Tanukitsune

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

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Before reading these last few posts, I had the urge to give S&S a try tonight (I pirated it, with the intention to buy if I liked it).

 

I...like it? The backgrounds look great, the writing isn't bad at all, and the impact of attacks is really tangible. But, I can't beat the Sodden Knight. Like, just can't do it. Tried throwing on my heavy armour and blocking with my kite shield, no good. Tried taking all my gear off and two handing my sword for max damage and mobility, no good. After I'm out of my "flask" item, the boss is usually down to about a fifth of its HP, but then I just can't land any hits at all without getting soundly punished.

 

What am I doing wrong, guys? Seems like this boss pulls the classic Dark Souls BS trick of having a weapon whose hit box is bigger than it appears to be :/

 

Edit: I realised now that I didn't try spamming throwing knives or bombs at him. Seems cheap but I bet it'd work a treat.

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For the record, I like it as well, just ran out of steam part way through.

 

The only tips I can give are to go in with an elemental charge on your weapon if you can find an item to do that, and to roll through him? I almost never bothered to block through the first half of the game.

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I tried Tron Evolution for free and after playing the initial tutorial, I just started getting flashbacks of the awful Remember Me and the okay but dull Aeon Flux games.

 

If I run out of everything else to play on my console I might go back, but I am not sure I can face it.

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The lack of a world map definitely hurts it, they adhered to strongly to the Souls design in that respect, and their world design didn't really facilitate the kind of map learning that the Souls games do. 

 

I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed it as much solo, I only messed around solo for an hour or so.  But in co-op, I felt it really shined.

Haven't played it myself. but I think a complex 2D map is harder to memorize than a 3D one. Maybe because you only see a small part of it at once and don't have the kind of sightlines you get in 3D. In Super Metroid I know how to go from one area to another, but I don't actually have that good a sense of the world.

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In 2d a lot of the areas can use repeated assets, making one screen look much like another unless it's a special area such as a boss arena. Some games are able to work around that by using a lot of different tile sets, but Salt & Sanctuary looks fairly same-y so far, exacerbating that issue. Comparing it to Dark Souls is especially a disservice, since that game lets you see other zones, either past of future, off in the distance to further help orient yourself even over other 3d action/adventure games. It is one of very few non-linear games out there that I understand how everything connects without needing a map. Dragon's Dogma, Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto, none of those worlds make any sense to me without at least having a basic map to refer to.

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After 11 hours I decided I was done with Morrowind. When I reached the ten hour mark I was like, "I've been playing this game for a bit and I still do not know if I like it or not but I'll keep trying."  And then the next night I played an hour doing some small side quests, neglected to save, died wandering into somewhere I shouldn't of wandered into, and I was like "okay I think that's enough of this." It's not the game's fault I forgot to save but after that I felt like there wasn't much that made me want to make up that lost progress, even knowing the game is open enough that I could have made it up with completely different quests. I don't know, I've heard a lot about great the game's side quests are but I just wasn't seeing it. All the ones I did were just a lot of traveling to do one quick task and then traveling all the way back to tell the person I did it with little story pay off. Sure each quest built out the world a little bit more but never enough that it made walking forever at the slowest damn speed worth it. I've played enough of it to be believe the people who say there is something really special about this game but I've run out of the patience to find it for myself. It was worth trying, it's definitely the most I enjoyed an Elder Scrolls game and it was neat to get a little look what it did different from modern games (ie written directions instead of quest markers. Which is neat and rewarding in a way but not really like...fun). Hell maybe I'll give it another shot someday but for now it's time to find something a little (or a lot lmao) faster paced. 

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Even though I've really loved it, I think I might quit on Cave Story+.  After having owned it for years, I finally gave it a go over the last few days and have found it to be charming, delightful, thoughtful and often elegantly designed.

 

Aaaaand, then the final section arrives and it's just a whoooooole bunch of old school bullshit brickwalls.  Navigating spike filled paths with finicky jet pack.  Endless waves of enemies while trying to do platforming.  Miniboss with no save after the bullshit spikey path.  Insta-kill traps AFTER the miniboss. Finally hit a save, and lo and behold a boss, another boss, and then the second phase of that boss with no saves in between those. If I wanted to throw myself at those bosses for a few more hours, I could probably beat them, but I'm really just not all that sure I'm interested.  Each shot I take at these bosses feels like it's ruining what has otherwise been an exceptionally good game.

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I had the exact same experience Bjorn, minus getting to that save before the multiple bosses. I'm glad I didn't keep going then, I didn't play that game for extreme hardness so I enjoyed what I did play before that.

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I watched some YouTube videos of beating the bosses, and then the secret real final level and secret real final boss, and I'm definitely not going to finish this game. 

 

The final level ramps up the difficulty even more with more jetpack spike navigation, shit falling from the ceiling and new enemy types that show up by the dozens and fire projectiles while you hit timed doors you have to wait to open while fighting off hordes of enemies, and then the final boss has not one, not two, not three, but four forms. 

 

I don't get why you would want to take the final act of this game and increase the difficulty by multiple times when the rest of the game wasn't that way, and didn't do anything to teach the player how to deal with these kinds of levels. 

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I started playing Yakuza 5 and... does anybody know if the taxi stuff is optional? I hate driving and the taxi job seems super annoying. The reason I like Yakuza games is because you don't have guns or cars. :\

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After 11 hours I decided I was done with Morrowind. When I reached the ten hour mark I was like, "I've been playing this game for a bit and I still do not know if I like it or not but I'll keep trying."  And then the next night I played an hour doing some small side quests, neglected to save, died wandering into somewhere I shouldn't of wandered into, and I was like "okay I think that's enough of this." It's not the game's fault I forgot to save but after that I felt like there wasn't much that made me want to make up that lost progress, even knowing the game is open enough that I could have made it up with completely different quests. I don't know, I've heard a lot about great the game's side quests are but I just wasn't seeing it. All the ones I did were just a lot of traveling to do one quick task and then traveling all the way back to tell the person I did it with little story pay off. Sure each quest built out the world a little bit more but never enough that it made walking forever at the slowest damn speed worth it. I've played enough of it to be believe the people who say there is something really special about this game but I've run out of the patience to find it for myself. It was worth trying, it's definitely the most I enjoyed an Elder Scrolls game and it was neat to get a little look what it did different from modern games (ie written directions instead of quest markers. Which is neat and rewarding in a way but not really like...fun). Hell maybe I'll give it another shot someday but for now it's time to find something a little (or a lot lmao) faster paced.

I think to enjoy a game like Morrowind you have to get sucked into the world and I think that was easier 15 years ago when a fully explorable 3D world like this was a mindblowing thing. It's a pretty big step up from just playing with your own imagination. Playing it today though there are so many impediments to getting immersed. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Morrowind has some of the worst combat in any (otherwise decent) game ever and it has a leveling system that encourages you to spam jump until you get carpal tunnel.

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I spent the evening playing Starward Rogue last night, which I was pretty excited when it showed up in the Humble Monthly, and I imagine that will be the only time I play it.  This is the kind of game I play, and think, "This is a great game for someone, just not me."  It's a combination of rougelike with a bullet hell shooter.  I usually find bullet hell games to be more stress than they are worth.  This has multiple difficulties though, so it's fairly tailorable to the challenge level you want.

 

The biggest downside, and I think the thing that will keep me from coming back, is that it just didn't feel like it had any personality.  It opens with a cute, almost Portal-esque tutorial with a snarky AI walking you through a level.  But from then on, there's just no personality, at all.  It's mechanically really good and it seems like there's a good diversity to equipment and upgrades to customize builds around for different experiences.   But it all feels very sterile.  Oh, it's a grey room with lazers.  Oh, it's a greyish red room with lazers and robots.  The art direction is a bit more varied than that, but not by much.  It's like the opposite problem that Our Darker Purpose had, which absolutely oozed personality and character and the world from every corner, but suffered from not being mechanically well tuned enough to keep playing. 

 

There's something else that bugged me too, which is it has the Devil Rooms from BoI, where you trade health for higher grade power ups...but it doesn't make any sense.   Why is this here, who is making the trade, what are the doing with it?  In the quasi-religious fever dream of BoI, a mechanic like that feels like it fits.  But in a a sterile, sci-fi environment, it feels really out of place, just that Arcen really wanted that mechanic in there and didn't worry about finding a way to make it mechanically fit. 

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I really want to quit Witcher 3: Blood and Wine. Right now it just has none of the magic that the base game or first expansion had. Just did the spoon-man quest. Maybe I'm not in the right frame of mind. Anyone else feel this way?

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After 11 hours I decided I was done with Morrowind. When I reached the ten hour mark I was like, "I've been playing this game for a bit and I still do not know if I like it or not but I'll keep trying."  And then the next night I played an hour doing some small side quests, neglected to save, died wandering into somewhere I shouldn't of wandered into, and I was like "okay I think that's enough of this." It's not the game's fault I forgot to save but after that I felt like there wasn't much that made me want to make up that lost progress, even knowing the game is open enough that I could have made it up with completely different quests. I don't know, I've heard a lot about great the game's side quests are but I just wasn't seeing it. All the ones I did were just a lot of traveling to do one quick task and then traveling all the way back to tell the person I did it with little story pay off. Sure each quest built out the world a little bit more but never enough that it made walking forever at the slowest damn speed worth it. I've played enough of it to be believe the people who say there is something really special about this game but I've run out of the patience to find it for myself. It was worth trying, it's definitely the most I enjoyed an Elder Scrolls game and it was neat to get a little look what it did different from modern games (ie written directions instead of quest markers. Which is neat and rewarding in a way but not really like...fun). Hell maybe I'll give it another shot someday but for now it's time to find something a little (or a lot lmao) faster paced. 

 

I remember loving morrowind when I was about 13. Such an immersive, marshy world. Did the atmosphere hold up so many years later?  

What you're describing about fetch quests is the problem with all elder scrolls games, even Skyrim. I rarely felt like what I was doing mattered, so eventually in Oblivion and Skyrim I just would skip through all the text in a quest and focus purely on the mechanics, leveling and aspects of the game outside of story or immersion.

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The atmosphere does hold up today....kind of. Like I really liked putting on my high quality headphones I have for my transcribing job, consuming some illicit substances, and just kind of getting lost in that weird little world. I found the setting to be fascinating and really wanted to learn more about but the process of learning about the world really kicks you out of the immersion. Even the most special of worlds lose what makes them so special when most of the time you spend of them is walking at a slow crawl with so little pay off. I started playing Planescape: Torment a few days ago and I can't help but compare the two despite being pretty different. While the combat is similarly mindless and horrible, the world of Torment drew me in instantly while with Morrowind most of my experience was like "this world seems like it could be really neat" rather than feeling neat. 

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I recently had to give up on Bravely Default. I really enjoyed it for a while thanks to the battle system rewarding (punishing) (mis)calculated risks, level of difficulty, class variety and world building. However, as a parent and graduate student I found I didn't have time to wade through a thousand random encounters to power up my party enough to progress through the story.

 

Additionally, I find taking time away from a story due to other responsibilities makes it far less compelling. Even Hyper Light Drifter, which I adore, has lost some of its appeal not because I care any less for what Alx and friends have created, but because the fixed cost of recalling where I've explored or what parts of the language I've deciphered when stopping and starting up again occupies a significant fraction of my available play time. As I age, I'm finding myself more and more thankful for shorter experiences with easy pick-up-and-drop-at-any-time systems.

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I recently had to give up on Bravely Default. I really enjoyed it for a while thanks to the battle system rewarding (punishing) (mis)calculated risks, level of difficulty, class variety and world building. However, as a parent and graduate student I found I didn't have time to wade through a thousand random encounters to power up my party enough to progress through the story.

 

The thing about Bravely Default, is that random encounters are the best in any JRPG ever. You can literally turn them off. So there's no need to do them if you don't want to. Also, you can set essentially an automated attack pattern, bump up the random encounters to +100% and grind while practically ignoring the game. 

 

I'm not saying you shouldn't quit, but that your reason for quitting can be overcome if you want to continue. There are plenty of other problems with that game, I also quit!

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I spent the evening playing Starward Rogue last night, which I was pretty excited when it showed up in the Humble Monthly, and I imagine that will be the only time I play it.  This is the kind of game I play, and think, "This is a great game for someone, just not me."  It's a combination of rougelike with a bullet hell shooter.  I usually find bullet hell games to be more stress than they are worth.  This has multiple difficulties though, so it's fairly tailorable to the challenge level you want.

 

So I decided to give this another shot, and I think I was tired the first night I was playing it.  I've finished two runs now, and I'm quite digging it.  I do think that my initial impression that it lacks character or personality is correct, that hasn't changed.  But the mechanics and skill level are really good.  Once you've finished a run once, it unlocks a new feature.  Shops now have shopkeepers, who when killed it changes the inventory of the shop.  The new inventory are made up of items that can radically change playstyles, mostly by adding in heavy risk/reward stuff (like limiting health for more damage). 

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I think I'm done with No Man's Sky. It's just kinda boring. There's nothing to do and once you've seen 5 procedurally generated planets, you've seen them all. 

 

The exploration is pointless. You just find the same shit. Same buildings. Same everything. 

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Trading in a few games today for some quick cash: No Man's Sky, Fallout 4, NBA2k16.

 

No Man's - Fell off of this one so hard. The crafting is beyond clunky and the worlds got dull real fast.

 

Fallout 4 - Completed the main mission, but was left with an empty feeling. None of the DLC sparked any interest.

 

NBA2k16 - After Nick's tale of how silly the career mode is, I had to give it a shot. It's pretty unbearable in a fun way. The pacing, editing, and scenes that they chose to include were all very off. Nice to see that even bringing in someone with a cinematic eye can't make cutscenes any better. Overt storytelling doesn't work for me in this medium. Got to my second season and tried out a few games and practices and my motivation fell off. Very complicated game!

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The problem with SUPERHOT is that the game's plot keeps telling me to quit and play something else, and my fear of missing out keeps telling me I should quit and play something else. I've played enough of SUPERHOT to know how it plays, and it's fine, but when the game is being so insistent I'm very much inclined to let it have its way.

 

It's trying to set up a forbidden fruit, I have to know what's in the box but as someone who falls for that every time, they're not even close. The game's told me everything that matters about superhot.exe; at most, all you will do is shoot ruby dudes or be menaced by a computer.

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I give up on Mana Khemia, I liked the story and characters and I even liked it's weird alchemy upgrade system, where you must synthesize certain items to unlock upgrade slots, but that meant you can't really grind and when I encountered a boss that fell in the category of "I think I can do this, but I don't want to", the battle was long and annoying... So I just watched the ending on YouTube. *shrugs*

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The problem with SUPERHOT is that the game's plot keeps telling me to quit and play something else, and my fear of missing out keeps telling me I should quit and play something else. I've played enough of SUPERHOT to know how it plays, and it's fine, but when the game is being so insistent I'm very much inclined to let it have its way.

 

It's trying to set up a forbidden fruit, I have to know what's in the box but as someone who falls for that every time, they're not even close. The game's told me everything that matters about superhot.exe; at most, all you will do is shoot ruby dudes or be menaced by a computer.

 

 

The last level of SUPERHOT actually does some interesting things with the formula. It's very short, so I would consider giving it another shot.

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I think I'm quitting Axiom Verge at the last area. Generally I loved this game. The atmosphere, the movement, all the interesting power-ups all clicked with me so well but eventually I felt that I just lost my patience for this game and was no longer having fun. Totally worth my time and money, but not enough to push through bits where I wasn't having fun just to see the end. 

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I am quitting Tap Tycoon today. (clicker game for mobile devices)

 

It gave me purpose through a strange period of change in my life, as every minute that passed by earned me money in the game.

 

It has nice undertones pointing to the military-industrial complex. Click to make money so that you can make even more money. Every time you reinvest (prestige) you "send troops to war". You're competing in a "war" with all the players in your country against all of the other countries playing the game. The US always won in the three weeks I played, which gives all of the US players a bonus, which helps them to make even more money, which makes it even harder for the other countries to compete.

 

Like most clickers, there's timers and exponential math. The game loop is tiny and inconsequential and lovely.

 

I no longer need the hole filled, so I'm happily moving on.   :tup:

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