Games that are wasted on you! But you buy them anyway.

What Game series or genres do you buy even though you're not a massive fan. A few of mine to kick things off are:

Beat Um Ups
I did like Tekken 3 back in the day and Street Fighter 2 but from then when they got a lot more branched out I really don't care for them much, yet I still always buy the Smash Bros games however, i've only put 20 hours into Ultimate and less with previous titles.

Monster Hunter
Bought World for the first time on PS4, was enjoying it but easily put it aside after around 15 hours and never picked it up again and just sold it. Than I bought Rise which is having the same effect. I can't even tell you why, I was enjoying it but after 15 hours I have placed it aside and not picked it back up again.

I'll join you on beat-em-ups, Rubix. I have enjoyed stuff like Streets of Rage and Final Fight and even dabbled with early one-on-one fighters such as Way of the Exploding Fist and International Karate. I love the styling of early Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct, too. But... I am so rubbish at fighters. Too fast, too complex - ten minutes in and I'm frustrated by them! I bought Smash on N64, Wii and Wii U and my total playtime is probably fifteen minutes. I don't buy 'em nowdays.

The FPS genre can vary. GoldenEye and Sniper Elite... brilliant! Destiny was too tough. Call of Duty is a weird one for me. I have bought a number of versions over the years and, tbh, barely played them. Online play is just a cycle of being killed every five seconds... but I don't mind playing the offline bot mode on easy level. Much more fun!

Very much the same as you with Beat em up’s, I bought SF5 Champion Edition last year and played 2 matches on it, Smash Ultimate I have played for about 20 hours and I also bought Dragonball FighterZ and played that for about 2 hours (these last 2 are on Switch so the handheld aspect means I put a bit more time into them I think)

Big one for me though would be JRPG’s I’m not a big fan of turn based combat or overly complicated systems yet I own all the Xenoblade games on Switch, Dragon Quest 11 on Switch I also bought despite not completely loving the demo (I thought the main release would click better with me yet I have yet to start it) I do like the Pokemon games though

Monster Hunter Rise I own now but will start it after I finish Skyward Sword so i can focus on it for a while.

I think it's JRPGs for me too. Now and then, I completely love one of them, and as they're also the sort of thing that seem to get rare and shoot up in price, I end up buying far too many, just in case, and almost never actually play them. I have so many Tales, Etrian Odyssey and SMT games and never played a single game from any of those series. It's the once every 5-10 years experiences like DQ8, Ni No Kuni and DQXI that get me.

I have Dark Souls trilogy sitting on my shelf too. I know those games are absolutely not for me. I don't like stuff that's super hard, I don't like the idea of losing progress, or repeating sections over and over, but on the other hand, every time I check highest rated games on Metacritic that I've not played, it's always a bunch of Souls games. Thing is, even the whole demonic aesthetic of them bores me too! The one that I'd actually want to play is Sekiro, but sounds like that is the hardest of the lot.

I've bought Smash Bros so many times on every console where it's released and am really wondering when I'll ever learn.

I probably put an hour into each, at best. I just really don't like it, but feel I'm missing out by not having it.

Furious with myself.

Resident Evil 4.

I would say beat ‘em ups too, but I’ve learnt not to buy them any more. Same with football games.

I’ll occasionally buy a golf game, and get very enthused, but I never stick at them for long so they’re a bit of a waste.

Jawa: The Story of My Gaming Collection

Last edited by Balladeer on Mon Aug 02, 2021 1:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I wouldn't say there are any genres where I make the same mistake over and over again. These days I've realised that my interests lie in five specific genres, and with a couple of exceptions I don't tend to veer much outside those five. If anything it goes the other way with me, whereby I may not realise that my tastes have changed over time, and I'd actually be willing to give a chance to games/genres I thought I'd abandoned. Pikmin 3 was a recent example.

I guess the most recent series was Dragon Quest. I think I have owned IX, VII (I think? Might be VIII), and XI now. I found IX mediocre because the battle system was old-feeling and simplistic simplistic, I don't care for the art design, and the whimsical dialogue seemed empty without any decent characterisation to back it up. Meanwhile VII (on 3DS) added the rest of the game feeling old to all that. I bought XI anyway because everyone was raving about it, only to find that it had exactly the same problems I had with IX and VII. Never again.

I guess if they did another proper Professor Layton I might include that. I really liked two of the Layton games (Lost Future and Azran Legacy), and found the plots and plot twists of the others too nonsensical to really like them. Spoiled Layton vs Wright for me too. That said, the series has just enough charm to pull me back in if they get rid if all the Katrielle nonsense.

Absolutely fifa. Only buy it when it’s on sale now but I only ever use, like, 3 or 4 buttons. Crap at it.

I also bought Solitaire on Switch.

I imagined I'd play it on a train journey, back when train journeys were a thing. I could have bought a pack of cards for 50p instead. I'm a stupid idiot.

Should have gone for 51 Worldwide Classics so you can pivot from solitaire to slot car racing as so often one wants to do.

For me the closest is probably Demon's Souls and Dark Souls II as the souls games I have bought. Demon's Souls being the first doesn't really count, and I probably should have tried Dark Souls rather than the sequel for my second attempt, but it probably still isn't for me. Not being able to pause, not being able to reload from saves, a central gimmick that makes the game harder the worse you are at it, obtuse and impenetrable stat screens... it's like a list of bad game design decisions.

I don't think it's fair to call them bad decisions, they may be ones you don't agree with but that doesn't necessarily make them inherently bad. Also the stat screen literally has a help option on it that explains what every item on there means!

But yeah, the series is definitely not for everyone

I've cut down on the number of 'duff' games I buy but I do stumble of occasion but usually under €10 max in a sale. I don't really get on with Monster Hunter World at all but my daughter and I have put enough games over the years to justify the €20 I paid for it. I bought Little Nightmares 2 at launch and haven't touched it since, based purely on reviews. I'll get to it eventually but It's behind a mountain of stuff.

Jenuall wrote:I don't think it's fair to call them bad decisions, they may be ones you don't agree with but that doesn't necessarily make them inherently bad. Also the stat screen literally has a help option on it that explains what every item on there means!

But yeah, the series is definitely not for everyone

'Not being able to pause' is definitely a bad decision if true (I've never played a Souls game). I'm also interested in seeing a defence of 'not being able to reload' as well, but the pausing one shouldn't be up for debate.

I stopped buying games from genres I knew I would never play for more than 5 minutes a while back, but there was a few genres that I would keep stupidly buying into.

Sports titles: I'm not a sporty person, but often I would think 'Oh, I fancy playing a football game, or golf game or American Football title' then they would ended up sitting on my shelf un-played.

JRPG's: I enjoy anime from time to time and so the aesthetics found in JRPGs would always draw me in only to once again end up sat on my shelf un-played. FF VII & VIII are the only JRPGs I've ever completed.

Souls games: I eventually stopped buying these types of games once I came to terms with the fact I simply don't have the time to 'get gud'. And, of course, for all the reasons ORKN above states.

Buying games that grow into media darlings that everyone falls over themselves to gush over. Example: 'Journey'.

Balladeer wrote:
Jenuall wrote:I don't think it's fair to call them bad decisions, they may be ones you don't agree with but that doesn't necessarily make them inherently bad. Also the stat screen literally has a help option on it that explains what every item on there means!

But yeah, the series is definitely not for everyone

'Not being able to pause' is definitely a bad decision if true (I've never played a Souls game). I'm also interested in seeing a defence of 'not being able to reload' as well, but the pausing one shouldn't be up for debate.

Is it? Or is it just part of the design they were aiming for? Do you want a pause button on an MMO or online shooter? A big part of the game is related to connectivity with other players which is something that is broadly incompatible with pausing, but even just looking at solo play the lack of a pause option is an intentional part of the game design and makes a huge difference to the atmosphere and experience of the player that would be diminished otherwise.

You can stop the game at any time and return to it using the quit option - it saves the game exactly where you were and lets you jump back in at that same spot.

Balladeer wrote:'Not being able to pause' is definitely a bad decision if true (I've never played a Souls game). I'm also interested in seeing a defence of 'not being able to reload' as well, but the pausing one shouldn't be up for debate.

It's because of the integrated online stuff, pausing doesn't make sense if you are in PVP or have other players helping with a boss, but I don't see why that should prevent pausing outside of those situations or if playing offline. Demon's Souls on PS5 has a photo mode which effectively pauses the game, so they must have solved it there (although I don't know what happens if you try to enter photo mode while doing multiplayer), and with the Switch port of Dark Souls you can effectively pause by putting the console into sleep. So yeah, pausing should be technically possible even with the online design of the game and it's just presumptuous of the player's time and attention to not include it.

Not being able to reload is more of a design decision admittedly, just one I don't like. If I try a boss, use a load of items, then die, forcing me to play on with those items now used means I have to go off and waste my time grinding those items back just to take another comparable run at the boss - which is just an unnecessary waste of time.

Jenuall wrote:Is it? Or is it just part of the design they were aiming for? Do you want a pause button on an MMO or online shooter? A big part of the game is related to connectivity with other players which is something that is broadly incompatible with pausing...

Up to here I agree.

Jenuall wrote:...but even just looking at solo play the lack of a pause option is an intentional part of the game design and makes a huge difference to the atmosphere and experience of the player that would be diminished otherwise.

Don't buy this at all. We don't live or game in a vacuum. Any game that doesn't have some way of pausing it when the doorbell goes or when an emergency develops can take its atmosphere and experience and shove them.

Jenuall wrote:You can stop the game at any time and return to it using the quit option - it saves the game exactly where you were and lets you jump back in at that same spot.

This seems like an annoyingly convoluted and loading-heavy method of achieving the exact same thing that a pause button would do. I am faintly impressed that the games remember your precise position and whether you were halfway through a sword swing or not, mind.

Abacus wrote:I've bought Smash Bros so many times on every console where it's released and am really wondering when I'll ever learn.

I probably put an hour into each, at best. I just really don't like it, but feel I'm missing out by not having it.

Furious with myself.

This happened to me during the N64/Cube/Wii era.

Never again.

Vermilion wrote:
Abacus wrote:I've bought Smash Bros so many times on every console where it's released and am really wondering when I'll ever learn.

I probably put an hour into each, at best. I just really don't like it, but feel I'm missing out by not having it.

Furious with myself.

This happened to me during the N64/Cube/Wii era.

Never again.

I've never really got on with Smash Bros, I enjoyed the GC one but after a dozen or so hours I got a bit bored with it and went back to Soul Calibur II, a proper fighting game.

Games that are wasted on you! But you buy them anyway.

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