this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Patient Gamers

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A gaming community free from the hype and oversaturation of current releases, catering to gamers who wait at least 12 months after release to play a game. Whether it's price, waiting for bugs/issues to be patched, DLC to be released, don't meet the system requirements, or just haven't had the time to keep up with the latest releases.

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Personally there are a few games which left me very dissappointed, after hyping myself up for years in certain cases.

Divinity Original Sin: turns out I prefer more streamlined, less packed games (love Pillars of Eternity) and that coop play in a CRPG stresses me out.

Wasteland 2: I actually managed to finish this one but secretly I admit I was hoping for a better Fallout which I didn't really get. New Vegas did the cowboy theme much better.

INSIDE: while the design was cool, it was just a ton of boring, easy puzzles in comparison to LIMBO, its predecessor.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (5 children)

RDR2, I eventually caved and bought it after months of friends telling me how good it is. But the movement and control scheme are just so bad it instantly ruined the game for me. Even qwop has better controls.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

YES!

I've been a PC gamer for 25 years, and RDR2 is by far thebmost annoying control setup. Everything feels laggy due to the emphasis on fluid and realistic animations.

Plus it suffers feom the same issue as GTA5: "Press Key to progress story". They both seem more like open world tech demos to me.

Good graphics, though. But graphics don't matter if the gameplay is good.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Same here! It seems like a great game otherwise, but I just couldn't get immersed in it because of the controls. Didn't feel like I was playing as Arthur so much as watching him and hoping he'd do what I want.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Cyberpunk 2077 CD project red was the golden boy after Witcher 3 and the dlcs. They could do no wrong. Of course their next game was gonna be critically acclaimed GOAT right? Nope. Dumpster fire. Couldn’t play it for more than 30mins without it crashing. Unimmersive and confusing. That’s when I learned corporate greed has no limits

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly the worst about CP2077 wasn’t even the bugs. I also pre ordered it and while the performance was kinda shit and there was a bug or two, it was still playable. Yes we shouldn’t let it slip but unfortunately it’s also kind of the standard these days.

However the game was shallow af and not at all matching what we had been told for years. The whole, create your own story from scratch? Yea you choose some background option, have a 1 min cutscene and then that’s basically it. We had been told that would be hours of gameplay depending on the option and it was a short cutscene.

The whole city was supposed to feel completely alive and you were told that you would be able to do whatever you wanted. That wasn’t close to true either. Plenty of stuff like that.

Luckily I had bought it on GOG to support CDPR because I had loved the Witcher games. Was able to refund it entirely and never locked back. Not even looking to play it anytime soon and maybe ever.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

God I hope I don’t add starfield to this list!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It’s a modern bethesda title. Not to be pessimistic, but you should probably lower expectations for it. It has a high chance to be 1. Buggy. 2. Shallow and derivative in both mechanics and story. 3. Full of DLC and shady monetary models. Bethesda succumbed to corporate greed and formulaic design principles a long time ago.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The Outer Worlds.... Hyped so much for it... Even snorting through my nose at the outer wilds..... Thinking they use to similar name just clicks

Now the outer wilds is one of my favorite games of all time. And the outer world is currently sat in my steam library with less than 10 hours. Just couldn't engage me.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

How did they manage to take many of the elements that could make a good game and just make it..... forgettable? I played it to the end, because I like walking around shooting things. I think that is about it.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

I'm not disappointed at the game but on myself.

I patiently waited for Elden Ring to go on sale, excited to play it. But the reality is i don't have enought time to play.

So what happens is I die a few times, restart my progress, die a few more, then my IRL game time has ran out. And I'm still where I started, no progress made,.

If i consistently evade enemies just to get far on the map, then what I've done is stunt my character progression and just horse around the map. I mean that's not playing, it's being a tourist inside the game.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

May I offer some unsolicited advice.

  1. Your damage output is as important if not more important than "getting gud". The more damage you do, the fewer attacks you have to dodge. That's kind of the secret to all these Souls games.

  2. Damage output and damage mitigation come from stacking many small, incremental bonuses. The most important upgrade for damage output is upgrading your weapon with ores. Pick one weapon (eg. Longsword) and invest all ores into it. Any weapon is viable for the whole game as long as you upgrade it. Don't be afraid to commit ores into your chosen weapon as you will eventually have an unlimited supply.

  3. It's possible to suicide-run into dangerous areas for powerful items since you don't lose items upon death. You can collect mid and high-tier ores this way even at low level.

  4. It's perfectly okay to farm exp from higher level, non-bosses. It's low risk since you'll be near a rest site. A good example is killing Vulgar Militiamen from the Farum Greatbridge site in the most northeast area of Caelid. You can horse yourself there ignoring everything. There are plenty of ideal spots that people have found, just look them up.

  5. If you're still having trouble, do each step in the following video as you see fit. Notice that most of these improvements are obtained by acquiring items, and not obtained by leveling up. https://youtu.be/GYI5Z3jhKB4

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

A lot of them you are meant to run past, you don't get meaningful xp from mobs until you get to late game secret areas, early game just Google where dungeons are, ride torrent to them and kill bosses for levels

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Fallout 4....

I was patient on it. Mostly involuntary, but patient still. It was incredibly disappointing. So many amazing features from 3 and NV was gone. Speech is a joke. So you want to agree, agree but be an ass about it, disagree, or disagree and be rude about it.

Those are your options in every single encounter.

It's a good RPG game overall. Just not a good Fallout game.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I was coming to this thread to answer the same. New Vegas was probably my favorite game of all time, with it's unique charm and creative blend of stories and character mechanics. I couldn't make it past 5 or 6 hours of the FO4 (I really wanted to give it a chance), before I dropped it for good. Bethesda wanted to make an action shooter with a twist, and they did a good job of that, but it lacked the creative "it" factor that made me sink 600+ hours in NV across multiple playthroughs. Just talking about it makes me want to boot it back up right now!

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm going to call it now and say Starfield...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That demo thing they did a while back looked pretty lack-luster.

"make any ship you can imagine" while they cycle through like 5 premades, 2 of which have the exact same cockpit...

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The original Fable. I wasn't yet aware of Moleyneux's reputation as a liar and bought into all the neat shit that was supposed to be in the game. Like at one point he said you could cut a tree and then adventure for years in game and the scar would still be there. Outrageous to think now, but he also said there would be a dragon fight and even back then this wasn't difficult to make happen, yet it didn't even have a dragon.

Also Oblivion. I had found Morrowind and fell in love, went back and got Arena and Daggerfall and loved those, too. They talked about all kinds of things it would have and showed graphics that looked top tier in magazines during development. It came out and didn't look as good, was majorly dumbed down compared to Morrowind, and had even more technical issues. It was disappointing, but it still turned out to be a fun game regardless.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Elden Ring

It's just Dark Souls 3.5. Which is not necessarily bad if you really liked DS3 and just want more of the same thing, but I considered DS3 by far the weakest in the series to begin with, and playing the Nioh series after it has opened my eyes to just how much room for improvement there is in the DS series as a whole. From Soft has basically followed the same path as Bethesda - they used to make varied games until one of them randomly became wildly successful, and from that point onward they haven't had the balls to deviate from the winning formula and have just been remaking that same game over and over with a slightly different coat of paint each time. Which makes sense from a business point of view, I guess, but after this many repetitions, it's become clear to me From Soft is totally creatively bankrupt. Hell, it's been more than a decade since Demon's Souls, and they still can't even figure out a better counter to the "roll behind them and stab them in the butt" strategy than making enemy tracking ever more effective and their movements ever more spasmodic and unreadable in each subsequent game. The end result of this complete lack of willingness and/or ability to innovate is that despite being expertly crafted, Elden Ring feels very by-the-numbers and utterly soulless (if you'll pardon the pun).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I often describe Elden Ring with the following sentence: "If you gave me this game with no title and told me it's Dark Souls 4, I would have no reason to doubt you".

It's great for everyone that wanted more Dark Souls, and ER is arguably a good starting point for anyone that hasn't played any of the Dark Souls, but it's still Dark Souls. If someone had tried Dark Souls in the past and realized that they don't like the game, I really wouldn't expect Elden Ring changing that.

For me personally: Elden Ring is pretty much my favourite game of all time. I feel like it's the "culmination of Dark Souls design", and just happens to be exactly what I was personally looking for in DS games - but even with this in mind, I don't feel the need of getting more of the same.

But hey, as for Fromsoft just doing the same thing over and over - Armored Core VI coming out next week, and that's quite different. :D

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion is probably my best answer. Remains the only modern Elder Scrolls that I've only played through once with no desire to return to. Feels clunky and sluggish, the world is washed out and bland, the enemy scaling is a slog, itemization is not interesting or impactful, the UI is uncomfortable, etc. While it does a lot of things better than Skyrim, I just can't bring myself to enjoy the experience like I did Morrowind, and I admit I've sunk far more hours into Skyrim as well.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (16 children)

This one is wild to me. Oblivion very well be my favorite game of all time. I love the world it is set in so much. Skyrim is actually my answer for this question because I was expecting the game to to be as good as Oblivion.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

When I finally played Red Dead Redemption 2. I usually don’t play this type of big budget game, but my friends loved it and kept talking it up. I waited for years for a steam sale until it was finally about $20. Also, I loved outlaws (1997) and was pretty keen for another cowboy game.

An hour of listening to guys walk through the snow and I was out.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Mirror´s Edge. 9/10 on Steam. I bought it during the last sales. The gameplay is playing again and again and again the difficult jumps until you make it. It's boring.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I recently replayed that game after 10+ years. I think I could count the number of difficult jumps that required more than two attempts on one hand. The game is like $1-2 on a sale and you can beat it in 3 or 4 hours. I thought it was fun, but I could see how it would be disappointing if your expectations were higher than minimal.

Mirror's Edge: Catalyst was much better IMO. Actual story. Decent characters. Free roam. Side quests.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

For me it's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. After Breath of the Wild I was super hyped for a successor. When they announced they were gonna reuse the same exact game world I was a bit worried but thought it could work if they do it well.

Well here we are with like 90% of the content being reused. The gameplay is more interesting than Breath of the Wild and the dungeons are better and so is the story. But my main draw for Breath of the Wild was exploring the world. All this fun is missing in TOTK. The new parts of the world like the sky and underground are pretty bland and not quite as much fun to explore as an entirely new game world would be.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I really wonder what it is about TotK that makes for such wildly different opinions. Everything about TotK was a vast improvement over BotW for me. Up to and especially including revisiting the same locations to see how they’ve changed and exploring all 3 levels of the map to their fullest extent. I stopped playing BotW the moment I beat it after ~90 hours of play time. But I’ve continued to return to TotK nearly 300 hours in now, after beating it in about the same 90 hours originally. It’s just endlessly interesting wandering and getting sidetracked and finding / figuring out side quests.

I have a couple friends who beat it for the sake of beating the next Zelda game but the majority of my small circle continues to play, some even putting off beating it just to explore more. It’s very interesting seeing such different approaches, hearing what people focused on and how they tackled the openness. I’m not sure I witnessed the same phenomenon with games like Skyrim. Something about this one feels different at least. Hard to describe.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (6 children)

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It was so tedious to get through the opening area that by the time I got to the first dungeon I was getting tired of it. It did get better after that dungeon and the game opened up a lot more, but it one of my least favorite Zelda games.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (16 children)

there's one i'm currently under nda for that's still in testing and man. idk. hoping the next test flight feels better. theoretically close to release atm. sorry for vagueposting.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Planet Zoo.

As a kid who grew up playing Zoo Tycoon, I was STOKED for a new Zoo management game. I even built a whole new computer to run it.

Turns out it's more of a 3-D modeling program than a management/simulation game. And I don't have the time or patience to figure it out.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Diablo 4

Really loved the first cinematic and enjoyed the Beta. But I'm already bored after reaching lv 30. Haven't played it in weeks. I don't know, the MMO aspect kinda ruined the expirience for me and the combat isn't fun enought to keep me engaged.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Elden Ring. I was looking forward to a more mainstream Dark Souls with a story written by GRRM, but it turns out I just don't jive with those games at all, no matter how polished they are.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Hollow Knight. Finally bought this after getting the stream deck. I just remember thinking: This is it? This is what everyone has been raving about? I think I played it two or three times, then completely forgot about it.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Interesting, hollow knight is maybe my favorite game ever made. It's always interesting to see how differently other people relate to things

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Horizon Zero Dawn

I thought this would be right up my alley but I really did not like the protagonist and the fighting and exploring seemed kind of boring.

The Last of Us

This game gets praised all the time but it felt too limited and 'on rails' whilst the gunplay and stealth was not for me.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Horizon is my answer too. I was expecting an open world that felt alive, but instead it was a jam-packed theme park. You don't hunt, you go to the right exhibit and kill everything within it. The entire herd is within a 50 meter radius, go nuts. Go away and come back later and it'll be full again, exactly where it says so on the map, jammed between other points of interest with extensive, contrived looking plarforming challenges connecting it all. It's like a zoo and a vending machine had a baby but we're supposed believe it's a big open natural world. Great concept, garbage execution. I felt like Bobby Hill hunting at La Grunta.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Torment: Tides of Numenera
But I think I’m mostly disappointed in myself for not sticking with it. I joined the kickstarter, followed all the updates and was genuinely excited to explore the world being described.
When it finally came out I only played it for a few hours before losing all interest in it. Too much text and everyone seemed to have their life story to tell. Which is odd, because usually I love text heavy games with tons of lore.
Every so often I tell myself to give it a second chance, but never seem to be able to muster the energy to follow through.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Assassin’s Creed III. I know it’s considered one of the weakest entries in the series, but I absolutely love the time period it’s set in. That alone had me excited. Decided to finally give it a try recently and quickly found out that all the criticisms are valid. It’s not very fun, the story is extremely bland, there are multiple glitches throughout, and the modern day sections are just the absolute worst. I don’t ever expect much when it comes to the AC series (especially the titles from that time) and can usually find something enjoyable in them. Not the case with III.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Outer Wilds. I just don't understand why everyone loves it so much. I thought it was boring.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

There's moments in the game that really hit. Just a amazing wow experience. Its been a few years and your comment still makes me think about it.

And if they didn't, totally understandable.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Oh, quite a lot over the years, but to pick a few I can readily think of:

Cyberpunk 2077: My one big prepurchase the recent few years. And it turned out to be laughably bad. I mean I was expected it to be fairly buggy, but even given that it far outdid even my worst imaginations. Not only was the game insanely unbelievably buggy on release (and frankly it still is, they only patched the actual breaking issues not the constant barrage of weirdness), but it is just... not very good? It has pleny really good components, but the sauce sticking it together is devoid of any design or soul, leaving it to feel like a can of ravioli with too few actual ravioli in it.
Doesn't help that the main quest was, IMO, bad to the point of caricature. At least the handful of amazing secondary quests more than made up for that one. Still, overall one of my biggest disappointments of my 30 years of video gaming, especially in how underdesigned it is even ignoring all the bugs.

Divinity Original Sin 2, specifically co-op: I don't know. This got hyped so much for that particular feature. Yet while the combat moment-to-moment gameplay is hilarious in co-op, following the actual story - basically why I play these kind of games - felt supremely irritating, more so because of how frequently characters get forced into conversations the other player then has to opt into no matter where they were at the time or what they were doing. In a lot of ways I wish co-op would have been more restrictive, to more readily support co-op story consumption.
But it's also weird, because like I said, combat-wise the co-op is amazing. Still, was quite disappointed overall.

Overwatch 2: Feels like a cheap pick, but wow was this a disappointment. Between the dropped PvE, the frankly insulting replacement they're now rolling out for it and their complete unwillingness to acknowledge the switch to 5v5 in hero reworks and balance changes - and hence how half-arsed the entire balance feels - this makes me long for an OW1 clone that really just freezes OW1's state, as clearly trying to modify it didn't work out.

Ultima IX: I don't know how many here are old enough to remember this. It was so hyped. It looked so gorgeous. It was so amazing to see it all in this 3D. And then when it came out, not only could it at best run at glorious 10FPS on my machine (and I had a beast of a PC for the time), it was also buggy and underdeveloped enough that I figure it might just have been CDPR's inspiration for how they worked on CP2077. Plus, in U9's case, there's the extra insult that the story and dialogue is quite inconsistent with the previous games, which was a real head-scratcher. Just a disappointment all around. A really big one.

The Dig: This is a weird one to remember. Because in a lot of ways, I also would say The Dig is one of the best point&click adventures ever made. But it was so bewildering and disappointing to younger me, I just came off the supremely accessible and clever Fate of Atlantis having played it late, and there was so much hype for The Dig, so naturally I got it. I was so disappointed.
Now to be fair, looking back upon it now I can recognize that a mix of my hype and the way FoA went against a ton of industry standard for the time was priming me for said disappointment. It's a good game in a lot of regards, in particular in selling the actually alien vibe of it. But it also has "logic" that would make Sierra Games proud. At least I didn't have to use a necklace on the moon (IIRC) 😂.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I don't really understand the premise. The point of being patient imo is to avoid the hype.

So I'll just answer the question if disappointment in games generally:

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It knew it was different, but it still didn't feel like Zelda to me, so it didn't scratch that itch I had. I'm enjoying Skyward Sword much more than BotW, the first dungeon just feels like I'm back in Ocarina of Time, the forest feels like Minish Cap somehow, and the premise reminds me of the original The Legend of Zelda (get the sword and go off on an adventure without knowing where you're headed). BotW is my least favorite Zelda game, mostly because of disappointment. When I heard Tears of the Kingdom was much the same, I didn't bother getting it. Maybe I'll get it eventually, but I have no desire to play it.

Borderlands. I had avoided the game so successfully that I knew nothing about it other than that it was a shooter RPG, but I knew it was popular among friends. I missed the window when it came out, so I figured I'd give it a shot. After about 15 minutes, I realized it was just a looter shooter and noped right out. For some reason, I absolutely hate the genre and was disappointed that's what my friends were so hyped for.

Lords of the Realm III. I loved Lords of the Realm 2 as a kid and played the original at a friend's house and enjoyed that too. So when Lords of the Realm III came out, I naturally wanted it. However, they threw out pretty much everything I liked about the previous games (strategy around county/resource management) and doubled down on everything I didn't like as much (sieges) and it just felt like a worse version of the Total War games. Because of this game, one of my life's goals is to remake Lords of the Realm by preserving the good parts of each game in the series, essentially to make the Lords 3 game I wanted.

So these days, I watch gameplay footage before diving in to a game, because that would've avoided my problems with each of the above. There isn't really a game I'm waiting for, I just have a big wishlist of games that looked interesting at one point that I'll review when I'm looking for a new game to play.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Supreme Commander 2. Threw out all the things I respected from the first game and swapped in a bunch of trendy bullshit that I did not. A crushing disappointment.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Yeah, unfortunately:

  • Horizon Forbidden West
  • God Of War Ragnorak

I was extremely excited for it on PS5, however when playing them - I felt bored after a few hours. Quit playing and never went back.

Don’t know whether it was just overhyped for me or just not my type of game anymore.

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