Hi! <waves>. I’m Person Number 3 
If you find the game too easy with the new controls (though I think the “too easy” description goes out the window when you find the lab, but anyway), try to get five stars in the new challenge missions.
You need to get off the ‘level grind’. Elder Scrolls games, like Oblivion are not as level focused as others.
It is a very flexible character system. You can literally be whatever you want and tweak your character in many ways. You also have to plan ahead carefully…which is the appeal for me.
It reminds me of the old Runequest games…but Runequest literally had no levels. I wish Elder Scrolls would have went that route even more…the more you use a skill successfully, the better you get. You didn’t get more hitpoints or anything…just better at your skills. Oblivion would have fit that well, because Oblivion (and Morrowinds) main weakness is that you can ‘cheat’ by deliberately staying at a low level and be highly skilled and, therefore, have easy fighting (like winning in the arena all the way to champ while a very low level.
However, if you don’t ‘cheat’ like that, the combat in Oblivion is fun and challenging.
I had the same problem as Mosier with Morrowind. Second and third playthroughs tended to get easier and easier once you found the “flaws” in the system. Also, it’s got a little bit of the Diablo “click, click, click, click” problem. Really good game, though. Huge land, lots to see and do and explore, but I wish you had a better feeling of what your main quest was exactly. I appreciate the openness and all the side stuff, but if they just put your main quest in blue or green text as opposed to every other quest, it might help to stay on task.
I thought of another one: Tomb Raider.
I used to be like this also, until I got into NFL Street II. You only have seven players and they play both offense and defense, the are only a small number of plays and they’re broken into basic categories (run, short pass, long pass, trick plays), the game is simple and fun. After I got good at both NFL Street’s I wanted more sophistication and with Madden '07 I’ve never looked back.
Dungeon Siege. I really really wanted to like this game. Then it got a little dull - enemy attacks, I set the party up with their commands and watched and waited while the party fought.
Then I played a bit more with the commands, and found you could leave the party in an infinite loop continously injuring and healing the sole remaining enemy while gaining xp constantly for each action, while you wander off and let the computer play itself. That’s not fun.
Here’s one: Warcraft 3, and by extension, the entire WoW. It seems inane and childish to me. I certainly play childish games (Mario Kart, anyone?) but they don’t try to build themselves up as anything bigger. The characters look foolish and cartoony to me in WoW and WCIII, the stories are silly and juvenile, and I just hated the whole thing.
I agree on Warcraft3. I played Warcraft and Warcraft 2, they were fun. Then WC3 took forever to come out. I didn’t play it for another year or two after it came out, but all I could think was how disappointed I would have been if I was waiting for it.
As much as I love Warcraft3 and the mythos it created it really is story telling for under-10s. I don’t mind the cartoony look though, in fact it was one of the things I really liked about WOW (unfortunately not enough to keep playing it long term though…).
I rented it. It’s a lot more enjoyable than I expected. It’s not perfect. The ending is a bit abrupt. But overall I never get tired of using various combinations of “plasmids” and firearms to fuck up a bunch of jabbering crackheads.
I heard that the worst part of the ending was that the twist was pretty much straight out of System Shock 2.
Xenosaga isn’t for everyone. I was “lent” the game by a friend (lent being in quotes because he disliked it so much he effectively gave it to me), and I didn’t care for it when I first started it, either.
However, I had a couple of friends in my FFXI linkshell who were absolutely in love with it, and after explaining to me the story and battle controls, I ended up falling in love with it, too. The story and characters are extremely in-depth and complicated, and unless following complex storylines and character backgrounds is your thing, you won’t really like the game.
Yes, the combat system is frustrating at first, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll wonder why RPG’s haven’t done it before. And yes, it’s pointless to build up your AWGS in the first game.
Anyway, I’m putting my vote in for the Halo series as well. I absolutely suck at FPS’s, and was told by my friends that even people like me enjoy Halo. I played it with them on several different occasions and just couldn’t seem to aim my weapon worth a damn. I’d be dead before I could get anything in my sights.
I’ll also probably get castrated for this, but I found Portal to be quite the disappointment. I paid my 20 bucks and downloaded it from Steam, only to have it crash again and again on my 2-month-old gaming box. Steam support was extremely unhelpful (they started ignoring my emails after the first one), but I eventually got it to work myself.
I was so excited about playing it, but man, what a let-down! Beat it in about 3½ hours. The game was short, the puzzles were extremely easy and the final boss was a cinch after you figured out how to beat her.
The concept of portals was very innovative, and Valve really didn’t pursue it as much as they could have. The game felt very thrown-together at the last minute.
Didn’t get this in time for the edit window, but…
Lump me into the “meh” category as well for FF12. I’m a diehard fan of the FF series, but Square-Enix’s attempt to make it a one-player MMORPG missed its mark. Went the wrong way in the Silkawood, died and lost 4 hours of playtime, several levels, and tens of thousands of gil. Haven’t picked it up since. Not to mention that the characters (other than Balthier and Fran) weren’t especially interesting. I wanted to strangle Ashe.
Homeworld 2; I liked the original, but I barely got past the first level (where you have to rescue the transports) and never got past the second. I don’t think I’ll go back.
Sim City 3 and 4; With neither game could I get beyond a small town without the whole thing failing on me. Anything beyond Sim City 200 isn’t worth going back to.
Black and White; I got the little men to build some sort of a building and I never got interested enough to keep playing. I won’t be back, I may delete it from my D drive.
Huh. I actually vastly preferred 2 to 1.
My choice also. I waited a long time for Crysis because I love FPS’s, but I got bored when I got to the flying vehicle section. I’m not sure what all the hype was about. And I tried to pay attention to the plot, but I don’t think there really was one. I actually want to finish the game, but I dread playing it. Maybe I’ll go back to it in ten years when I’m feeling nostalgic.
Guitar Hero. I used to play DDR and Beatmania; I figured this would be fun, right? Not really. I just can’t get as excited as everyone else can, and it hurts my eyes. A lot.
Put me down for FFT as well, and Disgaea. I really liked what I played, but happened across one level that I couldn’t NOT play in which there was literally no way to win. I got pissed off, deleted my save, and never looked back. Asshole developers.
Chrono trigger was boring to me.
I’ve tried really, really hard to get into Super Mario Galaxy, but it’s just not clicking. The awkward camera angles mean that my favorite part (doing lots of weird jumping to get to new places) is pretty much taken out. Weak.