An old one: SPORE.
Cool creature editor. Lacked all the depth that was promised in the presentations. Instead of being a cohesive game through the ages, it's like 5 bare-bones shallow games glued together.
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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I loved spore as a kid, but I do agree that when I tried it again and an adult I was disappointed by the shallowness that I just hadn't noticed as a kid
The only good part of spore is the first part of the game, going from single cell to multi cellular.
I found the rest of the game convoluted, and this despite playing it to the end. And replaying it many times over
That said my brain can't believe it only came out in 2008. I could have sworn it was a 90s game.
surprised you feel that way, I was 13 and played it 3 years after it came out with no expectations and really enjoyed it. I wasn't part of the hype around it before release so I assumed a lot of other people in my position would feel the same way. I think the different "minigames" led me on a path to discover games later on like civilization, cities skylines, no man's sky, etc
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Elden Ring... I'm sorry I just didn't enjoy It even after beating a few bosses
- CD Projekt RED's Cyberpunk 2077:
the trailer showed V riding a crowded monorail train. I bought the game in promotion with Google Stadia. There was no monorail in the game. Or rather, you could look at it, and you could find some stations, but they were teleport points; - Obsidian Entertainment's The Outer Worlds:
it was marketed as a role-play game, but your possible choices were either bad or good, with no in-between, and they did not influence your story at all. It's just a shooter game, the SciFi setting is secondary and forgettable; - Blackbird Interactive's Homeworld 3:
too far from what I loved in Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm. For some reason the developers believed they had to introduce physical people with mental issues in a game about faceless ships blowing up each other. Nevertheless, the story is bland. I would like to pretend that this game did not ever exist.
A game that I've been waiting years to play for years is Mobius Digital's Outer Wilds.
I have only heard praise about it. I can't find the courage to finally play it and end up disappointed.
Outer Wilds (not Worlds) is incredible, I doubt you'll regret playing it.
Well, you might. Some people do bounce off; usually due to not knowing where to go next, or what to do next. But if you're the kind of person who doesn't want your hand holding and are okay to persevere a little, you'll probably have a good time.
No other game for me has ever matched the feeling of exploration and discovery, and that is only possible because the game gives you a long leash.
Funny! Outer Wilds was exactly the OP question for me.
Utterly frustrating realistic space controls, unguided exploration that leads to reentering the same planet for the 8th time and still not finding anything new, annoyingly specific timing-based puzzles…
Tap for spoiler
And a nihilistic “friends we made along the way” ending that doesn’t solve the initial problem. Fuck that.
I’ve had games in my wishlist now that I see “It’s like Outer Wilds!” and I start to think twice about them.
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Hogwarts. And all the horizon games.
anyone who played Hogwarts Legacy after the huge outcry about boycotting it for trans solidarity deserves to be disappointed
Is Rowling a piece of trash, yes. Does the game include a trans character, also yes. Were people still pissed off at the characters name, also yes.
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Arkham Knight was pretty disappointing. The batmobile was forced into several sections. The announced Linux build never materialized.
Yeah I think I got Arkham Knight for free and I played it until the first batmobile puzzle then never played it again. It just was not enjoyable
Starfield. I tried it on a more recent update and it was just boring. There was no point to exploring because outposts were useless and space combat was trivial. Just an overall boring game
I played it out of morbid curiosity after everyone started talking how bad it was. I went in like "It can't be THAT bad, can it?" - and indeed, it can. I'm still amazed that menus are fucking .swf files (Adobe Flash for those too young to recognize it)
It's one of the least credible scifi settings I've ever seen. Also, despite the whole "multiverse" the main story tries to paint, it's much closer to a time loop, given how nothing changes and effectively none of your actions are acknowledged by anyone. City NPCs won't even react to your ~~dragon shouts~~ ~~Force use~~ totally unique space magic, unless it hits them, then it's just like being shot. Even Oblivion guards would tell you to holster your weapons, Starfield guards won't even grunt if you shoot around like a maniac (but hit nobody)
I am so glad for game pass (at least before the price hike).
I tried Starfield and found it just so contrived and boring. To being made to touch and gather the weird space magic stuff in the asteroid to just suddenly being given a space ship to the inane combat and awful environments.
And this is someone coming from over 5,000 hours in F04 (and 2000 across Fallout titles, and God knows how much across Morrowwind, Skyrim, Oblivion etc). I am very much used to Bethesda jank.
But jeebus, Starfield is as compelling as wet toast. I read the synopsis of the game and was utterly relieved to have missed wasting countless hours in what has to be one of the worst written and developed games of the past 10 years.
That said it is clear Starfield was a huge pump and dump scheme by Zenimax to sell Bethesda to MS under the idea Starfield was gonna be the next Elder Scroll/fallout block buster. (not to mention populating stories about giving Sony an exclusive on Starfield to make MS jealous)
Little did they know they were buying pure Todd co~~ke~~pium that had been cut with a shit tone of sweet'n low
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There was the "spiritual successor" of L4D announced. Back 4 Blood looked like a very nice and fun L4D clone with some new mechanics thrown in. I have applied for a Beta to try it out and got lucky!
Game was boring AF. Play on medium difficulty and you can't do it without real players who actually have to be decent shooters including you. Basically, enemies hit you harder and you hit them less. Same as Left 4 Dead, right? Well... In Left 4 dead you'd just shoot special infected til they drop dead. Here, some infected are impeccable unless you shoot weak spots that are so tiny you might aswell just waste all your ammo on plain shooting. And a typical non-boss special infected on medium diffciulty is like tank on expert in L4D. PvP is locked in a small area so no actual campaign pvp like in L4D.
Also, afaik, card mechanics was broken in so many ways that they only kept nerfing it from the release til they closed servers.
adventures in the magic kingdom and yo noid
Any MMO, I'll pick it up and give it an honest try for a month or so. And I feel like I'm just grinding away for days for a couple hours of fun a week.
It's so damn boring, all of it.
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Duke Nukem Forever. As a teen Duke Nukem 3D was one of my most loved gaming experiences. Awesome game, came with easy to use level editor (Never got the original doom level editors to work back then). Played many many hours, made my own levels. Just plain loved the game.
Then the wait for Duke4Ever started and I waited, and waited and waited and (continue for 20 years so) and finaly got to play it.
It wasn't bad really, it just wasn't as fun as Duke3D was in my teens. It still had the same kind of humor, but never really hit any high notes. Weapons were limited, instead of having a weapon behind each number on the keyboard, now it was pick one up and drop one off.
Didn't even try to see how the level editing was.
Maybe I'll pick it up again if it's a euro on Steam or GOG, as Duke3D still is loved childhood memory.
I played DNF shortly after release 🏴☠️ , but I was already an adult by then and was aware of the development hell that the game went thru. Started playing not expecting much and I was still disappointed.
"Power armor is for pussies!" - says the guy whose game is almost literally a shitty Halo: only 2 weapons, limited ammo, regenerating ~~shield~~ ego.
Duke3D was definitely peak Duke. I didn't love DNF either. It was just meh. Fun enough for the time I played it, but never went back to it.
Most recently, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Invalice Chronicles. I remember loving Tactics Advance back in the day, but I tried several times to get into the Invalice Chronicles and I just can't do it.
Curious. What puts you off in Ivalice Chronicles?
It's just way too grindy, and not even the fun kind of grindy. Which is a lot coming from me since I can sit there and hunt the same Monster in Monster Hunter 50 times in a row to get what I need and not feel bored or frustrated. In the Invalice Chronicles, everything feels like it drags on-and-on to an exhausting level.
It's likely my own fault, though. I haven't played a tactics style game since one of the Fire Emblem games on Wii or 3DS and I'm probably not remembering how they truely played. Maybe down the line I'll go back to it and give it another try.
GTA V.
I liked all the previous ones, but this was just more of the same on a bigger generic map and a more convulted and stereotypical story. Online never worked for me either. Too buggy.
Vice City and San Andreas were the best of the series.
Map size/design is just more important than size. Same problem in Just Cause.
I didn't hate V, but nothing has touched San Andreas' magic for me.
I had to mention both, because I like them for different reasons.
Initially I didn't even like Vice City, because it was just an epigon of GTA3 with more lens flare, but the story and not least the music won me over. I know it's a blatant mockery of Scarface, but that's what makes it so great and funny.
San Andreas is probably the masterpiece of them all. Maybe it got a little too serious in comparison to previous games, but it managed to portrait a great feeling of freedom and doing whatever in-between the main missions.
GTA V is more like: Follow the arrow through this generic oversized map.
San Andreas just felt like it captured the 90s perfectly. I could almost lump it in as a 90s memory.
Witcher 3. Absolutely hated the sluggish movement, only made it a few hours
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I wanted to play Cuphead because I really liked the concept and the aesthetic. I got it not knowing its reputation for being hard as absolute fuck. Played it for several days with increasing frustration, started watching walkthroughs, those didn’t help, still tried to stubbornly stick with it, and eventually got to the point where my heart just wasn’t in it anymore.
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Elden Ring. Love DS2 and 3 but I HATE the open world aspect. Makes it feel pointless and then sucks to find out my exploring took me somewhere I can’t deal with due to my level.
Came here for the same thing.
Found ER way too easy after the souls trilogy.
The open world and torrent let you run away anything you want, making the open world a very safe and not dangerous at all place.
Paradoxaly, riding 10km in 5min makes the Lands Between feel way smaller than any dark souls area, where you have to fight for you like every meter
Tbf i liked doing malenia and radahn, and all the "big dungeons". (Damn actually i would prefer the game if it were just the concatenation of all dungons like a souls game.)
Anyway, very sad to enjoy this game as i loved the souls
AND GIVE ME BACK THE HELLISH RUNBACKS, I WANT TO FEEL THE FEAR OF DYING WHEN I FIGHT BOSSES (thank you silksong)
Funny for me it was RDR2. I still think I probably would have liked it if I stuck with it, but 20 minutes in I was told that I would have to regularly clean my gun and hunt to feed my camp etc. and it just felt like doing a bunch of chores and I noped straight out.
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