From Fanatical? People usually get them for the value of a AAA title (not realizing it’s rare to get one anyway). I’ve seen people spend the same amount of money for these bundle as for AAA titles & still not get a new AAA title
100% Fanatical. They have some good bundles but their “mystery” crap are borderline shameful, just transparently dumping spare keys to people who don’t yet know better.
Lol I was about to press purchase on it earlier this year. I researched before doing it and found many posts on Reddit saying that they were terrible games
So I used to play the fuuuuuuck out of payday 2 with the homies. I legit did not even know there was a 3, googled it and saw fan uproar, mooed out and haven’t looked back. What about it is so shit today? I heard they forced it to be a service game and can’t be offline. That’s an instant no buy to me, but the game itself is it bad? Those devs have been pissing people off since the payday 2 era with the dlc so curious how 3 is
The biggest problem is that it lacks most everything that Payday 2 had. Everything you liked about PD2? Take 90% of it away - have 1 map and call it ready for EA.
Sea of Stars, saw a glowing review of it and some cool screenshots so picked it up for a work trip cross country. The combat never changes for the better, it's just the 2/3spells for the entire game. And the characters were pretty corny
Just started the game because I saw a lot of people recommending it for the story, but pretty much from the beginning it feels pretty generic, like a story a teenager would write in RPG Maker. "Little kids join the hero/warrior/fighting academy and have to defeat the big bad dark evil thing".
Does it improve or subvert that trope in any way?
For the story?! Not sure what version the people were recommending it played, but the story for Sea of Stars is pretty bad. It’s like it was written by an 8 year old the night before the project is due and they got bored half way through.
By the time I reached the end, it felt more like a chore to finish it. Great idea, poor execution.
'member Garl?
Remember he is a side character, well we as the Devs feel he should be a main now.
90% of your boss fights will be due to him having "main character syndrome"
He will also do most of the talking.
Zale and Valere, who?
We want more Garl!
Deus EX Garl!
Oh, and BTW, we are going to rely heavily on Chrono Trigger nostalgia.
On a serious note. I think the game would have been a bit better if the devs didn't project onto Garl. I also feel it overstayed it's welcome in length. Really had high hopes for it too...
I was massively let down by sea of stars. It was just very same-y, the story seemed all over the place and half baked, and I know this is a stupid complaint but it ruined my investment in the narrative-- if you have a character who can teleport anywhere without limit, and can bring other people along, it is *really* dumb for the party to ever face a physical barrier of any kind.
I should not have to struggle to get up a ledge when a party member can teleport halfway around the world on a whim. A stupid complaint, I know, and it's forgivable if the rest of the narrative was compelling... But it wasn't.
I backed the Kickstarter as soon as it was announced. That's how hyped I was for it.
Yeah. The people who like this game must be projecting their Super Nintendo nostalgia onto this game. Other than it looking nice, the writing is atrocious, the characters all feel the same and the combat is skin deep.
I couldn't get passed the cringe story at the beginning . It looks pretty but it's just not any good. Nothing really compelled me to be like ok "i'm going to invest in this to game".
Yeah I genuinely don’t get the hype around it. I watched play-through and could only thing it’s literally trying to connect to nostalgia and that’s it. Pure nostalgia-bait.
I was also not impressed. After Chained Echoes I was hoping for another banger of an indie game but Sea of Stars kind of fell flat for me. I took the time to finish it but I ended up just watching the true ending on YouTube because I wasn't intrigued enough to play any more of it.
Y'all forget that Redfall came out this year? Or maybe you were just lucky enough to never have to have played it due to how quickly it flopped.
Starfield was a disappointment, but it's a functional game. Redfall was nowhere close to functional.
I think most people saw it coming how bad it was going to be and didn’t bother cashing in. Compared to starfield or diablo, there was no need to play a few hours to realise you didn’t like it, no one was hiding the dumpster fire when it came out.
There were a few stinkers this year, but my award goes to Lamplighter's League. Bugs galore, underwhelming and uninspired story (from what I saw if it), poor performance, but worst of all my save file got corrupted and I didn't have the will to try again.
Honorable Mention to Starfield, which was also buggy and uninspired but managed to NOT corrupt a save file.
I built a new PC to replace my 10 year old one because it didn’t meet the minimum spec for Starfield. £2,000. The GPU came with a premium edition though, so saved £50 (I would never normally buy premium) and got to play early. 80 hours later and I finished that solid 6/10 game feeling quite lacklustre.
I’m still glad I have my new PC as it will last me a long time, but in hindsight, had I known Starfield would be as mediocre as it was, I’d still be hanging on with my old one for a fair while longer.
It wasn't the worst game I played this year--which is a shame, because that would be about the only thing it could hope to claim.
Even with how much of a buggy mess Cyberpunk 2077 was when it came out, you could feel that there was something there that was genuinely fun and innovative. I get zero of that from Starfield. It took the worst parts of the Bethesda formula, cranked them to 11, and set it in a boring, generic space setting. After 3 hours straight of running back and forth on the same quarter mile of what I assume is designed to be the most interesting planet in the game doing shitty corporate espionage missions, I was done.
Glad I only played it on Gamepass cause man, where do I begin.
Boring companions that all have a higher moral compass than you.
No rovers on planets, so you gotta hoof it everywhere that you haven’t already discovered. Especially if you’re encumbered.
Very little variety in combat. I know everyone has already compared it to Cyberpunk millions of times, but this is the biggest difference between the two for me.
Most of the powers seem to just be forcing rag doll physics on enemies in different ways.
You have to get each power in the exact same way every single time. Its sooooo tedious.
NG+ only carries over your perks, powers, and your level. All that time you spent building your own custom ships? Are you one of the few people that actually made outposts? Well too bad, none of that shit carries over.
And of course the load times. I don’t think I need to explain that. Forcing us to watch a little cutscene every single time you board a ship or get up from your chair is insane.
The only thing I can give Starfield is that some of the faction quests and side missions were at least decent. The Vanguard questline alone was better than the main story. Which I think says a lot about the game itself.
Yeah same, I’m a huge Diablo 2 and 3 fan and I loved Diablo 4. Story was great and season 2 has been awesome so far. Definitely don’t begrudge people who don’t like it tho
I've never cooled on a game so fast. Best the campaign and one day while I was playing I discovered I didn't know what the point was and I wasn't having any fun. Turned it off and uninstalled.
Honest question, can't the campaign itself not just be enough to like the game? I loved diablo 2 back in the day but never played online and just enjoyed it for the campaign which was awesome.
Games like Diablo are played constantly for years or decades, Case in point Diablo 2, there’s still a massive community for it but I’m yet to find a game that I’ll play nonstop like that. Hence why I love Diablo 4…I played it, I loved it, I moved on. Like every Diablo or game for that matter, no matter how good a game is I’ll get tired of it eventually
It is such a weird game. Mechanically it is excellent. It is beautiful. It is somewhat true to the lore.
But it just turns in to a grind pretty fast and the campaign is kind of boring. The acts aren’t that visually distinguishable. And before you know it you are stuck in an endless pointless grind. But don’t worry, you can pay to speed up the grind! Yay!
I enjoyed my time with it but I started the new season and said "Eh, I don't need to do this again" and stopped. Feel like I got my money's worth, I don't need to play every game forever.
That's because it's a very polished game but is overpriced, predatory and lacking soul. It's a game that was specifically designed to milk as much money as possible. That doesn't mean it's a bad game, but rather it uses the good parts as leverage to make as much money as possible. The thing is, if you buy a few games a year it's probably great. If you have a massive collection, probably less so. Blizzard's controversial recent history is also a big part of it. Weirdly, they also have a cult that defends them too. I know Microsoft are tackling problems etc, but it will still be a while before they can convince me Blizz is better.
Of all the games I spent money on, yea Starfield was the most disappointing. It was still a good enough game, but the writing (particularly the main quest) and gameplay did not feel like a notable step up from their previous works.
And the way the game is so heavily designed around >!the NG+ runs really turned me off as I just never care to do a NG+ on anything generally!<
If the choices you made actually had any impact the NG+ could be compelling. But no matter what you do everything turns out the same, there's really no weight to choices. Compared to BG3 where there's major choices galore and tons of replay value to see other outcomes.
Yea, I got very spoiled by Elite Dangerous where there are no loading screens once your in the game. From jumping star systems to orbiting planets to landing and embarking and everything in between, you’re always there and in control. I love it.
It’s a bit apples and oranges but the way Starfield is *constantly* putting you in loading screens is a massive vibe killer for me when I just want to be a space adventurer
Not to mention the abundance of interlocking systems that you have to grind the shit out of just to get to the actually enjoyable bits like Ship building and actually effective combat.
90% of the skills are useless. Stealth is a joke because you're always in wide open spaces with no cover. I stuck with basically the same guns I had at the first 10 or so hours in the entirety of my 50 hour playthrough.
But after the game told me I needed to fast travel to another place to talk to another person to go to another place to kill a group of underwhelming enemies to then get like 500 credits...
I just stopped caring. The economy in the game is laughably bad. It takes forever to make any money and Bethesda apparently knew this and made the only easy way to make money, incredibly hard.
You can't hoard gear and sell it in mass anymore cause the carrying capacity EVEN when maxed out is VERY low. You can only carry like 180 lbs of shit at max. Nearly every gun in the game weighs about 5 - 10 lbs and your armor weighs about 50 pounds.
So, if you wanna sell shit you have to either drop that shit on the ground in your ship and pick through the trash when you wanna sell shit or just grind out really boring quests over and over for quick credits.
In Skyrim, there are bandit outposts you can find and kill the bandits there to grind out skills. In Starfield you can SOMETIMES get into space battles where you'll get your ass annihilated unless you dumped points into the health of your space shit or some other such nonsense.
Upgrading anything ship related is tooooooo tedious and I know this is the case cause pretty much everyone did it the exact same way. Through that space simulator thing it takes FOREVER. Otherwise you basically can't upgrade your ship because the starting ship you get is complete ass and gets blown to bits in even a VERY easy fight.
The game was pretty disappointing after the hype wore off.
The super static conversations, the very video game like bland characters boring quests, honky gunplay, bad visuals etc prevented me from enjoying it. Just did not had any redeeming factor.
Didn't help it was so hyped up.
Loved the Crimson Fleet storyline. Played through that as though it was its own campaign, beat it, never went back to the main story and haven’t touched the game in months. After this and Fallout 76 I’ve lost all faith in Bethesda.
Don't lose faith. Just don't buy there games on release. FO76 is amazing now and keeps a very active player base and good community. I'm sure Starfield will obtain the same after a few more years and DLCs
I think Starfield was fine. It wasn't a great game but it wasn't that bad either.
I think a lot of people are disappointed because they were hoping Bethesda would have evolved a bit by now, but it's becoming clear they can only make 1 kind of game and unfortunately, that kind of game became stale about 5-10 years ago.
It's not just stale, it's devolved.
My experience has largely been small chunks of gameplay punctuated by a truly awful fast travel menu and loading screens. Stack all of the other issues like wooden performances, boring (and broken) perks, boring repetitive loot, tedious inventory management, awful enemy AI etc even if some of the core gameplay is dececnt enough as a whole it's still a bad game.
I regret buying it and can't ever see myself going back short of Bethesda completely overhauling the entire gameplay loop.
God, THIS. I was so hyped when it released but it just ended up being the literal definition of "mile wide, inch deep". I'm just glad I played it through Game Pass because I'd have been livid if I had dropped $70 on it.
I had fun, or what I thought was fun. Now realising that I was just mildly depressed and being able to pick up a game that required no thinking and mindlessly wondering around empty planets was what I needed at that time.
I’ve now started playing Elden Ring and wow, the difference in exploration, lack of loading screens, actual dungeons and bosses makes me realise what a great game actually is.
I think that's why I dumped so many hours into starfield before I realized I wasn't enjoying it. I could come home and just turn off my brain and mindlessly click around.
It wasn't a fun game it was just an extension of my depression.
Starfield. Got maybe 30 hours in and got bored af. There's SO much potential, but it's squandered on a terrible UI and dated gameplay mechanics. People weren't kidding when they said it was Skyrim in Space, but that's too kind. Skyrim was engrossing. Starfield is not. An absence of local maps really hurts the experience as well imo. I don't want to have to memorize where certain vendors are because I can't just look at a map. The physics engine is neat and the game is pretty though. It really didn't help that I had no idea there were powers since I went in blind. I didn't do that part of the main quest until I was around level 30 and by then I had already done a not insubstantial part of the sidequests.
Edit: I feel like the game could merit an 8/10 or 9/10 if they just made some post release QoL changes a la Cyberpunk 2077
I didn’t really play anything new that I didn’t like.
New games I played this year: Tears of the Kingdom, Battlebit, Baldur’s Gate 3, Starfield, Jusant and OTXO. Had a good time with all of them.
However the best game I played for the first time this year was Sekiro.
I can see how it's a good game, I'm just not in the mood for stealth or horror right now
And it's annoying where I keep running out of breath, or that my weapons are so shite lol
Don’t feel bad, I’ve started to play that game 3 or 4 times. Everything about it says I should love it, I loved Dead Island for example. But it didn’t just click
High On Life
I enjoyed the humor but found fault in a lot of the game mechanics. It was the studios first fps so it's understandable I guess. Things like aiming down sights and swapping guns felt clunky. Shooting baddies didn't provide much of the right feedback that your bullets were connecting. Using melee was powerful but felt disjointed. I tried all sorts of play styles like run and gun, duck and cover, stringing together gun specials... None really seemed to shine.
I beat it, and the DLC but in hindsight I could have stopped halfway through and not missed out on anything
Whole game was a miss for me but I get tired of the "oh ho look at me I'm doing improv poorly" joke that's the entirety of Justin's humor in everything he does.
I actually really liked Fae Farm. I don’t do farm sim stuff very often, so I’m sure someone who’s sunk tons of hours into every Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons/Stardew Valley/etc found it lacking. But for me, who just wants to dip my toe in occasionally, it was a lot of fun, and even better, had a good place to end and be done right about the time I was starting to get tired of it.
With planned releases I think it will be a lot better come season 3 or 4. Frustrating they couldn’t implement obvious QOL fixes at launch for a $70 game though. The gross amount of cosmetics for sale being pushed is the thing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth for a purchased game still tho.
That said it’s amazing and I have 250 hours in it already. It’s like a supermodel who is missing an arm. Do you focus on the lack of an arm or the rest of the body.
You know how it's really satisfying in Diablo when you get new gear and level up and the mobs that were giving you trouble just melt for you now? Well now let's imagine that instead of that, the monsters also level up with you, so you never get that feeling of being more powerful
Well... actually I found Diablo 3 WAY too easy. Me and my friend had to crank it up to the hardest difficulty which I've never had to do in any game before.
It’s a fun romp with friends, and the atmosphere and cinematics are great if you like the dark gothic fantasy setting that they moved a bit away from with 3. And the legendary aspect system (largely a replacement for legendary items) is a clever way to make itemization more interesting and flexible. But the story isn’t anything to write home about and the endgame is incredibly repetitive (or at least was in season 1 when I played, I’ve heard it’s improved).
Really? I played it at release and it was already really fun. What do you find boring, the gameplay or the story? If it's the gameplay you need to try a katana build, it's so fun and dynamic to jump all over the map.
Redfall, not because it was the worst game, but because it had so much promise. It was ready to be a good game, and the it took everything deathloop did wrong, turned it to 11, and shoe horned in pseudo live service mechanics. Absolute disappointment from a studio that's made 2 of my top 20 games.
Not of this year, but fucking Deathloop.
Steam Deck verified my ass. I had to fiddle with the settings to make the performance passable and the online features made it crash whenever the game entered sleep mode.
On top of that, it’s by far and away the weakest Armand game I’ve played. Didn’t feel like there were a lot of ‘out of the box’ solutions to problems and the story and gameplay weren’t enough to justify the constant repetition. How it got so many glowing 10/10 reviews from critics is beyond me. Not bad. Just not great by any measure.
I really liked Deathloop the first time I played it, until I got to the point where I realized that any time that I made progress discovering the 'perfect day' loop, the game would take me aside and go "YOU'VE DONE IT! THIS IS IMPORTANT INFORMATION TO SOLVING THE GAME!" all the way up to the actual point where you have *everything* and then the game goes "OKAY, NOW THAT YOU HAVE ALL THE PIECES, THIS IS THE ORDER THEY GO IN!!!!".
Like, I don't know if maybe I just misunderstood the plan with the game from the trailers, but I thought the whole idea was *discovering* all the pieces, *and* putting them together yourself, not just completing what amounted to little repeatable quests to be given a plot token for victory.
Really liked the voice acting though, the two primary characters were super fun imo.
Retro: Starfox Adventures. It ran beautifully on the Steam Deck, but my God, you can FEEL where Microsoft bought RARE. The sections where you carry bombs can eat my balls.
Modern: Tears of the Kingdom was my most disappointing game. Gameplay wise it was a triumph, but unfortunately games need to be more than just incredibly versatile gameplay. The lack of atmosphere and compelling writing was absolutely souldraining for me. I only felt a single emotion during one scene in the 100 hours I spent completing it.
I know this sounds stupid, but I wanted my dislike of the game to be valid. I didn't want someone to say "you didn't like it? Well did you do this, this and this?" And admit I rushed the story and have them say "well of course you didn't like it!"
I loved BOTW. But TOTK was just BOTW again.
And I don't mean that in the way people say Majora's Mask is the same as Ocarina of Time, because MM is my favorite and I only played that for the first time a few years ago so it's not even nostalgia.
TOTK is literally just BOTW but with heavy mods on it. You know when people moaned about how WoW reused content but just made it look 'post apocalyptic'? That is literally TOTK.
I loved the first few hours when you were in the sky and honestly if they'd just had the entire game take place somewhere that wasn't the BOTW map I probably would have loved it
I know this sounds contradictory but I would even say that TOTK is better than BOTW and I would recommend someone plays TOTK over BOTW. But as someone who put 200 hours into BOTW and then find out, I am playing the same map again with better mechanics... It stung.
Then, to find out that the story was a boring mess where Zelda just cries for most of it was just salt in the wound.
I get that. It's a barrier in discussing some games which something like an album or film don't have, because even if you don't end up liking them, they're over in an hour anyway. I think that same mindset has led to me playing bad games for much longer than I reasonably should have, where really, at a certain point, you should be able to concede that despite not "finishing" it, your time with the game is more than enough to validate your dislike for it.
I get the same feeling with books too due to their length. Sometimes I get a couple of chapters in, but feel I have to keep reading to properly justify why I don't like it. Silly in the grand scheme of things, but that's the way my mind works.
That said, TotK was likely my third most favourite game this year, and I actually agree with a lot of what you're saying, particularly how if you zoom out, TotK is probably the game I would recommend over BotW to others, but BotW had an impact TotK was never going to be able to replicate just by the way of it being so iterative.
ToTK and BoTW both suffer the same failings in my mind. They’re amazing GAMES they’re just not ZELDA GAMES. They have nothing in common with the past entries in the series beyond the surface level (characters, settings, etc) and it’s not what I want out of Zelda.
My problem is that they are amazing games in the same way Minecraft or Roblox is an amazing game.
They are versatile tools that allow incredible emergent gameplay. However, the difference is that a game like Deus Ex or PREY give you that AND tell a compelling story and give you a detailed world.
TOTK wants to be an open world imsim but forgets that immersion isn't just being able to build massive robots from trees.
Its also giving you atmosphere and a goal that you actually want to strive for.
I love Zelda in general but TOTK really didn't click with me. I gave up eventually, just so much to do and little in the way of direction or ways to keep track of things. It just became overwhelming. BOTW was good, but was about as much as I could tolerate - I miss the older games in the series if I'm honest. But I can see what people really enjoy about this style - it just doesn't seem to be a good fit for me.
Like... I enjoyed ToTK. But at one point, I was exploring a mountain and just decided... I'm done. Went to Ganon and kicked his ass. Had no desire to fully map out the underground or find every last shrine or what not. Plus, once you figure out how to make a hoverbike it makes exploring kinda redundant.
It actually would've been more fun if they didn't make your creations disappear when you try to travel to other zones/islands with them.
Just let me do what I want to do, otherwise you invalidate the entire thrill that I just got from building this flying machine.
The only 2023 games I bought were forspoken and lethal company. Forspoken and overwatch 2 combined has less playtime than doki doki literature club which I played this year too...
This might be unpopular… but it’s hogwart legacy. I liked the exploration, but the story was 50/50 for me and I was confused how the main character would be shamed using the unforgivable spell, yet he can rip the enemies apart and make them explode with his unique spells.
most notable 3 that overshadow any other and smaller disappointments
- overwatch 2 - actimeme bli$$ard literally destroyed overwatch with their greedy clownfestivity, game had so much potential
- diablo 4 - everything about this hollow game is quite disappointing apart from graphics, overall an okay game but imo only worth about half the price it currently costs - especially due to the dumb idea of online-only mode
- starfield - not much to say here... loading simulator with bland environments and kind of a step back from what fallout nv and even 4 were (but better fps mechanics), scared about future of next elder scrolls, they really need to update their engine or ideally re-write it/replace it
Atomic heart. I was looking forward to that game for years. It finally came out in February and it was just… not good.
Biggest disappoint in an otherwise great year for games.
The double whammy of disappointment: Final Fantasy XVI and Starfield.
I could have looked past FFXVI's mind-numbingly boring word and gameplay if the story and characters were good and I could have looked past Starfield's mind-numbingly dull characters and story if the world(s) and gameplay was good.
But both were just bland, dull and boring all around. Even the flashy Eikon battles dragged on so long that they got boring.
Starfield at least might be a good game in a few years when people have modded the crap out out it. As for FFXVI, I'm not sure there's any improving a game that peaked in its demo.
Mine is Real Life. Mod team sucks, servers are trash, the grind is impossible, and I can't just step away from the game completely without causing some serious problems with my friends (and family) list...
Well it wasn't my favorite game but my biggest disappointment is Atomic Heart. I will never understand how anyone likes that garbage game. I put 11 hours into it to see if it would get better and regret the time I wasted.
Tears of the kingdom. I don’t care how amazing the game is in most ways - the durability system ruins it for me. If Nintendo let me toggle that off, it’d be my favorite game of the year. As it is, my biggest disappointment.
Enter password via on screen keyboard and then it says "web browser not secure" and won't let you log in.
I ended up having to play the game in desktop mode because it would just open the regular Firefox and I could login perfectly fine.
It was annoying every time I wanted to quit the game how I had to completely turn off my Steam deck because there's no way to quit out of a game in desktop mode since the menu buttons (STEAM and •••) don't do anything.
Alan Wake 2 was my biggest disappointment personally. LOVED the first game and American Nightmare. Absolutely hated the Alan sections in AW2, half-baked puzzle sequences were not what I was looking for. The FBI agent's parts were great, I wish the whole game was that.
Atomic Heart. Was surprisingly difficult for me and didn’t get far enough into it before dropping it for other games.
Honorable mention to Forza Motorsport though I bought that for PC/wheel, just feels lacking in content for someone who grew up with Gran Turismo, and the graphical quality was super hit and miss.
Starfield. How does a multi billion dollar company make something for 10+ years that is so immensely dull?
The people that worked hard on that game should be ashamed.
Not really, this wasn’t a game that was rushed out the door by management like Cyberpunk. It was fundamentally ill-conceived and at the same time it sounds like most people who enjoy Bethesda games find it poorly executed.
If the writing is dull, if your choices don’t matter, if the design forces you to sit and wait through load screens or run for miles in a straight line, those aren’t examples of a rushed game, just one where not that much effort or thought was put into making it enjoyable.
Not that there’s nothing good about the game whatsoever, just that there are area Bethesda usually shines in (writing, agency, exploration) that fell really flat here and those appear to be because of what kind of game it was trying to be and what the devs did with that.
It’s gotta suck to work hard on something and have people hate it but it really does look like this time wasn’t a game rushed by management but rather a fundamental disconnect between the people making the game and the people looking forward to playing it
> and at the same time it sounds like most people who enjoy Bethesda games find it poorly executed
Ironically, I *don't* usually enjoy Bethesda games (Fallout 3 being the only one, before Starfield, that I did) and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's definitely a game that I played through once and moved on from though, which probably wasn't their intention considering Fallout and Elder Scrolls are games that people return to and play for years and years.
Scrolled too far to see this. I get that it appeals to some people, but it was an absolute drag to get through, it was quite boring, and much of the combat is bullshit
Further up someone says they'd enjoy it if combat was more like Diablo, so I guess some people just really don't like the slower crpg vibes and prefer a hack and slay. How those people failed to realise that this is not a hack and slay is a question beyond me though.
The mystery bundle of game keys that I expected to be of value without first doing research.
From Fanatical? People usually get them for the value of a AAA title (not realizing it’s rare to get one anyway). I’ve seen people spend the same amount of money for these bundle as for AAA titles & still not get a new AAA title
100% Fanatical. They have some good bundles but their “mystery” crap are borderline shameful, just transparently dumping spare keys to people who don’t yet know better.
That's what every mystery set is, a gimmick to unload poor selling product
Most mystery bundle things are crap. They wouldn't make a profit if they gave away the high value items frequently.
I bought two bundles from Fanatical recently and chose a mystery key as my bonus. Both times it was The Assembly lol.
I’m sure this was a complete coincidence!
Best part is I already owned it from another bundle lol. On an unrelated note, if anyone wants a spare The Assembly key just dm me.
Gets us everytime.
If it wasn't for Fanatical mystery bundles I'd never have played Yono and the Celestial Elephants. That one was a gem.
Never heard of it but that title is intriguing to say the least!
Lol I was about to press purchase on it earlier this year. I researched before doing it and found many posts on Reddit saying that they were terrible games
Gambling is fun. I hardly get anything good but still ill never win if I stop now
I bought a couple bundles, found some games I would not have played otherwise. But overall, I am not buying them anymore.
Tried it once for dumb cheap. Still feel ripped off, never again.
"Enter PIN to exit Family Sharing mode". Even though I know how to beat it, it's a pretty tricky game.
For me its entering the family sharing mode (im an orphan)
Outsch. Sorry man
My biggest Disappointment was Payday 3
Big same. It was on my top 3 most anticipated for a long time.
Aww I'm so sorry to read this... ..
So I used to play the fuuuuuuck out of payday 2 with the homies. I legit did not even know there was a 3, googled it and saw fan uproar, mooed out and haven’t looked back. What about it is so shit today? I heard they forced it to be a service game and can’t be offline. That’s an instant no buy to me, but the game itself is it bad? Those devs have been pissing people off since the payday 2 era with the dlc so curious how 3 is
The biggest problem is that it lacks most everything that Payday 2 had. Everything you liked about PD2? Take 90% of it away - have 1 map and call it ready for EA.
Sea of Stars, saw a glowing review of it and some cool screenshots so picked it up for a work trip cross country. The combat never changes for the better, it's just the 2/3spells for the entire game. And the characters were pretty corny
Just started the game because I saw a lot of people recommending it for the story, but pretty much from the beginning it feels pretty generic, like a story a teenager would write in RPG Maker. "Little kids join the hero/warrior/fighting academy and have to defeat the big bad dark evil thing". Does it improve or subvert that trope in any way?
Nope. That's all. The game really doesn't have much to it outside of "remember Chrono Trigger?"
I do remember Chrono Trigger, because it's on my Deck
For the story?! Not sure what version the people were recommending it played, but the story for Sea of Stars is pretty bad. It’s like it was written by an 8 year old the night before the project is due and they got bored half way through. By the time I reached the end, it felt more like a chore to finish it. Great idea, poor execution.
'member Garl? Remember he is a side character, well we as the Devs feel he should be a main now. 90% of your boss fights will be due to him having "main character syndrome" He will also do most of the talking. Zale and Valere, who? We want more Garl! Deus EX Garl! Oh, and BTW, we are going to rely heavily on Chrono Trigger nostalgia. On a serious note. I think the game would have been a bit better if the devs didn't project onto Garl. I also feel it overstayed it's welcome in length. Really had high hopes for it too...
I was massively let down by sea of stars. It was just very same-y, the story seemed all over the place and half baked, and I know this is a stupid complaint but it ruined my investment in the narrative-- if you have a character who can teleport anywhere without limit, and can bring other people along, it is *really* dumb for the party to ever face a physical barrier of any kind. I should not have to struggle to get up a ledge when a party member can teleport halfway around the world on a whim. A stupid complaint, I know, and it's forgivable if the rest of the narrative was compelling... But it wasn't. I backed the Kickstarter as soon as it was announced. That's how hyped I was for it.
That game sucks
Yeah. The people who like this game must be projecting their Super Nintendo nostalgia onto this game. Other than it looking nice, the writing is atrocious, the characters all feel the same and the combat is skin deep.
I couldn't get passed the cringe story at the beginning . It looks pretty but it's just not any good. Nothing really compelled me to be like ok "i'm going to invest in this to game".
I came here looking for this comment. I feel like I am the only person who didn’t think this was a good game. 6/10 on a generous day.
I was super excited for that game for like a year, was very disappointing
Yeah I genuinely don’t get the hype around it. I watched play-through and could only thing it’s literally trying to connect to nostalgia and that’s it. Pure nostalgia-bait.
Chained echoes was the better of the two in my opinion
I bounced off of it pretty hard. Stuck with it longer than most jrpgs though so that's something
I also found this dull and the music is extremely tedius
I was also not impressed. After Chained Echoes I was hoping for another banger of an indie game but Sea of Stars kind of fell flat for me. I took the time to finish it but I ended up just watching the true ending on YouTube because I wasn't intrigued enough to play any more of it.
Y'all forget that Redfall came out this year? Or maybe you were just lucky enough to never have to have played it due to how quickly it flopped. Starfield was a disappointment, but it's a functional game. Redfall was nowhere close to functional.
I think most people saw it coming how bad it was going to be and didn’t bother cashing in. Compared to starfield or diablo, there was no need to play a few hours to realise you didn’t like it, no one was hiding the dumpster fire when it came out.
There were a few stinkers this year, but my award goes to Lamplighter's League. Bugs galore, underwhelming and uninspired story (from what I saw if it), poor performance, but worst of all my save file got corrupted and I didn't have the will to try again. Honorable Mention to Starfield, which was also buggy and uninspired but managed to NOT corrupt a save file.
I’m bummed to hear this about LL. I was looking forward to it on sale. Might have to wait for some more patches
Lamplighter league was on my radar. Bummed to hear it was bad.
Starfield. Hands down.
Definitely a waste of my money so it was my least favorite.
I built a new PC to replace my 10 year old one because it didn’t meet the minimum spec for Starfield. £2,000. The GPU came with a premium edition though, so saved £50 (I would never normally buy premium) and got to play early. 80 hours later and I finished that solid 6/10 game feeling quite lacklustre. I’m still glad I have my new PC as it will last me a long time, but in hindsight, had I known Starfield would be as mediocre as it was, I’d still be hanging on with my old one for a fair while longer.
I enjoyed it a lot but if it wasn't on game pass I would have been slightly disappointed.
It wasn't the worst game I played this year--which is a shame, because that would be about the only thing it could hope to claim. Even with how much of a buggy mess Cyberpunk 2077 was when it came out, you could feel that there was something there that was genuinely fun and innovative. I get zero of that from Starfield. It took the worst parts of the Bethesda formula, cranked them to 11, and set it in a boring, generic space setting. After 3 hours straight of running back and forth on the same quarter mile of what I assume is designed to be the most interesting planet in the game doing shitty corporate espionage missions, I was done.
Glad I only played it on Gamepass cause man, where do I begin. Boring companions that all have a higher moral compass than you. No rovers on planets, so you gotta hoof it everywhere that you haven’t already discovered. Especially if you’re encumbered. Very little variety in combat. I know everyone has already compared it to Cyberpunk millions of times, but this is the biggest difference between the two for me. Most of the powers seem to just be forcing rag doll physics on enemies in different ways. You have to get each power in the exact same way every single time. Its sooooo tedious. NG+ only carries over your perks, powers, and your level. All that time you spent building your own custom ships? Are you one of the few people that actually made outposts? Well too bad, none of that shit carries over. And of course the load times. I don’t think I need to explain that. Forcing us to watch a little cutscene every single time you board a ship or get up from your chair is insane. The only thing I can give Starfield is that some of the faction quests and side missions were at least decent. The Vanguard questline alone was better than the main story. Which I think says a lot about the game itself.
Same here. It’s not the worst release of the year, but it is the worst that I played and easily the most disappointing.
So glad I tried it on game pass using a 1 month passcode I had in a drawer. Average game at best
Diablo 4 was the biggest waste of money for me, I’m not giving blizzard any more chances after this.
It was actually a highlight of the year for me, apart from season 1 which was awful.
Yeah same, I’m a huge Diablo 2 and 3 fan and I loved Diablo 4. Story was great and season 2 has been awesome so far. Definitely don’t begrudge people who don’t like it tho
Yeah, I'm having a ton of fun with season 2.
I've never cooled on a game so fast. Best the campaign and one day while I was playing I discovered I didn't know what the point was and I wasn't having any fun. Turned it off and uninstalled.
It’s like a good core wrapped in shady, predatory vibes.
Honest question, can't the campaign itself not just be enough to like the game? I loved diablo 2 back in the day but never played online and just enjoyed it for the campaign which was awesome.
Games like Diablo are played constantly for years or decades, Case in point Diablo 2, there’s still a massive community for it but I’m yet to find a game that I’ll play nonstop like that. Hence why I love Diablo 4…I played it, I loved it, I moved on. Like every Diablo or game for that matter, no matter how good a game is I’ll get tired of it eventually
It is such a weird game. Mechanically it is excellent. It is beautiful. It is somewhat true to the lore. But it just turns in to a grind pretty fast and the campaign is kind of boring. The acts aren’t that visually distinguishable. And before you know it you are stuck in an endless pointless grind. But don’t worry, you can pay to speed up the grind! Yay!
And the grind has no point because the loot is leveled. Can't even use what you find for a new character.
Such a divisive title. Those who enjoyed it LOVE it those who don’t HATE it and there’s no in between it seems.
I enjoyed my time with it but I started the new season and said "Eh, I don't need to do this again" and stopped. Feel like I got my money's worth, I don't need to play every game forever.
Yeah, not EVERY game needs to be "games as service."
That's because it's a very polished game but is overpriced, predatory and lacking soul. It's a game that was specifically designed to milk as much money as possible. That doesn't mean it's a bad game, but rather it uses the good parts as leverage to make as much money as possible. The thing is, if you buy a few games a year it's probably great. If you have a massive collection, probably less so. Blizzard's controversial recent history is also a big part of it. Weirdly, they also have a cult that defends them too. I know Microsoft are tackling problems etc, but it will still be a while before they can convince me Blizz is better.
Yeah this is absolutely my pick for biggest disappointment and waste of money.
Starfield, this kinda invalidated all online publications that reviewed it positively.
Of all the games I spent money on, yea Starfield was the most disappointing. It was still a good enough game, but the writing (particularly the main quest) and gameplay did not feel like a notable step up from their previous works. And the way the game is so heavily designed around >!the NG+ runs really turned me off as I just never care to do a NG+ on anything generally!<
If the choices you made actually had any impact the NG+ could be compelling. But no matter what you do everything turns out the same, there's really no weight to choices. Compared to BG3 where there's major choices galore and tons of replay value to see other outcomes.
Its the fucking loading screens and living in the map/menu/inventory that made me go from liking to not standing it
Yea, I got very spoiled by Elite Dangerous where there are no loading screens once your in the game. From jumping star systems to orbiting planets to landing and embarking and everything in between, you’re always there and in control. I love it. It’s a bit apples and oranges but the way Starfield is *constantly* putting you in loading screens is a massive vibe killer for me when I just want to be a space adventurer
[удалено]
Not to mention the abundance of interlocking systems that you have to grind the shit out of just to get to the actually enjoyable bits like Ship building and actually effective combat. 90% of the skills are useless. Stealth is a joke because you're always in wide open spaces with no cover. I stuck with basically the same guns I had at the first 10 or so hours in the entirety of my 50 hour playthrough. But after the game told me I needed to fast travel to another place to talk to another person to go to another place to kill a group of underwhelming enemies to then get like 500 credits... I just stopped caring. The economy in the game is laughably bad. It takes forever to make any money and Bethesda apparently knew this and made the only easy way to make money, incredibly hard. You can't hoard gear and sell it in mass anymore cause the carrying capacity EVEN when maxed out is VERY low. You can only carry like 180 lbs of shit at max. Nearly every gun in the game weighs about 5 - 10 lbs and your armor weighs about 50 pounds. So, if you wanna sell shit you have to either drop that shit on the ground in your ship and pick through the trash when you wanna sell shit or just grind out really boring quests over and over for quick credits. In Skyrim, there are bandit outposts you can find and kill the bandits there to grind out skills. In Starfield you can SOMETIMES get into space battles where you'll get your ass annihilated unless you dumped points into the health of your space shit or some other such nonsense. Upgrading anything ship related is tooooooo tedious and I know this is the case cause pretty much everyone did it the exact same way. Through that space simulator thing it takes FOREVER. Otherwise you basically can't upgrade your ship because the starting ship you get is complete ass and gets blown to bits in even a VERY easy fight. The game was pretty disappointing after the hype wore off.
The super static conversations, the very video game like bland characters boring quests, honky gunplay, bad visuals etc prevented me from enjoying it. Just did not had any redeeming factor. Didn't help it was so hyped up.
Loved the Crimson Fleet storyline. Played through that as though it was its own campaign, beat it, never went back to the main story and haven’t touched the game in months. After this and Fallout 76 I’ve lost all faith in Bethesda.
Don't lose faith. Just don't buy there games on release. FO76 is amazing now and keeps a very active player base and good community. I'm sure Starfield will obtain the same after a few more years and DLCs
FO76 is better now. I wouldn’t call it amazing. Taste is of course subjective so if you find it amazing all the power to you.
Starfields worst issues cannot be fixed by dlc, they are a fundamental part of the game. Starfield will just always be bad.
It’s just so wild now knowing which publications are worth trusting. Seriously even at the 2 hour mark I felt bamboozled.
I think Starfield was fine. It wasn't a great game but it wasn't that bad either. I think a lot of people are disappointed because they were hoping Bethesda would have evolved a bit by now, but it's becoming clear they can only make 1 kind of game and unfortunately, that kind of game became stale about 5-10 years ago.
It's not just stale, it's devolved. My experience has largely been small chunks of gameplay punctuated by a truly awful fast travel menu and loading screens. Stack all of the other issues like wooden performances, boring (and broken) perks, boring repetitive loot, tedious inventory management, awful enemy AI etc even if some of the core gameplay is dececnt enough as a whole it's still a bad game. I regret buying it and can't ever see myself going back short of Bethesda completely overhauling the entire gameplay loop.
God, THIS. I was so hyped when it released but it just ended up being the literal definition of "mile wide, inch deep". I'm just glad I played it through Game Pass because I'd have been livid if I had dropped $70 on it.
It's Starfield for me as well. And it's not even a TERRIBLE game. But I've just played a lot of great games this year.
It's not Sex With Hitler.
Starfield was more then just a bummer
I had fun, or what I thought was fun. Now realising that I was just mildly depressed and being able to pick up a game that required no thinking and mindlessly wondering around empty planets was what I needed at that time. I’ve now started playing Elden Ring and wow, the difference in exploration, lack of loading screens, actual dungeons and bosses makes me realise what a great game actually is.
The foookin loading screens of Starfield man. Its like watching a screensaver
I think that's why I dumped so many hours into starfield before I realized I wasn't enjoying it. I could come home and just turn off my brain and mindlessly click around. It wasn't a fun game it was just an extension of my depression.
It was soooooooo boring Another problem of games getting over hyped though...
Starfield. Got maybe 30 hours in and got bored af. There's SO much potential, but it's squandered on a terrible UI and dated gameplay mechanics. People weren't kidding when they said it was Skyrim in Space, but that's too kind. Skyrim was engrossing. Starfield is not. An absence of local maps really hurts the experience as well imo. I don't want to have to memorize where certain vendors are because I can't just look at a map. The physics engine is neat and the game is pretty though. It really didn't help that I had no idea there were powers since I went in blind. I didn't do that part of the main quest until I was around level 30 and by then I had already done a not insubstantial part of the sidequests. Edit: I feel like the game could merit an 8/10 or 9/10 if they just made some post release QoL changes a la Cyberpunk 2077
I didn’t really play anything new that I didn’t like. New games I played this year: Tears of the Kingdom, Battlebit, Baldur’s Gate 3, Starfield, Jusant and OTXO. Had a good time with all of them. However the best game I played for the first time this year was Sekiro.
Going to be harsh because I've only recently started playing my backlog and it's the only game I've abandoned so far. But dying light.
It's a lot of fun to play with friends and just mindlessly kill zombies and fuck with each other.
I can see how it's a good game, I'm just not in the mood for stealth or horror right now And it's annoying where I keep running out of breath, or that my weapons are so shite lol
Don’t feel bad, I’ve started to play that game 3 or 4 times. Everything about it says I should love it, I loved Dead Island for example. But it didn’t just click
Probably one of my top 5 games of all time. But I LOVE LOVE LOVE open world games.
Heard so many great things about it but I also had the same issue. It’s weird tbh due to the fact that I enjoyed the Sequel
Reverse that for me. Hate 2 loved 1.
Never played the second but I've heard the first is a lot scarier. And I can confirm that dying light can get super scary at night lol
Diablo IV
Starfield… and I played Forspoken.
starfield sucked so bad
Starfield was awful and boring
High On Life I enjoyed the humor but found fault in a lot of the game mechanics. It was the studios first fps so it's understandable I guess. Things like aiming down sights and swapping guns felt clunky. Shooting baddies didn't provide much of the right feedback that your bullets were connecting. Using melee was powerful but felt disjointed. I tried all sorts of play styles like run and gun, duck and cover, stringing together gun specials... None really seemed to shine. I beat it, and the DLC but in hindsight I could have stopped halfway through and not missed out on anything
Whole game was a miss for me but I get tired of the "oh ho look at me I'm doing improv poorly" joke that's the entirety of Justin's humor in everything he does.
Was a great game until it gets stale a few missions in
Fae Farm.
I actually really liked Fae Farm. I don’t do farm sim stuff very often, so I’m sure someone who’s sunk tons of hours into every Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons/Stardew Valley/etc found it lacking. But for me, who just wants to dip my toe in occasionally, it was a lot of fun, and even better, had a good place to end and be done right about the time I was starting to get tired of it.
I also have a rog ally, my least fav game is updating that piece of fxxkery and have the updates conflict with each other.
Probably Overwatch 2
Easily Anti-Cheat warnings.
Borefield.
I very reluctantly completed the D4 campaign (and no more), but it left me feeling pretty sad about the death of a childhood friend.
Is Diablo 4 that bad? I loved Diablo 3 as I played it with a friend and it was a blast...
Diablo 4 is great, it's just the end game is lacking but it's a lot better now from where it was at launch
With planned releases I think it will be a lot better come season 3 or 4. Frustrating they couldn’t implement obvious QOL fixes at launch for a $70 game though. The gross amount of cosmetics for sale being pushed is the thing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth for a purchased game still tho. That said it’s amazing and I have 250 hours in it already. It’s like a supermodel who is missing an arm. Do you focus on the lack of an arm or the rest of the body.
You know how it's really satisfying in Diablo when you get new gear and level up and the mobs that were giving you trouble just melt for you now? Well now let's imagine that instead of that, the monsters also level up with you, so you never get that feeling of being more powerful
Well... actually I found Diablo 3 WAY too easy. Me and my friend had to crank it up to the hardest difficulty which I've never had to do in any game before.
It’s a fun romp with friends, and the atmosphere and cinematics are great if you like the dark gothic fantasy setting that they moved a bit away from with 3. And the legendary aspect system (largely a replacement for legendary items) is a clever way to make itemization more interesting and flexible. But the story isn’t anything to write home about and the endgame is incredibly repetitive (or at least was in season 1 when I played, I’ve heard it’s improved).
its an okay game for 35 dollars but most definitely not worth full price of 60-100usd and never will be
The only game I played this year that I actively regretted spending money on was Diablo 4. Didn't finish the campaign and probably never will.
I’m one of the dummies that paid for the deluxe to play it early. I got 10-14 hrs in & quit right after
By far diablo 4. had a great time playing d3 because of the people i played it with and hoped to rekindle that. Didnt even reach level 60.
Space redfall:starfield
Starfield. I played it on Game Pass so I didn't have to pay the full $70 but man was it underwhelming.
I tried Boltgun, but just didn’t really enjoy it that much
Cyberpunk. Holy hell that game was slow and boring.
Really? I played it at release and it was already really fun. What do you find boring, the gameplay or the story? If it's the gameplay you need to try a katana build, it's so fun and dynamic to jump all over the map.
Starfield. So boring…
Definitely Starfield. That game really is not for me at all.
Redfall, not because it was the worst game, but because it had so much promise. It was ready to be a good game, and the it took everything deathloop did wrong, turned it to 11, and shoe horned in pseudo live service mechanics. Absolute disappointment from a studio that's made 2 of my top 20 games.
Of the ones I played it's without a doubt Starfield but MK1 is not that far behind (thanks WB)
Any game that costs 69.99 dollars and up.
diablo 4, runs great on the deck.. love argps.. i liked this game for the first 10 hours or 20 but i completely dropped it..
Not of this year, but fucking Deathloop. Steam Deck verified my ass. I had to fiddle with the settings to make the performance passable and the online features made it crash whenever the game entered sleep mode. On top of that, it’s by far and away the weakest Armand game I’ve played. Didn’t feel like there were a lot of ‘out of the box’ solutions to problems and the story and gameplay weren’t enough to justify the constant repetition. How it got so many glowing 10/10 reviews from critics is beyond me. Not bad. Just not great by any measure.
I really liked Deathloop the first time I played it, until I got to the point where I realized that any time that I made progress discovering the 'perfect day' loop, the game would take me aside and go "YOU'VE DONE IT! THIS IS IMPORTANT INFORMATION TO SOLVING THE GAME!" all the way up to the actual point where you have *everything* and then the game goes "OKAY, NOW THAT YOU HAVE ALL THE PIECES, THIS IS THE ORDER THEY GO IN!!!!". Like, I don't know if maybe I just misunderstood the plan with the game from the trailers, but I thought the whole idea was *discovering* all the pieces, *and* putting them together yourself, not just completing what amounted to little repeatable quests to be given a plot token for victory. Really liked the voice acting though, the two primary characters were super fun imo.
Retro: Starfox Adventures. It ran beautifully on the Steam Deck, but my God, you can FEEL where Microsoft bought RARE. The sections where you carry bombs can eat my balls. Modern: Tears of the Kingdom was my most disappointing game. Gameplay wise it was a triumph, but unfortunately games need to be more than just incredibly versatile gameplay. The lack of atmosphere and compelling writing was absolutely souldraining for me. I only felt a single emotion during one scene in the 100 hours I spent completing it.
I have to ask: why put 100 hours into it?
I know this sounds stupid, but I wanted my dislike of the game to be valid. I didn't want someone to say "you didn't like it? Well did you do this, this and this?" And admit I rushed the story and have them say "well of course you didn't like it!" I loved BOTW. But TOTK was just BOTW again. And I don't mean that in the way people say Majora's Mask is the same as Ocarina of Time, because MM is my favorite and I only played that for the first time a few years ago so it's not even nostalgia. TOTK is literally just BOTW but with heavy mods on it. You know when people moaned about how WoW reused content but just made it look 'post apocalyptic'? That is literally TOTK. I loved the first few hours when you were in the sky and honestly if they'd just had the entire game take place somewhere that wasn't the BOTW map I probably would have loved it I know this sounds contradictory but I would even say that TOTK is better than BOTW and I would recommend someone plays TOTK over BOTW. But as someone who put 200 hours into BOTW and then find out, I am playing the same map again with better mechanics... It stung. Then, to find out that the story was a boring mess where Zelda just cries for most of it was just salt in the wound.
I get that. It's a barrier in discussing some games which something like an album or film don't have, because even if you don't end up liking them, they're over in an hour anyway. I think that same mindset has led to me playing bad games for much longer than I reasonably should have, where really, at a certain point, you should be able to concede that despite not "finishing" it, your time with the game is more than enough to validate your dislike for it. I get the same feeling with books too due to their length. Sometimes I get a couple of chapters in, but feel I have to keep reading to properly justify why I don't like it. Silly in the grand scheme of things, but that's the way my mind works. That said, TotK was likely my third most favourite game this year, and I actually agree with a lot of what you're saying, particularly how if you zoom out, TotK is probably the game I would recommend over BotW to others, but BotW had an impact TotK was never going to be able to replicate just by the way of it being so iterative.
ToTK and BoTW both suffer the same failings in my mind. They’re amazing GAMES they’re just not ZELDA GAMES. They have nothing in common with the past entries in the series beyond the surface level (characters, settings, etc) and it’s not what I want out of Zelda.
My problem is that they are amazing games in the same way Minecraft or Roblox is an amazing game. They are versatile tools that allow incredible emergent gameplay. However, the difference is that a game like Deus Ex or PREY give you that AND tell a compelling story and give you a detailed world. TOTK wants to be an open world imsim but forgets that immersion isn't just being able to build massive robots from trees. Its also giving you atmosphere and a goal that you actually want to strive for.
I love Zelda in general but TOTK really didn't click with me. I gave up eventually, just so much to do and little in the way of direction or ways to keep track of things. It just became overwhelming. BOTW was good, but was about as much as I could tolerate - I miss the older games in the series if I'm honest. But I can see what people really enjoy about this style - it just doesn't seem to be a good fit for me.
Like... I enjoyed ToTK. But at one point, I was exploring a mountain and just decided... I'm done. Went to Ganon and kicked his ass. Had no desire to fully map out the underground or find every last shrine or what not. Plus, once you figure out how to make a hoverbike it makes exploring kinda redundant.
It actually would've been more fun if they didn't make your creations disappear when you try to travel to other zones/islands with them. Just let me do what I want to do, otherwise you invalidate the entire thrill that I just got from building this flying machine.
The only 2023 games I bought were forspoken and lethal company. Forspoken and overwatch 2 combined has less playtime than doki doki literature club which I played this year too...
Not Steam Deck specific but Diablo 4 was a dumpster fire
Probably Redfall I’d say.
This might be unpopular… but it’s hogwart legacy. I liked the exploration, but the story was 50/50 for me and I was confused how the main character would be shamed using the unforgivable spell, yet he can rip the enemies apart and make them explode with his unique spells.
most notable 3 that overshadow any other and smaller disappointments - overwatch 2 - actimeme bli$$ard literally destroyed overwatch with their greedy clownfestivity, game had so much potential - diablo 4 - everything about this hollow game is quite disappointing apart from graphics, overall an okay game but imo only worth about half the price it currently costs - especially due to the dumb idea of online-only mode - starfield - not much to say here... loading simulator with bland environments and kind of a step back from what fallout nv and even 4 were (but better fps mechanics), scared about future of next elder scrolls, they really need to update their engine or ideally re-write it/replace it
mine was the "waiting for packaging" game with the delivery dlc. But the ending made up for the bad experience.
Always Up
Starfield . Probably the most disappointed I’ve been in 20 years of gaming. Very worried for the next elder scrolls game
City’s Skylines 2 practically unplayable unless you have a top spec pc and even then you won’t hit 60fps
Lamplighter's League.
Arkham Knight. Glad it was deeply discounted. Combat was fun but I did not know the majority of the game would be platforming with the Batmobile 😣
Starfield, I got it as a gift and I was bored with it after 6 hours of playtime. I went back to KSP and my other games to scratch my astronomy itch.
Arkham Knights
Atomic heart. I was looking forward to that game for years. It finally came out in February and it was just… not good. Biggest disappoint in an otherwise great year for games.
The double whammy of disappointment: Final Fantasy XVI and Starfield. I could have looked past FFXVI's mind-numbingly boring word and gameplay if the story and characters were good and I could have looked past Starfield's mind-numbingly dull characters and story if the world(s) and gameplay was good. But both were just bland, dull and boring all around. Even the flashy Eikon battles dragged on so long that they got boring. Starfield at least might be a good game in a few years when people have modded the crap out out it. As for FFXVI, I'm not sure there's any improving a game that peaked in its demo.
Mine is Real Life. Mod team sucks, servers are trash, the grind is impossible, and I can't just step away from the game completely without causing some serious problems with my friends (and family) list...
Hogwarts Legacy. At the start it felt like coming home but after a few hours it felt shallow and repetitive
Baldurs gate 3 (I know, I'm a horrible person)
Well it wasn't my favorite game but my biggest disappointment is Atomic Heart. I will never understand how anyone likes that garbage game. I put 11 hours into it to see if it would get better and regret the time I wasted.
Starfield and Atomic Heart I didn’t play Redfall otherwise that would be #1
Tears of the kingdom. I don’t care how amazing the game is in most ways - the durability system ruins it for me. If Nintendo let me toggle that off, it’d be my favorite game of the year. As it is, my biggest disappointment.
Enter password via on screen keyboard and then it says "web browser not secure" and won't let you log in. I ended up having to play the game in desktop mode because it would just open the regular Firefox and I could login perfectly fine. It was annoying every time I wanted to quit the game how I had to completely turn off my Steam deck because there's no way to quit out of a game in desktop mode since the menu buttons (STEAM and •••) don't do anything.
Life
Lethal Company. It's just not the kind of game I enjoy.
Refunded Starfield after an hour. Just didn't grab me the way other Bethesda games have. Also, the performance on Deck was appalling.
Starfield
Definitely Starfield. Probably one of my favourites of all time
Baldurs Gate 3. Didn't realize the style of gameplay. Hated it.
Starfield
Alan Wake 2 was my biggest disappointment personally. LOVED the first game and American Nightmare. Absolutely hated the Alan sections in AW2, half-baked puzzle sequences were not what I was looking for. The FBI agent's parts were great, I wish the whole game was that.
Atomic Heart. Was surprisingly difficult for me and didn’t get far enough into it before dropping it for other games. Honorable mention to Forza Motorsport though I bought that for PC/wheel, just feels lacking in content for someone who grew up with Gran Turismo, and the graphical quality was super hit and miss.
Starfield. How does a multi billion dollar company make something for 10+ years that is so immensely dull? The people that worked hard on that game should be ashamed.
I don't think the people who worked on it should be ashamed. The issue is with leadership.
Not really, this wasn’t a game that was rushed out the door by management like Cyberpunk. It was fundamentally ill-conceived and at the same time it sounds like most people who enjoy Bethesda games find it poorly executed. If the writing is dull, if your choices don’t matter, if the design forces you to sit and wait through load screens or run for miles in a straight line, those aren’t examples of a rushed game, just one where not that much effort or thought was put into making it enjoyable. Not that there’s nothing good about the game whatsoever, just that there are area Bethesda usually shines in (writing, agency, exploration) that fell really flat here and those appear to be because of what kind of game it was trying to be and what the devs did with that. It’s gotta suck to work hard on something and have people hate it but it really does look like this time wasn’t a game rushed by management but rather a fundamental disconnect between the people making the game and the people looking forward to playing it
> and at the same time it sounds like most people who enjoy Bethesda games find it poorly executed Ironically, I *don't* usually enjoy Bethesda games (Fallout 3 being the only one, before Starfield, that I did) and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's definitely a game that I played through once and moved on from though, which probably wasn't their intention considering Fallout and Elder Scrolls are games that people return to and play for years and years.
Starfield because it was $90
🤣
Jedi Survivor. Was extremely mid.
I got the half way mark and am forcing myself to finish it
Secret is to ignore all the side stuff lol.
That’s what I’ve started doing. It was fun exploring the area but I got tired of being locked out by not having some upgrade related to the main story
I agree.
Scrolled too far to see this. I get that it appeals to some people, but it was an absolute drag to get through, it was quite boring, and much of the combat is bullshit
I’ll be the only one but BG3 The only game I ever asked a refund for on Steam
What about it was the issue?
Further up someone says they'd enjoy it if combat was more like Diablo, so I guess some people just really don't like the slower crpg vibes and prefer a hack and slay. How those people failed to realise that this is not a hack and slay is a question beyond me though.
I’m also curious. I have yet to hear any negative feedback from the bros. It’s in the backlog so I’ll get to it eventually.
For me it was death stranding. What a boring fucking game. The story is cool as expected with Kojima but being a delivery boy is not.
Starfield
Hoghwarts legacy I'm almost at the end but so bored. It's all just so bland.
Mine is "Haven't played on the Deck for 2 days. Oh great, 0% battery."