I came to a realization a few weeks ago that I may not actually like video games. Hear me out. I’ve been playing ‘hardcore’ games for roughly seven years. The first one was Torchlight, which I absolutely loved. I loved the protagonist who looked Asian if you squinted. I really loved that she came back as a voiced NPC in the sequel, and her voice was low and husky like mine. I loved that I could have a pet whom I could name and feed fish. The game was very addictive, and I immediately had the ‘just one more level’ feeling about it.
Diablo III was right after that, and I really dug that as well. Then the Borderlands, original and sequel, which I played for hundreds of hours. Then, I played Dark Souls, and everything changed. I could no longer play hack ‘n slashes afterwards because the combat was empty and unsatisfying. Yes, I played Skyrim afterwards and enjoyed it*, but I was a caster (of course), so I didn’t have to do much of the melee combat.
In all this time, I played dozens of games that I didn’t like. At all. Some that I really wanted to like and should have been up my alley, such as Alan Wake, and others that I just didn’t like at all. Like Arkham whatever. I’m not sure which game, but I hated the combat. I gave it a fair shake–a few hours–but I just didn’t click with it at all. Others, I liked, but there was one aspect that I just couldn’t stand that made me fall off it, such as Sleeping Dogs, which I call Sleepy Dawgs for reasons that should be obvious. I really liked it, not in a small part because of the badass Asian male protagonist, but the driving suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. I can’t emphasize that enough. I didn’t love the combat as it’s similar to the Batman combat, but I could hack that. It was the driving that I haaaaaaaaaaated. I distinctly remember the incident that made me quit. I had to follow a wedding cake truck (long boring story) to get the cake back. After failing it twice, I was DONE. When I went back to try it again much later, I accidentally erased my saved game because United Front Games, the devs, made the inexplicable decision to put New Game at the top of the queue rather than Load Game like everyone else, and there are no saved files in the game–at least when I played. That was it for me. No way I was playing the game again, and I have not.
There are games I’ve loved but had to quit playing because I was rubbish at them. Nuclear Throne, Hollow Knight, and Dead Cells. HK was quite early on whereas NT was after I beat the Throne, and DC was because I couldn’t beat the…The Hand of the King, which was the last boss at the time I played the game. HK was just me bowing out because I knew it was more game than I could handle. NT was me being really sad because there was so much after the loop content that I couldn’t access and that they kept adding to. DC is the one that really hurts, however, because I felt it was more the game’s fault than mine. Let me be clear. I sucked at the game. I fully acknowledge that. However, my issues with THotK is that it disregards everything else the game had taught me up to that point. The game is very much about doing it your way, but then with THotK, I couldn’t use any of the things that got me up to that point. My jam was all the freeze items, and none of them worked on him. In addition, I could only fight him at the end of an hour run that actually worked, so I only saw him eight or nine times over the hundreds of runs I’d done. The castle itself was a dramatic ratchet up, and it was a struggle for me to get through it. Also, by the time I was reaching High Peak Castle regularly, but I had maxed out all the things I was able to get. So, I was doing hour-long runs with no benefit.
I’ve played dozens of Souls-like games by this point, and I’ve liked two or three of them. Most of the time, I’m thinking, “I’d rather be playing Souls” and then I quit the game I’m playing. I’ve said before, but the problem is that the closer to Souls the game is, the more apt I am to say I’d just prefer Souls. The few that I played all the way through and enjoyed were Salt and Sanctuary and The Surge, but they both are pretty forgettable when it’s all said and done. That said, I’m cautiously hyped for the sequel to The Surge.
Side Note: I’m amused that I mentioned in the RKG chat yesterday that The Surge was one of my surprise fave Souls-like games, and several people were immediately eager to tell me that, no, indeed, Nioh is the best Souls-like. One person said Salt and Sanctuary was better. That’s all well and good, but I never said The Surge was the best Souls-like–just that it was a personal surprise fave. I would say objectively, Nioh is better, but that wasn’t what I was measuring.
There are many popular games that I don’t like or understand the appeal. The critically-acclaimed The Stanley Parable, The Collar Duties (though, to be fair, I never played one), Ass Creed III, KOTOR or whatever the acronym is, the Batmans as I mentioned above, and more. Oh. Just thought of more. Mass Effect. Fallout 3.
Then, there are the games that I can’t play for nausea reasons. The Prey was one of them. I tried the demo, and I was immediately nauseated. I tried to see if there was a way to fix it, but the only answer I found was to mess with the files. Which meant I’d have to buy the game in order to mess with the files before figuring out if I could play it or not. No. Not going to do it. I was sad, though, because it would have been the chance to play an Asian woman named Morgan, which is my favorite name. I also couldn’t play What Remains of Edith Finch or Return of the Obra Dinn because they both nauseated me as well.
Here’s the thing. I’ve realized that for every game I like, there are dozens that I don’t like/hate. As with most pop culture for me, I don’t have any genres that I like, but there are several that I don’t like. I get frustrated trying to figure out if I’m going to like a game or not. The only ‘genre’ I like is FromSoft (more specifically, Miyazaki), and they can’t pump out games fast enough to satisfy my cravings.
I had to give up on point-and-clicks, no matter how much I want to find a detective game that I like. They all disappointed me, and I’m tired of getting my hopes up every time one comes out. I start new games with trepidation because the chance that I will actually like the game is slim. Even knowing what I like, FromSoft games, doesn’t help because as I said above, I’m more likely to be impatient with a Souls-like than to like it.
This realization might seem like a depressing one, but it’s actually freeing. I don’t have to put pressure on myself to like a game before trying it. I probably still will, though, because that’s my nature, sadly. I’m much harder on myself than I would be on anyone else, and it’s something I’m working on.
OT: This playthrough by Eurogamer of multiplayer Stardew Valley had me crylaughing out loud at the hilarity. Enjoy.
*For the first 75 hours or so. Then, I started actively hating it, but that was my own fault. I was trying to do all the questlines in one go, and that just wasn’t a great way to play it. Also, I had a mod that allowed me to carry an unlimited amount of shit on my horse and take her with me wherever I went. That was a game-changer. No way I would have stuck with it otherwise. Also, I started Barbas’s questline but didn’t finish it until the very end because I wanted him as a companion. He was bad-fucking-ass.