# Games you love EXCEPT **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 29, 2003, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242 "2003-05-29T12:44:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Doomtrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/0ea827/32.png) [@Doomtrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doomtrain)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/21 "2003-05-30T03:10:47Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Rabid\_Squirrel \* > \*\ ***Neverwinter Nights**. The engine is good, I mean that it’s everything a DM could ask for, but the single player campaign bites. \*\* NWN’s toolset was its redeeming feature, though I lost patience when I had no one to play with that was worth tormenting. The single player campaign, though, man what a nightmare. “A wandering ranger lost a single boot in the house all the frickin’ way across town. Should you retrieve it for me, I’ll give you a gold and armor that’ll be way below your level by the time you get back.” ---
**Author:** ![Khadro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Khadro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadro)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/22 "2003-05-30T03:21:23Z")
Crusader: No Remorse was my favourite game for many a long month. I thought it lacked but one feature. The inability to roll backwards and forwards. You could roll sideways, but sometimes in order to get through certain obstacles, this meant you needed to run up to it, turn sideways and roll through. In Crusader: No Regret they actually added the ability to roll forward. I am not sure whether it was merely badly implemented, or whether the levels were made more stupid thanks to this extra ability, but it did not help the playability of the game at all. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/23 "2003-05-30T03:58:51Z")
**Curse of Monkey Island.** Great game, maybe not as good as the first 2 games, but still pretty damn good. However, the last 2 chapters are far too short. If it was disk space, they should have just bit the bullet and pushed the last two levels onto another disk. **Escape from Monkey Island.** Monkey Kombat. Okay, maybe I didn 't love it, but it was decent enough otherwise. \*\*Half-life.\*\*Xen. Nuff said. **Gaberial Knight 3.** By far, the worst part of this game was the jumping puzzles at the end. **Fallout 2.** The bugs that you get if you didn’t catch, and the fact some bad endings are unavoidable even though they shouldn’t be. **Medal of Honor: Allied Assualt.** Good game, but horrible ending, snipertown and the part with the infinite respwaning germans at the alarm switches got annoying. ---
**Author:** ![Lobsang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobsang/32/4067_2.png) [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/24 "2003-05-30T04:09:40Z")
I loved **Freelancer** except that I managed to complete it without realizing. Now it’s boring. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/25 "2003-05-30T04:23:36Z")
**AlbertRose** : I know one of the guys who developed **Ruins**. He’ll be glad to know that there really was one person, somewhere on the planet, who actually liked that game. **Gumbercules** : If they hadn’t had the zombies, you would never have faced the implied moral conundrum: if you’re trapped in a tomb with a bunch of zombies and a bunch of Nazis, who do you root for? I picked neither, and blew 'em all to hell with a stick of dynamite. Seriously, though, it wouldn’t have been a real Wolfenstein game without the undead. There are a billion and one WWII games out there without the supernatural, I don’t know why people were so pissed at the one game that combined the two. Nazis and zombies. It’s the Recess Peanut Butter cup of unspeakable evil. Okay, my pick: _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_, a great game that was surprisingly faithful to the show, except that it made the unforgivable error of having both a checkpoint save system and jumping puzzles. People! You can’t have a checkpoint save system _and_ instant death in the same game! It’s unfair and bloody stupid. The same goes for _Splinter Cell_, which I finally gave up on after yet another guard spotted me and ended my game fifteen minutes after the last checkpoint. For the fiftieth time in a row. ---
**Author:** ![Blibbleblabble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ea924/32.png) [@Blibbleblabble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blibbleblabble)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/26 "2003-05-30T05:13:32Z")
Okay, everyone is talking about video games here, but I’m going to say a board game… Risk! I love it, EXCEPT, it takes hours to play sometimes and I can’t find anyone willing to sit down and play! And really you need 3 or 4 people, so it’s impossible to get a game going. Sheesh. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/27 "2003-05-30T08:10:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by gonzoron \* > \*\*I love **Settlers of Catan** but I hate having turn after turn go by where I don’t produce anything because 8’s are rolled and 6’s aren’t or vice versa. I also hate when it’s clear NO ONE has wheat, and there hasn’t been any wheat rolled for 10 turns, but someone still asks for wheat. (It’s not much, but someone had to mention a non-computer game). \*\* Here’s what I did to address that problem: Take a set of 36 cards. Write on them all the possible outcomes from rolling 2d6, in the proper distribution (ie, one card each with “2” and “12”, two each with “3” and “11”, and so forth). Then shuffle them up. Then draw from the deck to simulate die rolls. Reshuffle either when the deck is used up, or when the final 7 is pulled, or at some other arbitrary point. This leaves things somewhat random, but ensures that the ratios come out approximately correct. ---
**Author:** ![effac3d](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@effac3d](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/effac3d)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/28 "2003-05-30T10:56:03Z")
Metroid Fusion: The game forces you to take a specific path unlike all previous games in the series which were like exploring a maze and you had to figure out what to do. Not to mention the annoying computer that tells you EXACTLY what to do,and listening to it is mandatory. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/29 "2003-05-30T11:43:31Z")
> [@](#): > > I love (and am addicted to) Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. :confused ``` I'm sorry, its just that I bought this game... and well, was less than impressed, along with 90% of the gamers who did. I did, in fact, keep it, largely as lesson on the dangers of buying games *before* you see the reviews. It wasn't the worst-rated game in history, but it did a good damned job of it. On the other hand, I was impressed at the sheer scale at which they screwed up. ``` Sorry for that rant, I just am _still_ horrified by the failure of this game. ---
**Author:** ![elf6c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c57346/32.png) [@elf6c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elf6c)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/30 "2003-05-30T14:33:58Z")
The stupid jumping puzzles in the Zen level of Half-life are the first thinf that comes to mind. The annoying uber-snipers from Metal of Honor: Allied Assault. On the Spearhead expansion pack its the dodge the random artillery barrage timed run-- this is fun how? ---
**Author:** ![gonzoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a6a055/32.png) [@gonzoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzoron)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/31 "2003-05-30T14:38:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MaxTheVool \* > \*\*Here’s what I did to address that problem: Take a set of 36 cards. \*\* Yeah, I know… That’s what they did in **Settlers of Nuremburg** and it works pretty well, but some people still like rolling dice. Unfortunately we usually play with **Cities & Knights** so it would have to be a bit more complicated (to cover the red die), and we’d either have to keep the barbarian die, or make a separate deck for it, or go to a 216 card deck. 🙂 Here’s another one: I LOVE Magic: The Gathering, but I hate the Constructed tournament scene. I hate the idea that you have to play one of a handful of successful deck types to win. I would never build a deck I saw on the internet, and therefore it’s assumed I would never win with my “rogue deck”. And the sad part is, the assumption is mostly true, because there’s no way I can devote as much testing and tweaking time to my rogue deck as the thousands of copycats testing the latest net-deck. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/32 "2003-05-30T15:08:48Z")
**Grand Theft Auto 3** and **Grand Theft Auto: Vice City** : Love 'em except the stupid save game system! Why can’t you just give me a quick save (on PC, of course)! It’s so annoying to run all the way to get a car, and then to Ammu-Nation, and then to the mission giver, and THEN to the mission itself. Especially sucks if it is a two part mission! ARGH! ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/33 "2003-05-30T15:15:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by gonzoron \* > \*\*I love **Settlers of Catan** but I hate having turn after turn go by where I don’t produce anything because 8’s are rolled and 6’s aren’t or vice versa. I also hate when it’s clear NO ONE has wheat, and there hasn’t been any wheat rolled for 10 turns, but someone still asks for wheat. (It’s not much, but someone had to mention a non-computer game). \*\* I think some people have more problems with this than others. In my gaming group where we either played straight settlers or c+k for literally once a week for more than 2 years, we had one player who would always get stuck not producing anything for many turns. Perhaps it was luck, or his lack of skill in choosing sites. I, on the other hand, rarely dont produce anything for stretches, and I cant really see what I did differently than him, in THAT respect (I DID have a better distribution of the different resources, but not of the numbers.) We also had the obligatory guy-who-takes-10-minutes on even a simple turn, the guy who always gets cut off because he places his initial towns 4 links away and tries to connect them (but if he did connect he’d win,) and the guy who complains that he’s losing, then when you go easy on him he comes back from behind and wins, then when we compensate for that and pre-screw him over to prevent that he complains that we’re out to get him! :rolleyes: Me? I was the guy who usually took a relatively short turn, but whenever I got more than 10 cards i’d have to take 10 minutes by myself with my cards arrayed off to the side, saying to myself “if I do THIS i’ll use THESE cards” [places cards to the side]“do THIS, use THESE” [place more off]…etc. Then I pick up the cards i’m gonna use … “Okay, what was I going to be doing”? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![KidCharlemagne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed8c4c/32.png) [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/34 "2003-05-30T16:03:12Z")
One genre that really boils my blood is real-time strategy. Until Rise of Nations recently came along, easily implemented and really important unit controls were always omitted. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2003, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242/35 "2003-05-30T18:18:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by gonzoron \* > \*\*Unfortunately we usually play with **Cities & Knights** so it would have to be a bit more complicated (to cover the red die), and we’d either have to keep the barbarian die, or make a separate deck for it, or go to a 216 card deck. 🙂 > \*\* I believe that your analysis is flawed… you still only need 36 cards. If you roll a 2, the only possibility for the red die is 1. If you roll a 3, there are two possibilities, 1 and 2, etc. \*\* > [@](#): > > Here’s another one: > I LOVE Magic: The Gathering, but I hate the Constructed tournament scene. I hate the idea that you have to play one of a handful of successful deck types to win. I would never build a deck I saw on the internet, and therefore it’s assumed I would never win with my “rogue deck”. And the sad part is, the assumption is mostly true, because there’s no way I can devote as much testing and tweaking time to my rogue deck as the thousands of copycats testing the latest net-deck. \*\* I tend to agree with you. But my solution is simple… I don’t play constructed. I play probably 15+ hours of magic a week, all of it limited. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-love-except/178242.md?page=1)