Great Games You Actually Hate

[J4MES OX4D 10,064]

Thought I'd make a thread of games that are popular and/or widely regarded yet for some reason, you just don't like them for whatever reasons or think they warrant their plaudits. Here's my top 5:-

 

1. Doom Eternal - shocking departure from the standard Doom formula that was carried through even to the 2016 reboot. Instead of going in all guns blazing, you now have to conserve ammo and trickle-shoot as much as possible due to the lack of available. Firefights are predictable and largely occur in arena environments and the amount of chain-sawing and glory kills you have to pull off literally negates the whole shooting element especially with the ammo reductions. It begins to feel like a rhythm shooter with dance-off mechanics and the inclusion of platforming is dreadful and painfully implemented - also an excuse to condense levels and divide them into battle arenas. It's a beautiful game but I will never understand why the took this direction. They also devalued and destroyed glory kills into an horrendously repetitive and predictable aspect. 

 

2. Max Payne 3 - the first two games were noir masterpieces by Sam Lake and his small Remedy team. These titles were produced for $3m and $8m back in the day. Rockstar bought the rights with Max Payne fan Dan Houser leading the writing. This game removes everything that made the original games iconic and instead Rockstar placed their own DNA design philosophy on it. We now have cover shooting, slow, cumbersome mechanics and the writing is absolutely ghastly with Payne delivering persistent monologue waffles that mean nothing and also don't take into account his past. 40% of the game is cutscenes and the flow is persistently interrupted - you'll be lucky if you can walk 30ft without a 5 minute video beginning. The comic book panels have also been replaced by nauseating cutscenes with outrageous post-processing effects and distortions. It's literally GTA without the cars and Payne himself doesn't even look, sound or behave like how he used to. Dan Houser absolutely destroyed this series in one go and at a cost of $105m making it the most expensive game ever at the time. 

 

3. Control - this time it's a Remedy game that didn't sit right with me. Game feels like a tech demo and whilst it looks impressive, the visuals look rather washed and weird. The story isn't anywhere near as intriguing as it sets out to be and the mechanics don't feel very refined. Not what you'd expect from the OG creators of Max Payne. There is only one gun in the game and although this can be upgraded, combat becomes stale within the first 30 minutes because every shot feels the same. The environment is also the same old office with lots of backtracking or warped sci-fi based levels. You can literally see all this game has to offer within the first 10 minutes. 

 

4. Zelda: Breath of the Wild - definitely a good game but extremely overrated IMO and the media are way too forgiving for Nintendo products where other ones are criticised. After about 20 hours, this game becomes exhastingly repetitive with some annoying mechanics, a largely empty world and a gameplay design not too dissimilar from previous Ubisoft titles. It's finished, it is polished but either I've outgrown this series or I am burned on open world titles. However, since then I returned to Ocarina of Time and found that to be a far better experience aesthetically and with its sublimely charming music. Weapon degradation, tiresome travelling and bloody radio towers really soured this for me but like many Nintendo fans, if you don't play other multi-platform games including open world ones then this will be one of the best ever. For me, it's nothing I haven't seen a million times over in recent memory. Tears of the Kingdom does worry me with its even bigger size but the world and mechanics seem way more entertaining. BOTW was just too much and the Shrine bloat became unbearable. 

 

5. Elden Ring - I think this is a great game but just not a good Souls entry. The open world is far too barren and the highly championed exploration wasn't quite as interesting as I thought especially when it came to the tedious dungeons which mimicked the chalice ones from Bloodborne. Bosses rely on invisible walls and invincibility frames which is completely unacceptable for a game of this nature and hasn't been since seen Dark Souls 2. They also have extreme move-sets which cannot be telegraphed and these moves cannot be broken past certain fames so all you can do is sit back, get one hit in and then avoid another 9 step attack. I really prefer the linear design of Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro and the open world in Elden Ring does the whole game a disservice especially from the replayability factor. Boss bloat is also horrendous with so many copy and pasted even in the overworld. I still think this game is better than what most developers put out but for me, some of the negative factors are too significant and quite surprising. I sincerely hope this new open world design doesn't become the norm in future From Software titles.