Goodbye, Mass Effect.
Besides all the mentioned ones, here are few from my side:
Need for Speed - played since 2 SE until Undercover. It is impossible to release the same game each year and the peak was MW’05.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater - some may say American Wasteland was good. I didn’t liked it but it was not as bad as anything after.
CODs - that is a pet peeve of mine. Great game, but it overstayed it’s welcome. OG MW1 and MW2 still hold a special place in my heart.
Battlefield - same as above. BC and BF3 can’t be beat.
World of Warcraft - that is an entirely different game to what it used to be imo.
For me it was Pokemon.
Started in order and got the games new as they came out since DPP. The core of the game to me was exploration, Pokemon, then battles. However over time Battling got more and more popular to the point where the game just became boring. This was Black and White for me.
I hoped it would get better with each release, but it was Sun and Moon where I just couldn’t care any more. After that I tried a game here and there. But nothing ever went back to that core of Exploration, new Pokemon the battling.
They made it into in A button simulator lol.
I only ever played DPP and BW/2 a long time ago, but I then happend to jump to SwSh when it came out and it literally became a live joke between my sibling watching me play to see how far we could go through the battles by only mashing the A button.
I think we made it to like between the 7th and 8th gym before I had to actually change my attack/pokemon using the c-stick.
I am ashamed to say that Pokopia (on my sibling’s Switch 2) is pretty great. It’s a sublime, cozy exploration game, basically absent of battling so far.
Pokopia is a subcategory of Pokemon. What kills it for me is that the game is Switch 2 exclusive. So I might get to try it in a decade.
Mystery Dungeon is still my goto favourite Pokemon game. Combat is back set, exploration top priority
The Elder Scrolls
Bethesda is dead.
Halo. We’re never getting another real one.
Command & Conquer. I don’t think I’ll ever touch 4. Tempest Rising is great so there’s that. I guess I’ll just keep playing Tiberium Wars until time stops.
Tiberium Wars is definitely peak and pinnacle…even tho I suck at it. :)
Assassin’s Creed
Diablo
There’s more, but those two hurt the worst.
Don’t you guys have phones? will live rent free in my head as one of the funniest on stage failures ever.
I kind of enjoyed Valhalla … but maybe that’s because I’d never played any other AC games in the past, so I didn’t have any expectations to disappoint.
Overall, on the better side of mid. General gameplay and exploration was pretty fun, world was very detailed and beautiful. The AC parts seemed a bit shoehorned in. Hated the arbitrary parkour challenges, and really really hated the modern-day meta storyline. Kind of wish they’d just have let all the AC stuff go and just made a fun Viking game without any of that other bullshit. Still, I enjoyed playing it for quite a while. Maybe I’ll play it again someday, but it’s definitely not on my shortlist of replayable games I keep coming back to.
Yeah, that’s how people started to feel around ACIV: Black Flag.
But during AC1-3, we were all excited to learn more about the modern day mysteries and have more assassin stuff. We all wanted more!
Then Ubisoft decided to make it a yearly thing and kill off any characters with plot points that might hinder their multiplayer battle pass, yearly release dreams. Then it all fell apart and they had to scale back… But the damage was done.
I haven’t even played it the first time but it seems like they’ve made them so long that replay would be a burden.
True. It was quite long, especially if you’re trying to do everything.
But, hey, as long as you’re enjoying a game as you play it, being long is kind of a good thing.
Also, I’m pretty sure it could be much faster if you don’t bother exploring everything and doing everything and just focus on the essential story missions alone. But in that game, exploring the landscape and doing all the things is really the fun part, so you don’t want to skip it.
Borderlands.
Word.
Borderlands 2 had my best game memories beating Vermivorous the Invincible with 3 friends, me playing as Maya. First of all getting it to spawn is tense.
I so desperately want to like BL2 because it has Gaige, my favorite Vault Hunter of all time, but I can’t replay it because the story is so infuriating to me. It’s like the writers are punishing me for thinking the Vault Hunters from the first game were cool.
I will miss those lighthearted adventures…
Planetside 2, for me.
It was never perfect, yet it’s basically dying of old age. I think that’s quite an achievement for an MMOFPS.
And I’m pretty sure there will never be another game like it, at its scale (and Foxhole doesn’t count IMO).
Planetside 2 at its peak was such a cool and unique experience. Shame it’s withering and dying
GTA when I watched how GTA:V shifted from a single player game to a multiplayer online service.
Gay Tony died for this
But he’ll be burried in a solid gold coffin covered in diamonds because holy fuck are players stupid and giving rockstar so much money with that online service bullshit.
It’s such a venn diagram between potheads and literal children…likely with lots of overlap. Lol
It’s going to get worse. Getting the people behind Fivem means it’s going to go to the next level with VI. It’s going to be Roblox meets the current GTA streaming RP stuff.
I bought a PS5 a few years ago specifically for GTA VI. I’ve already decided between price hikes, and general trends, that I’m NOT buying that game. Not even just for single player.
Because I’ve already been told that single player will be a non-profitable after thought that barely exists.
Welp. Fuck that shit.
everything blizzard made.
Blizzard is a corpse being puppeted.
It’s just Activision. Has been for years.
Until you learn about Blizzard’s bro culture that has existed almost as long as the company that resulted in a female employee committing suicide because no one would take her sexual assault allegations seriously.
Franchises are like bubble gum. If you try to make them last too much they lose all taste.
Halo. Still holding out a sliver of hope that something cool in the universe will be made one day.
Halo
The games? Yeah, eh, one of these days I’d consider Infinite single player if it’s like $10.
The series? I can’t remember if people said Season 2 was…watchable…but that makes me sad…
I remember liking the books, though. The books were rad.
343 hasn’t come close to knowing what the fuck they’re doing
The Bungie Halo era games had problems, sure, but overall were a masterpiece of a series. Everything since then has been ok at best, and borderline insulting at worst.
So much retconning, characters with zero arc, contempt towards the fandom, and build up with no onscreen payoff.
From what Halo Studios has announced regarding Campaign Evolved, and how they’ve dug in their heels in response to fan feedback, I wish I were as hopeful as you.
In my opinion, Halo should have always remained a Bungie property with connections to the Marathon universe, and neither series should have ever been a live service game.
I found some of 343’s multiplayer fun, but yeah their storytelling has been dog water
Halo was DoA for me after growing up with twitchy PC shooters like Unreal Tournament, Quake and Starsiege Tribes. The gameplay was glacially slow compared to what I was used to, but it did usher in online multiplayer to the console masses.
I really loved that about halo. The slower TTK makes for more chess like engagements, well with the exception of eating a shotty or a rocket to the face. Still, bouncing a perfect grenade or pulling off a ninja jump just feels so satisfying
It did before they turned it into call of duty with halo skins
Those are fundamentally different kinds of games. Sure, they’re all first person shooters, but there are more differences than similarities.
I feel like it’s the equivalent of saying something like: “Poker was DoA for me after growing up with fast paced card games like Uno, Slap Jack, and 52 card pick up.”
That’s fair. It’s not to say that I didn’t try the multiplayer in college. I was the only guy doing work-study with the network admin team so everyone needed me to configure their Xboxes for the campus LAN.
My favorite thing to do was to find a warthog and barrel around the map like a maniac trying to run people over. Still better than a dirty camper!
I know you meant Dead on Arrival, but Dead or Alive is 100% on my list. It was so much fun during DOA 2/3. Now it’s just a micro-transaction dress-up store.
Pokémon is starting to get there I think.
Mass Effect is still on the ropes for me. Andromeda was okay. I’m personally a bit over all the open world games.
Pokopia is great, though it was made by the dragon quest builders team, not game freak.
Otherwise, can’t argue
I liked what I played of Pokopia, and I loved Pokemon Legends Arceus.
Other than those, the last time I really loved a Pokemon game was likely Black 2.
I’ve been enjoying some of the quality ROMhacks that have come out in recent years like Lazarus, Odyssey, Emerald Seaglass, and Scorched Silver. I also started casually playing Platinum Kaizo (a difficulty hack), but haven’t played it much at all.
But I’ve had a better time in Odyssey and Lazarus than I have had in a mainline game in a long time.
I’m sure some of it comes from the graphics being inspired by the GSC (Lazarus) or using RSE graphics (Odyssey) and those are the most nostalgic ones for me.
Infinite fusion is fantastic, even if it didn’t have the merge gimmick. My favorite pokemon game since b/w2
I might have liked Andromeda if they had enemy variety or likeable characters. Everyone knows Shepard but for the life of me I cannot remember the name of Andromeda’s protagonist or any of the team members for that matter. Absolutely forgettable in almost every way.
SAM and their relationship with Ryder was interesting.
…That’s about it, sadly.
Mechanically and visually, the game was awesome though.
Ryder Peebee Drack Vetra Liam Jaal
I think that’s the squad. Then SAM, the AI.
Additionally I remember the Kett being the antagonist, and it was something generic like Archon? As the title. That might not be the right title — if it is, it’s because Genshin Impact solidified that term for me.
I honestly thought you were having a stroke until the second line. That’s how little they resonated.
RIP Call of Duty, The Sims, Sim City, RCT, Super Smash Bros, Dragon Age, Halo, and GTA
Wait, what’s wrong with Super Smash Bros? Is it just the DLC characters?
Yeah, that and they just haven’t really had the same feel/balance.
I like Ultimate, but it’s not doing it any favors.
Final Fantasy has been dead for a while. XI was the first major warning that things were no longer the same as an MMO was the last thing I expected from a mainline entry. XII was okay but it got rid of the overworld map and kept an MMO style of gameplay that felt like a slog to get through. Everything after that has been a disappointment heralded by extremely long dev times.
I bought FFXVI and both VII remake games on PS5 because I was still holding out hope that they could reignite the magic of the previous games. I mostly enjoyed them, but they didn’t feel remotely like the Final Fantasy games of the past. XVI was more Game of Thrones than Final Fantasy, and the VII remake games were more XV/Kingdom Hearts than Final Fantasy.
I feel like the writing was on the wall as far back as X. There is very little variety in the combat, it’s very much a hallway like XIII, the “world map” is a list of locations in the order you visited them, and there are multiple long stretches where you can’t backtrack.
I’ve also tried playing Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey in the hopes that they would scratch that same itch, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to commit to finishing them. I haven’t played Fantasian, but I’ve heard mostly positive things about it.
It’s no wonder the VII remakes feel like KH since they are being done by Nomura.
I didn’t get to finish Lost Odyssey due to my 360 red-ringing. It’s a shame too because the story was one of the saddest since FF IX. It really explores the idea that immortality isn’t all that great when everyone you know and love will eventually die and leave you with just memories, but then end up losing those memories too which ends up being half blessing and curse. The industrial setting a la FF VI was just gorgeous with one of Uematsu’s best ever scores going off in the background. The character designs were pretty great overall too with Jansen being one of my favorite JRPG characters because of his dry witty remarks no matter what the situation is.
Everything about the game hit just right and felt like it was a proper FF title in all but name. It hurt to know Mistwalker Studios barely did anything worthwhile after that for a long while until Fantasian.
You know, Lost Odyssey wasn’t on the radar for me but you may have put it on the map. Will have to look into it.
13-2 is still, even now, my personal favorite Final Fantasy.
I’m thrilled to learn that one person liked it. /s
