^ Yep.
FFXIII was just annoying. It was an on-rails turn-based fight-fest with cutscenes. Nothing more, nothing less. XIII-2 fixed a lot of those problems and feels more like Final Fantasy, but it’s not like that’s perfect, either.
I couldn’t bring myself to finish Final Fantasy XIII. It had pretty good music and pretty good graphics, and that’s about all. I felt no connection whatsoever with the characters, despite the melodrama of their stories. Or perhaps because of the melodrama. The combat system was…I dunno. Strange. Good on them for trying something different, but in this case I don’t think it worked. It felt like you could never be sure how things were going to play out.
The weapon system also bothered me. The incremental upgrade system kind of ruined the thrill of, well, upgrading. I mean sure, you could always keep improving your weapon so it never fell behind, but that’s kind of the fun of getting new weapons to replace the old ones: Your fights slowly get longer and harder, until at the right moment you find or buy a new weapon that’s twice as good as your current one, and then you start trashing every monster you come across. The whole feeling of freshness you get when having new equipment got thrown out too, since, at least for me, I don’t remember hardly ever switching weapons, since none of them were clear upgrades, just sort of…slightly different. And you’d have to upgrade the crap out of them to make them anywhere near as good as the weapon you’d already been upgrading for days.
Anyway, yeah, definitely a solid meh. It wasn’t so horrible that I threw it down and walked away in disgust, but it just sort of made me trudge along through it until I finally gave up.
I’m gonna say Left 4 Dead 2 also. I didn’t hate it like so many seemed to, though I guess that was mainly about the timing of its release, but I didn’t really like it that much either. It was kind of fun, but I didn’t really see any reason to have it in addition to the first one. I like the characters from the first game much better, and the new zombies and weapons didn’t really do it for me. The majority of the settings being daylight also kind of killed it for me. I much preferred the nighttime setting of the first game, and the atmosphere of the levels were much better IMO. So mainly I just didn’t see a point to it.
I’m trying to remember what I actually bothered upgrading in FFXIII. I liked how some weapon and item combos unlocked extra benefits. Like having the Axis Blade + Speed Sash would increase your ATB charge rate even more. Lightning is a killing machine with that and Army of One spam.
Okay, I think I upgraded some of the Bangles for added HP boosts, and the magic buff items to make Hope’s magic even more ludicrously OP. It’s like the only redeeming thing about him in FFXIII because his character is so annoying.
Ah well, at least he turns out okay in XIII-2. His character actually evolved a bit, unlike Snow, who’s just as much of a goofball in the sequel.
Stalker 1 for me. I never really got into the story and I never felt any motivation to do the side quests. I was just trying to get through, hoping that at some point in the story I would be drawn in.
I never was.
Oh god, Far Cry 2.
So BORING
Good thing Far Cry 3 came along.
I was actually quite the opposite, I played a little bit like twice when it came out and thought “why should I play this” and then I finally started playing it and I couldn’t stop.
I felt that way about Clear Sky. Didn’t do a single side quest that I didn’t have to do. It was a chore to get through, and I did it just to get to CoP - but unfortunately it was so long and frustrating that it burned me out on the games so I won’t be playing them for a while.
I mean seriously, Red Forest was like the only good part of that game. The rest of that game was just shoot mercs shoot bandits shoot monolith shoot this shoot that. The broken faction wars system killed any semblance of pacing the game established by the good parts, and for the most part it just felt like one mediocre action set piece after another instead of actually trying to establish a mood.
Every single Dynasty Warriors game
recently: Halo 4
honorable mention: Max Payne 3
I hope you mean MP3’s story. The gameplay is pretty much the best tps gameplay ever.
Nah, the gameplay is pretty meh too. Last Man Standing has the tendency to fail because you can’t twist your ragdoll enough to get who shot you, you can’t turn corners while in cover, and enemies often have early Clancy game-esque accuracy. The cutscenes also railroad you into horrible cover, or you can literally be shot seconds after getting control of your character (like the airport level where you’re riding the conveyor belt into the map from a cutscene). Plus the environments lack interactivity outside of specifically canned sequences, so there’s little incentive to go looking for ammunition or items in the maps. The story was also pretty predictable, despite having very strong characterization for Max’s slide backwards from where he was at the end of MP2.
Max Payne 3 was an okay game, but it was a horrible follow up to Max Payne 2.
Tomb Raider.
NightSky.
Did you know that there’s a key that switches perspective from over left shoulder to over right shoulder? Not sure if that would have helped but I never encountered that. You shouldn’t be in cover enough to need to worry about turning corners, this applies to being put in cover after cutscenes too, you shouldn’t be in the cover long enough for it to matter, and the only time I can think of being put in the open like you’re describing is in the airport. I do kind of agree about the interactivity but there were the clues and looking for golden weapon parts, which I still haven’t found all of.
I didn’t play the Max Payne games until just before 3 came out so I wasn’t invested in the story and so can’t really comment on that but for me, MP3 was much better gameplay wise compared to 2 and I hear 2 is the worst from a lot of people who played the games as they came out.
Far cry 2 was rad
Yes, I know about the shoulder switch in MP3. In the Airport in particular it’s more efficient to corner snipe instead of using cover in some places.
As for 2 being the worst, they’re wrong. The story is great at using the first game’s events to it’s advantage, and brings out plenty of unexpected twists. There’s plenty of cabinets and stuff to explore, and the levels felt coherent and focused, instead of flashing back to completely irrelevant bullshit to let Max dodge bullets on a cruise liner like 3.
Oh, and DAT 360 SPIN RELOAD.
Max Payne 1 still remains the best one
because
I enjoyed MP3 for what it was, but the story felt like one of those 80s or 90s action movies but with Max Payne as the main character.
Pariah. It was a meh game. It had some cool elements. But different aspects of the story fell short. Like the way it’s told, how rapidly it passes, and the voice acting.
I see it as a proper Die Hard 4/5 and not really a Max Payne. I still love it though.
I feel like I would have liked Metro 2033 a bunch if I hadn’t played Stalker.
It was as every syfy channel original movie is to Tremors