Games That Beat You

[TheFlyingGerbil]

The companion thread for Games You Beat. If you're done with a game before the credits roll post here. To get us started you can post games from the past you gave up on and why.

 

Let the catharsis/shaming begin.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

While there's plenty of games I've put down and not got back to there are only a few I'm officially done with.

 

The desire to finish Uncharted on Crushing (being the only thing standing between me and a platinum trophy) waned in comparison to the frustration I felt trying to complete it. The only problem here is it completely killed any desire to play the other two games, which pretty much everyone says are actually better.

[Hot Heart]

Waaaay better.

[staySICK]

Eat Lead: the Return of Matt Hazard

 

I got stuck at a part midway or so, I believe the game glitched and I decided you know what, this isn't that great of a game to be that determined to get through.

 

Though it did have a neat cover travel system that somehow hasn't made it into many other games. Watch Dogs' is similar.

Edited August 10, 2014 by staySICK

[toxicitizen]

I've mentioned it a few times already but Tales of Symphonia bored the shit out of me. Nothing about it was really bad but I didn't care about the characters at all and I kept waiting for the story to get good. After 20 or so hours, I just kinda went "fuck it, this game isn't worth my time". No regrets. The only problem is it was my first attempt to get into the Tales of series. So now I have a copy of Tales of Xillia and I'm not sure if I should even bother with it. And my interest for the localization of Tales of Hearts R has really diminished as well.

 

Nier is another one. The game did some really weird and creative things but it just never clicked for me. At one point I died to a boss and realized I had lost almost an entire dungeon's worth of progress. That's when I asked myself whether I was actually enjoying the game enough to bother doing it again. Turns out I wasn't.

 

I'm sure there's more but those are the only ones I can think of right now.

Edited August 10, 2014 by FLD

[TheMightyEthan]

The Witcher. I played for about 8.5 hours before deciding fuck it, this isn't enjoyable. Recently I got talked in to giving The Witcher 2 a go, and I was really enjoying it, though I seem to have stopped playing for no particular reason...

[Mister Jack]

Witcher for me too, but for different reasons.  After Witcher 2 came out and everyone loved it like it was the greatest game ever made I decided to get into the series, starting with the first one.  I knew Witcher 1 wasn't as good as 2 but I wanted to get the whole story so I figured I'd just put it on easy and blaze through it so I could get my data for Witcher 2.  The game was good enough to keep me playing except there was one problem.

 

GOD DAMN BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH.

 

No matter what, I was guaranteed to get a blue screen while playing Witcher at some point between 30 minutes to an hour or so.  Every single time without fail it happened, and I tried every fucking solution I could possibly think of to fix the issue, up to and including switching out the video card, and nothing worked.  Short of getting a whole new PC, I flat out can't finish the game.  To this day I have never played Witcher 2 because I haven't finished 1 and I just can't bring myself to start a trilogy in the middle.

[TCP]

Watch_Dogs, I just plum don't fucking care. This character looks like a pedo. He looks like what you'd get if you ask someone who's never been outside before to draw someone cool. Nothing in the game is fun. Hacking, is not fun. The shooting isn't fun. The driving is atrocious. The soundtrack IS REALLY BAD. We're living a year after GTA V gave us Rebel FM, and the best Ubisoft can do is a 1996 Weezer song?! And then about 15 crappy other songs? No thanks.

Similarly, Child of Light. It's beautifully drawn, but someone forgot to put the fun in. The poetry writing is fun at first but after awhile it's kind of annoying. 

Donkey Kong Country Returns. The original DKC games were NOT about tough platforming, this is just too hard and it's not fun anymore.

Also: any Souls game. I just don't have the patience for that. 

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

I find that typically people with poor, narrow tastes tend to hate soundtracks that don't appeal to their lack of music knowledge. The Watch_Dogs soundtrack isn't bad.

[CorgiShinobi]

Dark Souls 1 didn't really beat me other than I wasn't quite able to get the "fix" going and the lack of an online component really does take away from the overall experience. Hell, there's a lot of games I have to get back to, but I would say two games that genuinely beat me were Star Wars: Bounty Hunter and X2: Wolverine's Revenge.

 

For Bounty Hunter, it was because there was a jungle level that went on forever and if you died you had to pretty much do the whole thing over. I got near the end once, but was shot down by a horde of enemies before reaching the checkpoint. That's when I shelved the game.

 

For Wolverine's Revenge, it was a game that primarily relied on stealth rather than pure character action gameplay. Levels would have exact stealth paths, so a lot of it was trial and error on finding the proper path to navigate through the entire level. About one of the final levels you needed to navigate through tight security in a prison for mutants. Giant robot sentries and so forth, so if you got caught once you were pretty much dead. No, really, because you couldn't defeat a group of those robots no matter how skilled you thought you were at the game.

 

I dunno, maybe someone will prove me wrong, but I never did get to face off against Lady Deathstrike or whatever the game ended on for Wolverine.

[TheRevanchist]

Sega GT 2002. Fuck you, 2002. Fuck you right in your eye. Didn't play another racing game for 5 years after that.

[TCP]

I find that typically people with poor, narrow tastes tend to hate soundtracks that don't appeal to their lack of music knowledge. The Watch_Dogs soundtrack isn't bad.

 

 

 

FDS, just because you read Pitchfork and listen to whatever they think is cool at the moment, doesn't make you knowledgeable on music... it just makes you kind of pompous .....and a bit of a hipster. 

Edited August 10, 2014 by The Cowboy Poet

[deanb]

D[emon|ark] Souls.

 

Not really got the patience for either. Constant grind of feeling like getting nowhere. Though got pretty far with Demon Souls I guess. Also always felt like, though more so with Demons Souls, boss battles were mainly won through abusing glitches n shortfalls in the game than any particular mechanics of the game itself.

 

Got a ton of other uncompleted games, but more of a time thing I guess. Adult life provides many distractions I didn't used to have as a kid, so far easier to end up slipping from a game. Tomb Raider has taken me over a month so far.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

 

I find that typically people with poor, narrow tastes tend to hate soundtracks that don't appeal to their lack of music knowledge. The Watch_Dogs soundtrack isn't bad.

 

 

 

FDS, just because you read Pitchfork and listen to whatever they think is cool at the moment, doesn't make you knowledgeable on music... it just makes you kind of pompous .....and a bit of a hipster. 

 

 

But I don't read Pitchfork and I rarely know what most other people think is cool at the moment. Where on earth did you ever get that idea? I typically have no idea what's happening with popular music.

[TCP]

I really don't want to derail this thread but...
 

http://pitchfork.com/advance/492-the-next-four-years/
 
The new United Nations album.
 
Not much Geoff Rickley this time around but this is still really intense and sarcastic as ever. I guess Geoff was too busy forming No Devotion with the ex-members of Lostprophets.

http://pitchfork.com/advance/317-the-unnatural-world/
 
I can't believe this band went from self-releasing 200 CDs of their work to having a feature on Pitchfork.

http://pitchfork.com/advance/228-everyday-i-get-closer-to-the-light-from-which-i-ca/
 
The new Jesu is streaming on Pitchfork. Seems a lot better than his last few. Surprisingly I could only get this to work in IE10.

Oh and this one, where you defend your favourite website:
 

 

THINGS THAT CAN TAKE A RUNNING JUMP OFF A PIER WITH THE TIDE OUT:

People who base their entire opinion of a band or artist on one or two songs.

People that only listen to singles but never whole albums.

American Idol/The X Factor/Whatever the fuck they call it these days

Pitchfork Media

People that suddenly hate bands they liked just because they became popular.

[/rant]

Why would you list PItchfork but not Rolling Stone, NME, or any other publication/website? They all suck for the most part.

 

Face it, FDS, you love yourself some Pitchfork. You're all "I wonder if Animal Collective has any new cassettes out?" but you also like knowing what Drake is up to, because you have a wide taste in music.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Wait, so you're basing that purely off the fact that Pitchfork gets some awesome exclusives? That's just streaming. You know, listening to music, not reading some tryhard talk about the band for 5 paragraphs with only 1 about the music in the album review. I don't use Pitchfork for news, either.

Sounds like you're trying to make some assumptions about something you know nothing about.

Here's another shocker: I listen to album previews on NPR, too, without reading what anyone has to say about them, or listening/reading to anything else on NPR.

Some of us actually care about music. You, on the other hand, are the one who is caught up in what is or is not popular and trends. Something I have no clue about. Is Animal Collective still popular? How do they maintain the image you're mentioning where you can make a tape joke when they were so big a few years ago? Does Pitchfork even care about hip-hop/R&B anymore? I figured that would just be a phase for them. I truly don't know.

[Strangelove]

Aw shit, it's goin' down in dis thread.

[TCP]

Apologies for derailing this thread. I can only take so much of his pompous attitude! At this point, I'm not sure what he's arguing anymore since he claimed he didn't read Pitchfork, then I show that he does read Pitchfork and now he's saying it's for the exclusives, but he's still arguing with me for... some reason? Oh right, cause he loves music way more than anyone else. Got it. It's fine that he reads Pitchfork and listens to NPR, but, that doesn't make him a musical authority. 

 

 

To get things back on track:

I think Final Fantasy X is going to beat me. Which sucks cause that means I'll probably not get through FFX-2... I really wish you could have bought the HD versions separately. Tidus is just such an obnoxious character. I honestly don't know how this game is held in such high regard by (a lot) of people, he's nowhere near as bad as Lightning. Lightning might be a mope that Square Enix repeatedly shoves down our throats but at least she's not a bratty teenager. Maybe the rest of the party (I've only gotten to the point with Wakka) are so awesome it makes up for him? 

[Strangelove]

FFX is just fun to play. The battle system is awesome.

I will admit that the game only has 2, maybe 3 legitimately good interesting characters, all of them the "older" characters of the game.

But what's great about FFX are all the places you visit. Theyre just beautifully realized. The world and it's lore are really well established. It feels like its a living breathing thing.

The relationship stuff is pretty bland and sometimes cringeworthy, but I think the overall story is really cool. The themes it touches are tropes from older FF games, but expanded a lot more. Plus, the game can be depressing and dark as fuck sometimes. Which you wouldnt expect considering the whole tropical and carefree marketing it had.

 

But who knows. it could all be nostalgia. I played it when it came out and replayed it when it came out in HD and I still think its fantastic. It also holds up incredibly well. Though thats a mix of FFX being ahead of it's time technologically(it looked and sounded fantastic back then and it still does now) and jrpgs not changing much since then(there are actually jrpgs made now that look WORSE and have WORSE voiceacting).

 

To me every jrpg that came after seems to try to replicate it, but cant.

[toxicitizen]

Nah, FFX is great. At least half the main characters are good, story is really interesting, battle system is solid and the world is beautiful. I'm starting to think Cowboy simply has no tastes.

 

Or maybe he just doesn't like Final Fantasy. Which other FFs have you played, Cowboy? And have you enjoyed them at all?

[Mr. GOH!]

FFX beat me, way back in the day. It felt like a series of corridors to me and nothing much sticks in my mind about it other than bland mediocrity. FFXII was the better PS2 FF game.

 

Recently, Remember Me beat me. I only got to the first memory and gave up.

[TCP]

Nah, FFX is great. At least half the main characters are good, story is really interesting, battle system is solid and the world is beautiful. I'm starting to think Cowboy simply has no tastes.

 

Or maybe he just doesn't like Final Fantasy. Which other FFs have you played, Cowboy? And have you enjoyed them at all?

 

I've beat XIII (which X really reminds me of) and IV, and played portions of VI VII and IX. Plus I mastered Dissidia 012. XIII was ok (it actually really reminds me of 10), IV was great, and I'd do a complete runthrough of VI if the PS1 port didn't suck so much. I haven't minded the other characters of X so far, the first guy you start out with who gives you the sword was ok, as was the girl on the boat and Wakka. I'll give it another shot. The part I got to a few nights ago was in Wakka's town, you go into the temple and there's someone who's been stuck in there for a few days and Tidus goes to save him, when he's told that's forbidden he yells "like I care" and I just wanted to punch him right in his stupid face. Plus I am a sucker for anything with time travel in it, and he's supposedly 1000 years in the future.... 

[toxicitizen]

So, it's been a while, but it sounds like you're barely a few hours in. And you're already thinking of stopping? Wat. It's a JRPG, you need a bit of patience, man. Those can take a little while to get going. Just pretend that Tidus is mentally ill and everyone else is humoring him.

 

Also, as someone who enjoyed FFXIII for what it was, FFX is so much better it's not even funny. I mean, X's story isn't an incoherent mess of nonsense, for one. And it has an actual combat system that doesn't prefer playing with itself.

Edited August 13, 2014 by FLD

[TCP]

OK OK I'll keep playing it.

 

What got me through FFXIII

 

was a strange and primal sexual desire for Vanille. I uh... didn't understand it.

 

 

Oh and I played a bunch of FFXIV which was great, I want that game, without anyone other players in it. That is my dream Final Fantasy.

[Hot Heart]

Okay, so...

 

Every Final Fantasy after VII

I just got to the bits where I probably needed to grind more and got bored.

 

Brutal Legend

Firstly, the open-world bit runs like complete ass on my PC. All skipping and such, so there's the enjoyment gone there. Secondly, cool theme/world/visual design but I just wasn't a big fan of the gameplay even before it got to the RTS-lite stuff.

 

Darksiders

Just got bored with it. The movement felt clunky, the combat felt clunky, the main stuff was too repetitive anyway and I didn't care for the story/theme.

 

Driver: San Francisco

Sorry, kenshi, could not get into this at all. Had a bit of fun with making cars crash into cops, but that's about it. Liked the concept, but really disliked the car handling.

 

The Binding of Isaac

God, I hate this game.

 

Hard Reset

The first game I got for free through some Steam event thing. Wouldn't have touched it otherwise. Not big on FPSs anyway and this one didn't click.

 

GTA  IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony

Really liked GTA IV and all it brought but, unfortunately, PC version I got had framerate problems all over. Got pissed off with the boat-bombing mission that was required to progress since it's explain in tiny fucking boxes in the top corners of the screen while you're trying to look ahead. Before that I'd already had enough of their 'mini-game mechanics' bullshit thrown into missions.

 

Aaaand breathe.