Slay the Spire for me, I thought it’d be a slam dunk because I love Balatro, but it just didn’t land for me at all.
What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype?
Submitted 5 months ago by lriv724@discuss.online to games@lemmy.world
Comments
swab148@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
That’s funny, I love Slay the Spire, but I have mixed feeling about Balatro.
Balatro is addicting in that once I start playing I don’t want to stop, and yet after playing for a few hours I couldn’t say for sure I had fun at any point the whole time.
Playing Balatro feels like exploring the backrooms to me - just infinite bland nothingness.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 5 months ago
Kinda the same, but I did like slay the spire. But balatro is leaps and bounds superior.
Hobo@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Huh opposite for me. I have played Slay the Spire for like 2000 hours. I have beaten it through ascension 20 on all 4 characters like 20ish times at this point. I still pick it up and play it when I’m bored and it still is fun somehow.
I could not get into Balatro like that. I think I have roughly 50 hours in it and like 3/4 of the way through it with all the decks and challenges and simply cannot bring myself to complete it. The last 10 or so hours just felt like a slog. Still a good game but the sheen wore off for me well before I could 100% it much less start replaying.
To each their own I guess! Funny how similar the games are and how there’s just some people that love one but can’t get into the other.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 months ago
The new Silent Hill 2.
The use of DLSS makes it look like a fugly, smudged mess unless you’re totally motionless. The combat is inconsistent; hit a monster, it gets stunned but then jankily cancels the stun animation to grab you or attack through your attack so it hits you but you don’t hit it.
Not sure what is better than the original other than the graphics when standing still.
binarytobis@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I enjoyed Blue Prince, I’m exactly who it was made for, but it was definitely much worse than people would lead you to believe.
The game makers had no respect for players’ time. You solve one of the large, run-independent puzzles and it all clicks, then it could take you several hours to playtime to luck into the conditions to actually test your solution. Everything takes longer than it should. It’s obvious that I’m going to toggle security settings every time I’m in the Security Room, why do you make me go through this slow as hell PC every time? It’s not for realism because no PC back then had such fantastical functionality, so why not make the PCs load screens faster? How does the slowness enhance the experience? Why not just put buttons on the wall you can toggle for the security settings, at least? There were times where I figured something out, and rather than spend ten hours trying to actually do the thing, I just looked up that part of a walkthrough to get the next info.
Really interesting game, but I did some napkin math and I wasted 25 avoidable hours during my playthrough (long unskippable loads and such) that could have been spend completing an entire different game.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
Check out Seance of Blake Manor, doesn’t have the rng
binarytobis@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s funny, I literally downloaded that one last night.
domi@lemmy.secnd.me 5 months ago
Same. The game is fantastic but the RNG is only cool on paper and falls apart just a few hours into the game. The methods they give you to influence your luck are just not enough to do much at all.
It’s really frustrating when you are trying to do something but you constantly have to do something else because that’s what the game is giving you.
I cheated at the end and gave me infinite rerolls for rooms so I could create the layout I needed in that moment. Much better that way.
pika@lemmy.today 5 months ago
I bought into the review hype, bought the game, then realized about two hours after the Steam refund window expired just how tedious this game felt to play.
I really wanted to like it, but it stopped being fun and started being so tedious that I uninstalled it.
nfreak@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
I bought it ages ago but finally decided go give it a go. From the first day I could tell it wasn’t gonna be a game for me. Note-taking is basically mandatory, and it seems so easy just to get fucked out of a run by RNG.
Narrative seemed interesting but I feel like the whole “ability to decide what room you’re going into” thing should be weaved into the story off the bat.
jacksilver@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I absolutely agree with you, I got to a point where I had solved the “main” puzzle, but was struggling to complete other puzzles (that I knew the solution to) simply due to room draws.
I wanted to love the game, but it held itself back on the RNG design. It can be so detrimental to the game that I wouldn’t recommend it to most people.
who@feddit.org 5 months ago
The game makers had no respect for players’ time.
I don’t know that game, but the importance of respecting the player’s time cannot be overstated.
I wish more game makers understood this and prioritized it accordingly.
nfreak@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
It’s a huge part of why I quit Destiny 2 entirely. A game that doesn’t respect the player’s time and pads it with RNG on top of RNG to extend playtime feels awful.
Cyberflunk@lemmy.world 5 months ago
arc raiders
Killer@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Do you have a general reason? Giving the name of the game doesn’t do much when i don’t know why you didn’t like it.
nlgranger@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Prey. It’s inferior to the older Dishonored games in pretty much every aspect.
TwoSteps@programming.dev 5 months ago
Wild, I had the opposite experience, I loved Prey (I also love the Dishonored games). What stuff did you end up not liking about Prey?
nlgranger@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I felt dishonored offered many more options to move around, the level design had more surprises and verticality which multiplies options. Sneaking is a viable approach works. The characters and dialogs have a lot more depth and there is a lot more lore to discover along the way.
Also It might be my fault because I opted to avoid typhoon upgrades, but the mid game was really tedious due to ammo scarcity and the end ga
BryceBassitt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
For me the difference is simply being a scardey baby who cant handle horror
Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 months ago
Compared to Dishonored, Prey lacks all the movement.
I_Jedi@lemmy.today 5 months ago
Fallout 4. I could never bring myself to finish it. The furthest I ever got was just before the Mass Fusion mission between the Institute and the Brotherhood, with the Railroad already dead. I just couldn’t summon the will to continue. In ever playthrough after that, I rush to Nuka World, finish a few parks there, and call it quits again.
CodeBlooded@programming.dev 5 months ago
Deep Rock Galactic. I was really excited to play it and I tried to like it. The colors and graphics were 10/10 awesome, I just found it to be extremely boring and repetitive.
filcuk@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Man I LOVE drg. A good team on a call made this the most fun I’ve had playing in recent years. Unfortunately, the population is lower and one may have trouble finding new players. Veterans are usually happy to help, but you’d need a patient one.
Butterpaderp@lemmy.world 5 months ago
For me, deep rock really shines when you’re playing the higher hazard levels. Seeing a wall of the cave move because it’s covered in enemies, and then hitting them with a fat boy gave me happy chemicals.
it_depends_man@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Very fair, I had a lot of fun with it as a casual game to relax with. Not so easy it’s trivial, not so hard it needs a lot of thinking.
catalyst@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I picked up Vampire Survivors, played one round, and was like yeah I think I’m done here.
Leonyx@kbin.melroy.org 5 months ago
I don't know how I managed to have gone through the game as long as I have. I got it for free when it was a giveaway on Epic. I feel that's exactly the right price because really, it's just an almost do-nothing but move slightly and just pick options kind of game. Got boring fast.
It started being really ridiculous when I got one character, a skeleton that threw bones, up to the point where all I see were just numbers, gems and other flying things from the abilities I picked. It just got comically stupid but still boring at the same time.
This game's entire premise, was that it's supposed to give you feel-good moments without having spending money like you normally would on mobile games. It behaves like a mobile game without MTX. But I think its problem is that it retains the other problems that mobile gaming has than just MTX, such as time-wasting, cheating you of your dopamine and all that.
salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 5 months ago
I picked it up and thought “this is so stupid,” right before spending many hours playing it.
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 5 months ago
Try out Magic Survival, the (way better) game VS was copied of
JakoJakoJako13@piefed.social 5 months ago
Farthest Frontier.
I love city building games. They’re my genre of choice. This one is hyped up to 11 as this great agent based logistics chain focused city sim. It’s not. Like at all. The numbers are obfuscated to hell and back. It’s got the slowest tier one to tier 2 transition I’ve ever played in a game like this. Very little does what it’s reported to do. They added a useless tech tree to lock stuff up to get a sense of progression, when in reality it just adds a second layer of requirements and time to progress to the next stage of your city. They have a really frustrating combat system which is cool in thought, but poorly executed. The economy is fucked and barely makes any sense.
The most frustrating thing that’s the biggest deal breaker is that pops don’t move into the city upon building housing. You need extra people to fulfill basic laborer roles. I can fill up every job I’ve plopped and have 20 extra workers doing basic labor or nothing. Or I can have two extra workers and build more houses to increase the pop count. Problem is nobody moves in. One of the requirements to get to tier 3 is 200 pop. I can’t break the 64 barrier let alone 100 because for some awful reason the dev decided to use a desirability score and not move pops in upon building a house. I have a population cap of 140 people and there’s vacant houses everywhere. Yet shit don’t change. I don’t think peasants in the fucking 1400s gave a shit about market prices and luxury amenities when fucking bears and wolves attack every 5 minutes. Just move people in the houses when I build them.
The game is a looker. I’ll give it that. Everything else is frustratingly bad.
skrunch@lemmy.world 5 months ago
All the souls games. I don’t get it, they’re just no fun 🤷♂️
Also, never finished doom eternal, far too busy. Dark ages was great tho
Leonyx@kbin.melroy.org 5 months ago
I love the fuck out of dark fantasy. The problem is that while souls-games and Elden Ring, are drenched with dark fantasy elements, the game execution itself just didn't appeal to me at all. I just don't like the idea of tediousness mixed with a scale of difficulty where all and any progress of mine are just dashed because a slight misstep.
who@feddit.org 5 months ago
My first attempt was Dark Souls 3. I went in expecting challenging but rewarding battles, and a mysterious world to explore. Unfortunately, I found myself bored within an hour every time I played, and gave up on it after maybe a dozen sessions.
I tried Elden Ring maybe a year or two later. I stuck with it for longer, but the experience was roughly the same. The combat felt tedious. The art and animation didn’t appeal to my tastes. The world seemed big, but desolate. The controls somehow made me feel awkwardly disconnected from my character. Nothing about the game made me care about it at all. The biggest challenge was in keeping my eyelids open.
I wonder if I would find soulslikes more appealing if I had grown up on console games. They’re clearly popular, but it seems they just aren’t for me.
Crashumbc@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I actually bought DS3 twice, For the PS4 the first time, and couldn’t do anything. I’m not a console person by nature. Then I found out it was on PC, my jam, got it and OMG is that port shitty
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 5 months ago
All the souls games. I don’t get it
They’re memorization timesinks
Datz@szmer.info 5 months ago
It depends on person and skill, a lot of people manage to beat a majority of bosses 1st try.
Also, personally, I just like using magic which makes some parts easier.
Katana314@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’ve enjoyed a lot of Soulslikes, but none of the ones made by FromSoft. Their style of providing poor explanations of mechanisms just makes no sense to me, even if you want to give players those moments of self-driven discovery.
domi@lemmy.secnd.me 5 months ago
Now I’m wondering, which non-From Soulslikes did you enjoy?
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 5 months ago
There was a time when I could not have imagined liking those kinds of games. My partner got me Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition and I hated it. Hate may be too kind a word for how I felt. I’ve always loved metroidvanias and the style seemed right up my gothy, witchy alley, but I couldn’t get past the first basic zombie.
Then we watched a bunch of videos and realized that the game was designed to be played slowly and deliberately. There were no “junk” enemies and paying careful attention at all times was the game. When it clicked, it clicked, and now From Software games are my favorite.
BreakerSwitch@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I had a similar experience. Went the wrong way in DS1, headed straight for the catacombs, went “oh. This isn’t hard. This is punishing.” And dropped off. Later a friend gave me some guidance and some pointers on what the game did/didn’t expect of me and I’ve been a giant fan ever since.
Sekiro took me a little time to figure out what it expected from me, too, but now I absolutely adore that game. That’s more of a mechanical “what should I be doing in combat” statement of the fact that the game expects you to act aggressively while focusing on defense. Though
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Souls games didn’t make sense to me until I saw Giant Bomb play through Demon’s Souls. Mechanics that I didn’t know were there were explained in plain English, and then I could better understand where I went wrong when I died.
rtxn@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Elden Ring. It is good for what it is, probably the best in its genre, but after so many Soulsbornes, it just feels like more of the same. Formulaic.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
It’s definitely not the best in its genre, if only because they did away with the level design ethos that makes their other games so good.
nfreak@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
This is something that gets completely lost in the translation to an open world game. The DS trilogy, Bloodborne, and even the original Demon’s Souls feel hand-crafted and carefully structured without being completely linear. ER loses a lot by leaving that formula behind.
On top of that, the boss/enemy design is imo some of the worst they’ve ever done. The past games (with DS2 being the one with the most exceptions) typically give you very fair but challenging fights. Telegraphs are clear without being slow and obvious. Particle effects and such are generally kept to a minimum to prevent visual clutter from taking over the screen. Bosses hit hard, but very few hits or combos, if any, would one-shot most builds outside of challenge runs. ER throws all of that out the window - bosses tend to hit like trucks, are visual clusterfucks (either enormous models with a terrible camera, tons of particle effects blasting out the ass, or both). I feel like the final boss of the DLC as an example is the most egregious example of this sort of design philosophy. Hell, Nightreign works so much better with the exact same designs because it’s such a faster-paced game where getting knocked down once or twice isn’t usually the end of a run.
Datz@szmer.info 5 months ago
I (re)play Soulsborne for builds, and I think that’s necessary to appreciate ER. Trying out all the spells and different weapons is most of the fun, the rest being trying them out on bosses.
Buffy@libretechni.ca 5 months ago
To me, the Souls combat does best in a tightly knit and highly curated environment. I really enjoyed Elden Ring but I do not think it was a step forward for the series. Open World worked to the detriment of the game IMO.
nfreak@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
I echoed this in another thread. I honestly feel like ER is the weakest “Soulsborne” game they’ve put out. It feels like a lot of conflicting design philosophies at once.
The lore and worldbuilding are phenomenal but gameplay-wise it falls short of what made their past games shine.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You know, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I’d say Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is worth playing for a lot of reasons, but I think it’s got huge fundamental issues in both its combat and narrative design; it’s still on the short list for most outlets’ game of the year awards this year. Hades just got a sequel, and I didn’t even care for the first one. For many people, those two games are just about the only roguelikes or -lites they’ve ever played, but I don’t think they’re even good ones of those; the level generation is so limited that you’ll have seen all their permutations quite quickly, and the bonuses from boons just about all feel superfluous and interchangeable. Hollow Knight holds this legendary status among metroidvanias, and Silksong followed suit. I thought Hollow Knight was just fine, but I was surprised to find that this was the game with that sort of following. When facing the possibility of playing Silksong this year or about 5 other video games that came out this year, I don’t think Silksong is making the cut.
But your mileage will absolutely vary. These games have hype for a reason: a lot of people love them. You might, too.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
I agree regarding Hollow Knight… It was fine. I don’t really get the hype though, people would make you believe it’s the best game ever made.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 5 months ago
All of the games you listed here were pretty under hyped IMO except for perhaps Silksong.
I understand this is all subjective, but I think you’re leaning toward like indie gaming hipster material with this comment…and that’s my opinion.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I leaned toward games that came highly recommended that I actually played.
kinther@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I played E33 for about 4 hours. The combat system is atrocious. It feels like I’m playing a turn based RPG but with elements of Dark Souls? The almost necessity of dodging in combat made me give the game up.
Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
I just played it on easy difficulty then it became enjoyable for me.
B0NK3RS@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I’d go for CO:E33 too. Its a decent enough game but I don’t understand the absolute hype it receives. Probably a 5/10 game for me.
Hobo@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I can answer this for you. So imagine a genre of game that you grew up playing, loved, and sunk possibly thousands of hours in. Now imagine for like 15 years they only made the most dogshit version of that genre of game. Then someone comes along and makes a decent, even passable, modern version of that game.
It’s like giving dirty water to a dehydrated person. Is the water good? Fuck yeah in the moment it’s fantastic. Is the water the greatest water you’ve ever had? Well technically no, but please don’t take away the dirty water please.
TabbsTheBat@pawb.social 5 months ago
Just played through Doom: Eternal cause it was on sale for 4€ a bit back. The entire time I was wishing I was playing Doom 2016…
Delta_V@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Dungeons and Dragons 5e is less fun than 3.5e IMO.
There was more of a sense of character progression, and ability differentiation in 3.5e.
5e achieves balance by flattening the power curve.
For example, the attack bonus for a level 20 Fighter in 5e is just 4 points higher than it was at level 1 - same as a 5e Wizard. Both get +2 at lvl 1 and +6 at lvl 20
In 3.5e, a level 20 fighter’s attack bonus is 19 points higher than it was at level 1 (+1 to +20), but a wizard only gains half that much fighting prowess as they level up (+0 to +10).
All 5e characters are pretty much the same statistically & mechanically. Differentiation comes from role play, which is the least interesting part of the game for me.
capuccino@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I often stay away of new games because that exactly, the hype. If you play a new game and you say it sucks, everybody yells at you, but if you let past the time, it’s the time the one who gives reason to people.
Whitebrow@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Not sure how recent we’re talking but within the last year or so my 2 biggest disappointments have been once human and nightingale. I can usually work around jank and weird creative decisions, but unfortunately neither of these two were worth any of the time I’ve spent playing em since they felt like they didn’t seem to want you to progress.
Played once human for about 3 days, nightingale for around 3 hours and then refunded.
M137@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Planet crafter - Holy shit is that game janky, ugly, badly designed etc.
Conan Exiles - I did enjoy it for a while, but it quickly becamse such a chore since so little is explained so you spend so much time having to look things up, and even then it’s often not obvious what to do. I payed solo, and there is a point where doing that just feels impossible, I ended up wanting to cheat to do some things and that’s a point I never cross so I just stopped playing.
I really want to play some game like that, ; survival with base building, exploration etc, But I think I’ve exhausted the list of one that are good enough for me. I’ve played Minecraft, Terraria, Star Bound, Enshrouded, Subnautica, Grounded, Valheim, The Forest and more that I’m not remembering right now. There are some that are in early access that I’m interested in but I’ve stopped playing EA games, I now always wait till full release.
If anyone has any suggestions I’d be very happy, I’m seething for something to dive deep into. I’m only interested in Single player games through, at least ones that can be played as such.
9bananas@feddit.org 5 months ago
similar suggestion to BlackAngels: RimWorld?
sounds like you’d enjoy top-down gameplay more than 1st person, so might be something to try!
pro tip: try the base game first. the DLC are all good, but none are required!
Black616Angel@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
They are all centered around being the person executing the task. Have you tried Dwarf Fortress or alike games?
meatwads_tooth@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Soulmask. Its been phenomenal even in EA, and its about to fully release before the end of the year. Once Human is also fantastic and its free.