Anyone have any games they bought recently that they’ve regretted? I know I have.
Far cry 2 and darksiders have been terrible disappointments to me so far. I grinded through far cry 2 and finished that game despite all the respawning checkpoints and wooden voice acting and barebones stoory. Darksiders I can’t even bring myself to get past 2 hours of the game. It’s so generic I have to turn on the radio to keep myself awake.
You should continue with Darksiders. I agree the opening 2-3 hours are generic, but it really improves and becomes very much like a Zelda game, dungeons and all. I’ve read many reviews that critique the opening hours.
Guild Wars 2. Bought it, played it for about 4 hours, and it just never grabbed me. Went back to playing Rift instead.
I’ve gotten buyers remorse every. single. damn. time I’ve bought a game when it first came out. No matter how good the reviews were it just wasn’t worth it once I had it. Some were complete crap, some just not worth the money.
I don’t buy games anymore, at least, not until they’re many years old. Can’t even remember the last game I bought, and it was purchased from Half-Price Books.
Wait, yes I can. It was “You Don’t Know Jack”, a trivia game, whatever version it was they released on DVD. Not nearly as good as the old ones, and the first edition of those was really the only good one in the bunch. Cost me $5, and I wish I had that $5 back.
Yeah, I’ve heard a bit of that too, but I’m struggling so hard. I’ve booted up the game three times already and I’ve only played a little less than 2 hours. I’ll give a few more shots at this game and then I’m moving onto my freshly bought XCOM
Have you checked out the free version on facebook? They have new content reguarly so it’s nice to play once in a while.
Oh my goodness, you reminded me I still have guild wars 2. I bought it because it was on sale and I played like 30 minutes and haven’t touched it in half a year!
Bioshock Infinity and The Last of Us.
I know both have amazing reviews but this Bioshock is nothing like the first two and Last of Us’ controls make me want to throw my controller across the room.
Bioshock Infinite. I think I’m basically done with the American AAA games industry.
And uh, actually, I think my problems with Infinite is that it’s TOO MUCH like the first ones. Why am I rummaging through trash cans? 
It’s Steam sale time, so the games I’m buying at the moment that I know I’ll never get around to playing are the ones that should be sparking regret - particularly because I just crossed over the 500-hour mark of Civ 5 yesterday.
But there are games I buy knowing I’ll regret. Basically they’re every sports game that isn’t a major American sport or soccer, because the simulation’s always either fiddling with minutiae or that the game’s too complex to sim properly.
I recently picked up Rugby Challenge 2 and it lived down to expectations - not enough control at the rucks, mauls and set pieces but too much control over defenders so that whenever you switch players on defense the player in the line turns around to reflect the way you were running with the previous player you were controlling, opening up a hole in the line and gifting the opposition a try.
I’ve pre-bought the new Ashes cricket game that’s due for release at the end of the month. I know it’s going to be terrible, but I just keep hoping it’ll be good.
Men of War: Vietnam
I love the genre; Platoon? One of my favorite movies. But the game is impossible. The first mission - you have to play as a Vietnamese squad of five, I think, and infiltrate an outpost and an island base up against like 50 troops and helicopters and shit. I couldn’t get past the friggin’ outpost in 20 tries.
The game sucks.
Darksiders I picked up and put down, but I can’t say I was disappointed at all, as I had no expectations. Similar story with Deus Ex Human Revolution, Prototype, and Metro 2033. I just didn’t get into them. I either got them as part of a bundle or tried them out for free, so no harm done.
I picked up Bastion as part of a bundle, however, and still felt disappointment. I really wanted to like the game and had some expectations. I felt the controls were unresponsive, didn’t care about the narration gimmick, and set it aside.
The biggest disappointments are when the bloody thing just doesn’t run and I really want to play. I bought a new copy of Civ IV when I got a new PC recently and it won’t go. Worse, maybe, is when I like the little bit I can play, only to have the fun abruptly end due to bugs, like my experience with Knights of the Old Republic.
Probably the biggest disappointments in terms of genre are RPGs. I like some RPGs a lot. Fallout 3, Borderlands, roguelikes, Skyrim, Shadowrun, and so on, I like them and consider them all to be some type of RPG. I’ve tried some highly-regarded games, like Dragon Age Origins, Baldur’s Gate II, Final Fantasy, and Planescape: Torment and actively disliked them. Maybe not right from the start, but not all that far in. I think the connection might be abstract or goofy combat (although that wasn’t really the problem with DA:O, I thought the combat was good if frustrating) and too much flavor text. I liked Torchlight quite a bit but can remember getting annoyed as paragraphs of flavor text scrolled slowly by while some actor intoned each word. I think that once one aspect of a game starts annoying me, other annoyances, inconsistencies, and absurdities become more noticeable. I considered, say, Mass Effect 1 and Fable II to be mediocre games, yet enjoyed them enough to finish them. Objectively, Baldur’s Gate 2 may very well be a better game than Fable II, yet with the “better” of the two I couldn’t be bothered to continue past the intro.
Well, speaking of Fallout 3, I picked up Fallout New Vegas thinking I got a real bargain. It was so cheap I feel bad bringing it up, but damn, I’m disappointed.
Install it, run it, it goes for “medium” graphics setting. Really? It’s not like this PC is old, but OK. The game’s appearance is a bit lame. Fallout 3 was sort of ugly, but this might be worse.
Ah yes, the drawn-out RPG intro. I can’t skip through this fast enough. No worries, Skyrim had a super-annoying intro but was an awesome game anyway. Let’s get out there and explore.
Jeez, it takes forever to get anywhere. Why are the enemies disappearing? Is that lady floating?
I did what it said to do, why’d the quest not complete? Guide dang it.
Wow, that flavor text is even more useless than usual. At least there’s a ton of NPCs. Pity that 90% of them could be named Jen Knerrick.
“Hi.”
“How 'bout this heat, huh.”
“I’m an NPC standing on a corner.”
Where’d my followers go? I see them on the map, why can’t I find them?
Tell me you’re not going to crash. You’re not going to crash, are you? You can do it, you bloody bugfest. Fine.
Metacritic score of 85, my ass. I’ll give another go sometime. There were definitely some interesting bits.
The Last of Us
Take Uncharted, remove all of the fun, and make the game as entertaining and serious as a real zombie outbreak. I don’t understand all the praise for it.
I was mightily disappointed in Fallout 3. First, I want turn based games. My reflexes are not what they used to be. Even if I can technically pause a game and give instructions, it interrupts the flow of the game for me. Second, dear Og but the setup of FO3 was lengthy. Do I really and truly need to learn to walk? And going through junior high and high school was painful enough in real life, I really don’t want to do it in a video game.
I bought Civ II: Test of Time and couldn’t get it to run. I felt only a tiny twinge of remorse, though, as I paid less than five bucks for it. I mean, I’m sorry that I couldn’t play it, but at least I didn’t lose much money.
Going way, way back…Illusion of Gaia for the SNES.
I’m really disappointed in the Yobo NES/SNES console. The SNES part works well. However, all the NES games are rendered in monochrome, not in color. Since palette-swapping was common in NES games, this makes it impossible to distinguish between a Slime, Red Slime, and Metallic Slime.
I bought GTA:IV during the recent Steam summer sale.
Immediate regret - this is like the worst PC port I’ve ever seen in my life. I can’t change the resolution, bind keys, or get the gamepad to work. It’s basically unplayable, and shame on whoever did the PC port.
I only spent a few bucks on it, so…yeah. But still just heartbreaking and maddening. These idiots who did the port can eat a bag of hell.
Just picked up Defiance during the Steam sale for $14, since I’ve been kinda watching the show and hoping to try it out but didn’t want to pay $50 for it…
It’s a console game. You can equip two weapons at any one time and have to switch back & forth between them (although you can re-equip in combat, you have to let people punch you in the face while you’re doing it, so it’s not too much fun). There’s no real indicator I can see that tells you how tough a monster is before you start attacking it. So, you’re riding down the road and pass a mini-event (“Save the medics!”), unload on one of the things attacking the medics, and it tears your head off. Okay, that’s not so much fun, really… I may play it some more over the next few weeks, but really, it’s back to Rift again.
Fable. I loved it the first time I played through it years ago. Saw it for $5 on Steam last week and while I don’t hate it, I’m having a hard time figuring out why I liked it so much the first time.
I didn’t like Fallout 3 as much as I thought I would, either (I seriously considered learning how to write code so I could participate in the Fallout Restoration Project), but it was still pretty good and I didn’t regret buying it or anything. Plus New Vegas fixed a lot of the things I didn’t like.
I’m getting quite picky as I get older so buyer’s remorse is getting more and more common for me - games that are good and well-made often just don’t click for me. I usually wait until the game costs only a few euros if I’m uncertain if I like it, though. Can’t get too mad about it if all I spent was 5e and sometimes a game I think I’m probably not going to like ends up being great, like Saint’s Row III or Alpha Protocol.
This last Steam summer sale was worse than usual, though. Bought half-a-dozen games and none of them have ended up being all that great and in addition to that when I was playing Falskaar mod in Skyrim I realized I should’ve bought Dragonborn after all when it was on sale. Oh well, it’ll be on sale later too.
LA Noire. Yes, it looked wonderful, and I even enjoyed the gameplay which was basically just a glorified game of 20 questions, but it has nearly zero replay value and a criminally short story. All that plus the fact that I bought it the week it was released means, if I had it to do over again, I’d definitely pass.
It’s interesting to me that some of the games mentioned in this thread are some of my favorites. I’d love to erase my memory of Fallout 3 & New Vegas so that I could play them again brand new. I’ll never forget the first time I left Vault 101…
Have you played the first two games?
I have not. I’m actually quite late to the Fallout fandom. I have the first game on my laptop, but haven’t really given it a go yet.