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Games You've Shelved 2021


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We've needed this thread for a long time, so I'm starting it. It's for games you're done with, but haven't actually beat.

 

Persona 5: Strikers

 

I'm just not having fun with this game. I got it after playing Age of Calamity, but I don't think the musou style fits this setting nearly as well, and I don't like the way they've implemented it. The way musou games usually work, you're running around on a big ass field fighting armies of enemies, capturing strategic points, etc. In P5S, you're sneaking through "jails" (very similar to the palaces in regular P5), and when you engage enemies you go into a kind of battle mode to fight them just like the regular game, except you're fighting with musou mechanics. The thing is, there's typically only a few enemies at a time (there were occasional larger battles, but they were few and far between), and the thing that makes musous fun is running around demolishing whole armies of guys. It's just not engaging.

 

It has out-of-combat sections as well, where you're running around talking to people, investigating, etc. It's trying to feel like a real Persona game, and to some extent it succeeds, but it suffers from a similar problem to the combat: it's simultaneously too similar, but not similar enough. There's no life sim elements, no time limits (all time advancement is story-driven), and other than your teammates the people you're talking to aren't fleshed out characters, they typically just say one line and act as a checklist to trigger the next story beat. Again, not engaging.

 

Part of me is kind of impressed how much this feels like a real Persona game, it definitely fits, but they clearly didn't know what parts to keep and what to change.

 

2/5

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Vagrant Story - (yes the one that was released in 2000)

 

I've tried so many times to get through this game, but every time I get stuck at the same point. I get to the Earth Dragon and just cannot get past it. It's the one "hard" game I've played that never clicked with me. Most of that ilk, SoulsBourne, Returnal, etc. I eventually get. But Vagrant Story I have accepted I will never beat.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Call of Duty Black Ops 3

 

Whether it's a bug, glitch or something else, every time I started the game it put me back at a previous base camp, didn't matter how much I advanced in the story, I was always back in 

Spoiler

Singapore

No big deal until I had to stop and leave mid-mission, when I came back, it hadn't saved, even though I did select save and quit. I had to start the mission all over again.

 

Was pretty close to the end I think.

 

Spoiler

When you "die" and move on to the cyber-afterlife with Taylor.

 

But I don't feel like replaying the whole thing again.

 

Other than that, I did enjoy the game, the sci-fi stuff is pretty neat.

 

Haven't decided yet, but I'm really close to shelving Battletech as well.

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Oh right, we have this thread now. I haven't permanently shelved it but I guess it counts.

 

Horizon: Zero Dawn

 

I gave it a dozen hours or so and it was fine but I just wasn't feeling it at the time and over a month later I still haven't felt any desire to return to it. Gonna have to try again at some later time, I guess. Ideally after a more thorough PC upgrade because it actually made me realize that I'm very likely CPU-limited with my current setup. It kinda ran like shit and it really shouldn't with the GPU I have. ?

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  • 5 months later...

Got a few games here. I'll start from the beginning...

 

Gato Roboto - Cute cat-based Metroidvania. I played most of this one over the course of a few days at the start of the year. Everything was going swimmingly until I got to the end-game boss. Hours, literally hours of my life spent trying to beat this fucker before I ultimately decided it just wasn't worth it, and rage-uninstalled it. Not gone back to it. 

 

Scarlet Nexus - I went into this one hoping for exciting combat and some cool cut-scenes. It delivered on the latter but the former I found to be a little underwhelming. I got maybe 1/5 of the way through (I heard it's actually surprisingly long?) before I decided I didn't have the time to give to the game and haven't gone back. That being said, it's on Gamepass and I could see myself giving it a second look.

 

Game Builder Garage - Oh Nintendo. There's something truly incredible about GBG, but as is so often the case with Nintendo games, their inability to figure out the online component utterly ruins the end product. GBG is no different in this regard. They made something amazing with the core game, and then failed to deliver on even the most basic of online features; the ability to browse other peoples creations in-game. This is the studio that made Mario Maker (a series not without it's own online issues), you'd think they'd understand the importance of letting people download and share their creations in-game, but nope. For many people the promise of GBG wasn't that they'd be able to create their own levels, it was that they could download, play and learn from others. Unfortunately Nintendo makes that almost impossible, and in the process makes GBG a much weaker product.

 

Turns out Game Builder Garage left a bigger impression on me than I originally thought.

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I forgot about this thread.

 

I've been trying to play games I already have in-between Gamefly discs (they're quick but there's still usually 3-4 days of turnaround between when I send one back and receive the next one), so I've been trying out games I already own and just never played, so I've been shelving a few recently.

 

Death's Door - It pains me to put this here, because I loved this game, but the fourth(?) major boss was just too fucking hard. I can't do it, and I can't even get far enough along in the fight to feel like I could do it with more practice. It just murders me. I already have the second-highest level of damage upgrade, and there are more health upgrades I could get, but only a couple, and that would definitely not be enough to see me through. I eventually just had to throw in the towel.

 

Sundered: Eldritch Edition - This is a roguelite that just didn't hook me. It's of that mysterious, slow-burn, you-don't-even-really-know-what's-going-on type stories, and those never grab me very well, and the traversal and combat just wasn't doing it for me either, so I set it aside.

 

Subnautica - This one I can definitely see why people like it, it's just not for me. The beginning really reminded me of No Man's Sky actually, but with way less guidance about what I need or where to find it. After like an in-game week of still not feeling like I'd made any tangible progress, I gave up. I want to like it, but I don't have the mental energy to work that hard for what is supposed to be my leisure activity.

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And another one, Hollow Knight. Like Subnautica, this game actually did grab me at first, but also like Subnautica, I don't feel like I have a good idea of what I even need to do, let alone how to go about doing it. I found a boss, but I'm not strong enough for it, and the game has not introduced any mechanics for getting stronger. I don't even have a dodge ffs.

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Returnal

I like the core game loop, but I just wish it was easier. I don't have enough time that I want to fail at the same thing over and over again until I "git gud". If it had a Hades style "God Mode" where each time you fail you get tankier, I would stick with it. But as it is, I think I am out.

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