Octopus Overlords

Lead and Gold: Gangs of the West

Just not into trying to learn a light MP-only shooter on the PC. That's why I spend money every year to play the latest Call of Duty game.

Runaway: A Road Adventure
Reason: Voice acting, and scriptwriting is horrible. Very canned, very cheesy, very over the top. While I appreciate and love the genre in general, this one had a little too much "you have to put your mouse EXACTLY right here, in a much of dark, visually undiscernible "things" to find the "used toothpick" that is required to move the story along.

Torchlight 1:
Reason: Mostly because TL2 came out, and I have it (and plan to play it), but also because I was getting to the point to where it was just a grind to keep going. Either my build was faulty, or the way I played was not up to par, but down in the deeper levels, I was getting killed so much that it was not fun.

I abandoned and went back to Torchlight eventually because I was getting one-shotted by poison bursts. But my build made stand-off engagement viable, and that allowed me to finish it.

Well, let's see then. *cracks knuckles*

Star Wars - The Old Republic. A few friends wanted me to try so I did. I had a few fun weeks with it, but in the end I'm not a Star Wars fan and who has the time for MMOs these days.

Guild Wars 2. I got hundreds of hours out of this and very nearly finished it, so maybe it's not "abandoned". Come to think of it, I probably spent nearly a hundred hours on SW:TOR too so maybe we need to start cutting MMOs some slack.

Sims 3 - Medieval. Decided to try a Sims game that was more "game" and less "toy". Heard some nice things about Medieval. But: yuck. Uninstalled after 20 minutes after hearing the Sims speak. Nice production value but terrible game.

Towns. Bought it, got 11 minutes into the tutorial, decided I really do like me some production value.

Loom. See above.

Machinarium. Again, production value.

Legend of Grimrock. Got through about half the game before I got sick of that Eye of the Beholder sidestep dancing. *THWACK!* move, turn, move, turn, *THWACK!". Nice nostalgia value though.

Bioshock 2. A weird display bug made it so the edges of the game didn't "fit" on my screen. Quit in disgust. I had enough of Ayn Rand with the first game anyway.

Dead Space. I bought it thinking it was a horror game. It turned out to be a splatter game. Uninterested in splatter, I'm not a teenager.

Dungeon Defenders. Realized tower defense games kind of suck.

Skyrim. Didn't finish it, but I might go back to it so maybe it's not technically abandoned.

Test Drive 2 Unlimited. Stopped playing it when Guild Wars 2 was released, but it's a nice game. Should I get bitten by the racing bug again I might revisit this.



Questions?

You abandoned Machinarium due to its production values? Hell, that's the reason I finished the game, and I generally don't finish anything, particularly puzzle based stuff.

I personally thought it was an awesome gem of a game, to be held up as maybe one of the best examples of indie titles in the past several years.

And you think tower defense games suck? Have you tried Defense Grid by chance?

Patapon: I had a great, great time playing the first battle. But the various menus and upgrades I then had to worry about really disrupted the fun flow of the game. After just 2 or 3 battles, I'm putting this away.

Retro/Grade: This very clever PSN game turns a shmup into a rhythm game by going backwards. In terms of fun, it's alright. I finished the 10-mission campaign but I've given up on finishing the challenge map, so I consider the game to be abandoned.
EDIT: I changed my mind. I'm giving myself credit for finishing Retro/Grade, not abandoning it.

World of Goo

Just too fidgety of a physics game for me to enjoy. I don't want to deal with some high wind, shaky contraption building game that's going to collapse due to an error I made in establishing a base five minutes ago.

Rather than create a new thread for the new year, I think we can just keep on rolling with this one.



Those games you're into
You know I play, too
But sometimes a game will go wrong and just
Make you cry
Well if that happens, baby just walk out
And don't keep playing
So come on, take that game and kiss it (take that game and kiss it)
Goodbye


My latest abandon:

Persona 2: Innocent Sin: It's neat to see the roots of the Persona series, but P2 makes me appreciate what a huge leap in presentation, gameplay, and storytelling P3 was. P2 is just not as fun. There are no social links. The battle view is just overhead isometric, without the camera sweeps and cuts that make the P3/P4 battles exciting to watch. And while the dialogues with demons can be cute, they are a chore that P3 wisely discarded. At about 25 hours in, I beat the boss for the chapter about the three-girl idol singing group. With some reluctance, I'm stopping here.

Good riddance to Hammerfight. It seems solely designed to induce carpal tunnel syndrome.

I finally abandoned Skyrim when I realized that it had become a shooter. Somehow I managed to create a mage/fighter type who was all mage and no fighter, and the only spells I used 98% of the time were double-hand lightning bolts and healing. I suppose I could role-play my way into a different style of play, but I would always know that I was packing laser fingers that could solve all of my problems. Questing just became less compelling after that.

Soooo, you decided to stop playing the game where you kill dragons with lightning bolts from your hands? When I was a kid, that was all I ever wanted from video games. Hell, that's 90% of what I want from them now.

Chaz wrote:Soooo, you decided to stop playing the game where you kill dragons with lightning bolts from your hands? When I was a kid, that was all I ever wanted from video games. Hell, that's 90% of what I want from them now.

It just didn't seem fair.

The other problem for me was the Monty Haul aspect: By mid-game I had magical everything and enough money to buy whatever I wanted. I was selling off ultra-rare soulgems because it didn't seem right to be carrying a hundred of them. Too Much Loot has always been a problem with the Elder Scrolls games.

Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational: I had fun during the beginner tournament, but find the game too hard beyond that even on Easy mode. Especially with regard to putting, I have no idea how to use the three-stroke interface to compensate for wind, slope and distance. Frustrating and pointless, like real golf.

Corpse Party: I thought this was going to be a horror visual novel, but instead it's like some awful Zelda game with hard-to-find plot triggers and puzzley boss battles. The game has good dialogue and Japanese voice acting and some interesting tricks, but I'm giving up without having beaten even the first boss.

Skulls of the Shogun: This is a simple-to-learn turn-based strategy game with a mild sense of humor. But I find it too tedious and difficult even on the Casual difficulty setting. I'm just not good at this kind of game. Giving up on the 7th mission.

Liberation Maiden: This anime-style shooter impressed me with what it could do on the iPhone, with lasers and rockets flying everywhere and a driving soundtrack. It also has an interesting mechanic in which your ammunition and shield are powered by the same reactor, so the more you shoot, the more vulnerable you are. But it's glitchy, has poor controls, and can be tedious. And if you take too long to defeat an end boss or screw up the finishing move for it, you're forced to restart at the beginning of the stage. Not having gotten past the end boss for Stage 3 (out of 5), I've had enough.

Darwinia: It's odd how much time I've put into this game since it is a ton of work and not much fun. There's something addictive about it, like painting or cleaning. But, having completed the Yard level and not seeing much improvement since I started, I'm putting the game aside for now.

Lone Survivor: This is a much better game than the similar Home. But by the time I reached the first floor, I was tired of the difficulty and awkward navigation. I'll just watch the rest on YouTube.

Pathologic: I sort of like the weirdness, but my time is better spent reading about other people's experiences (1, 2) with it than playing it myself.

Cricket Revolution: No gamepad support, keyboard combos required on a twitch timing basis to bat. I tried, I really did. I gave it like three attempts, and I couldn't get through the damned tutorials.

Gemini Rue: I was expecting to like this game, but got annoyed by the puzzles and gunfighting minigame. The story and characters are a little dry. And how many adventure games have to take place in a Blade Runner-type setting?! I stopped playing not long after the point at which I could switch between characters.

Delve Deeper: Too boardgamey without enough of a draw to keep me coming back. Just not something that's holding my interest.

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron: I was pretty close to the end, but got fed up with dying again and again during the platforming. Impressions here.

Demon Souls (PS3):

I have VERY few PS3 games, as I generally despise the format, except for racing, sports or platform type games, but I did try to play Demon Souls for about 2 hours the other night. Just could not get past the feeling that the camera was the reason I was dying about half the time (even if my own fault for not being able to manipulate it properly). I almost wished for some kind of fixed, or auto camera, since me having to move the camera and focus on doing that properly, took some of my reflexes, if you will, from the fighting and dodging parts.

Again, I chalk this up to a me problem, as I was raised on a mouse + keyboard, which are extremely accurate compared to the PS3 controller which has a lot of play in it. Looked like a fine game, and I really enjoyed the premise, graphics, even (maybe especially) combat while I played it. But ugh...just could not get past that camera issue.

FWIW, I also had a similar problem with Infamous, and pretty much every other game with the same over the shoulder perspective (pretty much all of them!).

Up next to try before I completely give up on this type of game for console: Bayonetta

GreenGoo wrote:I never walk away from a game. I just take a break. Sometimes years worth of break.

Likewise. Since its original release, I have called "Thief: The Dark Project" my favorite game of all time. I've played it numerous times over the years, but never finished it...until 2009, when I finally sat down with "Thief: Gold" for a few weeks, and finished it. A remarkable sense of accomplishment. Now I need to finish "The Metal Age". I still have my original saved games from both those games backed up onto a zip disk.

I did give up on "X-Com" shortly after starting it. I just could not figure out the mechanics of how it worked. I'd like to give it another try someday. Has it really been almost 20 years?

When that game was released, and I was hearing great things about it, I went out and bought two copies. I mailed one to my brother in New Mexico, and kept the other for myself. And while the whole thing stumped me, it went on to become my brother's favorite game of all time, and he's repeatedly thanked me for giving it to him. I believe he still fires it up from time to time.

I also buy a lot of Adventure games. Something about them has always appealed to me, but I've never finished a single one of them. I love the idea of the stories and settings and relaxed gameplay, but I think I just get frustrated and don't have the patience required for some of the puzzles and backtracking when I miss something.

I never delete a game from my hard drive, always intending to go back to it. When my drive gets full, I either add another drive, or purchase a new system, and put the old rig in the closet. It's rare, but I do actually pull an old PC from the closet and hook it up to continue an old game from time to time, maybe every year or two. Thus, one of my priorities when purchasing a new system is a massive hard drive. For instance, my newest rig is now 3 years old. When I bought it, it came with a 1.5 TB drive. I immediately added another 2 TB drive. Now, 3 years on, I've got over 120 games installed, with less than half of my drive space used. I've only finished maybe 10 of those games, but fully intend to get back to some of the rest of them someday.

Giles Habibula wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:I never walk away from a game. I just take a break. Sometimes years worth of break.

Likewise.

Yeah, it's truly a rare thing for me to completely abandon a game. I completed Drake's Fortune about two years after the PS3 launch of it. With inFamous, it was the same thing to where I just had to take breaks from it as the missions got a bit too repetitive near the end. I think it took me about a year with on-off play.

To echo everyone else, I have had a hard time staying with Bioshock, but it has nothing to do with the game itself. The atmosphere and story almost require me to be "in the mood" for it and it's a difficult thing to do when I only get to play in the evenings where I'm already tired.

Fallout 3 is also a mystery. I have over 100 hours in Fallout NV, but I just couldn't get far past the introduction outside the Vault in Fallout 3. I think I liked the desert setting of New Vegas more and the storylines seemed more engaging to me. I will go back someday to a modded Fallout 3 (which NV didn't really seem to need modification). I just finished Dead Money and that took me months of play...the story was good, but I didn't like the sudden switch to survival horror. I really need to make it to Vegas

I didn't finish Demon Souls until well after Dark Souls came out...but I'm glad I stuck with it following the advice of my fellow OOers along the way. I'm slowly edging myself closer to the end with Dark Souls.

The Room: The atmosphere is right for this iOS/Android puzzle game, but navigating around the puzzle box and choosing the parts to work on is a pain. The hint system is annoying, too.

Tomb Raider(the new one) - You get all these great weapons but on the final boss (and some prior ones) its a consolated timing with a pick axe battle. No thanks. Its the journey not the destination.

Arx Fatalis - Was really getting into this one. Then realized the weapons degrade so fast you can't even get through 2 fights. And there is not enough gold in the game to keep them in repair. This is the kind of situation where I would use cheats, but they don't exist. Blech.

Jaymann wrote: Arx Fatalis - /....../ This is the kind of situation where I would use cheats, but they don't exist. Blech.

Really? That's too bad, as I was thinking of firing it up again sometime this winter. In my case, it wasn't the repair thing that caused me to quit. I never made it that far. Very early on, I spent all my money/used all my food because I couldn't keep myself fed, and quickly starved to death or something. At any rate, I was exceedingly frustrated by this. I swear, I had to eat like every five minutes (okay, possibly it was ten minutes) of game time, or I'd starve.

A few years back, I decided to give it another try, and this time, I did not have this problem. I don't know why. Possibly I chose an "easy" difficulty that time...? I don't remember. All I know is that I kept waiting for that hunger thing to rear up, and it never did (or, at least, not outside of reason). It was much more enjoyable that time, but now I can't remember which computer I have it installed upon. Too many old rigs in the closet now....

Abandoning some popular iOS games I got as freebies: Tiny Wings, Infinity Blade 2, Badland, and Where's My Water? I'm just not drawn to them.

One I paid for was Dead Man's Draw. It's a nicely presented and cleverly designed card game, but after beating the first three levels of the tournament, I think I've played enough.

Hipolito wrote:Where's My Water?

I played that one to completion. However, Disney got greedy with the sequel, making it so that there's an energy bar to control how many levels you can play at a time, and then making a pay/nag gate at the end of the second set of levels that requires either you FB nag three friends into sending you keys, or paying $0.99 each for them.

At that point, I instantly uninstalled it.

I think I'm going to have to call Fallout New Vegas as abandoned, I just don't have the time to play it and I don't want to start from scratch again as I have no idea where I left it. The next one I think I'm going to have to abandon is Mass Effect, I've put 5-6 hours into it recently but its just not really grabbing me. Does anybody know if it gets better once you are out on your first missions?

Scurvy Scallywags: Puzzle Quest in the Monkey Island universe?! Why that's ... not what this game is, unfortunately. It has innovative match-3 mechanics and some o' Ron Gilbert's humor, but gets way too repetitive and grindy. I stopped after getting 6 o' the 16 verses o' the Ultimate Sea Shanty. Fuller thoughts here.

Tower Wars.

I played through the tutorial last night, and did ok. Tonight, I couldn't manage the first bot match. And as much fun as versus tower defense might be, the genre doesn't appeal to me enough to try and figure out one with what appears to me to be a steep learning curve.

xwraith wrote:I think I'm going to have to call Fallout New Vegas as abandoned, I just don't have the time to play it and I don't want to start from scratch again as I have no idea where I left it. The next one I think I'm going to have to abandon is Mass Effect, I've put 5-6 hours into it recently but its just not really grabbing me. Does anybody know if it gets better once you are out on your first missions?

It does. It is a little like KOTOR, in that you have to make it through a series of linear missions, after which you gain access to the galaxy to fly around in (relatively) freely, side missions, optional activities, and so on. Also, it sets the stage for Mass Effect 2.

Tidalis. I'm not going to keep beating my head against trying to string together a 20-block combo. I'm just not.

And we can throw Anomaly Warzone Earth on the pile as well. Multiple failed attempts at mission 2 lead me to throw this one out. I guess there's something about tower defense type games that I'm just not getting.

Isgrimnur wrote:And we can throw Anomaly Warzone Earth on the pile as well. Multiple failed attempts at mission 2 lead me to throw this one out. I guess there's something about tower defense type games that I'm just not getting.

There is a trick to that one, that after finding out what it was, and realizing I had not been using it, turned it from a hair-pulling grind of a game into a pretty cool one.

Unfortunately, I do not remember what it was, sorry. I look upon Anomaly as one of those games that has so many things right - great graphics, great polish, great UI, etc. But just doesn't have that "it" that makes me want to keep playing. Strangely, I DID kind of trudge through it for many levels (I've put several hours into it on both Windows, and iOS)....way past what I would normally give a game, just because I felt that it deserved more than a cursory look.

It just never grabbed me for some reason, though. There is a great concept in there somewhere, I am sure...they just need to tweak it to make it more interesting, or compelling...or something.

FEZ Shoddy mouse/keyboard support led to some of the puzzles being nearly impossible to solve on my own. Combine that with the overly complex map and I've hit my limit with this game.

..nevermind. I went back to it after I realized there was only about an hour or so of game left and its not required to solve everything to finish.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

I was ~35 hours in, and at probably 80% completion when my 360 mysteriously deleted all of my saves. I love the game, but I'm not going to turn around and repeat all the same content just for the last couple of hours worth. I'll look up a synopsis and a couple of spoiler videos, then move on to Revelations.

Beat Hazard.

I played a few songs with it. It might be great at what it is, but I'm pretty much done with arena-like shmups. I prefer the top down or side scrolling versions.

I'm marking Dirt 3 as Complandoned. I've only got the last X-Games final to unlock, but I'm not going to beat my head against the Gymkhana setups or trying to better my rally times to get those last 15 points to get there.

All in all, I enjoyed Dirt 2 more, what with the Baja-style races instead of the trick driving/drifting component, which I don't enjoy that much.

It pains me to say this, but I think I'm going to have to give up on Red Faction: Guerrilla. I've enjoyed playing it, and in most tough situations, I'd be able to just try again and eventually get it. That is, until I've got to Guns of Tharsis. I can get to the bridge just fine. It's the sequence after it, where you have to destroy the 3 power cores for the guns. This is where I think the technology goes against it, instead creating an incredibly frustrating experience. EDF Drones apparently don't respawn in this mission, so in theory, I should be able to steadily advance by shooting enough of them while making my way to the objectives. I quickly run out of ammo , but there are ammo boxes, so technically, I should be able to refill and then proceed. But here's where I feel things start to really feel unfair. In the midst of having no ammo while the EDF are shooting at me, I run towards the nearest ammo box, only to have it be destroyed by the guns just as I get there. Seriously?? No ammo and being shot at means I'm not going to last very long, meanwhile the EDF that are there are swarming me. How the heck am I supposed to complete this mission? I can't really take cover either, as the infrustracture crumbles around me. This is a great example of terrible design. At the very least, they could have made the ammo boxes indestructible. All of this makes for a very frustrating experience, a more difficult one than it needs to be.

With Dying Light released and being a much superior game in mechanics, story and action, I am abandoning Dead Island. I hope those survivors find the way off the island on their own.

Luftrausers. Almost 3 hours played, 4 achievements unlocked. There's not enough motivation to continue with the difficulty of the ramping of unlocks and levels to keep me wanting to move forward.

Scoop20906 wrote:With Dying Light released and being a much superior game in mechanics, story and action, I am abandoning Dead Island. I hope those survivors find the way off the island on their own.

Interestingly, I am considering going back to Dead Island, after having played a decent amount of hours in Dying Light.