Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

[Sno]

Does the series get any better once you get past the GBA games? I bought Gyakuten Saiban 3 before I even started the second one because it was cheap and I was so sure I’d be into it, not sure if that’s still a GBA conversion though.

The first three games, which are the GBA to DS remakes in the series, are the ones i think most people would say are the best games in the series. As such, the problem i'm going to present you with is that the "cases" people remember most fondly are usually the ones at the end of each of those games. So do you feel like investing twenty or more hours into a game you're not sure you like, clinging to the hope that you'll grow to like it more?

You probably do not.

[Yasawas]

I think I'll cut my losses with this one then.

 

 

I'll still end up buying Ace Attorney 5 if it comes out at retail.

[Karimi]

I couldn't get through Gravity's Rainbow....

[elmuerte]

I think I'm going to quit playing Tropico 4. I encountered a game breaking bug after 3 hours in mission 18. I cannot complete it, and I don't feel like replaying the whole thing. So far I've played it for 50 hours, but due to this bug I will probably not wrap up the remaining 10% of the game.

[Reyturner]

Screw this flower growing Street Pass game that shady rabbit sold me. 

[Dewar]

I think I'm going to quit playing Tropico 4. I encountered a game breaking bug after 3 hours in mission 18. I cannot complete it, and I don't feel like replaying the whole thing. So far I've played it for 50 hours, but due to this bug I will probably not wrap up the remaining 10% of the game.

 

I was struggling for a while last night on that mission myself. That's the one where you have to kill the spies, right? What bug did you run into?

[elmuerte]

I accidentally arrested the spy (I thought that would suffice as to eliminate him). In prison I couldn't touch him. And at some point he got out. The mission thingy is still there, but no "view" link to view any spy. I can only press "ok".

[Atlantic]

I got Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on the cheap just to have something to pass the time. I've played a few hours of it, bit I'm done. The setting is so bland, and none of the quests I encountered offered any sort of interesting scenario or decision to make. I think that's the problem: there are no choices to make that are in any way meaningful. With weapons it always seemed best to take the whatever did the most damage, with armour what offered the best protection. There is kind of a stealth ability tree, but there was no clear reason why I'd use be a sneaky bastard when I could kill anything in a few hits with no problem. The story seemed like the most fantasy-trope riddled rubbish. I have no idea who any of the "characters" are (in quotes because they're entities solely for telling you to go somewhere else and kill something else rather than exert any sort of personality or opinion). I can kind of see why 38 Studios went into bankruptcy from this side: it's not a very good game. No wonder it was cheap...

[I Saw Dasein]

I agree with all that, Atlantic. Plus it was really, really ugly imo. Like a low-rent WoW ripoff. Do not like. 

[Dewar]

I really liked it

 

It gets significantly harder as it goes on, making the stealth kills and some of the special abilities on weapons and armor more useful, but if it feels bland to you, it's not going to get any better.

 

Edit: That should be a frowny face, not an angry one.

[melmer]

Won't be playing that then

This month I have been mostly quitting soul sacrifice, gravity rush, uncharted vita watsit, saints row 3 and plants vs zombies 2

[I Saw Dasein]

I also quit Saints Row 3. The open world is really bland and the shooting totally sucks and all the activities are lame and make no sense. Plus the writing was way too embarrassing so I had to turn the dialogue off. 

[Dewar]

I apparently have a lot different taste in games than a lot of people around here

[Atlantic]

I agree with all that, Atlantic. Plus it was really, really ugly imo. Like a low-rent WoW ripoff. Do not like. 

 

I didn't think Amalur was ugly exactly, it just had no visual identity of its own. Completely plain. I would say "vanilla" but even vanilla has a flavour. And another thing that bothered me was the pronunciation of "Tuatha." Maybe it's a Scot's Gaelic thing, but in Irish I would have pronounced it more like "too-hah," rather than "too-ah-tha" that's in the game. It made me a confused man every time it was said.

 

I really liked it

 

It gets significantly harder as it goes on, making the stealth kills and some of the special abilities on weapons and armor more useful, but if it feels bland to you, it's not going to get any better.

 

Edit: That should be a frowny face, not an angry one.

 

I guess I just don't trust the game to make the difficulty to be interesting. I don't feel that making enemies more resilient to be a good way of making it more challenging, which is what I'd expect from an RPG.

 

Overall though, what it made me realise is that maybe I don't like games like this any more. Games that supposedly allow you to do anything, but don't execute those options particularly well. I found myself skipping all dialogue, so any "social" bits were out the window; I like stealth games, so the sneaky-tree here felt poor, with encounters more geared towards open combat; and then I wasn't engaged by the combat. I think games that have a tighter focus end up being better for it. Dark Souls doesn't try to do stealth or chatty bits and is far better for it. And then something like Dishonored, though not comparable to Amalur in any way (and actually a game I really enjoy) is good because it shows restraint: it's not an open world, it doesn't have a dynamic day/night cycle, and it gives actual choices which affect how missions play and some points in the story. That I was able to affect change in the world through my actions and not through a dialogue tree/glorified menu felt far more enticing.

 

In short, I might be done with open world RPGs.

[Dewar]

Hmm, I still enjoy reading the dialog and I read most of it for at least the first 10 hours of the game. Maybe that's why it didn't feel so bland to me, though I agree the visual style is mostly boring with just a few moments of brilliance in the bigger cities toward the end. The overall story there is about destiny and determinism, so a lot of the "choices" in the game aren't really choices at all. I can understand how that would be offputting, but I kinda dug the overall theme. *shrug*

[Twig]

I really liked it

 

It gets significantly harder as it goes on, making the stealth kills and some of the special abilities on weapons and armor more useful, but if it feels bland to you, it's not going to get any better.

 

Edit: That should be a frowny face, not an angry one.

I also really liked it!

 

Combat was super fun. Did get easy because I did all the sidequests (why? because I'm an idiot) and got overleveled, but man. It's one of those games that I was super super excited about the sequel, because I'm always optimistic developers will fix the flaws in the first game. Kinda like Assassin's Creed -> Assassin's Creed II. Man. Now I'm all sad again.

 

Also, Atlantic, they went bankrupt for reasons entirely outside of the success (critical or otherwise) of Kingdoms of Amalur. ):

[youmeyou]

I quit Torchlight 2 after the first act because it kept crashing when I attempted to play with my gf online. Imo, the gameplay is far too dull to support a single player experience. Not to mention, it looks and mostly controls like Dota 2 so why not just spend my time playing an analogous game that's actually exciting?

[Atlantic]

The overall story there is about destiny and determinism, so a lot of the "choices" in the game aren't really choices at all. I can understand how that would be offputting, but I kinda dug the overall theme. *shrug*

 

But wasn't the main character supposed to be free from destiny because he was brought back from the dead? That seemed to be the initial setup anyway, in that you were outside of fate and free to forge your own path. Except any choice you made was frivolous and had no long term effect. It's probably that I was not invested in their fiction that I had no interest in anything I was doing in it. 

 

 

Also, Atlantic, they went bankrupt for reasons entirely outside of the success (critical or otherwise) of Kingdoms of Amalur. ):

 

I know, woeful mismanagement and all. But, if the game was stronger, maybe it could have saved them... ?

[Twig]

I know, woeful mismanagement and all. But, if the game was stronger, maybe it could have saved them... ?

Not really. It's nice to believe, but the game was fine and well received and none of that mattered.

[Gormongous]

Not really. It's nice to believe, but the game was fine and well received and none of that mattered.

 

Yeah, if all the postmortems told any truth at all, the decisions that doomed the company were made long before the game was even close to release.

[Dewar]

They also bought that game when it was half way done already, more as a marketing tool than a profit making machine.

[UltimateHurl]

I'll have to admit I gave up on The Witcher. Seems like a lot of people here are saying what I felt: I don't like a 40-50 hour experience that just grinds. I've been told The Witcher 2 fixes a lot of problems and 3 looks amazing, but I hate to skip a game, even if I know the story isn't _too_ important.

[Dewar]

I had problems getting through that game myself. I stopped and started again several times, but I did find it worth it in the end. How far in are you? Maybe start over on easy?

[UltimateHurl]

I was about 5 hours in, I'm actually considering watching a Let's Play or something, but that could work too. 

[darthbator]

I played almost 40 hours of the first Witcher and feel like I got almost nowhere at all. There's a lot of cool stuff in that game but I think the combat feels awful and it's grindy as all hell!