Warframe. 3500 hours in about 5 years.

I watched it develop from just a fun little “be a magic space murderhobo” into a game with some actual story behind it (and some kinda cool cinematic story missions… that went a bit off the rails when they made time canonically non linear)

The unfortunate part for me was the reputation gating and crafting materials grind. Every new update brought another new material and another new hub world with another dozen or so NPC’s to increase your popularity with by running the same missions ad nauseam, just to get another weapon you were going to level up for the Mastery Rank exp and never use again.

I started in the days before Mastery Rank 30 was anywhere near possible, after hitting L1 (30+1) and realising there was no appreciable difference to gameplay I completely lost any reason to play.

I had hopes that there would be something big once you hit the original “max rank”, even if there was intent for the devs to continue adding more after that. I had thought there would be some change in the way the game played, like they would reduce the crafting times from 4 days (a new warframe requires 4 blueprints, a head, systems and torso, all 12h crafts, then a 24 hour craft to stitch them all together, all 4 steps requiring blueprints and materials which are RNG drops from different specific enemies on specific map types/planets/hub world areas gated behind reputation)

The GRIND was unreal. They had to roll back their crafting quantities on Railjack after each individual component, of which there were 6, took 1 million credits and 4 sets of 4 figues worth of materials. I nolifed that game hard enough at the time that I spent an entire week (including wait times for the crafting itself) just to build a ship that was advertised as a ‘dropship for you and your mates to use both in space and as air support on the open world areas’ but that became a “use in very specific missions and one big gamewide event that’s never coming back”

Don’t even get me started on trying to earn platinum (RMT currency to instantly complete a blueprint that’s crafting or buy a new cosmetic/weapon/frame without the crafting steps)

Saying all that, it was a good way to spend time during covid.

Dark Souls 3. I have 160 hours in Dark Souls 3, and I hated probably 90% of it. Its just such a boring slog, it’s when Fromsoft imo jumped the shark with what i call, “flailing boss syndrome.” So many bosses and enemies in DS3 just flail wildly with such little telegraph or strategy other than, roll away, and mash roll. Dodging should be a strategic maneuver that lets you avoid damage and change your position, but it really hasn’t been that since Dark Souls 2.

DS3 is what started the whole dodge slop thing thats so prevalent in modern souls likes. Ironically, Bloodborne, which also has flailing boss syndrome, is one of my favorite games of all time, but the game is a lot more deliberate in its design around those kinds of bosses… minus a few.

I think DS3 is too Action, not enough RPG for me as a Souls game. Bloodborne is unique enough to be a separate category for me, and Elden Ring’s weapon ashes really add a lot more flavor and gameplay, along with letting you really diversify your build more. Plus I think the bosses in Elden Ring are more readable, and block is actually something you can feasibly do. (Though I do think they need to decrease the dead angle that can hit you when blocking.)

I just despise Dark Souls 3 so much, all everyone talks about are the late game bosses, but dont mention the slog of areas you need to get through to get to any of the good bosses.

But is DS3 a bad game? probably not, its probably a me problem. DS2 set my expectations up in the sense that DS2 was completely different gameplay wise to DS1, where as DS3 felt like a more generic sequel to DS1 rather than expanding and making the game feel different or unique. DS3 was just DS1 but super fast and that’s really it. I guess i just wanted something different.

Blue Prince. After reaching room 46 and realising that the game was just getting started, I immediately gave up. This is probably the game that respects the player’s time the least that I ever played.

It has amazing lore and overall feeling but is ruined by the RNG. It’s somewhat bearable in the first part but becomes extremely annoying when you know what to do but can’t because of unlucky draws or not enough steps left.

GTA 5, meh story, boring combat, no real progression. Don’t really get the hype

Dota

Rage 2. I really wanted to love it because I did love Rage 1. But 2 was fun in short burst between saves not working and the game just crashing. And overal the game just lacked that certain desolate atmosphere of the first.

I hate it when they populate games with meaningless npc’s just because they can. Each village easily could have done with half of them if they felt somewhat believable.

They tried a bit too hard to be Postal 2 in a setting that clearly doesn’t call for it.

Eventually I just powered through begrudgingly to get the main campaign over with.

Cataclysm dark days ahead. You think a low scifi world set in the close future where 5 (maybe more) apocalypses went off at once? The original developers did, sadly the new guys seem to hate the idea. Every update for years has focused on stripping the fun out of the game, it’s only a matter of time before they remove the zombies for being too unrealistic.

Cities Skylines 2. I’ve got thousands of hours in the SimCity franchise. Over 500 hours in the original Cities Skylines. CS2 is a fucking mess of a game. It actually ran pretty decently on my PC when it first came out but you could tell it was an incomplete mess right away. The simulation was non-existent. The game looked like dog shit. The only way to get it to run decently was to turn everything down to low and medium. Somehow I squeaked out 75 hours in that first 3 month release window. For a working adult with responsibilities, that’s a lot of time for me now. I install it occasionally and see if it’s any better. It’s not. I did this last week and it actually runs worse on the same PC than it did at launch which is counter to what most people are experiencing.

Mods through the Paradox launcher is a necessary evil for the game to function. I can barely get it to run stable without mods, I don’t think tricking out the game is gonna help the situation. It’s such a sad case of a game killing a whole genre. Especially when it’s my genre. I love city building games and no game has hurt more than Sim City 2013. I didn’t even play SC2013. I watched my favorite franchise die and made probably the smartest decision of my gaming life by saying fuck no to that mess. Fucking Cities Skylines 2 is right there with it, but I made the opposite choice. I gave it a chance and it stings all the time.

What’s even worse is how such a staple of my childhood has turned into an almost impossible task to recreate. I’ll never understand how gaming went from being able to produce 4 generational city building titles in ~10 years to not being able to get one to function at the same level at all in 20. You can count CS1 sure, but even that game was missing something compared to SC4. CS1 is not even close to the same level of SC4. Even now when the game is hard to run on modern hardware.

What’s even more killer is we see other examples of Maxis era staples getting second life in new franchises all the time. Planet Zoo 1 and 2. Transport Fever for Transport Tycoon. Planet Coaster taking it’s place next to Roller Coaster Tycoon. Hell even the Jurassic World Evolution series fills a gap from the old Jurassic Park Genesis game. But the modern city building attempts are all backwards attempts.

They all focus on the wrong thing. Agents. They all want to be able to simulate every living being and everything they do. It never works. It’s why the newest Citystate is such an intriguing project. They’re not doing every individual agent. And the dev finally decided to focus on modernizing the engine to work with fully 3d spaces. There’s a couple contenders out there that are a year or two away. Citystate, Metro 1998 even though that’s more of a throwback. City Masterplan. If just one of these games hit, we’re back in business. Until then I’ve watched my favorite genre die twice. Hopefully the third time is the charm in terms of longevity.

Hades - I haven’t seen anyone list this one yet. It was the first roguelike/roguelite I ever played and it taught me that I don’t like roguelikes/roguelites. It tried to like it, but it’s just not for me. Luckily, son boy loves it so it’s not a total waste.

I always dislike The Witcher 3. As many times as I tried to like it as many reviews as I read that it was amazing. Dear God the controls sucked and I hated that game. No matter how many times I try it.

This isn’t a “lot” of time, but I spent 19 ish hours to complete Under the Island. I don’t want to be harsh on an Indie game, but the game let me down so badly. I wanted a Zelda-like and this had some really interesting ideas. It was just that everything between the ideas was terrible. The plot was predictable and boring. Characters weren’t. The mini games were some of the worst I have ever seen. Navigation was obnoxious and often relied on the top down perspective hiding the REQUIRED path with little to no indication that you could walk “through” an obstacle. I could go on.

Why did I play it through? I just kept hoping that everything would live up to the interesting ideas. It did not.

Oxygen not included.

Factorio spoiled me on resource calculation. ONI fudges it to a noticable level.

Every single mobile game.

Overwatch, because: Overwatch 2. Now they’re back to the original Overwatch format, and I just can’t even.

Hunt Showdown.