Patient Gamers

Yoshi’s Island for SNES is a game I have picked up multiple times but never really finished. It has some of the most beautiful visuals in any SNES game and the music is equally iconic. I always fall in love with it when playing the first levels, but somehow I always grow tired of it about halfway through.

I think the levels are overly long, and the collectathon aspect becomes annoying. It turns more into a chore than an enjoyment. It’s frustrating, because it’s a game I really want to love throughout.

For me it was TLOU pt 1. I was so excited for it to come to PC, but it ended up being completely unplayable, and I wasn't really a huge fan of the third-person cover-shooter gameplay. I played about 3 hours (and 4 hours of waiting on the menu) during the first week, and haven't touched it since.

Dead Cells. I played for ~60 hours, but could not get the final boss down. It's a tiny stage with a huge boss that has very quick combos that can 2 shot you. I tried a dozen times to figure him out in the training area (where you can practice boss fights) and I still couldn't get it. It's probably me though, my reflexes aren't quite what they used to be.

(don't hurt me)

So far it's been Baldurs Gate 3. I've found it clunky to play and it doesn't run well on my machine despite far surpassing the recommended hardware.

I'm definitely going to do some trouble shooting and give it a much more in depth try, but it's way easier to just play another game than figure out why this one is broken lol.

Yes, but also no.

I didn't play the Halo franchise until late 2015-early 2016, but I thought 3 and ODST were disappointing, and I stopped one mission into Reach. These days, Reach and 3 are my two favorite Halo games and ODST gets an honorable mention for its campaign. So what changed? In retrospect, it's because they were running on a 360 with an ass framerate, ass resolution, and ass FOV with a weird crosshair that made me subconsciously raise my head and controller-based controls that I was bad at. They were uncomfortable for me to play on the hardware I had to run them on, and as soon as I had them with all that QOL improved, the experience was completely different.

This experience, along with plenty others, has shown me that it's often not the game itself and could be several other factors, from the port and the platform to my expectations and my attitude. So while I've had a bunch of "disappointing" patient experiences, a good amount of them stopped being disappointing when I gave them another shot

Not sure if this counts, but Path of Exile once in awhile. They release new content patches every 3 months and introduce new league mechanic. Some leagues are great, others are less so. It's probably the only game ever played and continue to play on release.

Final Fantasy XVI :/ combat was fun but the RPG elements were pretty bad tbh

Overwatxh 2.

The Saints Row reboot from a few years ago. I loved the first four games, figured I'd love this. It's a game made for 2010 sold in the 20s. A mile wide and an inch deep.

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010?). Cars felt right due to Criterion working on them to make them like in Burnout, but their Autolog service, plentiful cutscenes, menu, performance issues and a lot of boring lonely sprints on time killed it for me. I loved to drive in free mode, but avoided races like fire.

GTA IV, but it was on me, maybe. They totally shifted the tone of the game, changed so much I felt like I play a different series. While I came to like it more, the first time it just didn't work for me.

TellTale's The Walking Dead after S1. It's either them losing their juice or me and my friends starting to understand the formula and how low stakes it actually is.

Original deus ex. Yeah I'm sure the story is very good. But gameplay is just not enjoyable to me no matter how many times I try. Combat is annoying unless you put all skill points to X gun skill, then it is boring. In stealth I have no feel how visible I am and gep gun is annoying to use.

I have tried to enjoy it at least 5 times since I like the new ones but at this point I give up. And yeah I tried with mods and shit.

I actually had the opposite experience with Limbo/Inside. With Limbo I felt the puzzles seemed unfair - I died a lot to things I couldn't see. I quit the game not too far in and haven't picked it up again.

But I played Inside and absolutely loved it, it's one of my favorite games now. So idk maybe I should give Limbo a shot again.

Donkey Kong 64. As a kid I loved Rare games and couldn’t wait to play DK64. I was so excited that every time the magazines dropped on the mat at home I would immediately search for any news on the game.

When i finally got my hands on the game I was disappointed within a few hours of playing. The constant retreading with different characters made the game feel more like a chore than a fun platformer. It was probably the first game where I felt so disappointed especially since I bought it with my own money. I think I stopped buying Rare games afterwards. I didn’t even buy Perfect Dark.

Wasteland 2 i thought i'm getting a Fallout 2 but better, but instead it didn't grab my attention at all, have to quit early in the game but still passed the refund period. I tried to get into it again and again but still doesn't work.

Grim Dawn This one being called a "better Diablo" and i was expecting something that will grab my attention, but really it's kinda boring and uninspiring. I think it's much more similar to Torchlight than Diablo, which i also couldn't get into.

Space Pirate and Zombie 2 it's very different than SPAZ1 and i don't quite like the transition, couldn't get into it.

Dont Starve i'm not sure why i couldn't get into this one, i like survival crafting stuff but my soul is rejecting this one.

Spec Ops: The Line Everyone want you to play this one for the story, but dang the whole game is just so boring. I have to force myself to finish it, story is okay i guess.

Halo. I picked up the collection in the summer steam sale for $10 and it was just ... boring. I guess that's to be expected for a 20+ year old game, the genre has innovated and improved a lot since then.

Master of Orion 3 Played 1 and 2 all the time as a kid with my brother and my father. We were SO hyped that there was going to be a MOO3 and we bought it blind because that's what you did back then. We were in for a massive disappointment. They had some good intentions to reduce Mikromanagement but we never understood how to really play it. We tried it again after a while but came to the same conclusion

In the most recent history, No Man's Sky. I know it's gotten better over the years, but that initial blandness was rough. Other than that in three days a spiritual successor to jet set radio comes out (bomb rush cyberfunk) and I just have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to let me down. The devs have been so quiet for so long about it... And in three days I get to learn the truth.