I picked up Jak 2 on the cheap when I saw it as a Greatest Hits title. The game magazines and sites were gushing all over this game, showering it with praise (mainly because of the GTA3 elements), but it just wasn't fun. The pseudo-FPS nature of it was kind of offputting, and lack of checkpoints plus excessively large levels is just unforgivable.

I played Final Fantasy Tactics, wound up not being impressed. My efforts at pre-battle levelling up with random combat just wound up getting my whole army destroyed, and review of the strategy guide didn't make the later game sound even more interesting. The advanced classes seemed hyper-specialized and a pain to try and employ. After the fiasco that was the final boss of Saiyuki, I have a suspicion that I'd wind up frustrated at the end of FFT as well.

I understand Virtual-On has fans. I wonder what they're smoking. I outright apologized to my brother for passingly suggesting Virtual-On: Mars as something that might be good. Hideously bad controls and mind-numbing gameplay; it's nothing more than a 2-bit arcade game designed to swipe your quarters, nothing more.

I generally like most if not all of the games in many of the popular series that people have been singling out for criticism.

MGS3 - In addition to the excellent critiques put forth so far, the thing that ruined this for me was the interaction of story and gameplay. They pushed the gameplay to be so "realistic" that it isn't fun anymore, while the plot was pushed to insanely unrealistic heights. Snake has to heal his wounds limb by limb because it's realistic, but Sentient Bug Man and 105-Year-Old-Sniper get a pass?

The Metroid Series - While the action's fine, the lack of plot has always really bothered me. Would it be so hard to give the heroine a few lines, or to craft an expansive sci-fi plotline that exists outside of the manual and ending screen?

Grand Theft Auto Series- I know their gameplay defined an entire genre, but I just can't bring myself to have fun while slaughtering paramedics as they try to revive people that I ran over while distracted by a hooker in the car on my way to kill an innocent person in cold blood for money.

Katamari Damacy - Maybe if I smoked the same magic mushrooms the developers were on. Hate the music, want to kill the Tubeheads.

Final Fantasy 9 and Chrono Cross get the dubious honor of eliminating any interest I had in either series (I hated FF8 too, but my expectations were so low for it, it wound up exceeding them and I was able to play through it).

3D Zelda-Playing Ys VI reminded me of what next-gen Zelda should probably be like (since it resembles A Link to the Past). Might still give Twilight Princess a try though.

Mario Sunshine-Nowhere near as fun as ANY non-edutainment 2D Mario out there.

Kingdom Hearts-Looked okay from screenshots...Guess that's why they're screenshots. Flaky camera, congested areas and an all around annoyance factor.

Any driving sim.

Any "survival horror" game that relies on 3D control while you're actually looking at the character from an overhead (or similar) view.

MVP Baseball 2004-Bought it to cure the "baseball itch" one year...Gladly traded it in 3 days later for a cool $30 credit. Hitting was just a bitch in that game.

Any game that is pushed and pushed and pushed by game stores and magazines until the release date and then given every year-end award available to justify the ridiculous amount of time and energy spent gawking over them. I've been around enough to be able to tell the jump in quality from "the year's most overhyped/over-rewarded" games to most other good games isn't that great, if at all noticable. While I don't "hate" the actual game in the end (unless I play it and find out it really is garbage), I'm much less more likely to be tempted to play it and to dig around for others that are "somehow" missed.

Any Mario game but expecially Mario 64: I've tryed to play these for longer than 3 hours but I just can't, my eyes simply refuse to watch it anymore, I reall hate them.

Any FPS: I has never able to control these games anyway, 1st person view isn't for me.

Jade Empire: Got 9.9 on IGN.............oh boy :biggest_roll_eyes_ever:

Ninja Gaiden: This one is just plain overrated.

Have you tried Majora's Mask? The gameplay is a lot more varied and in-depth than the other games. This is why Majora's Mask has its haters, because it dared to try something new and interesting, when all the fans just wanted a dumb plug and play extension to OoT.

The big one for me is Halo 2, and in general, Halo 1 as well.

While I enjoyed Halo 1, I absolutely loathed Halo 2. What didn't help my enjoyment was how so many people praised the game for being the godsend of FPSes, which is so far from the truth it drives me crazy. These are the people that have such a narrow scope of the gaming world that they shouldn't even be allowed to form an opinion on what's good and what isn't.

Halo 2 is the biggest marketing scheme in all of the gaming world if you ask me. Hell, even I was convinced at one point that I should own it, but I broke through the mold and decided that I should probably download it for free before I give them more money. Sure enough, I'm glad I didn't buy it.

Everything about Halo 2's campaign mode is a step back from Halo 1's. And I mean EVERYTHING.

Weapons - Shittier in every way, including the 2 frames of animation they threw in for melee hits.
Vehicles - Here's a great idea! Let's take the thing that made Halo 1 fun (indestructable vehicles) and throw it out the window to make it MORE REALISTIC!
Music - Oh wait, it's the same, except they layered an ELECTRIC GUITAR OVER THE SONGS TO MAKE IT MORE XTREME!
Story - Who cares, really? Every single cutscene is as cliche as they come, with people finishing others' sentences like it's no tomorrow, edgy women who are tougher than the guys, and bad words to make it more gritty.
Production Values - I'd give this game high praise if the Covenant DIDN'T SPEAK ENGLISH.

The big thing that gets my Halo 2 goat is how everyone gets fucking bleeding erections over DUAL WIELDING. Wait, you mean the same feature that was handled better 9 years ago when Goldeneye 64 came out? SIGN ME UP!

Halo 2 is also the first game I've ever played that experiences slowdown during a cutscene. It's just a big pile of shit. The only thing they did was put the game on Xbox Live and give it more modes of play that have already been available in games that have been out for years and done things better. The fact that this game has such a huge following is a testament of the state of this once beloved industry. It's become infected with a sea of shitty ass new-school gamers who play nothing but Halo and Madden games.

/rant

Here's one game that people haven't mentioned that's topped out my list of pet peeves recently: Dragon Quest 8. I still haven't understood what it was about the game that got it so many rave reviews. Maybe old-school isn't my thing but my list of grievances include the following:

Battle system: They tell you that agility has something to do with turn order. In reality, everything appears to be completely randomized and in many cases, my lowest agility character ended up going first with the rest of the combatants (both allies and enemies) following in a completely unintuitive manner or one backed up by game stats. That pretty much took out all of the strategy from combat because you'd have no idea when an action you inputted would take place. Heck, give me ATB any day of the week despite its shortcomings. Furthermore, most battles were pretty boring, making you input in the same attack combinations each round of every combat ever. A drunken monkey could play this game and do just as well.

Random encounters: I usually don't have problems with random encounters, but the amount in DQ8's was just flat-out excessive. It really became quite a chore to just walk from location to location or navigate some cave complex in order to reach the boss in that location. It was even worse when you went back to the early parts in the game and be forced to face weak creatures you fought as a low-level character. For those of you telling me to use Holy Waters, realize that if they didn't want to make the game so burdensome, they should have removed those encounters after a certain point. Having you fight slimes at level 40+ was just a poor design decision and an insult to my intelligence.

Boss battles: Since they've removed the strategy element and made combats a dull, routine process, the only way they could make bosses interesting was to make them defeatable in a way that was dependent on levelling up to justify the random encounter system they had in place. Needless to say, most bosses went by with me having to use the Whistle command to snag random encounters for the purposes of levelling in order to defeat the upcoming boss. It was a chore and a really boring one at that.

Plot: It was so-so. I'd say that this is even mediocre compared to the games of the SNES era when you had storylines like FF4, FF6, and Ogre Battle running around. Everything is so cliche and predictable in DQ8 that poking fun of it is no longer fun and you can get sauced really fast if you turn it into a drinking game.

Everything except for the graphics and music just bugged me a lot about this game. I've also been told that the rest of the DQ series is like this and that's pretty much put me off the entire series forever.

I don't think I "hate" any game that is supposed to be really good, but I do find some of them to be overrated. I'll list some of those. Mind you, I still consider these games to be decent if pretty good. (in this order: SOTN > XG > FFIX) Just definitely not the best ever in their particular genres. My words will seem a bit harsh:

Xenogears - The end all and be all of RPGs, right? Maybe if plot is your only concern, and even then, the storytelling isn't that great. The dialog is stiff and condescending, the overall gameplay is tedious, the dungeons are horrid, and the second disc is just a rushed mess. Not to mention that the game could've used an extra layer of polish with the load times, graphics, and camera.

Castlevania Symphony of the Night - A hybrid game that fails to excel in all of those areas. The inverted castle is lazy and redundant game design, the transformations are mostly useless, and the gameplay comes up short compared to both Super Metroid (in terms of exploraton) and Castlevania 3 (in terms of action/platforming). Not forgetting the shallow RPG elements and amusingly bad voice acting.

Final Fantasy IX - This game has somehow become overhyped over the last few years. Battles are slow, the cast is weak, the soundtrack is loaded to the brim with filler, and the story doesn't take off until Disc 3. This combination of new and old finds itself lacking identity and failing to capture the progressive magic of the old school games. Instead it feels like a stale retread. Been there, done that better is the name of the game.

That would ruin the atmosphere of the games. The whole sense of loneliness. The alien mystique of everything. Metroid Prime 2 ended up with a freaking Halo-inspired plot, which to me is part of the reason that it isn't as good as Metroid Prime. If it could be better executed perhaps, but there's little chance of that. The last thing I want is a predictable Sci-Fi channel plot along with the same B-movie drama. The whole scanning business introduced in Prime was an interesting idea though. Sort of a less obvious way of adding depth while preserving the atmosphere of things.

Amongst wrestling game fans, WWF No Mercy for the N64 was meant to be one of the best wrestling games ever. I didn't like it like I thought WWF Smackdown! on the PS wasn't good. All my mates at school were saying that was better than Attitude, but not to me. WWF No Mercy was slower (than Smackdown!), lacked atmosphere due to absent commentary, moves were too easy to pull off, the story modes sucks big time, it was just devoid of any fun whatsoever to me.

I always disliked the Soul Calibur series, well any beat-em-up game, bar Street Fighter 2 (SNES).
I never got any enjoyment out of beat-em-up games, except for Street Fighter 2 (SNES), and to this day I have no idea why Street Fighter 2 is the only beat-em-up game that I have a slight liking to.
I also hated Medal of Honor Frontline (PS2) I could never get into it and thought that it was awful, since then I have avoided all FPS on consoles.

This one's easy: Gran Turismo. It is absolutely 0% fun. The most fun I had playing it was in the car selection screen where you could pick all the different makes/models and change what color they were. The series is supposed to be a "driving" sim but the handling in GT 3 & 4 just blows. Sorry, but it doesn't seem realistic at all the ways cars "stick" to the pavement so much that you absolutely cannot drift, yet the cars spin out completely at every possible turn? If my car handled like that I'd fix it, quick. :rolleyes:

R4 > any GT game ever made or will ever be made...

Counterstrike. Not that it's a bad game by any means, but it is just completely not for me.

I really hate waiting after a death and totally dislike how it seems like more than half the community are young kids who play the game 24/7. I'll walk into some LAN place and watch these 5-6 year olds getting headshots with an AWP like it was second nature. There's just something really disturbing about it all.

I also really hate MMORPGs... all of them from WoW to Everquest. I picture them as leeches that suck your soul, money, and you just can't get them off.

Super Smash Brothers: Not funny. Not the least bit funny. But it's just me.

Wario Ware: I haven't quite yet understood this. You play for 5 seconds and then? What exactly? This could be a flaw with me, as I like to have some sort of story behind my gaming.

Survivial Horror: This always feels more like work and less like fun to me. I'm aware that the vulnerability of the characters are part of the game, but I ablsolutely loath the whole jumble of keeping track of precious herbs and ammo. Sure, you do that in other games too, but in survivial horror the thing is waay to big.

I passionately DESPISE Final Fantasy VII. I played 30 hours of this shit before I gave up - The characters were horrible, the premise was bland and clichéd beyond words, the world design was depressing and it was just such a letdown compared to VI. They changed a LOT of stuff when they were producing VI - Fantasy elements forgone in favour of steampunk, character classes toned down - I guess they just assumed it would be a good idea to change as much as possible this time 'round. WRONG. FFVII was the biggest pile of pseudo-intellectual sci-fi wank I have ever played - It's not FF. At all. God, even the FMV looked horrible.

All RPG's. Like, every single one.

They're not exciting, they're not entertaining. They're not even engaging. Walk around and fuck with menus for 80 hours. Can't beat that guy, level up. Rinse repeat for a month. Final Fantasy is the worst thing to happen to gaming since ever.

The only RPG I've ever actually beaten was Pokemon when I was 12.

Atmosphere counts for something, but too much lonliness and silence equals boredom, even if there are critters to shoot.

Don't get me started on Xenogears. It's like what would happen if you melded the beginning of Star Wars IV with Star Wars I with a script by first-year philosophy students.

No. There's a limit on how many times I want to try out a series before I give up.

To each his/her own.

Over the vast number of games I've played through, I've never really hated any of them. I guess I tend to pick out the best of the bunches based on my first impressions of visual styles along with previews from mags/online as such. But one game really got me, when it really shouldn't have. I loved The Matrix, so much that I kinda made myself like the 2nd one until the 3rd one came out and made me realise how the saga had gone down the drain to being purely a cyber-geek niche thing. But I digress..

The Matrix: Path of Neo got pretty good critiques from gaming mags, gaming sites, readers, gamers, friends, everyone. It was said to improve on Enter the Matrix (which was an OK game imo) by the bucket load. Well I played through it and during the first chapter there were some cool scenes and the action was fun at times, but then after about 1/3 of the way through, it became a load of nonsense. Level design declined, story declined (yeah I know, story!), action got boring, glitches aplenty, and I only forced myslef through it to witness the 'new' ending.. which was pure stupidity from the once respected director duo.

I can't think of why ppl say it's good, unless they haven't played many games of similar genre. But this doesn't seem to be the case so I'm left with a big wtf in my mind. This game is the worst 3d-gen game I've ever played.

But again, to each his/her own..

Wait, wait, wait... people actually liked that game and gave it good reviews? Whaaat? That was a bad game. Finding a new glitch every day didn't help either.

Well, it's a tradeoff I suppose. I'm sure they could try to retain the atmosphere like say, Deus Ex does, but it must be handled most delicately.

I prefer Alien over Aliens, if that helps to explain my position. The Newt subplot in the second movie turns my stomach.

You should post that on IGN to start a riot. You can get ostracized for even daring to mention that Xenogears is less than what it should be. Someone there said that Xenogears was (and I kid you not) the greatest creation of the human mind. :eyebrow:

While we're still hating on Xenogears, I'd like to add that I would've played more than 10 hours of that game if the camera controls weren't so damn bad (trees and buildings kept blocking out my field of view so I couldn't see where I was going) and they stopped stupid miniquests like "play hide-and-go-seek with a stupid kid". That was the point where I just gave up on that game completely, so the battle system didn't even get a chance to show how degenerate it was.

Guitar Hero is a piece of shit. I had it for a little over a day and in that time I had completed most songs in Extreme with a 5-star rating. It was easy, it was boring and overall one of the worst music games I have played.

Super Mario 64, I also didn't like. I found it terribly flat and lifeless, it didn't appeal to me at all.

World of Warcraft. Here are some quick facts.


+ The game has over 6 million accounts. A third of those accounts are asians botting to sell items and gold on eBay.

+ It uses an outdated recycled warcraft 3 engine. The cartoon graphics look retarded and don't fit the genre.

+ The game has no balance. Classes really have nothing unique about them to distinguish themselves. Healer = DPS. Tank = DPS. DPS = well, slighty more DPS than the rest. Classes are also lampooned to spec a certain way or no one will want you in the raid.

+ Each new live update seems to break the game further or make very jarring changes to game. Such as combat changes and taking away the uniqueness of races.

+ If you read the official (hell any) forums you have 6 million people bitching and complaining about all same things people bitch about in other MMO.

+ The result is that we have a horrid game 6 million people around the world are compelled to play simply because it's made by Blizzard. These 6 million people are screaming for blood on the official forums and yet continue to pay their subscription because they don't have the guts or the sense to stand up and realise Blizzard lick balls.

The announcement of Resident Evil 4 and the first trailer sealed the deal: I had to have a GameCube. The range of games for the GC was less than thrilling, so I went with the usual suspects: the REmake (simply gorgeous), RE 0 (meh... it started off great and went downhill from there) and MGS (because I'm an idiot and paid half the price to play it again). Eventually RE 4 was released - not that it had anything to do with what had been planned initially -, and everybody was gushing over its alleged ingenuity. Sorry, but if I just want to mindlessly shoot my way through a game without doing much else, I can pop PSX' Loaded into my PS2. Shoot, kick or suplex, duck, slash with the knife, lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseam. If this is survival horror, Castlevania LOI is too.

So yes, RE 4 has not only replaced RE CV as my least favorite RE, but has achieved something I've never thought the series capable of: It bored me to death.

Zorro