Games you've played to remind yourself why you don't play them anymore...

So, I made a terribly error this evening. I was going to sit down and get some quality time in with Catherine or FFI when I got this weird burr up my ass about how I haven't touched some games in my library. I stumbled upon FFX-2 which I have not touched since I beat it 7ish years ago. I figure, what the hell, I lost my old save file when I lost my memory card, and maybe its time to take a second look at that battle system everyone lavishes with praises. So I threw the game in and spent the evening playing, only to be horribly reminded why its been nearly a decade without so much as a spark of interest in strolling through it. While the gameplay is certainly the high point here, I completely forgot how stupid the story was, and how utterly trashy the dialogue was. If I ever bring myself back to play it, I will have to shut off the subtitles and play it on mute, if I wish to continue on...

So, when was the last time you played a game you haven't touched in a long time only to discover how awful it has aged, or has just always been?

The last one was probably Assassin's Creed actually. Flying through the last four or five assassination's before starting the second game made me remember not only how utterly mediocre it was as a whole, but how god damn annoying much of it was. I think I may have actually grown to dislike the game more because I forced myself to go through so many missions in the span of a day or two.

I've also been getting a bit of an urge to play Gran Turismo 5 again lately, but I'll be damned if I'm going to fall for that. It was decent enough at the start, but the problems pile up so high towards the end that I wanted to murder the Polyphony team. Luckily that's all too fresh for me to fall for it. Also, I think the game Mission Impossible for the N64 sort of qualifies in the sense that when I bought it a couple of years ago it was every bit as terrible as I remember, but I knew that going in and like it in spite of that.

Ugh yeah, the first Assassin's Creed. It's why I always tell everybody to just burn through it before even thinking about touching the sequels. The story is very interesting, but the gameplay has flaws that are impossible to ignore once you've played with all of the amazing improvements of later titles. The first time is like, oh wow this is cool but I need to take a break because it's getting on my nerves a bit. Plus you can drown in a knee high fountain. You dive into it from up high, and then instead of Altair being like "ouch, I fell from a high ledge!" he does his drowning animation and game over :<

Final Fantasy VII and Suikoden IV

Gran Turismo is a good call. I had GT3 for PS2 back in the day and every few months I got the itch to play it, only to remind myself how boring non-Mario Kart racing games are.

The most recent game for me is MvC3. I play it because I love the style and visuals but every time I play online I just get reminded how bad I suck at that game.

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Originally Posted by Del Murder

Gran Turismo is a good call. I had GT3 for PS2 back in the day and every few months I got the itch to play it, only to remind myself how boring non-Mario Kart racing games are.

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I'd say we have vastly different reasons for picking them though. GT5 is on my list because it's just a really bad game after you get past the first few initial races. GT3 and GT4 are hands down to of the best racing games I've ever played though.

I can't really think of any games I've gone back to and found to be significantly less than I remember them being.

Guess I just don't wear nostalgia goggles?

Kinda got that feeling popping in GT5 a few weeks ago but it's more of a case of me needing to spend a lot of time with it to build up my skills and then breeze past a couple races. Thankfully, whenever the main mode becomes a bore, the Special Races are like a second game (or multiple smaller games) unto themselves of interesting and fun challenges :)

Final Fantasy IV is one. In fact, I've kind of really hit that point where you first uncover the ugly spots of the title. The presentation is better than ever on PSP but I just can't ignore the gameplay anymore for this one. One, there's no customization system, and that's fine, some of my favorite DQ games don't have one and Xenogears isn't terribly worse off for it. But the battles really are just relentless slashfests with flying numbers that coudln't possibly be less meaningless. Because of how unbalanced the Gil rewards are, it's one of those FFs where you might as well have an inexhaustible cache of potions and hi-potions to heal up after a slashfest that gets your health kinda low. Because the dungeons don't have any clever puzzles or key paths to figure out, they're all just boring dungeon crawls with meaningless battles in order to buff the play time on the clock. And that's really lame. The story was good for its time, and the presentation makes it a classic RPG, but that's just not enough for me anymore.

Okami comes to mind. It took a third playthrough three years after the first to realize this game would be absolutely incredible if they would just have scrapped 90% of the dialogue. Wait, did I say dialogue? I meant monologue. And I'm looking at Issun. A.k.a. the spoiler of mental challenge.

SPOILERCan you imagine Okami without words? It would be paradise.

I was just wishing for a skip button.

I went back to play rumble racing wearing nostalgia goggles. I took off said nostalgia goggles and was still having a blast.
I probably could find a time when I replayed old games to find out why I stopped, but I can't remember any of those times.

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Originally Posted by Del Murder

The most recent game for me is MvC3. I play it because I love the style and visuals but every time I play online I just get reminded how bad I suck at that game.

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That's okay, since MvC3 sucks as a whole.

Zoo Tycoon.

Nevar again.

I've never seen so many Okami dislikers in one place (not just talking about this thread, but I've seen tons of hate for it in other threads for some reason). That game showed Zelda: TP how it was done IMO. :kakapo:

The most recent one I can think of is the Lunar Silver Star Story remake for PSX. I don't know how the hell I was able to play through it back then (the Eternal Blue remake too). But I can play the original Lunar games for hours without getting tired of them. Must be because the remakes are so horribly slow.

Most recently for me it's been Bioshock. It took me a long time to beat it when I played it for the first time a year and a half ago. A couple of months ago I figured I just didn't 'get' it my first time through and decided to give it another shot. But nope. I made it to the second level and just put it down and took it out of my PS3, probably for good.

Another was Mass Effect 2. I'd never played it until it was released on the PS3. I rented it, thinking a Bioware game would finally click for me. Unfortunately I was just reminded why everything the company makes just bores me to tears.

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Originally Posted by Polnareff

I've never seen so many Okami dislikers in one place (not just talking about this thread, but I've seen tons of hate for it in other threads for some reason). That game showed Zelda: TP how it was done IMO. :kakapo:

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Chalk me up as another Okami disliker. I never finished it and about a year ago I loaded up my old save and figured I'd resume my game already halfway through. Once the little bug started interrupting me at every point of interest on the map I stopped again. Twilight Princess was pretty bad like this too, but it had some amusing dungeon design that made it a lot less annoying.

Most recent one for me was Megaman Battle Network 4.

I keep it on hand, always, as my benchmark of "worst sequel of all time". I pick it up every now and then, not to enjoy it, but to wonder at the sheer artistry of how thoroughly and methodically a solid game series can be utterly destroyed by a single entry.

Seriously, the problems with FFX-2 don't come close to touching what's wrong with MMBN4. I don't think they could have made that game worse if they tried. And yet MMBN3 was one of my favorite GBA RPGs (after Golden Sun, of course).