Any recent games that didn't do it for you?

Have you bought any PC games within the past couple of years which you really tried to enjoy and get into but it just didn't happen for whatever reason? For me it's "Steel Division II". This one really surprised me because I've had an academic interest in the war on the Eastern Front during WWII for a very long time so I figured this game would be right up my alley. Ultimately though, after several hours of watching training "how to" videos and playing some of the quick battles it occurred to me that the overall experience felt bland and flat. It's one of those things which is elusive and can't place my finger on but in the end I just wasn't having fun and was not drawn in. Here is some info on the game:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_Division_2

I can stop watching for your Steel Division AAR now

For me in the past few years there have been a few titles I've purchased that failed to bake my potato.

Outer Wilds -- Neat concept. No sense of focus or direction and not enough compelling to keep me interested. On back burner.

Outer Worlds -- Obsidian RPG, can't go wrong, right? Didn't grab me. Most surprising.

Endless Space 2 -- Probably a good game here, but the first 45 minutes were painful and that left me 15 minutes to get my money back. One of only two games I've ever refunded on Steam

Panzer Corps -- The other game I refunded on Steam. I was struck by how much I hated it. And it only took 30 minutes to reach this level of rejection.

Dark Souls 3 -- Sat in my library for years. Tried it and quit at the first bonfire. Not me cuppa.

This list could grow to fifty but that's a start.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla not up to the previous two Assassin's Creed titles.

Strictly personal opinion. I like to play a neutral defender who tries to do the "right thing" at the moment -- who defends innocent folks on both sides of a fight from aggression. If I must be on a side, I like to play the defender of a country that's being attacked or is "occupied". In ACV, I am one of the attackers/invaders and must kill combatants I perceive as defenders at times.

I put in a lot of hours. I will probably get back to it.

I was curious about this one so I looked it up online. The premise and gameplay seems like an absolute snooze-fest for me so I know to avoid this one.

I am finding it increasingly difficult to get into any video games these days.

That's perfectly understandable. I have several friends who dumped PC gaming after many years and went into a different hobby like backpacking (hiking), learning a musical instrument or just travelling to other countries.

I have the best gaming rig I have ever owned, plus an Xbox Series X. I have many games, plus Gamepass. Not sure what it is.
I've just been playing a bit of Forza Horizon 5 lately. The arcade aspect is more my speed these days.

There was another game that should be on that list but I couldn't recall the title when typing it up. But now I remember. It's Greedfall. Can't put my finger on what it was missing or why I shelved it. But it is third person, and it's quite amazing how much a game has to overcome for me if it's third person. This mode causes such a disconnect in my brain that the game play itself has to be extraordinary for it to persist in my play list. The Witcher 3 is one of the very few games that ever fought it off and emerged as an all-timer. Even GTA 5 and RDR 2 might have fallen foul had it not been for the first-person option.

Matter of fact, it was only the introduction of first-person mode after GTA's release that tempted me to try it. And I really enjoyed it. Not sure that would have been the case otherwise.

I turned off Assassin's Creed Odyssey after playing only ten hours.
Horizon Zero Dawn lasted 40 or 50 hours but I stopped playing that.
I have struggled a bit staying into Day's gone, but I did modify the main characters to remove all ink on their skin. That was an improvement. Not a bad game, just hasn't grabbed me.


Meanwhile I have 400+ hours in No Man's Sky, almost rivaling time spent in Elite Dangerous, and Mount and Blade Bannerlord playtime grows.

I find I prefer games that are immersive, allow free-form play, limited to no rigid mission structure while still retaining a plot and provide a broad depth of interactivity through which the player can become part of the world. I suppose that's why "immersive sims" such as Kingdom Come Deliverance are my favorites. Elden Ring continues to be fantastic, too.


Games that don't tell me how, or demand that I play a certain way are the ones that appeal to me the most.

I am quite the opposite. But, that's me, there is no wrong way to enjoy a game.

It has to be "over the shoulder" 3d person for me. Or, "look down from above" 3d person. I turn off quickly to "first person". I know why I feel that way -- but, beyond the scope of the thread.

In contrast to new games, I've had enough of trying to find a good game recently.

Just fired up Tom Clancy's Endwar again and having a blast.

Borderlands 3 - Didn´t grab me at all and I stopped playing within the first hour. Liked the predecessors very much and even played them in coop, local and online.

Tiny Tina´s Wonderlands - Was a bit sceptical about it after my experience with Borderlands 3, but was persuaded to buy it by a friend to join him for some casual coop gaming. Found the gameplay so mediocre and the humour so annoying, stopped playing after a short while and uninstalled it.

Interesting Frank. I like Borderlands 3 a lot and have dropped 100 hours in to Wonderlands.

Actually I think BL3 is the best of the Borderlands games, except for writing. But mechanically I think it's the best in the series. The DLC was good too.

It's interesting you didn't like it if you liked BL2.

I'd rate the series like this

Borderlands 3
Borderlands 2
The Pre Sequel
Wonderlands
Borderlands 1

Same here WT and because of that I have hardly bought any games recently that I could drop into the category Panzer speaks of in the OP.

I am also very cautious of any games I buy nowadays and where possible always try out the 'unofficial demo' before making a final purchase.

If I had to pick one in the last year it would be RDR2. Luckily I got a refund on it via Steam.

No, not Red Dead Redemption!

I mean, I think that's the best designed PC game ever.

Interesting how different we all are.

Yeah, and I thought that I would enjoy it but it just didn't click with me. You could argue that I didn't give it enough play time as I was aware of the refund limits of Steam. Maybe in the future I will give it another go but not at full price. Are you listening Epic?

Funnily enough, another Rockstar game I had been wanting to get my hands on for ages was GTAV. So when Epic gave it away I was all over it but I hated that as well. As for Rockstar support, they are a joke but that's another story.

When I think about it a bit more, it probably has more to do with the fact that I generally can´t stand the grind for loot mechanics in those kind of games anymore.

Spent so much time with friends playing games like Destiny or the Division over the years in the never ending search for better loot to finish the harder parts of the games together, that I simply don´ t want to play similar games anymore. Kind of genre burnout probably.

I liked RDR2. So much so I may play through it again. Be more of a villain this time, to get the alternate ending.
With Gamepass, it makes me not want to buy games. I already have a big backlog of Steam/GOG games. I'm at a point where I will not buy a game until I can get it with all the addons, and on sale.
I plan on getting into Wings Over The Reich when the winter hits. I will follow it's development.

This rings especially true with the younger gamer demographics who usually play through a game in a few hours and then forget about it and move on to another game. It makes perfect sense to just pay a monthly fee to rent games for those types of gamers.

The critical key for me with all the Borderlands games is the coop mode. I find these games to be pretty boring in single player mode but in coop mode they are a ton of fun. The interaction with other human players really makes all the difference for me.

I never finish these two Alien games. May try again. I get killed too fast.

https://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/4518319/

Warhammer 3: tedious, broken campaign, bugs, crashes, corrupt saves, totally unstable multiplayer, and no playable skaven. Supposedly most of the bugs have been ironed out, but I shelved it until the immortal empires map comes out.

Necromunda: I like me some WH40K and they nailed the environments, but I just completely bounced off the gameplay.

The stand out game for me is Days Gone. In my opinion which is all it is, Days Gone is an awful game. I removed my earlier post as I don't think anyone really cares about my opinion on the matter.


Dbond you mentioned Greedfall. I've been interested in that one for awhile. I like third person games so that wouldn't bug me depending on how its implemented. Witcher 3 is great and I'd love to play it again. I played the first game once and the second game three times. For all the hours I put into playing W3 now would be a little too soon to return I think. I hear they are making some sort of free update so maybe when that comes out. I just hope they don't remove the original versions or cripple the updated version with too many bells and whistles. The Witcher 3 engine always performed well for me on my 970 except for the battle with the black rider who used ice spells. I'm on a 1660 super now so I hope the game would still run well. There's a great camera mod for Witcher 3 that gives you a lot of freedom of where and how to setup your camera that you might like. I like the camera kind of up and over the right shoulder in third person games.

I definitely would like to play Red Dead Redemption 2 again. October will have been 4 years since the game came out and I probably finished it a few years ago so maybe around that time would be a good time to revisit it. I'd be tempted to try the PC version but I seem to read a lot of reviews and forums that suggest its a fairly resource intensive game. I'd love to see at it 60fps but I'm not sure that's possible without a brand new clean, current generation PC.

IL2 'Great Battles'.
Maybe it is just me, but i read that many like myself have ditched this and returned to old IL2 1946; the latest 'B.A.T.' collection of mods that has transformed the game out of all recognition and features thousands of different aircraft now from the 'Dawn of Flight' to 'the Jet Age'.

Actually I was going to read your opinion of LA Noire haha. Saw it last night, but did not feel like reading, as it was a fair size post, and it was late.

Yes there's probably a good game in there, and my apathy is probably down to my own proclivities. I might give it another go. Another game that could fit in this list for me is Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen which I've started three times and just couldn't keep going. It gets a lot of praise and I'm a RPG guy, but this one didn't click. Third person thing, probably.



My box is quite modest indeed and has no trouble with the PC version. This is a game I've been thinking of revisiting, which I did about a year ago. I originally bought it on Epic as many did, but then bought it on Steam when it was released there. When I got the Steam version I played for probably 80 hours and then moved on to other stuff but I'd like to pick that back up. It's a fantastic game, and I think the best designed PC game we've seen. But yeah, it should run fine unless your PC is really old. For reference mine is a Ryzen 2600, 1660 Ti and 16 gigs 'o RAM.

My pc is from 2015, core i7 4790k with 16GB of ram. I recently had to get a new hard drive and operating system and graphics card. On this same PC I now have Windows 10, an SSD which I've never had before and a new EVGA Geforce 1660 super 6GB card. I really need a new monitor as mine was bought in 2010.(I specifically bought it for my Xbox 360 and Red Dead Redemption). It still functions but I'm having some issues with it but I just can't get a new one right now. I enjoyed RDR2 on PS4 and overall it seemed to run at a pretty optimized 30fps save for the bigger city in the game.

Dragon's Dogma is one I've played off and on. I probably have a hundred or more hours in it but never finished it. I never even started the Dark Arisen stuff. I think I just loose interest after awhile as the story doesn't always maintain its interest to me.

L.A. Noire I wholeheartedly recommend. Great game.

Horizon Zero Dawn was mentioned and that's another game that I just can never get into. I started playing it in 2017 and play it off and on. I made the mistake of trying to play it like an RPG and spent too much early on getting nowhere and for no good reason. It finally opened up more with regards to story interest once you go to the main city of Meridian but I eventually discovered that I just don't find the story interesting and as pretty as the world is, its quite uninteresting and feels mostly empty. I like when a game does a good job telling a story with no words just through environment exploration and encounters but this game feels mostly empty with cut and paste combat gameplay. I may try to finish it at some point but its another one of those games that is not very interesting or engaging and a bit of a chore to get through and its gameplay becomes kind of boring after awhile.

LA Noire I have started a few times. I think they did a fantastic job of nailing the time period.
It's on my to do list...someday.

Subnautica didn't do it for me. Played it for a bit and it all felt a bit pointless. No interaction, just repeat tasks in a certain order to get the next level of gear, then repeat a different set of tasks to get the next piece of equipment.
Got a refund.

Steel Division 2 also didn't grab me for some reason. I played Wargame (EE, AirLand, and Red Dragon) a lot, but Steel Division 1+2 just haven't grabbed me.

The steel division games are too fast paced and hectic to be played as war games. As a twitch type multi-player game it's OK but there are better ones

Scum, terrible ui imo and lacks atmosphere and is well over saturated with colour. Still in development though so may come back to it in a year or so and have a look.

War on the Sea, just found boringingly repetitive and fairly average to look at.

Il2 Great Battles. Had some fun with online for a little bit but it just seems a bit..lacking, souless? Ai is terrible so offline is no good for me. I do really want to fly the Me410 but not prepated to drop 80 bucks for it. Would be nice is the mission builder wasn't so da mn clunky so it had the campaign and missions il2 had available. The tank side of it is also staler than last weeks bread.

What has kept IL-2 Great Battles on my hard drive is the cooperative MP mode as well as the fact that NO ONE else is making new WWII flight sim content besides 1C Company. I don't count the a la carte' stuff made by DCS.