Games You Want To Love But Can't

[Edlennion]

Total War: Medieval II has the Pope. Fuck that guy. Playing the Christian nations just isn't fun when you have this gigantic tit shouting at you all the time.

Yeah, I know what you mean there.

It's been a while since I played it, but I remember that last time I did, he annoyed me so much that I marched an army all the way from the England-Scotland border just so I could sack Rome out of spite. That was really satisfying though...

on topic:

Crusader Kings 2. I love the sound of this game, but I've played the demo over several times and it's just never clicked with me. Maybe because it's only the demo, but I just don't love it like I thought I would

[Bhazor]

I remember once spending 30 years just killing the pope again and again. I'd have an assasin stationed in every province in europe and as soon as a cardinal turned [BAM!!!] they'd be smotened.
Hilariously it meant the pope was never alive long enough to excommunicate me so as far as the other factions went I was considered incredibly pious because all the cardinals were now from my faction.

OT
Assassins Creed
Lovingly detailed historical settings, parkour gameplay, interesting framing device, beautifully smooth animation,appalling combat, brain dead AI, dull risk/challenge free parkour gameplay and a framing device that ends up as one of the most amazingly dumb stories I can remember*. I've tried all three major releases and just end up rage quitting about two hours in. Then I go back to just wander the city for IRL landmarks and end up bouncing off invisible walls and random piss easy but annoyingly long chases.

*a whole army/civilization of Assasins? How the fuck does that even work?

[Xercies]

Agree with Europa, people keep saying its their best game(except for crusader kings) but i find it extremely, extremely dull as a game to be honest. But Crusader Kings does click with me so i don't really know why.

Eve Online - I want to love it, i so want to love it, in fact every year for the past ten years since the day I played the 14 day trial one summer I have been in love with this game and wanting to play it. The stories it creates, the adrenline rush that piracy causes when I tried to be a pirate, the community I found when I played the Faction Wars. All that I love. But its a game I can only play for 2 months maximum because it is so bloody boring, the skills are boring since you have to wait for them, the ship mining is boring, the ship combat is kind of boring. Its just sooo boring, but sooo interestign at the same time. its one of those games where I get the ideal of it and i sometimes glimpse at it when I'm playing it but then it goes suddenly and i'm left with a dull game.

[Casimir Effect]

I too had a permanent Pope-Assassin (or ten) who did that year after year. But I still had an army who worked their way through every christian faction until all Europe west of the Aegean was either English (me) or Rebel. It was at that point I realised the game had become a farce so fuck it, Rome: BI time.

[coldvvvave]

Homeworld
I like everything( story, artstyle, music, cutscenes) but not the gameplay. It's just boring, slow and unfair. Tutorial is insufficient. Balance is unfathomable. You never know what to do first time. Only ion-beam spam works. Lost too many ships? Too bad, next mission is unwinnable now( lol no resources). It's like a trial and error full-3d platformer in space, only there are no platforms. If you are not a grizzled veteran( 5-6 playthroughs, can win by using scouts and salvage corvettes only, knows when stuff hapens in missions) the game will screw you over with scripted AI attacks and other great things. Surely, there are people who mastered this game easily, but not me.

PS. Guy who created Supernova Station mission should be tried for crimes against humanity.

PS2: Last time I gave up at Karos Graveyard mission, should just watch whats left on YT.

[deano2099]

Hitman
The first two I've tried a couple of times but can't get into, thought I'd skip to Blood Money (which I never do) but even there I feel kind of paralysed by the options once you're out of the tutorial. I can't seem to let loose and just see how it goes but the rules on detection and disguises seem a bit too woolly for me to get my head around the system.


Civ
I can play it through on easy and do alright and have a bit of fun, but none of the games have come with a decent tutorial that actually allows me to get my head around all the systems. And playing even a single game isn't a short time investment - I don't have the patience to slowly up the difficultly level to force me to grok all the elements without kicking my ass. It really needs a scripted, directed tutorial/campaign where you're a set leader against other set leaders, and the game tells you what to do, unlocking certain elements of the game at certain intervals, but still offering a bit of a challenging, slowly ramping it up. As it is I find it either too easy or too hard.

Splinter Cell
Love the games, but either the FOV or the night-vision mode or something causes me a huge migraine after an hour of play. Only games that have ever done this.

[RobC]

Skyrim (and all the other Elder Scrolls games): Combat just gets too boring and repetitive.
Conquest of Elysium 3: I route for the small developers to succeed. While CoE3 isn't a bad game, it didn't grab me. Tom Chick's write up of the character classes made it seem so interesting, but there just wasn't enough to do.
Diablo 3: Click-click, I just can't take games like that anymore. Same with Torchlight. Torchlight required the least amount of thought to win out of any I have played in a long time.

[agentorange]

Of my most recently played games, have to say The Witcher 2. From what I had read I knew they had made significant changes to the structure of the game, but I was still expecting a Witcher game, which in my opinion The Witcher 2 is not. It's just a typical action RPG with some Witcher window dressings. I loved the combat in the first game, it was completely original (as far I know), and the animations accompanying the combat truly made Geralt look like he was a professional monster killer; the stance system was brilliant as well, engaging a cluster of enemies with the group combat style, then isolating the most powerful enemy and finishing him off with the strong style, you actually had to pay attention to the flow of the combat to have any chance on the higher difficulties. Not to mention you absolutely had to make use of potions, due to the variety of the enemies and their special stats, unlike TW2 where potions just amount to power-ups. In The Witcher 2 it's just: QUEN, ROLL ROLL ROLL ROLL ROLL-INTO-ATTACK ROLL AWAY ROLL ROLL ROLL ROLL-INTO-ATTACK, QUEN AGAIN. I cannot imagine what the fuck the enemies were thinking as they watched Geralt roll around the battlefield like a crack addicted acrobat. Anyway I'll stop the rant now, but yeah, I wish TW2 had kept the high points of TW1, rather than completely white washing away what was interesting about that game.

[Althea]

This is now one of my favourite typos.

Been meaning to try Venetica for a while. Is it entirely impossible to play with the bugs or what?

Might as well be, but I'd argue the combat system makes it impossible.

[UnidentifiedFlyingTard]

Skyrim, Deus Ex HR, Diablo 2 (I just couldn't get into it, I love Torchlight though oddly enough), Company of Heroes, BioShock 2.

[Voon]

Fable springs to mind. The first one. It has a lot more content than the second and it seems like a better game too. But, I don't know why I've barely invest an hour or so playing the game and not touching it again afterwards.

Fallout 2
Same reason. But I think I have some sort of choice paralysis.
"Hey! I want to do something different! So, screw the storyline! I want to go to New Reno! No! No! I think I should get to San Fran to steal all that money from that sucker! Or maybe I should get the Bozar first! Or get the part for the car in The Den! Or... or... hmm... I don't know what I want to do."

I end up exiting to windows and start playing SimCity 2000 almost everytime that happens

[Althea]

Fable springs to mind. The first one. It has a lot more content than the second and it seems like a better game too. But, I don't know why I've barely invest an hour or so playing the game and not touching it again afterwards.

Don't try the third, then, that's got less content than the second.

[Rii]

Nice to see The Witcher getting some love in preference to The Witcher 2. I thought I was the only one out there for a while.

For me it's the Total War games. They've just never clicked for me although I dearly wish they would.

[csuzw]

The X games: Can't even remember which ones I own but don't recall ever getting anywhere. I haven't been able to get properly into a space game since Freelancer.
EVE: All the stories about it sound great but in reality it's horrible to play. Endless unreadable right click menus. Fun.
Empire/Napoleon Total War: This was the era I'd been waiting for in the Total War series and I just couldn't get into it at all. Empire being entirely broken for me at launch didn't help but I'd tried again and again with Napoleon but never played more than a couple of battles before getting annoyed with something.
Any Paradox strategy game: I love the look of them but don't seem to have patience for them these days.
Dwarf Fortress: Another game where the stories sound amazing but I have no time for the user interface. It shouldn't even be hard for the guy to fix, as there is a whole community willing to do it for him if he just provides an interface for them to build on. I've tried a couple of times with custom tile sets but they don't really improve things much.

[Chaz]

Bioshock.

Should have been just the sort of game I love. Creepy first person shooter with RPG lite aspects, set in a gorgeous nautical art deco steam punky type setting. Yet for some reason it just didn't get its hooks into me. Don't think I got much further than Neptune's Bounty, after which I just didn't feel any inclination to keep on playing it. Can't explain why as it should have ticked all my boxes and yet it did nothing for me.

[elephant god]

Spelunky: I want to love it, but I just can't seem to adjust to it's control scheme. I bounced off of it repeatedly, while loving it's top down colleagues Dredmor and Isaac.

and:
X3: It just seems daunting, and will suck up a lot of time, but i LOVE drifting through space trading etc.

[asskicker]

For me it's the Total War games. They've just never clicked for me although I dearly wish they would.

This exact thing, the battles look amazing, but to do it all myself... I just can't get into it. :(

[Grizzly]

Baldur's Gate, for some reason. I find some aspects from the game's combat, born out of having a game which is either based too much or not enough on DnD (both ways work!) to be mildly frustrating (as well as lacknig a proper DM that does not throw you into encounters that are waaay to strong for your party). One hit kills are always frustrating, and the wildly overpowered or underpowered encounters you can get in some cases are very much a BG2 problem due to it's less linear nature.

[Voon]

Don't try the third, then, that's got less content than the second.

I did. Slightly disappointed.

[Jockie]

Arma 2: Just not for me really, I get that it's a sim, but to me it feels like you're wrestling with an entirely insane control scheme that overcomplicates simple actions (see also X3, although in that at least the actions are more complex than operating your arms)

I just bounced off the Hitman games.

I prefer Terraria to Minecraft, because although it's freeform, there's a clear progression and rules to the exploration. Minecraft's exploration always ends with me getting hopelessly lost underground and never actually feeling as though i'm doing anything useful. Plus I can't build anything pretty; practical, functional and ugly as sin are about as good as it gets.

Starcraft - Best RTS of all-time apparently. I always preferred Total Annihilation. I abhorred SC back in the day when we used to do LANs and I was forced into playing a game I held no interest in. Seeing my pathetic paltry base being wiped out by a swarm of flying units as my friend cackled gleefully in the corner, I couldn't even target the fuckers with my sorry collection of units.

Eve Online (no explanation needed really).