he’s not a regular “good person”, but he’s also much more complex than just a “bad guy”. He’s flawed, tragic and ultimately incredibly human. I think he’s a fantastic character, just like most characters in Disco Elysium.
My heart welped for Harry in the dreaming sequence. Despite his best effort, Dolores wouldn’t stay. Nothing he could do or say. The powerlessness made him incredibly vulnerable and human. Very realistic depiction of a broken love.
The final dream is my favourite moment in all of gaming. Complete heart wrenching and beautifully written, and really kind of pulling the whole game into focus and making all the pieces click into place at once. I still can’t believe they made it so easily missable too, as it’s kind of the fulcrum the whole game is balanced on.
It also never ceases to amaze me how Robert Kurvitz managed to distill the entire pathos of the whole game into three words to close it out, too.
I don’t think I necessarily like Harry, but I sure as fuck empathize with him. Playing him as someone seeking redemption or trying to put his life back together (and SO OFTEN failing) was incredibly meaningful. You put it very well.
I get that. But I consume a lot of crime fiction. The Wire, Guy Ritchie movies, etc. These stories are full of terrible people, but they don’t make me feel like I’m trudging through a story with a bunch of assholes.
The main theme of the game basically centers around failure. How it manifests, how people react to it, how it affects them in the long run. Bitterness, apathy, delusion. Most of the characters are some kind of fuckup (except Kim, my beloved). Some of them are failures because they’re fucked up, some of them are fucked up because they failed again and again, but either way it’s an exploration of what that does to a person, what that does to a people, what that does to a town.
Some people just disassociate, some people give up and abandon their values to go with the flow, some people fight back impotently against forces they’ll never overcome. Above all, I think it’s basically about perseverance, one way or another, in the face of failure.
It’s very raw, very bleak, very human. It’s easy to feel vindicated when you strive and succeed, when you’re a virtuous hero, but who among us is just a virtuous hero? It’s much more complex and real to fail over and over and still get back on that horse, because what else can you do? The characters are supposed to be flawed, they’re supposed to be unlikeable. The game is about exploring what it is that made them unlikeable: how much of it is forces beyond their control, how much of it is their own stubbornness and maladaptive reactions, how much of it is just trauma.
If you don’t like exploring those ideas, you probably won’t like the game.
The characters are supposed to be flawed, they’re supposed to be unlikeable. The game is about exploring what it is that made them unlikeable: how much of it is forces beyond their control, how much of it is their own stubbornness and maladaptive reactions, how much of it is just trauma.
It’s kind of a necessary aspect. You can’t really effectively explore what persistent failure does to a town without feeling like you’re trudging through a story full of assholes. If the characters weren’t so abrasive and broken, it wouldn’t really be the same kind of thing.
And if you keep playing you learn the tragic reasons why Cuno is such a little shit and, I won’t post spoilers, but depending on your choices you can help him become way less of a little shit. It’s roughly the same for most of the asshole characters: they’re assholes at first, you find out why they’re assholes and develop a lot of sympathy for them, and sometimes you facilitate their redemption.
Could be, but I didn’t have the patience to see it. If that’s what they wanted me to see, I certainly felt it could have been paced better. You mostly only hear good things about this game, but my friends list on Steam has about a dozen people who stopped playing it around the same time I did. I can’t say why they put it down, as I didn’t poll them, but someone I follow on Giant Bomb had a pretty similar reaction to the front-loaded negativity of this game very recently, so I know it’s not just me.
Sure, but again that’s the point. I can get why someone might not have the patience for it, but you can’t really change the front-loaded negativity or pacing without sacrificing the whole message. It’s a crucial aspect of the storytelling.
Honestly, people who give up on it kinda validate the themes. You and your dozen friends didn’t persevere, like many of the characters. Giving up is one response to bleakness. That’s not a value judgement, like I said it isn’t for everyone, but it is kinda poignant that by checking-out you demonstrate exactly what it’s saying, to some degree.
I finished it recently and I also didn’t get what all the hype was about, but for me it was more the fact that none of the quests, main or side, were satisfying in the least.
I am a socialist and dont get offended at all if called a communist and finally I get why people may hate us, after playing this game.
Also, having to change clothes every 3 minutes brings me out of immersion.
It is very “snobbish” in its design despite beautiful art département stuff and voice acting.
Rainworld. I’ve started it twice now and quit a half-hour in both times. I love a good side scroller/Metroidvania, but this one has one mechanic I can’t abide: a time limit. You have to rush from shelter to shelter because the world periodically floods and annihilates everything out in the open. I just want to explore at my own pace game, thank you.
I’m going to say yes, but if you just can’t enjoy the “proper” experience, but you enjoy it with the slight “cheat”, then that could be better than not playing.
Worth noting is that the time it takes to start raining varies, food respawns, creatures move around. If you can’t make it to the next shelter and die, you restart the cycle in the same way - but if you grab enough food to hibernate and go back to the same shelter, you might find it easier to progress on the next cycle.
Cult of the lamb, maybe I just suck at the game but I felt there was just nowhere near enough time to do anything, just a chore to constantly keeping the cult members happy
Real. I just beat the main game a week or so ago and I have absolutely zero interest in picking it back up, even though I bought the DLC and there’s also post-game content.
I bounced off of Where The Water Tastes Like Wine. I didn’t really even get into the gameplay because the narration in the intro just wouldn’t shut up. You’d click an option, the caption would pop up, and then it would mail a request for the audio file to the developer. I’d have the caption read by the time the narrator started to speak, and the narrator talked the way old people fuck. I went “I don’t have the patience for this right now, I’ll come back to it later” I chose the Exit option from the menu, and the narrator started delivering a multi-line “everyone gets a break but you’ll come back” dialog, which I ALT+F4’d out of the software and uninstalled it on the spot. Dim Bulb Games is one of many studios on my black list.
Yeah, I couldn’t put my finger on it but I think you’re right. Real shame because it seemed like the game was going to be right up my alley in terms of its subject matter. But it’s just not an enjoyable experience.
I discovered it through its soundtrack. I was listening to West of Loathing’s soundtrack on Youtube, which was partially or entirely done by the same artist who did WTWTLW’s, so I got recommended some videos, looked up what it was, decided to give it a try, and…maybe if someone implements it for Apple II or some other machine that physically cannot support voice acting so we can dispense with the pretentiousness.
Granted, Obra Dinn’s pacing problem wasn’t about dialog. It was…You find a corpse, click, a musical sting plays, you get a few seconds of audio play, and then you see in glorious monochrome dithering the aftermath, and then you’re stuck there for the exact amount of time that some music plays. If you immediately learned something, you can’t do anything about it. If you learn a piece of information that puts something you saw earlier in a new context and you want to go back and look at it, you can’t do anything about it. If you’re not done looking when the music is over, you’ll clunkily have to come back in here. And woe betide you if there’s another corpse in that scene and you end up doing like five of them in a row.
It’s not so bad when it’s your first time through the game and you’ve never seen any of it before, when you’re taking in the scenes for the first time. It’s a bigger issue on the second playthrough, which…this game isn’t designed for a second playthrough. The fun isn’t in the mechanics and it isn’t exactly a feast for the eyes (the monochrome dithered retro styling is interesting in full 3D and I understand it was a pain in the dick to get the Unity engine to do that, but it’s still a bit…harsh), so most of the fun is learning what happened, and if you’ve been through it before, well.
Any Soulslike anything. I have gotten my ass beaten by enemy NPCs in Smash Bros, and I have gotten my ass beaten by enemy players in Battlefield, and I stuck around with both until I got quite good (Smash Bros more than Battlefield, but still).
But Dark Souls, Demon Souls, Elden Ring… I’ve actually owned all of them and played none of them for more than a few hours at most. I got the furthest with Elden Ring but it’s just not fun, it’s harder than Smash Bros but about as fun as Ghost of Tsushima combat - which is to say, not very fun.
Oh also, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla or whatever the viking themed one was. I’m not a picky AC player, I loved the originals and I loved Origins and I loved many (though not all) in between those. But the viking one just had the slowest, least satisfying combat in the world. Which sucked since I’m Danish American, can’t even live out digital viking fantasies, but pirate fantasies are a decent second I guess.
On the flip side, the Stanley Parable is so good that I haven’t finished it because it makes my brain feel like it’s tripping but in a disorienting and uncomfortable way. It’s so good but I cant handle it for too long.
Out of curiosity, have you tried Sekiro or Nine Sols? I’m in the same situation as you, disliking souls with a passion, but for some reason the party mechanic in both these titles made all the difference. Even though I still got my ass whooped on repeat, it at least felt fairer.
I havent, but it’s not really the getting my ass beat that turns me off from the games, it’s more the
not really having fun while it happens lmao. Even when I first started playing BF3, I’d still have exciting moments between the repeat deaths on deaths on teamkills on deaths. Soulslike games have, for me, usually just felt like a slog and a grind. Maybe it’s just because I havent gotten good at them, quite likely really, but the barrier to entry just doesn’t seem worth surmounting to me when there are so many other games to play out there without the barrier to entry.
Ah I ended up hating Stanley Parable, but mostly because the developer is a troll. I admit, on a meta level it fits the game’s theme, but as an achi hunter it felt insulting to come across comments of him laughing at players who couldn’t figure out what made specific achievements trigger, when behind the scenes he kept changing the criteria week to week just to mess with his players…
Oblivion Remaster: I loved Skyrim, but this game felt not as fun as Skyrim to me. Not sure what it was. Maybe it’s just nostalgia for Skyrim and I don’t have the patience for those kinds of games anymore.
Hollow Knight: The platforming always felt clunky and the constantly having to Google shit to figure out where I’m supposed to go next without spending 4 hours backtracking turned me off. I much prefer the Ori games to Hollow Knight.
I’m so with you on Ori vs Hollow Knight. It’s almost like it’s a bit shameful to admit it because HK is the “true hardcore” game but honestly I just have such a better time playing Ori, it’s actually an enjoyable experience versus putting myself through a meat grinder. All respect due of course to HK which is brilliant if you’re ready to be brutalized, but I prefer to play games to at least somewhat relax haha.
Dark Souls 3…it is a bit hard to jump in after its slower predecessor, for some reason unknown, I just like the legacy combat system better, can’t find the rhythm in the new one…
The thing that stood out to me was that a lot of enemies would dash past you or over you, breaking lock on, making the camera more annoying than in other games.
Minecraft and others like it. I want something to work towards. Because in games where you can do anything and make your own fun, is too much after my days.
The Outer Wilds - I get recommended this over and over, I know it’s a huge hit, a cult classic, and beloved to many people. I finally got it and gave it a real solid attempt, several times so far. I understand the gameplay loop I guess, the repeating, the weird ship flying. I mean, I appreciate it and love that people are experimenting with new ways to make games that break old molds. I really like the atmosphere and maybe if I were a lot younger it would feel fresh and interesting.
But I never really started having fun, never really connected with the characters or the world, I never got hooked. Everything felt like a janky obstacle instead of progression and reward.
Maybe I’ll try it again sometime, but maybe it’s possible some games just don’t rub me right.
Also, ITT: lots of people arguing with other people why their feelings are wrong.
I only gave it one try when it came on game pass and I dropped it pretty quick. I wanted to go back to it after seeing how hyped everyone got but now I’d have to buy it and I’m just not ready for that kind of commitment
I agree, but I would go beyond just “a game I don’t like” to a much more controversial “this game is actually terribly designed”.
Because of the way it’s designed it’s possible to randomly end up with a completely awful experience that ruins its “one time” playability for forever. I know this because it’s what happened to me. In my very first time out I ended up at like a 70% progression point to the final answer. Not because I’m “smart” or “good” mind you, I just got “lucky”. But it’s not actually lucky, because it now means 70% of the game is useless to me. It won’t help me get closer to the answer and it will (very frustratingly) take me back to where I’ve already been.
I think most people would counter saying the world itself is interesting/worth exploring on its own. But in one run I didn’t at all become engaged with the world itself (which is very reasonable). Certainly not enough to give a fuck about trying to go out and learn about it for its own sake. If it had taken me more runs to actually make progress then maybe I would’ve become engaged tangentially while working towards my goals. But alas. And FWIW, I did more than one run. I think overall I played the game for 3ish hours before getting fed up with going in circles.
If random chance can render most of your game not worth exploring, that’s bad design. Flat out.
Sorry, it’s been years and I don’t really remember any details. I just picked somewhere that looked interesting found out some info. Then in subsequent runs I opted to head in different directions and they kept revealing information that pointed me back to where I had been the first time.
Am I understanding that you mean certain important locations are not fenced off until you find the clues that lead to such locations? This game is pretty wide open. I certainly went to some “useless” location, but if I remember right, there is one very important location that you may just find “accidentally”.
I like the game, but it took some considerable effort to like it, plus a saving bug at the beginning that I had to solve, so I can understand why someone does not like it.
But in one run I didn’t at all become engaged with the world itself (which is very reasonable). Certainly not enough to give a fuck about trying to go out and learn about it for its own sake.
TBH, it sounds to me like you’re just not a very curious person.
But in one run I didn’t at all become engaged with the world itself (which is very reasonable). Certainly not enough to give a fuck about trying to go out and learn about it for its own sake.
TBH, it sounds to me like you’re just not a very curious person.
TBH, it sounds to me like you’re just not a very intelligent person.
I actually got fed up at around 50% and went to see what this supposed amazing final reveal was about and felt horridly overwhelmed by the fact that it was actually one of my guesses.
Obviously never gonna play it again and the devs are blacklisted.
Dude I was gonna say balatro too. That game is fucking hard as hell.
I played it for a few days and man, it felt so unfair each time.
Slay the spire felt much more fair. When I failed then, it felt like it was my fault more often than not. In Balatro though, nah man. Shits rigged lol.
For Balatro, depending on the difficulty … some draws are just unwinnable. You just gotta try again. You will pick up patterns or ways of winning eventually. But if it’s not for you, there’s no need to push yourself.
What’s funny is that I just can’t seem to beat Slay the Spire. I should try getting back into it 😂
Haha that is funny, I loved slay the spire. On lower ascensions, I would do pretty well, but after ascension 8, I struggled hard. I think the best I got was 12 or something on all the characters. Past that in couldn’t win most runs.
Balatro felt much more punishing for some reason I guess. Slay the spire has more strategy and skill based mechanics which i think made it more fun or at least, had mechanics that I could more easily enjoy/understand. In Balatros defense, I didn’t unlock everything so maybe thats why i didn’t enjoy it as much.
I got to about the same level of ascension in Slay the Spire. Eventually, I realized that dying 10 times in a row before getting the dream deck for finishing a high ascension level just… wasn’t that entertaining. When a game has too much RNG, it becomes about as much fun as flipping a coin and trying to get heads 5 times in a row. Oh and also, when you do get that perfect deck, it becomes even more stressful making sure that you don’t screw it up and have to start from the beginning all over again!
Now I just play with ascension off entirely. The A20 achievement is the only one I don’t have, and probably never will.
Yeah for Balatro, some cards you can unlock will just simply make runs easier. Balatro can also probably be more luck-based than Slay the Spire. Your “luck” gets better with more experience because you can get used to the bosses and anticipate obviously and then you can change your deck to adapt. It’s a balance between your economy and then maxing out the “blue” (fixed upgrades) and “red” (additions plus multipliers) … for the red on the higher difficulties you have to be “luckier” earlier to beat the bosses.
For Slay the Spire, I’m honestly not sure what I’m doing? I always start to feel as though I’m doing well and I move to the next ascension and I lose immediately 🤣 I don’t think I’ve past 4. Maybe I should read a guide :D
Guides helped a lot for me. Also just watching people who routinely did good in ascension 20 was beneficial.
Some general advice that helped me quite a bit was:
Take on as many elite enemy’s as possible without dying. They make you stronger from the relics they give as well as the card rewards and potion drops.
Remove strikes and defends from your deck while adding new cards. You want to keep a smaller deck typically, but having draw cards is also great to help you get through your deck more quickly.
Upgrade cards as much as you can. Upgraded cards help you scale for fights.
Look at the map before doing anything on each act. You can plan a route and see what is the best path based on your character or what you start with.
All that said, each run is different but the more you play, the more informed you are so you can make better choices each run based on what you know.
I may give balatro another go at some point, but just didn’t give me the same feeling that slay the spire did.
Dishonored. I was excited because of the reviews, but couldn’t vibe with it. I found it ugly, thought the world was uninteresting, and the forced stealth mechanics are frustrating and unfun to me.
This game is one of the games that I always bring up when people ask the question “what game did you bounce off at first, but you’re glad you stuck with it”.
It took me a few goes to get into it, but after abandoning trying to perfect the stealth run and just enjoying it for what it is I started to love it
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For me it’s any roguelike (or roguelite) I try. I may find the premise of the gameplay interesting, but having to replay the run from the start (while very likely not learning anything new, because I can’t repeat the situation that gave me trouble before) ruins it pretty quickly. Even the ones I kinda like (Rabbit And Steel and One Step From Eden) can’t keep my attention for long and I end up playing them very rarely.
Metaprogression in roguelites makes it even worse because I know that the runs are gonna be unfair from the start to make the upgrades work.
Exactly. I really went all in on rogue lite/like games last year to see what the hype was about and I came out with mixed opinions. I don’t hate the genre like I did before but I also don’t love it. I played balatro, megabonk, ball x pit, etc. I enjoy the randomness but sometimes it starts giving me a headache.
Ended up ranting about metaprogression, oh well.
I appreciate games that know what they want to be, and have an intended difficulty for you to experience/master (I also have nothing against adjustable difficulty and/or accessibility options, but I like knowing what the devs expected). I also appreciate roguelikes’ uncompromising approach, with the original concepts like non-modality, and expecting you to face challenges to get rewarded instead of bypassing them.
Metaprogression… Goes three ways. There are games which get easier as you upgrade across runs (which either get easier than they should or start too difficult), games where beating them at a difficulty unlocks harder difficulties (love that, as long as there aren’t too many things to separately unlock, since it lets you ramp things up to your comfortable difficulty while providing a ultimate challenge to reach), and games where you unlock content as you play (can be good for easing players into the game, but take it too far and you’re back to having to put X hours into the game to get the full experience)
Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, Luck be a Landlord do the second (StS has ascensions, Dead Cells has IIRC boss cells, LbaL has floors), but they do things differently in other regards. StS has you unlocking content based on accumulated score across runs with a specific character, but it doesn’t take too long. It also has a true ending that you can’t do on your first runs. Dead Cells seems to have a ton of content and upgrades that take a long time to unlock. LbaL doesn’t have any other metaprogression IIRC, but it does lock at least two important mechanics to specific floors (and up).
I hadn’t considered unlocking difficulties as metaprogression, but yea in that case I think it’s a fair mechanic (to be clear, I tend to drop these games when I get to the inevitable difficulty spike at the final area/boss, so I haven’t really experienced it, as the only one I can clear is Rabbit and Steel which has a traditional easy/normal/hard/harder selection).
Unlocking content to ease players in I think is weird and counter productive, as often even failing gets you further in the process and you might not have learned what the game was trying to teach you by delaying something. You might then be in a slightly harder game without having progressed as a player.
What I really don’t like are the permanent leveling/modifiers you find in games like Hades. I feel like they go against the basic idea of a rougelike/lite, since you can/need (depending on the game) to grind.
For me it’s Don’t Starve. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Early in the game I have to collect rocks and sticks and gold (IIRC) to make a “science machine” (WTF is that?) as a requisite for further crafting. And I found out the hard way that my character has to put flowers on their head to avoid dying from insanity. What were the devs smoking?
I love survival crafting games but Don’t Starve is a bit too punishing for me. I gave it 20 hours of attempts before giving up.
Things can fall apart so fast and so easily and like you said, they just throw you to the wolves to figure it out or die
But it’s not a matter of “figuring it out” if there’s no logic to the items. I’m supposed to just combine random shit and hope something good happens? Seems pretty disrespectful of my time.
There is a tech tree, you unlock recipes by crafting newer machines or picking up new ingredients. It’s not random and it does make sense
It’s a type of game very similar to Dwarf Fortress: losing is fun. You need to die many times to learn how to manage survival. Learning basic recipes by heart, efficient cooking recipes, threats for a specific time of year etc.
I agree that it’s very punishing. I never made it past winter.
I understand how crafting and tech trees work, and I’ve played plenty of roguelikes and soulslikes. I’m saying this makes no sense (and I’m sure it’s not the only example):
Seriously, where did this BS come from? And how the hell would I know this necessary recipe without looking it up? It’s like the devs were like “I guess we need a crafting station. Uhh… throw together some rocks and sticks, whatever”.
EDIT: The recipe is apparently shown in-game. But it’s still astonishingly stupid that they didn’t call it a “workbench” or similar like every other game.
The components to build a science machine in Don’t Starve don’t strike me as much stranger than those to build crafting stations in other games. In my experience, they’re often unrealistic.
Did you miss the fact that the recipe is shown in the build menu?
Maybe it is now? I don’t believe that was present when I played years ago.
I think you somehow missed it, mate. Here’s a screen shot from the year of its release:
Don’t starve is pretty hardcore if you don’t know what you’re doing. I love the game, and i absolutely suck at it. Every now and then you get lucky and the game seems pretty easy. Other times you starve and need food, but you’re also insane and can’t eat rabbits, and then it’s winter and you die.
So… just like I said, doesn’t make any goddamn sense.
Your comment makes me wanna go try the game out again. I have zero idea how to play it but, it might be worth another shot now.
I could never get into Don’t Starve but Don’t Starve Together is a blast with friends and mods. The game’s old and developed enough at this point that I wouldn’t try to figure anything out on your own. Just look it up. You’re not gonna miss out on the “discovery”. The game is crushingly hard already.
If a wiki is genuinely required, then IMO that’s a sign the game probably isn’t designed well.
It apparently isn’t designed to your tastes, but to say it isn’t designed well would be to overlook decades of highly regarded roguelikes. Even Nethack, which is nearly 40 years old and still loved, requires lots of experimentation (and many deaths) to discover how things work.
No, I’ve played a sufficient number of roguelikes that don’t have this level of BS.
A friend and I tried playing Don’t Starve Together. We kept dying before progressing very far.
I found nearly all of Disco Elysium’s characters so unlikable, (especially?) including the player character, that I could not enjoy it at all. I think I like the systems in it, and I’m happy when an RPG exposes its dice rolls; the voice performances were all very good; I just couldn’t stand it after 5 hours of trying.
You’re definitely not supposed to like Harry as a person. He is at best insane and at worst a racist, mysognistic, alcohic drug abusing piece of human garbage. It is also very easy to be put off by even the good people because Harry has already wronged most of them and they have already had enough of his shit by the time you take control.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just because I relate to him but I do kind of like Harry. Yes, he’s not a regular “good person”, but he’s also much more complex than just a “bad guy”. He’s flawed, tragic and ultimately incredibly human. I think he’s a fantastic character, just like most characters in Disco Elysium.
My heart welped for Harry in the dreaming sequence. Despite his best effort, Dolores wouldn’t stay. Nothing he could do or say. The powerlessness made him incredibly vulnerable and human. Very realistic depiction of a broken love.
The final dream is my favourite moment in all of gaming. Complete heart wrenching and beautifully written, and really kind of pulling the whole game into focus and making all the pieces click into place at once. I still can’t believe they made it so easily missable too, as it’s kind of the fulcrum the whole game is balanced on.
It also never ceases to amaze me how Robert Kurvitz managed to distill the entire pathos of the whole game into three words to close it out, too.
spoiler
See you tomorrow.
I don’t think I necessarily like Harry, but I sure as fuck empathize with him. Playing him as someone seeking redemption or trying to put his life back together (and SO OFTEN failing) was incredibly meaningful. You put it very well.
I get that. But I consume a lot of crime fiction. The Wire, Guy Ritchie movies, etc. These stories are full of terrible people, but they don’t make me feel like I’m trudging through a story with a bunch of assholes.
The main theme of the game basically centers around failure. How it manifests, how people react to it, how it affects them in the long run. Bitterness, apathy, delusion. Most of the characters are some kind of fuckup (except Kim, my beloved). Some of them are failures because they’re fucked up, some of them are fucked up because they failed again and again, but either way it’s an exploration of what that does to a person, what that does to a people, what that does to a town.
Some people just disassociate, some people give up and abandon their values to go with the flow, some people fight back impotently against forces they’ll never overcome. Above all, I think it’s basically about perseverance, one way or another, in the face of failure.
It’s very raw, very bleak, very human. It’s easy to feel vindicated when you strive and succeed, when you’re a virtuous hero, but who among us is just a virtuous hero? It’s much more complex and real to fail over and over and still get back on that horse, because what else can you do? The characters are supposed to be flawed, they’re supposed to be unlikeable. The game is about exploring what it is that made them unlikeable: how much of it is forces beyond their control, how much of it is their own stubbornness and maladaptive reactions, how much of it is just trauma.
If you don’t like exploring those ideas, you probably won’t like the game.
I would like exploring those ideas, but it doesn’t change what I said above.
It’s kind of a necessary aspect. You can’t really effectively explore what persistent failure does to a town without feeling like you’re trudging through a story full of assholes. If the characters weren’t so abrasive and broken, it wouldn’t really be the same kind of thing.
But I wasn’t exploring failure. I was just annoyed every time I had to talk to Kuno or anyone else.
And if you keep playing you learn the tragic reasons why Cuno is such a little shit and, I won’t post spoilers, but depending on your choices you can help him become way less of a little shit. It’s roughly the same for most of the asshole characters: they’re assholes at first, you find out why they’re assholes and develop a lot of sympathy for them, and sometimes you facilitate their redemption.
Could be, but I didn’t have the patience to see it. If that’s what they wanted me to see, I certainly felt it could have been paced better. You mostly only hear good things about this game, but my friends list on Steam has about a dozen people who stopped playing it around the same time I did. I can’t say why they put it down, as I didn’t poll them, but someone I follow on Giant Bomb had a pretty similar reaction to the front-loaded negativity of this game very recently, so I know it’s not just me.
Sure, but again that’s the point. I can get why someone might not have the patience for it, but you can’t really change the front-loaded negativity or pacing without sacrificing the whole message. It’s a crucial aspect of the storytelling.
Honestly, people who give up on it kinda validate the themes. You and your dozen friends didn’t persevere, like many of the characters. Giving up is one response to bleakness. That’s not a value judgement, like I said it isn’t for everyone, but it is kinda poignant that by checking-out you demonstrate exactly what it’s saying, to some degree.
I finished it recently and I also didn’t get what all the hype was about, but for me it was more the fact that none of the quests, main or side, were satisfying in the least.
I am a socialist and dont get offended at all if called a communist and finally I get why people may hate us, after playing this game.
Also, having to change clothes every 3 minutes brings me out of immersion.
It is very “snobbish” in its design despite beautiful art département stuff and voice acting.
Rainworld. I’ve started it twice now and quit a half-hour in both times. I love a good side scroller/Metroidvania, but this one has one mechanic I can’t abide: a time limit. You have to rush from shelter to shelter because the world periodically floods and annihilates everything out in the open. I just want to explore at my own pace game, thank you.
I think there’s a remix setting that lets you turn it off completely
Well, now I have to worry I’m not getting the proper experience. Ha!
I’m going to say yes, but if you just can’t enjoy the “proper” experience, but you enjoy it with the slight “cheat”, then that could be better than not playing.
Worth noting is that the time it takes to start raining varies, food respawns, creatures move around. If you can’t make it to the next shelter and die, you restart the cycle in the same way - but if you grab enough food to hibernate and go back to the same shelter, you might find it easier to progress on the next cycle.
Hmm. I’m just about done with Dave the Diver, maybe I’ll give it a shot next.
Cult of the lamb, maybe I just suck at the game but I felt there was just nowhere near enough time to do anything, just a chore to constantly keeping the cult members happy
Real. I just beat the main game a week or so ago and I have absolutely zero interest in picking it back up, even though I bought the DLC and there’s also post-game content.
I bounced off of Where The Water Tastes Like Wine. I didn’t really even get into the gameplay because the narration in the intro just wouldn’t shut up. You’d click an option, the caption would pop up, and then it would mail a request for the audio file to the developer. I’d have the caption read by the time the narrator started to speak, and the narrator talked the way old people fuck. I went “I don’t have the patience for this right now, I’ll come back to it later” I chose the Exit option from the menu, and the narrator started delivering a multi-line “everyone gets a break but you’ll come back” dialog, which I ALT+F4’d out of the software and uninstalled it on the spot. Dim Bulb Games is one of many studios on my black list.
Yeah, I couldn’t put my finger on it but I think you’re right. Real shame because it seemed like the game was going to be right up my alley in terms of its subject matter. But it’s just not an enjoyable experience.
I discovered it through its soundtrack. I was listening to West of Loathing’s soundtrack on Youtube, which was partially or entirely done by the same artist who did WTWTLW’s, so I got recommended some videos, looked up what it was, decided to give it a try, and…maybe if someone implements it for Apple II or some other machine that physically cannot support voice acting so we can dispense with the pretentiousness.
I mean, voice acting in and of itself is not a bad thing. Return of the Obra Dinn had just the right amount, for instance.
Granted, Obra Dinn’s pacing problem wasn’t about dialog. It was…You find a corpse, click, a musical sting plays, you get a few seconds of audio play, and then you see in glorious monochrome dithering the aftermath, and then you’re stuck there for the exact amount of time that some music plays. If you immediately learned something, you can’t do anything about it. If you learn a piece of information that puts something you saw earlier in a new context and you want to go back and look at it, you can’t do anything about it. If you’re not done looking when the music is over, you’ll clunkily have to come back in here. And woe betide you if there’s another corpse in that scene and you end up doing like five of them in a row.
I’ve heard that complaint before so you’re obviously not alone with your opinion but I personally never had an issue with that mechanic.
It’s not so bad when it’s your first time through the game and you’ve never seen any of it before, when you’re taking in the scenes for the first time. It’s a bigger issue on the second playthrough, which…this game isn’t designed for a second playthrough. The fun isn’t in the mechanics and it isn’t exactly a feast for the eyes (the monochrome dithered retro styling is interesting in full 3D and I understand it was a pain in the dick to get the Unity engine to do that, but it’s still a bit…harsh), so most of the fun is learning what happened, and if you’ve been through it before, well.
🤣🤣
Cairn. It’s the least enjoyable part of new Zelda games, on repeat.
This reminded me that the “new Zelda games”, at least the one that introduced this is almost 10yo
Any Soulslike anything. I have gotten my ass beaten by enemy NPCs in Smash Bros, and I have gotten my ass beaten by enemy players in Battlefield, and I stuck around with both until I got quite good (Smash Bros more than Battlefield, but still).
But Dark Souls, Demon Souls, Elden Ring… I’ve actually owned all of them and played none of them for more than a few hours at most. I got the furthest with Elden Ring but it’s just not fun, it’s harder than Smash Bros but about as fun as Ghost of Tsushima combat - which is to say, not very fun.
Oh also, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla or whatever the viking themed one was. I’m not a picky AC player, I loved the originals and I loved Origins and I loved many (though not all) in between those. But the viking one just had the slowest, least satisfying combat in the world. Which sucked since I’m Danish American, can’t even live out digital viking fantasies, but pirate fantasies are a decent second I guess.
On the flip side, the Stanley Parable is so good that I haven’t finished it because it makes my brain feel like it’s tripping but in a disorienting and uncomfortable way. It’s so good but I cant handle it for too long.
Out of curiosity, have you tried Sekiro or Nine Sols? I’m in the same situation as you, disliking souls with a passion, but for some reason the party mechanic in both these titles made all the difference. Even though I still got my ass whooped on repeat, it at least felt fairer.
I havent, but it’s not really the getting my ass beat that turns me off from the games, it’s more the
not really having fun while it happens lmao. Even when I first started playing BF3, I’d still have exciting moments between the repeat deaths on deaths on teamkills on deaths. Soulslike games have, for me, usually just felt like a slog and a grind. Maybe it’s just because I havent gotten good at them, quite likely really, but the barrier to entry just doesn’t seem worth surmounting to me when there are so many other games to play out there without the barrier to entry.
Yeah, I feel that. Totally fair.
Sekiro was the first one to hook me. Outstanding game.
Ah I ended up hating Stanley Parable, but mostly because the developer is a troll. I admit, on a meta level it fits the game’s theme, but as an achi hunter it felt insulting to come across comments of him laughing at players who couldn’t figure out what made specific achievements trigger, when behind the scenes he kept changing the criteria week to week just to mess with his players…
I’m sorry, I gotta be honest, that only makes me like it way more
yes, it’s definitely the kind of humour that people either really love or really hate :D
Honestly? Witcher 3. Heard so much good about it. Started it like 10 times. I hated the combat method. Made me hate the game.
Same, loved the story, loved the writing, but the combat was so awful I couldnt play it for very long
For me it wasn’t so much the combat as the movement. It just felt so clunky and like it was laggy to start and stop moving.
Maybe we should try it again sometime now that we have an actually decent GPU.
– Frost
The movement sucked too.
In had the same feeling with Demon Souls, which is optimized for PS5. I really just don’t find the combat interesting at all.
I think there’s a place for those games when I don’t have means to get other games though.
Oblivion Remaster: I loved Skyrim, but this game felt not as fun as Skyrim to me. Not sure what it was. Maybe it’s just nostalgia for Skyrim and I don’t have the patience for those kinds of games anymore.
Hollow Knight: The platforming always felt clunky and the constantly having to Google shit to figure out where I’m supposed to go next without spending 4 hours backtracking turned me off. I much prefer the Ori games to Hollow Knight.
I’m so with you on Ori vs Hollow Knight. It’s almost like it’s a bit shameful to admit it because HK is the “true hardcore” game but honestly I just have such a better time playing Ori, it’s actually an enjoyable experience versus putting myself through a meat grinder. All respect due of course to HK which is brilliant if you’re ready to be brutalized, but I prefer to play games to at least somewhat relax haha.
Dark Souls 3…it is a bit hard to jump in after its slower predecessor, for some reason unknown, I just like the legacy combat system better, can’t find the rhythm in the new one…
You’re not the only one, I love each other sooulsborne but 3 has this weird frenzy about it that I don’t really fuck with.
The thing that stood out to me was that a lot of enemies would dash past you or over you, breaking lock on, making the camera more annoying than in other games.
3 had too much of bloodborne into it unfortunately.
Minecraft and others like it. I want something to work towards. Because in games where you can do anything and make your own fun, is too much after my days.
Try Vintage Story. It’s focused on progression and it takes ages (in a good way) to do anything.
The Outer Wilds - I get recommended this over and over, I know it’s a huge hit, a cult classic, and beloved to many people. I finally got it and gave it a real solid attempt, several times so far. I understand the gameplay loop I guess, the repeating, the weird ship flying. I mean, I appreciate it and love that people are experimenting with new ways to make games that break old molds. I really like the atmosphere and maybe if I were a lot younger it would feel fresh and interesting.
But I never really started having fun, never really connected with the characters or the world, I never got hooked. Everything felt like a janky obstacle instead of progression and reward.
Maybe I’ll try it again sometime, but maybe it’s possible some games just don’t rub me right.
Also, ITT: lots of people arguing with other people why their feelings are wrong.
I only gave it one try when it came on game pass and I dropped it pretty quick. I wanted to go back to it after seeing how hyped everyone got but now I’d have to buy it and I’m just not ready for that kind of commitment
I agree, but I would go beyond just “a game I don’t like” to a much more controversial “this game is actually terribly designed”.
Because of the way it’s designed it’s possible to randomly end up with a completely awful experience that ruins its “one time” playability for forever. I know this because it’s what happened to me. In my very first time out I ended up at like a 70% progression point to the final answer. Not because I’m “smart” or “good” mind you, I just got “lucky”. But it’s not actually lucky, because it now means 70% of the game is useless to me. It won’t help me get closer to the answer and it will (very frustratingly) take me back to where I’ve already been.
I think most people would counter saying the world itself is interesting/worth exploring on its own. But in one run I didn’t at all become engaged with the world itself (which is very reasonable). Certainly not enough to give a fuck about trying to go out and learn about it for its own sake. If it had taken me more runs to actually make progress then maybe I would’ve become engaged tangentially while working towards my goals. But alas. And FWIW, I did more than one run. I think overall I played the game for 3ish hours before getting fed up with going in circles.
If random chance can render most of your game not worth exploring, that’s bad design. Flat out.
I’m really curious how that happened if you don’t mind sharing in a spoiler.
Sorry, it’s been years and I don’t really remember any details. I just picked somewhere that looked interesting found out some info. Then in subsequent runs I opted to head in different directions and they kept revealing information that pointed me back to where I had been the first time.
Am I understanding that you mean certain important locations are not fenced off until you find the clues that lead to such locations? This game is pretty wide open. I certainly went to some “useless” location, but if I remember right, there is one very important location that you may just find “accidentally”.
I like the game, but it took some considerable effort to like it, plus a saving bug at the beginning that I had to solve, so I can understand why someone does not like it.
TBH, it sounds to me like you’re just not a very curious person.
TBH, it sounds to me like you’re just not a very intelligent person.
This is what I feared.
I actually got fed up at around 50% and went to see what this supposed amazing final reveal was about and felt horridly overwhelmed by the fact that it was actually one of my guesses.
Obviously never gonna play it again and the devs are blacklisted.
I agree on this
Dude I was gonna say balatro too. That game is fucking hard as hell.
I played it for a few days and man, it felt so unfair each time.
Slay the spire felt much more fair. When I failed then, it felt like it was my fault more often than not. In Balatro though, nah man. Shits rigged lol.
For Balatro, depending on the difficulty … some draws are just unwinnable. You just gotta try again. You will pick up patterns or ways of winning eventually. But if it’s not for you, there’s no need to push yourself.
What’s funny is that I just can’t seem to beat Slay the Spire. I should try getting back into it 😂
Haha that is funny, I loved slay the spire. On lower ascensions, I would do pretty well, but after ascension 8, I struggled hard. I think the best I got was 12 or something on all the characters. Past that in couldn’t win most runs.
Balatro felt much more punishing for some reason I guess. Slay the spire has more strategy and skill based mechanics which i think made it more fun or at least, had mechanics that I could more easily enjoy/understand. In Balatros defense, I didn’t unlock everything so maybe thats why i didn’t enjoy it as much.
I got to about the same level of ascension in Slay the Spire. Eventually, I realized that dying 10 times in a row before getting the dream deck for finishing a high ascension level just… wasn’t that entertaining. When a game has too much RNG, it becomes about as much fun as flipping a coin and trying to get heads 5 times in a row. Oh and also, when you do get that perfect deck, it becomes even more stressful making sure that you don’t screw it up and have to start from the beginning all over again!
Now I just play with ascension off entirely. The A20 achievement is the only one I don’t have, and probably never will.
Yeah for Balatro, some cards you can unlock will just simply make runs easier. Balatro can also probably be more luck-based than Slay the Spire. Your “luck” gets better with more experience because you can get used to the bosses and anticipate obviously and then you can change your deck to adapt. It’s a balance between your economy and then maxing out the “blue” (fixed upgrades) and “red” (additions plus multipliers) … for the red on the higher difficulties you have to be “luckier” earlier to beat the bosses.
For Slay the Spire, I’m honestly not sure what I’m doing? I always start to feel as though I’m doing well and I move to the next ascension and I lose immediately 🤣 I don’t think I’ve past 4. Maybe I should read a guide :D
Guides helped a lot for me. Also just watching people who routinely did good in ascension 20 was beneficial.
Some general advice that helped me quite a bit was:
Take on as many elite enemy’s as possible without dying. They make you stronger from the relics they give as well as the card rewards and potion drops.
Remove strikes and defends from your deck while adding new cards. You want to keep a smaller deck typically, but having draw cards is also great to help you get through your deck more quickly.
Upgrade cards as much as you can. Upgraded cards help you scale for fights.
Look at the map before doing anything on each act. You can plan a route and see what is the best path based on your character or what you start with.
All that said, each run is different but the more you play, the more informed you are so you can make better choices each run based on what you know.
I may give balatro another go at some point, but just didn’t give me the same feeling that slay the spire did.
Dishonored. I was excited because of the reviews, but couldn’t vibe with it. I found it ugly, thought the world was uninteresting, and the forced stealth mechanics are frustrating and unfun to me.
This game is one of the games that I always bring up when people ask the question “what game did you bounce off at first, but you’re glad you stuck with it”.
It took me a few goes to get into it, but after abandoning trying to perfect the stealth run and just enjoying it for what it is I started to love it