Tanukitsune

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

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You eventually make your way to a little village. The story at this point is centered around something, I don't know, a whole bunch of diamonds, or maybe a briefcase full of documents. Come to think of it, it could have been a briefcase full of fake passports, but I can't say for sure. Anyway, your GPS thing tells you that the briefcase is just sitting there in the middle of the village. When you pick it up, you are ambushed by (you are not going to fucking believe this) your old buddies! That's right, those people who, for no reason at all, decided that they were willing to brave machine guns, forest fires and RPGs to pick your body off the ground and revive you suddenly decided that you had to die!

After an intense gun fight you make your way to the border, where there are a bunch of refugees who are desperately waiting to get out of the country. Then you are faced with a choice: help the refugees or don't. I don't really remember if the "don't" option included you getting a bunch of diamonds or something... in any case I choose to help the refugees (these mythical people of the land of Far Cry 2 who are not constantly trying to kill you at all times). Then I got some ending that was like "you did the right thing, good for you!" or something like that. I wasn't really paying attention, I was so distraught over how my old buddies tried to kill me, not because I felt like I was betrayed by them, but because it made absolutely no sense at all in the context of the game.

Actually, the whole

"having the buddies you thought were dead come back as your enemies" worked a little for me. I'd chosen to go to the bar during the mid-game confrontation with the hopes of saving them. Somehow I lasted an absurdly long time, but that only meant that I watched every single one of them -- Yosip, Marty, Hyppolite -- bite the dust before me. Then they show up near the end, saying shit like, "You didn't give a crap about us, you bugged out the first moment you could. Well, this is payback." It worked, if only because I had gotten out alive and hadn't gone back to check. I don't see how it would have worked if I'd gone down immediately upon getting attacked at the bar, or if I'd chosen to defend the church instead, but whatever.

Also, I think the diamonds the Jackal offered to give you were bribes for the border guards to let the refugees through, which he had been selling guns to raise (!). Inexplicably, you were informed that you'd have to commit suicide after delivering said diamonds, since "there is no way they'll let you out of the country." He even included a pistol in the diamond briefcase for that exact purpose, what a nice guy. I chose to blow the bridge and die from that, because at least it wasn't explicitly telling me DON'T YOU SEE ALL STORIES END IN DEATH EVENTUALLY.

So basically the ending worked 50/50 for me.

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The first time I ever quit a game was Ocarina of Time. Ten-year-old me just did not yet understand the concept "the tool you find in the dungeon is used to kill the boss," (even though my First Video game Ever was Link's Awakening) so I was stuck slashing away at Gohma. It didn't help that I was a miserable shot, so nothing happened when I actually did try shooting the slingshot. I ran through the Great Deku Tree three times before shelving it. Of course I did go back a year later, when a friend told me how to beat Gohma, and enjoyed OoT quite a bit, but at the time that I quit I was content to never play it again. The dungeon layout was incomprehensible, the graphics made a lot of things too dark to see, and the boss was impossible to beat.

I played Pokemon Silver over and over, but only to the point that you beat the Johto Elite 4. I only bothered to go to Kanto once and didn't make it very far. I think the appeal of any particular Pokemon game runs out for me about level 50, when all my Pokemon are as evolved as they are going to be and have acceptable moves. Pokemon has typically been more about assembling a team (notable exception: first time I played, I used nothing but Venusaur) and exploring, so the moment new places to explore run out and my team is assembled, I am done.

The part where you reach the Donkey Kong arcade game in Donkey Kong 64 was the moment I realized why arcades were going out of business.

There are a number of reasons why I didn't finish Deus Ex:Human Revolution, and the fact that the plot refers to

the Illuminati

with a straight face was a surprisingly important one. I suspect the real issue was that the game never suggests that it has a sense of how goofy it was, even though a lot of elements of the game were goofy as heck: You have (ugly) sunglasses embedded directly in your face! Adam doesn't find it the least bit exciting (not even for a moment!) that he can now jump twice his own height! I stuck around as long as I did (the end of the Shanghai part) because I liked the stuff about transhumanism and enjoyed the stealth gameplay enough.

OH! I quit Final Fantasy 12. Really liked the combat, really liked the bounty hunter system and the character progression board-system, and a tonne of things about it.

Completely was not following the story or characters. I quit after

fighting the same enemies for what felt like about 4 hours.

I stuck with Final Fantasy 12 for probably ~40 hours, totally convinced I was enjoying it. I stopped for a while to focus on school and ended up coming back a few months later. I had no idea what was going on anymore, so I turned it off and haven't revisited it. In retrospect it feels a bit like the Civilization of RPGs -- fun if you stick to it regularly, but requires remembering so much context that it's hard to pick back up after some time off. And it is hard to keep combat from feeling repetitive.

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There aren't a lot of games I outright quit. In fact, most of them fade out, like if they are being too frustrating, or just not fun to play. I don't think I've ever just said "nope, that's it, I will not do it anymore", but instead pick it up with less and less frequency, until suddenly I realized I haven't touched it in months.

This has happened with Bioshock a couple of times, but so early that I don't think I've ever gotten to the so called "good part".

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I played Saints Row 3 for about 10 hours straight on a day I was too hungover to do much else. I was waiting for it to get as 'insane' as most reviewers claimed but it never did. It all felt very clunky (especially the gunplay) and mediocre, not to mention well-tread. Plus I kept running out of ammo, and for a game that was about being OTT I found that pretty ridiculous.

Far Cry 2 I quit out of rage and anger for the reasons most people who don't love that game quit. The endlessly antagonistic environment and pointless undriven mission structure. Just felt like a chore to play: you had to drive to a certain place to get a mission but the drive took ages because you had to fight so many people just to get there. And the missions was an iteration of 4-5 basic templates. I had such a bad experience with that game.

Dragon Age I quit 10 hours in because I could not get a handle on the combat (on PC). It was incredibly difficult from the get-go and I couldn't figure out why. So I quit out of frustration. I then picked up Witcher and loved every minute of that so I think it's just a style of fantasy rpg preference thing.

I've got far too many games on the backlog and this thread is very comforting in that respect. All the reasons have been listed, not interesting enough, new games come out and I forget about the old ones, etc. I don't consider them quit because I absolutely want to go back and finish them, but... not when I sit down at my computer and look at my steam library. It's a hypothetical concern over an emotional one, maybe. Maybe it's about realizing it's ok to quit them.

After this thread I may quit Stalker: COP. I played it for about 20 hrs and really enjoyed it. But I stopped after playing a few too many side missions and losing track of the story. There's not enough of a core narrative in that game that brings you back and I need that in a sandbox game to actually complete it. Otherwise I just do missions randomly and then eventually tire of the aimless nature of the gameplay.

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Far Cry 2:

I don't remember anyone coming back to life. You have to fight whoever is alive at that point, which for me wasn't a whole lot of people since I was playing on Hard and lost several buddies. In my mind that scene works very well considering the tone of the game. These aren't white knights, they are people who offer their services to warlords. IIRC the people who had a longer relationship with (the actual buddies who would come to save you) were dead at that point anyway.

The Jackal's plan is to get the civilians out of the country and close all exits, leaving only the one's 'corrupted' by the war and a million guns. You haven't been working with him... but he did spare your life once and save it once by this point. The corrupt ones include both of you, which is the reason you can't leave.

I dunno, maybe the Heart of Darkness connection made it easier for me to expect something like this and not just shooting him.

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I'm kind of ashamed to admit this, but...

I have never completed a BioWare game. Ever. I've started Baldur's Gate, BG2, Neverwinter Nights, and Mass Effect, get about half way through each, and then just never pick it back up. I'm not completely sure why, the games just seem to get tedious and I lose interest. At some point you'd think I'd learn, but I bought Dragon Age 1 on sale awhile back and it's in my backlog. Hopefully this time will be different.

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Never finished Fallout 3, got a decent way through it and got stuck wallowing in sidequests etc, plus it was way too easy with the mutant companion with the gatling laser. Put it down for a while, played some other stuff and then restarted doing an "evil" playthrough. Steam somehow managed to lose the saves for that and I guess i'd overwritten the saves for the previous playthrough? I dunno, maybe i'll give it another go sometime, but it's not so gripping as it was a few years ago.

Majora's Mask is another one i've never completed, but not through lack of trying. My N64 and games got stolen a couple months after Christmas 2000, and I bought a Dreamcast instead with the insurance money. Then I bought the collectors edition of it on Gamecube and played through 3/4 of it, but the game kept freezing, which is pretty unheard of for Gamecube games. I took it back to the shop and got a different copy and that froze too. That was maybe five years ago. Then, a year ago or so I bought it on Wii Virtual Console, I was like fuck I want to complete this game, i've never even got to the Stone Temple. And my Wii locked up a couple of times while playing it. I dunno if it's just a bad port or something, but jeez. Maybe I should buy a cheap N64 on ebay lol.

It's pretty aggravating cos the way the game works is the saving system is kind of the way you end a play session before you power off, there's no quicksaves or autosaves or anything. You could play for two or three hours, do a temple and some related sidequests and get a crash and all that progress is lost.

Some other games i've given up on via my own accord and not technical difficulties are Dawn of War II, got stuck on some annoying Tyranid mission, and I was just finding the game kind of annoying. I didn't like how if you failed a mission you couldn't just restart it and do better, but you lost potential advantage as the day counter moved on one and the other planets got more infested. I guess that's a cool feature if you're doing well, but if you're struggling like I was, it just seems like a kick in the teeth.

More recently Guild Wars 2 I don't really see what the fuss is about. It looks and plays just like every other WoW clone like LOTRO, WAR etc. I bought it and played a few hours and was like "whatever, can't be bothered" and went back to playing World of Tanks.

I'm sure there's a bunch more that I can't think of right away. That's not even going into the tens of games i've bought in Steam sales and never played once. We could probably have a thread for that if you guys are anything like me.

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There are a number of reasons why I didn't finish Deus Ex:Human Revolution,

I quit at the final area because the designers decided to kick things off with yet another hallway flooded three inches high in electrified water. I don't think I ever figured out the "correct" way to solve those rooms; what I did was get two crates, stand on one and throw the other in front of me, jump on to it, then grab the one I was previously standing on and throw that in front of me, etc. This hallway was so long I would have had to repeat this process more times than I was willing. How did you guys get through those areas?

I'm kind of ashamed to admit this, but...

I have never completed a BioWare game. Ever.

This is something Bioware has always known about, even before they had precise numbers in the form of achievements and their social network, and yet I feel like the games are getting worse in this regard despite their efforts. I think they said less than a third of players finished Dragon Age. My absolute favourite game of all time is the original Baldur's Gate, and I hope that I will love the upcoming "Enhanced Edition" enough to play through the game ten more times. I totally understand why people can't get through it, the games are too open and big to give the player much drive to reach the end. I adore the Elder Scrolls III, IV and V but I've never even come close to beating their main stories. That doesn't mean I haven't spent at least two dozen hours in each one!

I'll add some here that I never finished all for the same reason: XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Mount and Blade (any of the three) and Final Fantasy Tactics. I've probably started each of these games in access of twenty times each because I absolutely love how all of them start; recruiting, leveling and equipping a large team of specialized troops never gets old. Their mid-games are pretty OK, but their end games are full of the worst things respective to each title.

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I adore the Elder Scrolls III, IV and V but I've never even come close to beating their main stories. That doesn't mean I haven't spent at least two dozen hours in each one!
I actually played three >60-hour playthroughs of Oblivion before I actually bothered to beat the main quest.

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I quit at the final area because the designers decided to kick things off with yet another hallway flooded three inches high in electrified water. I don't think I ever figured out the "correct" way to solve those rooms; what I did was get two crates, stand on one and throw the other in front of me, jump on to it, then grab the one I was previously standing on and throw that in front of me, etc. This hallway was so long I would have had to repeat this process more times than I was willing. How did you guys get through those areas?

There's an augment you can get forr your legs that shields you from electrical damage, I always try and pick it up just before the second boss fight. Also if you used the boxes long enough you find a room with a fuse box in it.

Its a real shame you didn't get past that point, I thought the next sections were some of the best in the game for atmosphere, they made some really interesting and bold choices about the level design and stuck to their guns.

I thought it was the best game i'd played all year and ran through it 3 more times, I kinda liked how goofy it was and how well they hit tthe tone of the origional..

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I quit playing Rayman Origins at the last level because it was overly long, unfair, and super unintuitive. I youtubed the ending and thought I'd got my moneys worth for £10. It's weird how the curve of fun on that game lowers over time...

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I'm fairly sure I don't finish a good majority of the games I buy. These days I don't have a ton of time to spend playing games, but there is so much out there that I would like to try. I figure I would rather spend a few hours with lots of games so I can at least get an idea of what they're about than playing a few games to completion. Just looking at a pile of games on my bedroom floor, I see Crysis 2, Super Mario Galaxy, Transformers WFC, Dragon Age Origins, Sin & Punishment 2, Mirror's Edge, Skyrim, Deus Ex: HR, Driver San Fransisco and of course Jerry Rice's Dog Football. Perhaps I'll go back to half of these, but if I don't, I'm perfectly comfortable with my experience with them.

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Oh man, this is my kind of thread. But I'm only going to talk about games I made a conscious decision to quit, not ones I just trailed off of. Because the latter doesn't have anything discussion worthy, it's just happenstance a lot of the time. I'll start with the most recent let-down (this doesn't happen a lot),

Sonic Colors for the Nintendo DS

This was the first Sonic the Hedgehog game I've played, hands on, since the Sega Genesis games. No exaggeration whatsoever. I had access to playing a Dreamcast game or two, but never took up the opportunity. This is an important factor, because in the Genesis days the game was far more platform heavy. While I've seen videos of just about every Sonic game since, and plenty of them start to finish, I never understood how the games felt to control (obviously). I still haven't played any of the 3D titles. Colors I jumped on because I've had good luck with DS games being likable, and it was a 2D themed gameplay I felt comfortable with from a first-impression look. And then the game decided to show me how wrong the series has become in design. All of a sudden it's about twitch reaction and not being able to tell what's happening. You're sped along a level and expected to know when to jump to avoid an enemy or pit before seeing it appear on screen. It brought me back to this horrible moment in Mega Man 5 where you're in a segment of screens where you drop from one platform, the screen scrolls to the next, and you have to move left or right to land safely. Well, in one particular drop, you fall off the safe platform, and the screen scrolls... and there's immediately spikes at his feet. There's no warning that you were going to drop off the wrong side, it was just a 50 / 50 shot of choosing poorly, and the only way you can know is by fucking up or succeeding the first time. And that's what Colors felt like; if you don't magically predict something, you fuck up. And at 27 years old, I don't have time for that shit. So I gave up on the game one or two stages after the first boss.

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Even though Sno and Henroid told me not to quit the former game, I haven't gone back to Metroid Prime or Wind Waker. Too many Chozo Artifacts! Too many Triforce Shards! I'm sick of hunting for hidden objects, even with walkthroughs and Let's Plays in front of me.

Oh no! Well, crap, I'm not the type to badger someone over something like this. I can understand not enjoying those moments. I mean, I'm not sure I enjoy them per se but I also didn't feel burdened in finishing those parts up.

Anyway, before I get to the next game I want to relate my story about, I need to make an additional note about Sonic Colors that I forget to explicitly state: Basically, I was expecting a platformer, which the game sorta is, but the pacing is screwy as all hell compared to what I was used to. And having to manage all these bar + powerup shits wasn't helping the experience. That said,

Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced

I adore the first Tactics game, like nobody would believe. The remake on the PSP is one of the few reasons I've felt compelled to own a PSP. So what is essentially a sequel was a colossal letdown. Thematically, the game changed way too much. Suddenly there were lizardmen and bunny people and it was far removed from the more serious setting of the first game. It kinda felt like they were trying to make the Ivalice setting more lively or give it more character, when it already had plenty of character to begin with. And despite being a GBA title, its presentation from an art standpoint was also off-putting. It was made more cartoony. But let's step by those presentation layers and talk gameplay. Classes being tied to the races was a bad move. I could understand playing to strengths or compensating for weaknesses, that can be very compelling as far as choice making goes - especially in a tactical game like this. But it wasn't left open-ended. The obvious grievance is the law system. I don't mind curveballs being thrown at me in a game, but it was entirely arbitrary, and I mean that from the stripped-down "just playing a game" perspective as well as the presentation layer of it. "JUDGES MAKE LAWS FOR NO REASON TO FUCK WITH YOU." It felt like something was being added to curveball the original game design, and the attempt was... well, I already said arbitrary. They really didn't value having the same gameplay system with balancing tweaks. WHen you're putting out a sequel, either directly or in spirit, to something and it's not an annual release, people aren't going to begrudge the concept of games playing the same way. There were years separating FFT and FFTA, they didn't need to dress it up as poorly as they did. All I wanted was more FFT, and I got something else entirely.

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I somewhat compulsively finish everything. The only game I really remember just tossing away was Xenosaga, which was also the last time I played a JRPG. I felt literally embarrassed watching it, like I was reading some 14 year old's diary.

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Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced

That's another game I played for hours-upon-hours but I don't think I actually saw the ending. It was a weird one, a sequel to a very hardcore game made not for fans of the original, but for a newer, younger audience. I think to reach the ending you had to find certain rare drops, but you could only hold so many of these items in your inventory, so you would have to randomly choose things to discard without any idea if you needed it later. God, that makes it sound like an MMO or a secret in Diablo or something.

I somewhat compulsively finish everything. The only game I really remember just tossing away was Xenosaga, which was also the last time I played a JRPG. I felt literally embarrassed watching it, like I was reading some 14 year old's diary.

If we could extend the topic to entire genres that we have stopped playing, JRPGs definitely fit that bill for me, for the same reason you give: by and large those games just got embarrassing as I got older. The last one I played was Persona 3 which I had to quit because of a horrible pacing problem built into the game: all the characters talk about how the adventure was winding down and after defeating this enemy it will all be over... but the game doesn't end there because there is a secret enemy who was controlling it all along! Once we defeat him it will be over! ...And yet the game kept going after that too.

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Yeah, I think the only JRPG I've ever finished was FF6. Though I loved FF12, it got to be too much of a grind after something like level 30. Some people can just walk through that game without a problem, but stacking status effects and whatnot always seemed really unintuitive to me. The judges were a brilliant touch though.

And I agree with the above that Xenosaga was embarassing.

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I grew up playing a bunch of SNES JRPG's and kind of just absolutely loathed where the genre went basically on and out from the PS1, but just in the last few years i've suddenly found myself way back into them.

I have this feeling that japanese developers finally gave up trying to play follow the leader with Final Fantasy, and now there are suddenly a lot of interesting and cool games, and people just haven't quite noticed yet.

Dark Souls and Xenoblade are probably two of my favorite games from this entire console generation, and those certainly aren't the only two JRPG's i've been way into lately.

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Yeah, I think the only JRPG I've ever finished was FF6. Though I loved FF12, it got to be too much of a grind after something like level 30. Some people can just walk through that game without a problem, but stacking status effects and whatnot always seemed really unintuitive to me. The judges were a brilliant touch though.

I found a weird spot in that game that was a strange confluence of circumstances, I was the perfect level and the enemies were thee perfect difficulty. There were some big stone golem that were spawning tons of skeletons and I was never strong enough to kill them all, but I was never in danger of dying thanks to my awesome Gambits. I like my machine on for 3 hours and went up 20 levels without even pressing a button.

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Speaking of JRPGs I really liked the 4 Heroes of Light on DS...but I never beat it, because towards the end it serves up a 'play all of the bosses again, now with more strength' dungeon. So I left it. It's really NES in its design and gameplay, but the art direction is fresh/awesome. It is also very difficult until you get into the top level of certain job classes. I recommend it to anyone into JRPGs because there are few of them that pull me in like this one did.

I can't think of a recent game I've played that I've completed. Unfinished: Solatorobo, Whispered World, Sword and Sorcery, Botanicula, FFXII, Gemini Rue.

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Tribunal has some pretty tough fights. I remember one where you need to kill some old guard of Almalexia's or something. It's worth persevering (or cheating your way through on PC) for the crazy ending this expension has, and then playing Bloodmoon if you haven't already. Bloodmoon is a definite high point, they're trying out some sweet new things (for the time).

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Tribunal is definitely the most difficult piece of content available for vanilla Morrowind, but if you go at it post-main quest, it's totally doable.

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Syder Arcade

This is the only game I "quit" of the Greenlight Bundle. It's half bullet hell, half Defender, something I'm surprised hasn't been done before.

Strike one for the game for have bullet hell-ish pattern with a non-bullet hell ship, A.K.A. not having a tiny hit box, but it never had too many bullets on screen, so it was doable.

Strike two, three and up until infinity was the very second stage. It's common knowledge that we all hate escort missions, right? Imagine having one in a bullet hell game!

Yep, hundreds of bullets on screen and you have to protect a space ship from them... Need I say more? Well, I should say that you can't stop the bullets, all you can do is hope you destroy every enemy on screen before they shoot and since this is a bit like Defender, they come from both sides.

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I'm quitting The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal, because Gaenor, who can go shit in his own mouth.

You brought this upon yourself, willingly talking to a Wood Elf. Lesson learned for any other TES game ever, I suppose.

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