For me it’s a couple
First is GTA. I played a LOT of Vice City and and San Andreas as a kid, but mostly because everyone else played them at the time and there wasn’t really many games quite like it where you could mess around and explore a massive city and find cool vehicles just by exploring. But by the time GTA 4 rolled around other open world games did things just as good and the edgey humor has starting to wear thin on me so I had moved on to things like Elder Scrolls by that time.
Another is Minecraft. Minecraft is the exact kind of game I should be in to, it looks so fun! But I just found the artstyle so damn ugly. It’s so rare for me to avoid something for aesthetic reasons, usually low poly art is charming but for some reason Minecrafts style just looks really unappealing to me. This is coming from someone who likes a lot of games people think are ugly.
Lastly are what I’ll call “grizzled white guy action games” Uncharted, Red Dead, The Last of Us. They just feel too much like they’re trying to be be a blockbuster for for guys that don’t want to be made fun of for liking games rather than games. I know that that probably isn’t the case, but they just seem too normal to me.
However I respect that these are all good series but they just aren’t for me. Are there any game series where this is true for you?
Don’t be afraid to say a series you know I like, I won’t be offended.
Dark Souls. Partly because fantasy worlds just don’t generally do it for me, but also the split second timing and memorising attack patterns and responses. I get why people find that style of gameplay rewarding, but it feels like too much effort to me.
And Minecraft, or really any other game where the primary mechanic is resource harvesting and crafting. Satisfactory, subnautica, etc. Even No Man’s Sky. I played enough Minecraft back when it was free that I get the appeal, but to me it just feels too much like work.
And that goes double for any game where the primary mechanic isn’t crafting but it’s had a system shoehorned in because of Minecraft’s success. That’s not gameplay, that’s busywork.
To be fair that’s mostly an issue on FromSoftware games from Dark Souls 3 onward. Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 1 and 2 are pretty slow games and you don’t need to play that way either, you could just play with a shield and defend most stuff just attacking when you feel like it or play a mage. But I totally get it, not everyone likes that style of gameplay.