Game you're playing and given up on.
 

Played any games recently that you're pretty sure you're never going to finish? If so post about it here.

I've been working on my biggest disappointment this year. Psychonauts on the PS2. I've been a fan of Tim Schaefer since Day of the Tentacle, but this mediocre platformer share few things with those games. Apart from the dialogs and art style I'm not impressed. The controls feel awkward, the power ups look bland and the game play is nothing compared to superior (imho of course) platform games like Tomb Raider Anniversary, Mario 64 or Prince of Persia (the Wii game). I haven't played for a couple of weeks now, but I got as far as looking for the milk man before I lost interest.

Another game that's been collecting dust since summer is Devil May Cry 3 - Special Edition on the PS2. I just don't get what's so good about it. I've gotten past the twin demons and acquired them as a weapon(s). I guess this just isn't my kind of game, the story feels artificial and doesn't make much sense to me.

A third game is Kingdom Hearts, also on the PS2. I basically have the same problem with this game as Psychonauts. It doesn't do it for me. I got to the Alice in Wonderland "level" before getting bored.

I normally play through games, even if I'm not overly impressed; but if I in the end can't give the game a 7/10 I seldom bother sitting through it.


So you have any game you're over and done with?

Oh yes... the latest I simply can't get myself to open again, is the third of Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened. Didn't even manage to play for more than maybe half an hour. Managed to get out of the apartment, gather a few clues and examine them, that was it.

Same goes for the Cameron Files - Lochness and Pharaos Curse.


I actually am intrigued by these stories, BUT I can't get used to the first person view. I feel so out of control as to where to go etc.
The way the camera moves around every time I move the mouse, makes me feel sick to my stomach, lol.

Wow.
Psychonauts a mediocre platformer ?
Each to their own I guess. Mind you, I played it on PC, not PS2.

Games I've given up on ?
I gave up on Hugo's House of Horrors 2 Because I kept dropping the matches into the water and could find no way to dry them. Turns out you just have to avoid touching the edges of the bridge ... how silly is that.

God of War 1 and 2 because they got boring

Republic : The Revolution because my PC at the time couldn't handle the game . . . I also remember it being slow. Very slow. Maybe if I went back I'd enjoy it, but I doubt it.

This is quite tricky for me, I rarely buy a game I know I'm going to not play, but it does happen.

I love DMC: Special Edition. Man... I play the hell of that game, definitely one of my top three PS2 games.

But that's not what this thread is about, anyway...

I gave up on Shadow of the Colossus for the PS2. To me, the game is extremely boring. That, and it has a slow floaty camera even with the settings cranked all the way up which was beyond annoying. Then having to spend 15 minutes to locate the next colossi with nothing to look at accept... some scenery, a few forest animals, clouds, and a horses ass. I wouldn't mind the trip if there was some action on the way... but not in this game. No power ups, no weapons to find, no special moves... nothing. Aside from an erratic frame-rate the game does look good... but that's about it.

Tomb Raider 2 - PS - I don't even know why I bothered. I remember horrendous controls of the original. Played it for a bit then just couldn't go on.

Kingpin : Life of Crime

The action was boring and repetitive and disturbingly deadly, even at the lowest difficulty level. I know I'm not brilliant at first person shooters but struggling to survive the opening scenes long enough to get a gun is a bit much.

First, The Dig is not a Tim Schafer game, and second, I also haven't played it for some time now.
I liked some puzzles, but at the moment I am missing the direction. I don't know what to do.
Maybe I will get back to it, some day.

Actually, I finish most games that I start, because I seem to know what I want and the games turn out to be mostly what I expected.
Oh, expect Evil Twin. Great graphics, art direction, story and atmosphere, but horrible camera and awkward controls.
The gameplay is very punishing, and it is nearly always not your fault. The camera doesn't show you where you have to jump next and often you even can't see your character.
Those people who thought that Psychonauts had a bad camera haven't played this game. Or Tonic Trouble (less severe, but still annoying). Or Rayman 2 (playable still).

You're right, I got him mixed up with Sean Clark for some reason.

I do agree it's a mediocre platformer, but I think its characters, story, and crazy world make it one of the most fun and interesting games out there. In a way it is still very much like an adventure game. Except it has gameplay. But incidentally the gameplay is pretty bad, so ignore it and just focus on the story, and, voilÃ*, it's an adventure game. And a very good one at that.

I tend to dislike threads like this because it's never much fun to see people list things you like in their "worst ever" types of posts, but I'm gonna go ahead and take issue with a couple of these.

Psychonauts is a fine game, but the PS2 version I understand is a less than adequate port. I suspect you might enjoy it more if you try another platform - the PC version is excellent.

As for Shadow of the Colossus, the contrast in gameplay is what makes it great. The Colossi are all the more majestic for the calm that precedes them. If you want non-stop action you're playing the wrong game.

Having said that, there is one game that comes to mind that I've stopped playing on numerous occasions, though never quite given up on: Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis. Always seem to get stuck.

Black & White I played the first few levels a couple of times and had a lot of fun with it, but the lacking balance always makes me give up eventually. I can never get around to doing anything much because I'm always busy making more food for the villagers.

I stopped playing Dungeon Keeper because of a bug somewhere halfway into it. I beat a certain level in an unconventional but (within the game rules) perfectly acceptable way which the game apparently failed to understand and I wasn't about the start the damn thing over.

Still haven't finished playing Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines - it's hard - but I'm gonna get back to it at some point.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary

I can't get past the fight near the temple, with the two centaurs. I gave up on it months ago.

I recently bought Bad Mojo (Redux), and started playing this afternoon. But after 30 minutes of it, I've decided I hated just about everything about it. So it's gone from my hard drive. Maybe I'm just not in the right mood for it and will want to give it another try at some point, but I seriously doubt I will.

For me it's probably one of the Zelda games Oracle of Ages or Seasons, where you have to do some Zoro dance or something to get the boomerang. Frustrating as hell. I gave up playing the game 5 or 6 years ago.

I feel like putting it on eBay asking for someone to beat that bit and to send me the game back!

Titan Quest: Immortal Throne.

I found the original game to be rather easy, but this expansion is just too difficult. Maybe I need to play the original more than once or something to get my character stronger, or I made poor character development choices or something.

Either way, the constant dying turned me off to this and I stopped playing.

Your kidding, that was my favourite boss battle out of the whole game. :D

I gave up on Kingdom Hearts 2 because the combat was tedious and I coulden't advance.

I gave up on Halo (PC version) and Far Cry.

I gave up on Halo because the controls were really terrible and unresponsive on PC. I really can't get into a game when the controls are so annoying that they take away all immersion.

Far Cry just felt like a mediocre shooter with a boring story and no interesting innovations. I didn't care for non-linear maps in boring jungle sets and all that.

Because I gave up on the first games, I also never tried the sequels. I'm considering giving Crysis a try though, because of the extremely positive reviews. I'm not sure yet at this moment.

Final Fantasy X
Got all the way to Jecht's Aeon. There I realized I'm way too underpowered with none of the über weapons or Aeons. Since it took all my mental endurance just getting to the end battling through those endless and infinitely boring random encounters, I finally gave up. Too bad, the story was good.

Ya, it ended with me screaming at my computer and considering throwing it through the nearest window. I might give it a shot sometime again.

If you don't like non-linear maps in 'boring jungle sets', it's probably not worth bothering - Crysis is more of the same in that regard. The story's not much of an improvement on the original either.

I still loved every second of it though :)

You gotta be kiddin me! Sotc is a puzzle/adventure game it's not meant to be action packed. And part of the fun is discovering the colossus and admiring the scenery. In that sense I loved it because you actually go thru most of what the character would have to go true in such an enterprise.


Oh and I definately second DMC 3, topic starter.I love a good hack'n'slash game and DMC3 was my firs DMV experience. I was thoroughly dissapointed and stopped playing after 3 hours into the game. And I always finish my games.

I've played a bunch of PS1 games that were revered among gaming circles, only to not find them entertaining. Let's see which ones I can think of:

Xenogears, for one. Boooooooring. The battles were boring, the story was boring, the characters were boring. I kept waiting around for it to get good, and it didn't. That was a while back, though.

Then Final Fantasy Tactics. I couldn't make heads or tails of the story, and it was so focused on story that that was a huge problem. (The cause of the problem might have been the translation.) The battles themselves were really hard with very little reward for beating them. It was really frustrating to keep redoing the same battles over and over and over again, moreso even than Fire Emblem (where there was much more repetition) because I could never tell what I was doing wrong. If I forced myself to play the game for long enough, I'd start to have fun with developing my fighters, but then I got the feeling that they were all running into dead ends, because there just wasn't enough to do with them. I stopped playing long before the end. It's nowhere near as fun as Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which is generally overlooked.

I tried playing the original Tomb Raider. I like its concept: Indiana Jones done as a realistic action-platformer. That's pretty ambitious. But those controls drove me crazy. I could see what they were going for style-wise: they were trying to impose realistic limitations so that it would be more impressive when you actually get somewhere. But they went way too far. Lara was having trouble with jumps I could easily make in real life. I mean, she walks right off cliffs, even when you're pressing the jump button! And turning was so frustrating- the most simple thing in a 3D platformer is jumping straight, then turning 90 degrees and jumping again. I wouldn't have believed how hard it is to do that simple maneuver in this game. I was very disappointed by how lousy this game was.

Most recently, I tried playing Silent Hill. The significant tension that was there wasn't enough to get me over the monotony. You walk through fog. And you walk and you walk and you walk and you walk. After a while, it gets old. Right when you start playing, it sends you on a treasure hunt around town. I normally like treasure hunts. The areas treasure hunts are in usually aren't this dull, though. Every street looks the same, every alleyway looks the same. It's a big world, and an empty one. Not fun. The action itself didn't have much variety to it. So I went into a school, and walked through every silly room in it, and then it told me to go through the whole school again. That's the point where I stopped. Why waste my time with this nonsense? I dunno, maybe I'll get back to the game some time to see if it goes anywhere. But I've pretty much given up.



I haven't been able to play Psychonauts because I don't have a PS2 or a good enough graphics card. Hearing that the control is even worse than Prince of Persia makes me feel a lot better. Thanks.

Star Ocean 3 & Dragon Quest 8 (PS2)
It started out good with nice graphics, music and story. Two epic worlds opened up before me. But both games slapped me in the face with their repetetive combat. Star Ocean with its real time and Dragon Quest with its turn based. Other RPGs like Torment, Baldur's Gate, Oblivion, KOTOR and to some extent Fallout had exciting battles, but I've yet seen a JRPG with it. This is bothersome since this is stopping me from enjoying all those glorious adventures (Final Fantasy, Lost Odyssey, Eternal Sonata etc. ). Anyway these were two more games I sold off on auction sites. *sigh* Now I've learned JRPG's just aren't my cup of tea. Well they would be if the combat system suited me better.

No... truly boring as hell. There really are no puzzles in the game except for finding out how to knock down a colossus and where to hit them and, I've never had a camera system annoy me to no end the way it did in this game. That, and things like if I'm on the hunt for the next colossi and I come across a cave entrance in a mountain I want to explore it but then I realize... why bother? There is nothing down there anyway and I'm not going down there just to look at the scenery, so that detracts from the adventuring part.

But it is one of the few games that I've found that I've just couldn't play and hit the eject button instead.

Well, you're missing the point of the game. It's clearly not your cup of tea, and I know others for whom it also simply doesn't do anything, which is much the pity but ultimately their loss as it does nothing to diminish what is a masterpiece of understated interactive storytelling.

I just recalled another one. Schizm had all that I wanted of a puzzle adventure (I think), but when I couldn't activate subtitles or review cutscenes such that I wouldn't miss vital clues; so the game got too hard for me. I didn't understand what I needed to do and where to go. I got as far as reaching the destination with the airship and flying off with the city (!?). So I reached the second part with both characters before quitting. It's a shame, the game had atmosphere and it's the closest thing I've played to Riven and Revelation. It just got too difficult for me without the built in hints.

Missing: the 13th victim.

Evidently, it started to get really challenging but when I realised that there might be even more "mini-games" awaiting me as in Missing: Since January, I decided to quit it. In Missing: Since January, the designers seemed to be rather inspired by console games but they forgot that you can't duplicate the feel of such controls on a pc. A pity though, 13th Victim still had an interesting concept.

Tomb Raider: Legend .

I got bored with it, pure and simple. Lady Croft needs to retire.

You did not just go there, girlfiend! :shifty:


It can be finished in 6 hours, its hardly boring, its got quite a brisk pace. What level ar you at?

I'll have to go with Oblivion.
I bought a brand new rig just for this game, the first week I had my jaw on the ground... but after I got used to the visuals... there wasn't really anything interesting to do besides "runnin' around, killing things".

Even though I finished Oblivion and had fun with it, it felt empty after the main quests and guild quests were over and done with. So to a degree I'll have to agree with you.

There is a new star in town anyway.

Uncharted : Drakes Fortune is kicking Lara's ass in terms of fun imo.

;) Sorry, love, I'm immune to that gayspeak fanboy 'tude.

I'm bored with it! Bored! So it doesn't matter if I can finish it in 6 hours or 6 weeks. That's not the point. *shrugs*


:) I've read very good things about it, though I don't care if it kicks Lara or whoever else's ass. But I don't own a PS3 so I can't be interested as much.

Dude Raider is awesome :D I started playing it and finished it in 2 days. Very addicting and fun. Probably the best PS3 game I have played so far this year.

I'm trying to get myself to finish Syberia... Really, really trying... I just don't know. The environments are gorgeous yet completely void of interaction. I don't think I'll finish.

I gave up on Tony Hawk Project 8 a while back, but yesterday popped it in and played until 1:30AM. So I'm going to finish that now, but didn't think I would.

Another one I gave up on was Shivers. It was alright, I thought it had decent graphics for the time, atmospheric music, good and sometimes frustrating puzzles. But it was the cartoon ghosts and one-item-at-a-time inventory system that brings you out of the game.

Trying to find two pieces for every urn. Then, making sure you're holding the right urn by the sound the ghost makes before you investigate it so you can trap the ghost instead of having it zap your energy.

After a few tries I gave up and didn't go back for a while. When I did try it again I had a new computer and the game would no longer run.


Gave up on The Bard's Tale for the C64. Besides the game just being too random and having wrap-around mazes, I couldn't take waiting 5 minutes for every battle to load. Especially when random battles pop up every 2 minutes or so.

Stopped playing Dragon Wars for the PC. It was a good game with an interesting enough story. One of the few ancient 3D RPGs with an automap feature. But the difficulty, to me, ramped up way too quickly. You think your party is tough so you try a new area but instead you're killed in the first round of your first encounter.

Wizardry Gold for the PC. Just, never finished it. I think I got annoyed with the voices and how the scrolling text to match it never stopped. The game, from what I remember, was alright but nothing overly interesting.

Ulitima Underworld for the PC. I managed to make it all the way down to the very bottom of the abyss, unlocked the door to fight the final demon but I realized I couldn't kill him no matter what I did. I finally gave up and read a walkthrough and discovered I was missing a piece to some weapon or... something that I needed for the last fight. When I read what I missed I just said "I am not going all the way back up there and going through all that" and just quit.

Claw for the PC, it's one of the most brutal platformers I've played. got up to 13/14 levels and Extra Lives are few and far and absolutely suicidal to get to beyond lv 12.
Doom: The Roguelike and Nethack. They're rogue games, so the difficulty is high, and it takes a true amount of skill to beat them. A shame my skill isn't up to par.
Soul Calibur II, Metroid Prime, a Franchise in Madden 2005 and NHL 2004 all because of my busted GC.

Don't even try Paradise then. I gave up after the fist scenes. Gorgeous, but too many pointless puzzles. I did finish the two Syberias, though, and enjoyed parts of them.

I am about to give up Gothic. It's probably not the game's fault, but the RPG concepts of some "quests" most people would call errands. It's like: oh, this guy is dying, now get 5 herbs from the deadly marshes so we may heal him and make the plot advance, like, five minutes.

I gave up on Journey to the center of the earth after just 60 min. I've finished Syberia 1 & 2, Moment of Silence, Black Mirror and The longest journey and liked them all, but this game wouldn't even give me complete control over the main character. I felt like I was fighting the interface all the time and got too bored to bother in the end.

A few months back , i finally played persona 1 for PS1 after never really playing it after i bought it years ago. I gave it up after playing it after a while though after the countless mazes , numerous random encounters and lack of save point. It's just not worth it , i can spend over 1 hour in the maze without getting to a saveroom/savepoint and it's just simply not rewarding enough to keep fighting monsters every few steps you take. It's just annoying.

After the Icewind Dale 2 NPC pack came out, I decided to finally play IWD 2 again. Only later did I remember I had previously given up on that game, since the part in the magma chamber was just too bugged. But I had an advantage over the last time I played it almost four years ago: I knew how to use the Infinity Explorer, and how to manually set off triggers and adjust variables. So I looked for the variables that looked right in IE, and triggered them manually in game. It was a bit of trial and error, but it worked. I'm going to play it again once Version 2 of IWD 2 NPC pack is released.

*scratches IWD 2 from her list of games she has given up on*

- :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Hehe, you sound just like me when it comes to JRPGs :)
See my earlier post about Dragon Quest 8 and Star Ocean 3.
Great stories and graphics, but boooooring combat.