Be Excellent To Each Other

We've got a "No one finishes games anymore" thread but it's about the fact that people do actually finish games; whereas my recent experience in throwing in the towel with Skyrim made me think about the games I genuinely didn't get through. So, tell me about your experiences with that kind of thing. The games that had that one level or boss you never got past. The games that you bought and then realised they just weren't your thing. The games that simply bored the tits off you to the point you walked away and never went back. The games that started strong and then just went somewhere so awful that you gave up in disgust.

I thought I was pretty good when it came to finishing what I start, sometime to the extent of playing games passed the point when I'm genuinely enjoying them. But looking back at my Xbox and PS3 history, out of the roughyly 50 games I've bought and played I've not completed 10 of them which is a lot more than I was expecting to see. The reasons for this differ per game and you can be bored by the details below.

• Assassin's Creed: Started off pretty well, but it quickly became clear that it was incredibly repetitive with the same set of mini-missions available in each city and only the increasing psychic powers of the guards to set each apart. I only had to be attacked a couple of times for the crime of 'walking down the fucking street' before it started to grate. I hear the sequels improved massively on the formula and it should be credited with down something genuinely different with the scale of the place and free-running style of the game but I'm just not interested in revisiting the franchise after the first one annoyed me so much.
• Bully: I'm not really sure what happened with this one; I probably played it least of all the games I've ever picked up but very quickly decided it wasn't for me. It was one of the games I picked up the day I got my Xbox so I can't even remember what killed it for me.
• Kameo: I had high hopes for this as it was billed as a Zelda-alike for the Xbox and it did play a little bit like one with the ability to transform into different creatures taking the place of the found gadgets in Zelda. It never really gelled for me though and an unbelievably aggravating boss fight about a third of the way in ended it for me.
• Killzone 2: This was just shit pretty much from the start. I seem to be almost alone in this but it just never felt like they nailed the basics of an FPS so the whole thing was aggravating. Bringing the sight of each gun up to your character's eye was really the only way to wring any accuracy from the weapons but, in doing so, the weapons somehow managed to obscure everything else on screen in a way that other FPS worked around. So you'd stumble between terribly inaccuracy or hitting one target while getting ruined by the other unseen enemies. Awful stuff and I was happy to give up on it.
• Skyrim: I think I've done enough whining about this one the dedicated Skyrim thread so I won't go one about it again here. Suffice to say that the combat wasn't my cup of tea.
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06: I picked this up cheap on a whim as something Mrs Bamba and I could maybe get into together. She wrapped her head around the mechanics of it alright but I never did and after playing a couple of holes during which I couldn't get a single shot even vaguely on target it got binned.
• Virtua Tennis 3: Another one bought for Mrs Bamba as she's a huge tennis nut. It was about this time that I realised, despite what she claimed, she wasn't actually interested in playing games at all and was generally content to watch. She had a couple of goes and then just got annoyed when she couldn't get the hang of it. I actually spent a weekend working through it until the difficulty ramped up too much so I ended up getting more fun out of it than I was expecting even though I never came anywhere near to finishing it.
• Guitar Hero II: The first and only Guitar Hero/Rock Band game I bought and it turns out that I just don't enjoy them all that much. They're fun for a couple of days but I just don't enjoy playing the same song(s) over and over again to improve on them and the higher difficulty settings can get to fucking fuck entirely. It continues to amaze me that anyone would buy more than one of these games. Conversely, DJ Hero is excellent fun as, I reckon, the base mechanics of the game are more varied.
• Lego Indiana Jones: I do enjoy the Lego games in that I've played the demo for every one that's come out and got right into it. But for some reason when faced with the full game of Lego Indiana Jones I got bored and moved on. I think part of the reason was the the puzzles seemed needlessly fiddly and, at times, I felt you had to notice some tiny little bit of scenery that was actionable before you could progress and until you did that you were completely stuck. There is the odd bit of that kind of thing in the demos of the various games but none of them have seemed quite so bad so maybe I should give one of the later Lego games a chance? Advice me wise Beexers!
• Ninja Gaiden 2: Not sure what happened here again. I was gagging for this game before I got the Xbox and remember enjoying it when I played it but something happened and I never went back to it. I still tell myself now and again that I'll pick it up but I'd need to start from the beginning again having forgotten everything I ever knew about it and that really does make it unlikely. Looking at my Achievement history it looks like I played Prince of Persia after it so it's possible I dropped it for PoP and intended to go back and just never did.
• Dante's Inferno: I suck at these kind of brawler games but I do enjoy them and have played through all the God of War games plus Bayonetta and Wolverine Origins (which is an overlooked classic by the way that I really got into). They do need to be well done though to keep my interest and Dante's Inferno just wasn't. It starts strongly enough with nice level design themed for the various sins but, I dunno, part the way through it just becomes really fucking boring somehow. Repetitive fights with the same enemy types popping up constantly and just nothing new really appearing.

So, talk to me of the games you've got hacked off with, or just hated from the outset, and tell me why. Or defend your favourite games that I've cruelly slagged off in my list. Or join me in putting the boot into something I've given up on. Talk to me Beex!

LEGO Batman is one of the best, and seems less fiddly. Also includes amusingly named achievements.
The LEGO Harry Potter ones are good as well, APART from if you have to build a staircase with Wingardium Leviosa, which is also fiddly.

Completely agree. Bag of wank.

Completely disagree. One of the best games on the 360.

Oh.

And I never finished Tetris.

GTA IV - about a third of the way in, did a mission which involved about 10 minutes of driving around, followed by a cut-scene, followed by a shootout. Cut scene ended, game dropped me into control pointing in completely the wrong direction and I got shot in under a second, not even enough time to turn round or get cover. Then I get reset to before the driving part of the mission.

Bye bye GTA, can't be arsed with that shit.

Lol.

I rarely finish games.

I agree about this one.. But 2 and Brotherhood were a joy to play. Still not convinced about the latest.

Most of them. Due to stupidly hard bit appearing from nowhere causing frustration, or boredom, or Dead Rising.

Only including games here that I've played for a decent length of time:

Final Fantasy VIII - Memory card crashed 20 hours in. Couldn't be bothered to go through all that again.
Heavy Rain - Just sort of stopped about 2 or 3 hours in. Seemed quite good but never really felt like going back.
Mirror's Edge - Well it makes me ill when I play it (as all First Person games do) and it's also pretty difficult to do it without shooting anyone (which was my aim)
Space Channel 5 - It was just too hard for me at the end.
Chrono Trigger - Somehow managed to lose my save file after about 40 hours of play. Twice.

I haven't finished Mirror's Edge either. Got to the last level with the hundreds of snipers and just lost all patience with it. A great idea and would have been a fun XBLA title - didn't really warrant a full-length retail game, IMO.

For me, I gave up on the fourth disc. There's a bit where you're in a bit building and all your stuff is taken away from you and you have to fight to win it back bit by bit. Just couldn't be arsed with it at that point.

Oblivion is one that I'll never finish. I've started it three times now, go through the underground tutorial type stuff, get out into the open, wander about a bit, save it and then forget about it.

When you get put in prison.
It gets a bit samey, as every floor is the same, but the point is to explore the cells to find the hidden items. You can breeze through it just fighting a few prison guards if you wish.

I started it once on the PC, then again on the 360 and did exactly the same thing, until last month when I started again for a third time and am now close to a non-DLC max.

It really is very good. I might have a break before Skyrim, though.

"Never leave a game behind" is my motto. I've smashed some of the shittest games of the last few generations through grit and determination.

There are a couple which, for whatever reason, I just could face continuing.

Oblivion and Fallout 3 both did absolutely nothing for me. I left them both after 10-12 hours each. I sure did try but eventually I took each out of the drive and it never went back. Weird, because the length of a game never normally puts me off at all, but I couldn't face the tedium of either game.

LA Noire just fucked me right off. I wanted to love it. I wanted to progress. But most of all I wanted to win. Would it let me win? Would it fuck. It punished me with its broken interrogation system that forgot to employ any logic and turned my suave rookie into a sociopathic prick.

I've just been reminded of another older game I never went back to: Majora's Mask. I don't care how interesting your core game mechanic is, the first time you expect me to repeat most of a dungeon because I arbitrarily ran out of fucking time about 80% of the way through will result in you being ejected from the cartridge slot and thrown away.

I've completed FF8 a couple of times, but oddly (and the same is true with Secret of Mana), I'll replay it again with absolute gusto but completely lose interest when there's nothing left to do but go and beat the end of game boss. Invariably I can't be arsed to do that, and stop playing.

I think it was Fantasy World Dizzy, when you had to find all 30 coins to fully complete it. I could get to 29, but that last coin was nowhere to be found. As I had about 3 games on my Spectrum at the time and nothing better to do, I would spend HOURS looking for that bloody last coin. Never did find it.

http://www.samsolutions.co.uk/dizzy/hints/fd-map.htm

Malc

From this generation I never finished:

Dead Rising - Fucking horrible game
Mirrors Edge - Pretty good then got to a cba bit (on a boat, I think)
Ninja Gaiden 2 - Cheaty boss fucked me right off
Ninja Blade - Cheaty boss fucked me right off

Every time you say this, it makes me less likely to put Dark Souls in the drive. I sometimes forget what such bad taste you have.

Every time you say anything, I don't give a fuck.

Dark Souls is only for awesome people anyway.

So many I don't know where to start- which is a little sad and one of the reasons I buy so few games nowadays.

Christ, which one(s)?

Oh, very much

Thinking back I don't think it was a boss that pissed me off. I'd just finished Volf (the Wolf thing) and got to the next stage and was struggling with an alley that had large cheating bastards in it.

The latest Mafiascum game

Ah the Flying Fortress. Those massive robot things are a nightmare. If you're a big nancy, that is. Did I mention I've completed it?

Prototype for ridiculously difficult last boss.

Deus Ex: HR for having stupid bosses.

No, it wasn't that bit. Either way it was a let down after the glorious Ninja Gaiden on the original Xbox, and that's coming from someone who completed the pitiful Shadows of the Damned.

Limiting this to games I've played a good deal of the way through already...

Star Wars: Kotor 2 - Broken

GTA: Vice City - Final mission is trial-and-error slog through hail of bullets. Hate that in any game.

Scarface - Final misison is trial-and-error slog through hail of bullets. Hate that in any game.

Lego Star Wars - Jumping bullshit on final level during lightsaber battle, where the established 'how to jump places' seems to have been ignored for some floaty lava platforms. Basically, the game cheats.

The Saboteur - Story finished, 900/1000 achievements and it will take me another ten to fifteen hours to do the remaining few hundred identical sabotages and 100% the cunt.

Red Dead Redemption - I really want to 100% this but dicking about in the wilds for ages looking for small generic mammal type #7 and then shooting TEN of the things isn't my idea of fun.

Mirror's Edge - I can't do it.

Fable 2 - It rrod'd my original 360 and I'm scared to ever play it again.

Mass Effect 2 - If I finish this, I'll buy Mass Effect 3 when it comes out and I'm too skint. Otherwise, I'd have it done already.

Borderlands - I played online with others too much and lost my immersion in the world being as I was whisked off to defat foes that were wey ahead of me in the game too early.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary - I would be nowhere without the walkthrough, and playing like that is boring.


Oh... and Zelda games - I frequently have better things to do than play a given title for a month or more and, particularly with Wind Waker (though OOT and TP are guilty too) I'd come back to it and spend an evening tooling around with all the faqs to hand trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do next, to no avail.

I think it's often not so much the problems with these games as the frustration of the needless amount of time it takes to get past them that's the issue, unfair restart points, loading times longer than you're surviving for in the boss battle, or the dialogue in Nintendo games being only semi-skippable when trying to get through a bit again, or when accidentally triggered, which I always seem to do for some reason.


I might also give up on the remaining unbroken bits of Skyrim if it doesn't stop spawning fucking nails-hard dragons when I'm 90% of the way to completing a long, complicated mission. Random events my arsehole.

I got bored by Mexico.


I only finished this due to our very own Curly, Larry & Moe dragging me through it.

Extermination on the PS2. Survival horror. The final boss has enough health to withstand the entire might of all your weapons, including the secret weapons, fully upgraded. He can hit you in ways you cannot defend against. There are limited health items through the game, and you need them ALL for the final fight. And he has two more forms on top of that.

In this YouTube video, the player just stands there for ten minutes, staying perfectly still, shooting all his remaining ammo and using all his remaining health kits.

Need For Speed: Carbon. The very final race is a canyon duel against Darius. His car is an Audi Le Mans concept that goes faster than the speed of light. You can't change or configure your car without doing THREE PREVIOUS RACES ALL OVER AGAIN. Canyon duels are played against a recorded copy of the computer player, which means you can't push him off the cliff (instant win) or even knock him aside so he spins out. Every collision will end in his favour: his car is made of lead, your car is made of paper. (Same rule as NFS U, NFS U2, NFS MW.)

The only way to win this fight is to either A) Be God or B) Use a fully upgraded Corvette to zoom past him and hold the lead for ten seconds. The Corvette is the only car in the game that beats his concept car for acceleration. Heaven help you if you don't have enough money to buy it. And you can't go back and redo old races for money because the prize money for already completed races is 1% of the money you get the first time.

You ruined the story!

Yeah but Shadows was a piece of piss. NG2 is sadistic.

Far Cry 2 on the 360. This looks like fun! This is the exact same fun I had a couple of minutes ago! Hmm... *skips ahead to read the ending* Wait... THAT'S the ending? When did that happen? *skips to middle* No... this doesn't explain it.



NEXT GAME.

Infamous on the PS3. This is fun! I especially like the bit where COLE KEEPS AUTOMATICALLY TURNING TO FACE ENEMIES AND THROWING OFF MY PERFECT AIM THE BASTARD.

Clive Barker's Undying, SHOGO: Mobile Armor Division, Command and Conquer: Renegade. I'm sure there's an appropriate time and place to sit down and really get stuck into these, but I just don't like first person shooters enough to care.

FC 2 is a gun maintenance and self medication simulator though.

I never finished Eternal Darkness, come to think of it.

I've finished more games in the last five years than I ever did previously. Stupid addictive achievements!

Blur. I had it with those bloody stupid targets. I never even got to the final set of races because I couldn't stay at 130MPH for an entire lap, or use powerup X against Y enemies, or destroy X mines with Y powerups or whatever. If you want me to do ridiculous targets, you have to GIVE ME THE POWERUPS NECESSARY TO DO THEM and THE ENEMIES HAVE TO DO THE THING I'M SUPPOSED TO DEFEND AGAINST.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, Killer 7, Sonic Adventure 2. Memory card died each time. Final level.

I also had 149 Pokemon when my save died. It's true.

I never finished Burnout Paradise, I only played it for the Bezzie lolz.

Then sold it. Like a massive, massive loser.

To be fair I'm surprised EA haven't shut the servers down yet.

They'd normally release a sequel first, wouldn't they? And Crash doesn't count.

It had fizzled out long before I chucked it in towards my camera fund.

Pfft - we played the other week, and it was epic!

And I played it the time before last. It was epic!

Can't have been that good if I wasn't there.

Where to start... Ace Combat 6 – I’ll go back to that one soon.

Resident Evil 4 – I’m ashamed that I haven’t finished this. I’ll go back to it soon.

Luigis Mansion – A delightful game that I started playing again a year ago, I got further than I’ve ever got before but didn’t carry on. I should do though because I really enjoyed it.

And the list goes on and on and on.. I tend to get distracted by the shiny and new. The 3 above are the ones I want to go back to though as I enjoyed them the first time round.

I will pick up RE4 on the XBLA at some point. I never got out of the first village.

Luigi's Mansion I just didn't click with.

I don't want to think about which you think is which.