Yesterday I felt like playing CoD, I didn’t buy the new MW3 due to the bad reviews, so I decided to re-install the new MW2. Set it up to install before work, home 8 hours later. Installed but I have to install more stuff, fine. (Yes I set it to MP first).

It installs as a “Call of Duty” app that shows all the other CoD Games already out, kinda like the battle.net launcher, some may find it convenient but it was a nightmare just trying to find what I wanted to play. This was after I was bombarded with battle pass and pops up wanting to spend money.

An hour later it tells me I have to install all these multiplayer packs.
Fuck it uninstall, I’ll play Black Ops Cold War instead. Still 180gig.

Nevermind.

I know this has no bearing on the gameplay but I think that has me very soured on
Black Ops 6.


So is there any games or game series you aren’t a fan of anymore?

Assassin's Creed creed lately. After Ezio, I could really care less about the story or the new characters in general. I haven't bought a wrestling game or a Madden game in quite some time.

Kingdom Hearts, for sure. The appeal of this series was how it mashed up Disney with Square characters; the original characters, like Sora, Riku, Kairi, etc., are fairly boilerplate on their own, let alone in comparison to their legacy IP counterparts. Once the Square characters were basically dropped after KH2, and the story spiraled out of control (I literally thought to myself that Vince Russo might have wrote Kingdom Hearts as I witnessed the unending "false finishes" of the third installment), this series had really put me off. There are flow charts of the KH story that, despite their best efforts, seem to clarify nothing. This is a prime example of a game that needs a reboot, but Square is just doggedly dumb about this game.

Final Fantasy ... I was a big fan of VII thru X, and the remaster of XII is everything the original should have been; however, I have almost completely lost interest in this franchise. If I could impute a backhanded superlative to the remake of VII, it'd be "vanilla masterpiece". It's as anodyne as it is good, and the first installment of the remake was uninteresting enough that I have skipped its sequel. It's incredible to think that Sega has made decidedly better RPGs in both Like a Dragon releases than anything Square has released, save the XII remaster, in the past two decades.

Shenmue. Shenmue, when it was released, was unironically one of my top 10 video games; it is now somewhat ironically one of my top 10. Not everything ages well. I think at this point the game defies qualification as either good or bad, and is mostly just remarkable as a blueprint for so much that came after it. The way that Yu Suzuki released an anachronism into the wild with Shenmue III the same year that Square did with KH3 is such a weird parallel to me. Both games had tortuous paths to release, and they both seemed to refuse to change in any real, substantive ways that would make them better than their predecessors ... I really don't want to play either any more, despite my fondness for them at the start.

Sonic ... like a lot of gamers, I grew up playing a lot of this on my Genesis. These are largely not good games, however. I would like to see a mostly enemey-less, exploration-based Sonic where using his speed is germane to solving puzzles. Sonic as something like Oure would work for me. They seemed to move in this direction some with Frontiers ... I'm glad they finally took a risk with the IP. It was long overdue.

Multiplayer FPS games: Quake, Unreal Tournament, Team Fortress 2. I sunk hundreds of hours into those games. I don't have much desire to play these games anymore, just because of how huge of a time sink they are, and the implicit requirement to "git gud". These days I'd rather relax and play a single player game at my own pace. Furthermore the gaming world has moved on to Battle Royale games. I've tried them a couple of times but they are so dull.

Final Fantasy. Like sting, I also lost interest in the franchise. I forced myself through Final Fantasy XII, and even though I enjoyed FFXIII a lot, it was the beginning of the end of my interest. However, I disagree on the FFVII remake. The original is my favourite game of all time, and the remake has brought the incredible story to a new audience, while using modern technology to enhance just about everything without losing faith to the source material. One of the greatest achievements in gaing.

I would say (some) JRPGs as they are a massive time sink and especially the ones that require you to grind a lot. It's one of those genres that if you're unemployed or only play these games that you're good but if you have a job or family etc., it's tough to feel like you are accomplishing anything in a really expansive one. I try and play maybe 3-4 a year at most although the SMT/Atlus ones always get priority seating for me. Even then SMT V Vengeance is something I will look into down the road just because this year I played Persona 3 Reload and will play Metaphor: Refantazio.

Rocket League went from most played PS4 game ever for me to just dropping it in a few years. Annoying people in team chat, consistent amount of players who drop and leave you to shitty A.I. in random matches, and eventually the playerbase fell off hard where you're now facing pros on a regular basis in lobby matches who can do all the aerial tricks that I only wish I can do.

Honestly JRPGs in general. I was huge into them in the late 90s/early 2000s thanks to Square and all that, but as things evolved (and I was less into vidya in general) the concept just didn't work with me anymore. If it isn't Pokemon I pretty much no sell it these days. Hoping one day to play the 2nd (and 3rd?) part of 7 Remake, but the odds of getting a ps5 seems comically low even today. I think a single player kinda peaks for me @ 15-20 hrs so the promise of 30-50 is not a positive for me. Final Fantasy as a whole was losing me the further they strayed from medieval fantasy and started turning the cast into kpop boy bands. I used to always try and do the mainline ones, but 13 was 13 and I think 15 I turned it off not long into it. Just doesn't appeal anymore.