GAMES YOU HATE OR DISLIKE?

Final Fantasy 13-2. Dear god, that game.

I like the gameplay. A lot. I really, really like the gameplay. It's a lot of fun running around, beating monsters and jumping through time. However...

The story is such a garbled mess, not given to you at all in any way to make sense of. It's so screwed up that it removes any enjoyment from the game and makes it painful to play.

Why are we jumping through time? Who fucking knows? There's some bullshit about Lightning in some... place, and there's this guy who just appears out of no-where (the future~~~) and is trying to save/change time but ffs they never bother to give any real time to intereaction or exploring the different plot points mentioned at all. It's a case of 'meet this guy, trust this guy, leave behind the fiance I trust to go through time with this guy, oh look we're fighting some kinda boss for this chick we don't even know who has lied to get us out of prison'. It makes no fucking sense at all and I just can't deal with it.

I just can't. It's complete bullshit and that's a pity because I want to play the fucking gameplay but cannot deal with the jackassery that is the story. I refuse. It's complete bunk and hickory. Fuck that noise, I'd rather go play FFX and that game? That game I hate.

Star Ocean 3, mainly because of the cutscenes and how stupid the characters are. The awesome gameplay wasn't enough for me to keep going.

Oh, and the Sims. Simcity is amazing, but something about ignoring real life to micromanage the mundane activities of virutal characters seems pointless if that is all there is to the game.

And I guess anything on Facebook because it's associated with Facebook.

Have you tried FF4, 6 and 9 Sooz? For all that people don't like 4 and 9 as much as 6, the characterisation isn't that bad. Especially the newer renditions of 4 (the original is lacking a bit but the newer remakes have a lot more care put in to them - which is what happens when you redraft the same thing over and over again, I guess).

Also, 6 is very character-centric and 9 is also very much about the characters, though some of them don't get enough screen time (two, in particular, don't see much which is a pity, but it does mean the main characters get a lot of screen time).

And of course 7 - Cloud gets a hell of a lot of characterisation, growing quite a bit over the course of the game, and most of the others do get quite a bit as well.

I mean, in comparison to RPGs released around the same time, you'd be barmy to think that FF doesn't focus on their characters because they tend to do so much more than, say, Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger (yes, there's some but after reading an LP recently, there's not really all that much when it comes down to it, though the game is still a star), Chrono Cross, Legend of Mana (for all it was great and the characters were neat, they didn't really spend much time on them), Illusion of Gaia (again, good game, not great characterisation/translation), Lufia series (great games, decent characters, not as much, though), Suiken Densetsu series (second verse, same as the first), and a whole host of other games.

So, yeah... FF characterisation tends to be a lot better than most characterisation in RPGs of the same era.

author=Liberty
Also, 6 is very character-centric and 9 is also very much about the characters, though some of them don't get enough screen time (two, in particular, don't see much which is a pity, but it does mean the main characters get a lot of screen time).

yyyyyeah, I think a lot of the love for 6 is pure nostalgia. It's scattershot and bland and offers little to no real arc for anyone.

Also I don't understand why anyone would like or respect Kefka as a villain, let alone treat him like some kind of terrifying entity. It's like someone mixed up the scripts and gave him all the comic relief lines.

HIS WAY TO POWER WAS TO MOVE A STATUE BECAUSE SOMEONE TOLD HIM NOT TO. That is not villainy, that is something a toddler does.

From what I heard (and saw) of Final Fantasy XIII, Paradigm Shift has to be the deepest and most exhilarating combat mechanic in the history of mankind to make up for the game's flaws - the linearity wouldn't have been a problem if there actually was any combat beyond mashing attack. Plus, I've seen the classes and they feel like one trick ponies (Protip: specializing a class that far makes them boring to play) and you only control one character at a time, too.

However, even if I dislike Final Fantasy for the most part (the games aren't terrible to me, just rather dull), this is nothing against Lords of Xulima:

-Character movement is terribly slow
-Combat has zero depth - all that matters is rolling hits for yourself and misses for the enemy and reloading if you get an untimely miss
-Stats are stupidly unbalanced - there's one you invest all the time (Speed) and one you should never spend points into (Energy)
-A food clock that is really easy to refill and only serves as an extra timewaster
-Because of the way stats work, mages are just as strong in physical combat as fighters if specced on physical stats (and your spells don't scale on a stat) and skills, only lagging behind in HP
-There's no respec option and you don't see all skills you can get until you level up, forcing you to use a guide if you want to optimize your character
-A lockpicking minigame that's completely pointless as bashing open the lock is more efficient every single time and never fails
-A non-scaled open world balanced in a way that you have to fight the encounters in a certain order
-Levelling up weakens the enemies more than it powers up your party
-The developers won't do a thing to fix the game's issues and insult the players for pointing out legitimate complaints

You won't find an RPG this bad anywhere in the world.

AE
Blasphemy!! How can you not like Chrono Trigger?? It's like, PERFECTION!, made into a videogame... Seriously, though, other than perhaps the light-hearted tone of the game, I don't see how can anyone dislike Chrono Trigger (Aside from the usual: "It's too hyped" nay-sayers).

I think I need to replay Chrono Trigger, because I just don't get the unanimous fanboying over it. Sure, I can see why people enjoy it, but I can definitely see why some people might think it's crud. The game is light years away from being perfect.

I for one thought the story was super weak and aimless. I get that the whole time travel and multiple endings thing was really ambitious for the time, but IMO all it wound up doing was making everything feel kind of pointless and nonsensical.

Disclaimer: I haven't played Chrono Trigger in about 6 years.

Sooz
yyyyyeah, I think a lot of the love for 6 is pure nostalgia. It's scattershot and bland and offers little to no real arc for anyone.

Also I don't understand why anyone would like or respect Kefka as a villain, let alone treat him like some kind of terrifying entity. It's like someone mixed up the scripts and gave him all the comic relief lines.

HIS WAY TO POWER WAS TO MOVE A STATUE BECAUSE SOMEONE TOLD HIM NOT TO. That is not villainy, that is something a toddler does.

Again, I need to replay this too. I thought it was stronger than Chrono Trigger, but certainly not by very much.

Kefka is pretty much like if they gave Exdeath more lines. He has the same "I AM DESTROY EXISTENCE" shtick as every other FF villain, but with less justification. A villain isn't very thrilling if they do something "just because".

Honestly, the only Final Fantasy villains that I really liked were Queen Brahne and General Beatrix from FF9. They were written very realistically, and the game played the whole cultural/racial genocide angle in an extremely realistic and disgusting way... Until it tried to blame Brahne on Kuja and make you feel sorry for her. Because you know, gotta have the I AM DESTROY EXISTENCE dude. Again.

But yeah, you should play 9 if you think you'll enjoy the character of Garnet, because the writer is practically married to the little reprehensible dumb ass. I'm sure someone that could see past all the awful, shitty shit that happens because of the moron would find the love story between her and Zidane "touching" or something. Bleh.

Fact: Garnet is my least favourite video game character of all time.

Anyways, to answer the topic question.

I don't like Minecraft, or really any of these games in the new wave of "Endless Open World, Endless, Pointless Busllhit" games. Probably because I'm a creative person with an interest in game design, there's just no point in me playing something like Minecraft when I could be working on my own games.

On a deeper level though, I think Minecraft was a wonderful idea that got developed in the totally wrong direction. Mojang earned my disinterest as a company by taking such a cool open world concept and bringing to the table pointless, jarring RPG elements that barely fit in the game and pretty much refusing to make decent, meaningful updates at a decent pace. Given how much money they were making off of it and that it was their only game, such a lax, lazy and aimless development cycle is inexcusable.

No Man's Sky looks bloody terrible for much of the same reasons. Why even play it? It's the ultimate "go walk somewhere" game. You literally do nothing besides aimlessly traipse around a pointlessly large and random worldspace. Discovering the world isn't much fun unless that world has a structure, a culture, a story, a meaning, etc. Random generation is just really fucking boring, especially on that scale, because once you've seen 3 or 4 planets you've basically seen literally everything, because you're so aware of the building blocks that the game is randomly constructed out of. Just look at Starbound.

There's Kingdom Hearts. I've only played a scant bit of the first one (and watched an LP of the second) and my god, it was just awful. "Hey, let's see what happens when you duct tape a bunch of Disney movies and FF fanboy-favourite characters together, shit on the original concepts of both, and then stick a hilariously pretentious animu plot that was basically written by a 12 year old about god knows what onto the outside!" Make sure to include the button mashing!

That's about all that I can think of right away. I'm sure I'll find more eventually though.

Actually, there's Skyward Sword, but I'm gonna need a while to structure a good breakdown of why I think that game is the asshole of the entire series.

Final Fantasy 11. It ended a series of good games with a real shit ass MMO. Terrible, terrible, terrible game. Greedy as hell, too. Thus began my disdain for Square-Enix business.

Gears of War. It is everything I hate about the xbox rolled into a giant katamari of crap.
Meat bag enemies that taje damage equally across their body and gibb. Beefcake AMERICA heroes. Hoo-RAH.
Repeat animations to the nines. Eat a bag of wieners.
Garbage.

Flappy bird.

Original Lara Croft games on PSX. Honestly haven't played them through. The controls are just the worst.

Most NES games. I was ten, and I couldn't beat any game we had. Mario 3 we got through eventually. And my dad beat Mario 1 & 2 for us. But 3 was ours. Even if he would come home from a long day and we'd plead for him to unlock the P-wings for us. My sister and I were terrible...

Kingdom Hearts is a love/hate. It's fun. But also tedious. It's cool to see and play with Disney characters... But they're so horribly handled! Most of the story sequences are slapdash, bad acting, bad writing, hamfisted into a turdfest Nomura story that reeks like rotten eggs mixed in sumo sweat.
I like some of the level designs, but only some. I mean PORTIONS. Usually the source material is badly adapted and the accompanying music doesn't carry the film tone.
It's a maddening yet ---no. I'm going to write another post, ripping apart KH.
FYI: My Take Down series is basically a scathing lovehate letter to Kingdom Hearts, broadening the crossover shtick beyond FF and Disney. It's such a bad series. Yet, I love it. Ugh.

Kingdom Hearts, you loathable loveable wad of crap. Such high production value on the models. Such bordering on amateur controls. Action RPG with an ATB rpg menu. Suck my balls! The invisible wall clipping and collusion detection is often atrocious, leading to platforming segments that are many times repeated.
KH1 was the worst for this until you unlock Glide at the end of the game. The subsequent games improved on this and made it bearable.
The floaty jump is always a strange creature.
I hated it so much, but I love Disney cartoons so much that the pull to see more was infuriating!
There was things like dodge roll and block. But they were all weird because the game mechanics felt extremely flawed and broken.

Awkward pauses in the cinematucs created this weird melodramatic atmosphere that was filled to the brim with bouncy Disney cartoons. It was too serious and the entire Heart premise was jarring and stupid. Any sappy moments were terribly teenager, that I literally rolled my eyes and tried to skip scenes.
Then there was the hit-n-miss voice acting. Commendable effort to try and get the right cast for the job. A big job, no less. Yet I would have far preferred bad voice acting to no voice acting. It would go from a failed attempt to recreate so-and-so's voice, to bobble heads with text boxes. The character animation was always weak as hell, too. Never felt like they captured the characters properly. From writing to voices to movement, the characters were never portrayed right. Hercules and Tarzan were about as good as it got.
Undeniably, this was a fan game. With the exception that Square-Enix has a license to make it.

Anyway, let's go through this quick.