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

[Henke]

In my Steam library I've had the following games sitting half-played and unfinished for a long while now:

 

Hitman (2016)

Hollow Knight

House of the Dying Sun

Shadowrun: Dragonfall DC

Snake Pass

Strafe

Undertale

 

And yeah, I would be a bit ashamed to give up on them, since they're good games, and worthy of finishing I feel. Luckily most of them have a quite small footprint on my harddrive, tho in the case of Hitman and it's 70GB installation I really need to shit or get off the pot.

[Bjorn]

Quit and refunded Pit People, the new Behemoth game that just came out of Early Access.  It's got great style and music and design, but mechanically I was finding it confusing and frustrating to the point of just being a slog that I didn't really understand.  It also was having some controller issues where it multiple times lost the input completely from controllers (having to restart the game to get them back).  Since we were in co-op, there was no way to save using the keyboard, as it would inevitably happen at a point where both players had to confirm a choice.  This kind of input loss isn't something I've had with other games. 

 

This is one of those games I can super see why some people would love it.  Just...not working for us.  The combat is weirdly slow for advertising itself as being super fast paced.  We only got a couple of hours in, but every combat encounter seemed to be our squad outnumbered by about 50 percent, and killing each enemy requires ganging up on them with multiple characters for multiple rounds.  It is super fast and easy to assign orders to characters (the only input is movement, the action is based on the characters distance and orientation to enemies/allies).  But then it's just minute after minute of watching enemy healthbars slowly go down.  And ranged units will always run away, so one battle ended up with multiple minutes of each of us chasing multiple archers around the map getting increasingly farther and farther away from other enemies. 

[Henke]

Ah yes, I saw Alec Meer at RPS had the same take on it you did: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/03/02/pit-people-review/

 

Quote

I came to Pit People straight off the back of my Into The Breach review, which means I’d just experienced a revelation in how brisk and elegant the age-old formula of taking turns to shuffle a small force of units across a set of tiles to bash or shoot enemies can be.

 

Because of that, it’s hard to forgive Pit People’s drawn-out, slow-motion wars of attrition. But it’s even harder to put it down, because it’s such a firehose of ideas, visual gags and spoken comedy outside of its cold and chewy tactical meat and potatoes.

 

[Nappi]

I bought Pit People on early access because I desperately needed to play a game like that at the time. I was playing Into the Breach when I noticed that the game finally got released. As I said on Slack, Pit People highlights really well how tight the gameplay of Into the Breach is, whereas Into the Breach highlights how wild and cool the art style of Pit People is.

 

Even when I first played Pit People on early access, I found it strange and simply not fun that the enemies took so many turns to kill. Now that I'm way into Into the Breach, I doubt I will play the final game for a good long while. It does make me wish that Into the Breach was visually more interesting, though. 

 

Edit: Pit People has real-time auto-resolve for combat. Oh my..

[thepaulhoey]

The only thing keeping me playing Pit People is the style of it. The combat is tedious and has pretty much no evolution throughout the game. I'd love if they'd just half the health of everything in the game at least so battles don't drag on. It might even make the game more tactical since when a zone is marked as an area a unit will take damage in it might actually be a problem! Very disappointing.

[Bjorn]

Nappi, yeah, the combination of playing Pit People and Into the Breach back to back really does highlight what each does well and poorly.  And while Pit People might be more forgivable if played in a vacuum, the speed and efficiency and weight of what Into the Breach does just highlights its flaws all the more.

 

Also agree that just everything in the game could have half the health, or do double damage, and it would only improve it. 

 

How does auto-resolve of combat work?  The AI just plays both sides and you watch?

[Nappi]

6 minutes ago, Bjorn said:

How does auto-resolve of combat work?  The AI just plays both sides and you watch?

 

But even Pit People’s auto-resolve involves a whole lot of time-wasting – it doesn’t skip to a results screen like Total War, but instead you sit back and watch in real-time like Football Manager, with an option to assume control at any point if things go South. I tend to leave it playing in the background while I talk to the cat.

 

I don't remember if that was available during early access, but that implementation sounds pretty weird.

[Bjorn]

Weeeeeiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrd.   Like, "we know our combats boring, here's a way to let it go while you do something else."

 

I mean, it's probably there for people who want to experience "the world" and whatnot, but still, for those people, why make them sit for minutes with a pointless, boring virtual battle raging?

[Nappi]

Right. I end up skipping most of the battles in Total War campaigns by the end (partly because there are so many and partly because I prefer the turn-based stuff), but at least those games don't force me to watch the battles anyway.

[thepaulhoey]

I didn't notice that feature but I was carrying on from my Early Access save. I don't understand how can you think a feature where combat auto plays is something you need and not think maybe there's a more fundamental problem to be solved?

[thenexus6]

I think Shadow of the Colossus for me. Never played the original game, was going to buy the newly released PS4 but didn't. I just borrowed it from a friend and made it just over one hour in, four bosses down. 

 

The game looks and sounds great, but I feel the game is totally let down by janky controls and camera. I was getting frustrated so much in that hour I played, and obviously I don't know how the game unfolds but I spent an hour starting at the "base" following my sword to a colossi, killing it then returning to base. I repeated this four times. It's pretty boring and repetitive, and the world was completely empty.

 

It's a shame because its regarded as one of the all time greats but, not working for me and I don't have time forcing myself to play a game i'm not enjoying due to how highly regarded its held.

[thepaulhoey]

Sounds like how I remember the PS2 version, I never made it past 4 or 5 Colossi.

[Bjorn]

22 hours ago, thenexus6 said:

The game looks and sounds great, but I feel the game is totally let down by janky controls and camera. I was getting frustrated so much in that hour I played, and obviously I don't know how the game unfolds but I spent an hour starting at the "base" following my sword to a colossi, killing it then returning to base. I repeated this four times. It's pretty boring and repetitive, and the world was completely empty.

 

The empty solitude of it is a selling feature for some people (me included), but I can understand how that doesn't work or click with everyone.  I enjoyed the run to each colossus (and keeping an eye out for fruits and lizards).  When I played it, I remember thinking how a less confident game would insist on having throwaway minions to chew through that added nothing other than hollow action for action's sake, and the empty world made for a better experience than needless fodder. 

[dium]

So, I "beat" Hollow Knight a while ago. But you can tell by the thread I'm posting in (and the scare-quotes I have to put around the word "beat") how that's not really true; I merely got the easy ending.

 

Purely in terms of required-tasks-remaining, I think I'm actually pretty close to the "real" ending: I (probably) only need to beat one more dream boss, and then I have to do the white palace, and then finally the super-final boss. Thing is, each of those steps is gonna take (at least!) a full evening of concentrated effort, and none of it sounds particularly fun—even though I've enjoyed every moment of the 50 hours I've spent playing the game up until this point.

 

It sucks to enjoy a game this much just to burn out on it right before the end. I absolutely will miss the sense of satisfaction gained from completion. I'd hoped that getting the easy ending would provide a little bit of that, but, frankly, it mostly just felt like a taunt.

 

I might come back and give this another go when the final DLC comes out.

[thenexus6]

Heavy Rain

I want to see where the story goes, but the gameplay and stupid controls made me quit the game. I think I made it to chapter 12-15.

[Henke]

I quit a PILE of stuff recently. All of them games I enjoyed for many hours but which I eventually just ran out of interest in.

 

Darkwood (made it to the 3rd area)

Gravity Rush 2

Hollow Knight (defeated 1 of the 3 end bosses, I think.)

Horizon Zero Dawn

Shadowrun: Dragonfall DC

Strafe

Styx 2

[marginalgloss]

I think I have given up on Metroid: Samus Returns for 3DS. I was tempted to pick it up at launch, but I waited quite a while so I could pick up a physical copy for under £30. I'm glad I did, and I'm slightly confounded as to how it received such overwhelmingly positive reviews on release. It is a perfectly acceptable version of a classic side-scrolling Metroid game that adds nothing to the genre and does virtually nothing to surprise or excite. You could buy all three Steamworld games on 3DS, and still have a bit of change left over, and you'd have a much better time.

 

It plays fine. It is made very well. It looks nice, if unremarkable (and unthreatening). Some of the sound and music is what you'd want. Some of the puzzle design is good. But why bother exploring and solving the puzzles if the only reward is a paltry +3 missiles? Can't we do better than this today? It is devoid of environmental storytelling, or any meaningful sense of progression. Battling the same metroid-infected creatures every time, with only slight variations in the boss chambers, is boring. The whole thing feels strangely tired, indifferent, and humourless.

 

I guess some of this repetition could be explained by the idea that it's essentially a remake of Metroid II for the Game Boy. Certainly if even half of what happens here was replicated on that little machine, I'd be impressed, but the 3DS version does nothing so impressive with the hardware by comparison. The ability to parry enemies and free-aim feel like a worthy concession to modern game design - no more awkwardly mashing jump while shooting - but the game never asks you to use those abilities in ways beyond the obvious.

 

All of which got me wondering what could be done with a new Metroid game on Switch. Something more is required, I think, than a simple retread of the Metroid Prime games -- and I'm hoping they push the boat out as they did with Breath of the Wild. But if anything the format of the Metroid games has been tighter than Zelda, less prone to the fits and starts of innovation that make even the middle-ranking Zeldas worth replaying from time to time. 

[Roderick]

Yes, exactly this. Samus Returns (which I finished apart from the final final boss, which I was indifferent to put a lot of time in at that point) is a technically precise Metroid experience hugely lacking soul and extremely repetitive. It exists for people who want the Metroid flavor and nothing else, who want to experience the gameplay exactness of Metroid, specifically Metroid, and don't care if it exists in a void or this strange concoction of repeating gameplay elements.

 

Knowing this, I don't think it deserves a low grade. It's very good at what it wants to do, but maybe the target audience if way more narrow than you might think for such a well-known brand.

[I_smell]

I've recently given up on trying to get to the end of Cultist Simulator.

 

It was a good game, I really liked it, and I even appreciated how there was no tutorial or instructions at all.

 

In the back half of the game though, this drove me crazy. One rougelike run can take a couple hours, which includes installing your cult, managing numbers and waiting. I got very deep into a run, and then realized that I had been pushing step 9 further and further away from myself.

...then I started again, and did the same thing with step 10.

...then I started again, and fumbled the next secret >:[

 

This is a couple afternoons spent playing a game that's nice, that I do like, but making no progress.

 

It's good and I would recommend it, but if you decide that you want to just see what the back half of the game looks like, looking it up in a guide is the only way. Solving each new puzzle as they come up is doable, but very risky~ and the thing you're risking is your own free time.

[Roderick]

Yikes. That's a downside to roguelikes that take a longer time to finish, I guess. FTL can easily gobble up an hour and a half or more per run, too, though I never felt I was stuck at an unreasonable point in the game.

 

I need to review Xenoblade 2: Torna: The Golden Country for Switch, so I can't quit it. I adored the original game, but after pumping a hundred or so hours into it, many filled with grindy tasks, I've had more than my fill of it. XB2 was game that already offered so much, so so much content, that it really didn't need even more content. I'm sure there are fans out there that can't wait to stuff their face with it, and it's all pretty good, but also just so much. (And it's doing nothing particularly different this time around.)

[Roderick]

Wow, I actually quit a game again, for the first time in a while! I was playing Folklore, the early PS3 action-RPG set in Irish folky locales. I was attracted to it because of its unique and charming appearance, and for the first 10 hours or so, I enjoyed the gameplay. You absorb the powers of enemies you defeat, which allows you access to powers needed to defeat tougher enemies and bosses. It's a nice system of upgrades and the combat luckily doesn't rely on combos or difficult button presses.

 

HOWEVER, it controls rather clunkily. At some point I encounter a mid-level sub-boss, some fast and weird fish beast, and it just tired me out. I decided I wasn't getting enough out of it to warrant pressing on. I still like the game for its charm, it's one of a kind in that way where a game isn't trying to fit an existing mold, but pursues its own sensibilities.

[twmac]

On 15/10/2018 at 3:30 PM, Roderick said:

Wow, I actually quit a game again, for the first time in a while! I was playing Folklore, the early PS3 action-RPG set in Irish folky locales. I was attracted to it because of its unique and charming appearance, and for the first 10 hours or so, I enjoyed the gameplay. You absorb the powers of enemies you defeat, which allows you access to powers needed to defeat tougher enemies and bosses. It's a nice system of upgrades and the combat luckily doesn't rely on combos or difficult button presses.

 

HOWEVER, it controls rather clunkily. At some point I encounter a mid-level sub-boss, some fast and weird fish beast, and it just tired me out. I decided I wasn't getting enough out of it to warrant pressing on. I still like the game for its charm, it's one of a kind in that way where a game isn't trying to fit an existing mold, but pursues its own sensibilities.

 

You should try out their other game Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom and even Knights Contract

[Roderick]

Ohh, they were behind Majin? Wasn't too impressed with that one either. Knights Contract looks better though, but I'm afraid their previous games now leave me thinking it's not really for me...

[twmac]

On 17/10/2018 at 4:33 PM, Roderick said:

Ohh, they were behind Majin? Wasn't too impressed with that one either. Knights Contract looks better though, but I'm afraid their previous games now leave me thinking it's not really for me...

 

If you didn't like Majin, you aren't going to like their games. Majin probably has the most polish. Knights Contract is good but punishing. The first boss in particular is pretty rough.

[Cordeos]

I just quit Monster Hunter World. and by quit I mean force quit because the game wouldn't let me quit from the menu. I was on a quest and the game didn't show me what to do to leave the quest, it just told me I couldn't quit. I was trying to quit during the first boss battle due to my annoyance with the combat system. There is so much odd behavior in the combat system that the game doesn't bother to explain. Sometimes I clip through enemies, sometimes I don't. I kept hitting something that would cause knock back, it was never clear if i was hitting terrain or armor. When the boss drops to certain levels of health it flees, while fleeing you are not allowed to attack the boss and get thrown backwards if you try. This is the kind of forced cinematic moments that drive me nuts in GTA games because they turn games from open world to roller coaster with no warning.

I had some other issues that started me on the wrong foot with the game. Mouse and Keyboard support is bad, I wish games would just do what Yakuza 0 did and straight up tell you to use a controller instead of pretending like their M&K implementation is fine. Only some lines are fully voiced and lip movements are seemingly random which I found super off putting. The choice of which lines are voiced and which aren't also feels very random. Similarly voiced lines and subtitles are often different which is very distracting.