Probably GTA V. I did enjoy it, but the story was all over the place and the multiplayer was never that fun (it wasn't long before it became filled with cheaters and ridiculous DLC cars/weapons). Something about traversing the map just bored me in a way that GTA IV and San Andreas never did.
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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To me, Rockstar Games are cool as world simulators and storytelling engines. My issue is that they plop lazily-designed gameplay on top.
No one ever talks about the core gameplay loops of these games, the thing that makes you progress through the storyline.
They talk about the storyline, but they don’t talk about the mediocre gunfights you have to wade through to watch a cutscene or hear dialogue. Wave after wave of anonymous enemies, like videogames haven’t changed since shooting galleries.
They have to introduce essentially unexplained superpowers (slowing down time) to make it remotely interesting. And even then, I would argue most people are just trying to get through every single mission.
Or the terrible movement/driving/riding physics. I didn’t finish GTA4 (also a “10/10 game”) because some of the missions relied on the abysmal movement.
It’s like… a Rockstar game is like going to IKEA. You’re going to be led through a lot of stupid crap, just because they want to keep you there longer.
I do agree with your observations here, especially when it comes to GTA V.
One Rockstar game that I thought did a good job with the gameplay loop was Max Payne 3. Near-death, running low on ammo and diving to the side of an enemy's shot in slow-motion whilst you line up that last headshot and see the animation as the final bullet hits it's target. THAT felt satisfying. It's not a perfect game by any means, but I loved the gameplay.
GTA V on the other hand did feel like a chore at times with its uninspiring gunfights. I think it actually shined most during the unscripted moments - being chased when a stray bullet pops a tyre, forcing you to fight your way out of a battle on the side of the road before running for your life, stealing another car and getting away. I guess that's what you mean when you say a storytelling engine.
Omg, the helicopters especially in GTA4 controlled abysmally.
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I remember finishing the story and going "That's it?". Even now when I try to remember what the actual plot was I have no fucking idea. And I didn't really get into GTA Online because by the time I got around to it sharkcards were already ruining online and I just didn't want anything to do with that.
But I have a hard time saying it's overrated. There's just nothing else like it in the world. Every other game that has tried to copy GTA has ended up being noticeably inferior to GTA.
I suppose it's overrated in the sense that there are better games in the series (in my opinion at least).
I think Rockstar did an incredible job with RDR2, so I'm hoping GTA VI is an improvement over V.
It was the first time I played a GTA game.
The dialog and social satire was what sold it for me. As a game, it's just OK. There's a lot of mechanics that it trains you to do for one mission, and then it never comes up again. Once you do the first big heist, money is no longer anything to worry about. Which is good, because buying a business for income is almost never worth it unless you're going to have a very long playthrough.
The torture scene was a bit much. In-universe, even fucking Trevor thought it was a bit much.
The final mission should have been the big three-way shootout between various corrupt organizations. Have Franklin have to make his choice on who to kill during that mission, and then wrap it all up. The story clearly climaxes there, and the rest is dragging things out.
I'm surprised it got so many 10 out of 10 reviews back in the day. I guess having an open world game with draw distances like that on an Xbox360 was a big deal, but once that technical achievement is no longer noteworthy, it's a 7 out of 10 experience. Which is fine, it's just not amazing.
I found it very strange how unfinished parts of it seemed.
Elder Scrolls games but specifically Skyrim.
I have tried it multiple times but I just don't understand how so many people can put so many hours into a game when an element you are going to be engaging in for a lot of your play through is one of the worst in the genre, the combat. It is floaty, imprecise and has zero feeling of impact. It is just horrible. I felt the same about Oblivion but Skyrim seems to be held in even higher regard.
Oh man, yeah the hit reg and combat physics in Bethesda games are awful. At least Morrowind had good RPG elements, I would rather have that DND style of combat than what Oblivion and Skyrim have done with theirs.
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That's why we all play archers!
The ragdoll physics still felt novel at the time. Nothin quite like headshotting a goblin and they go tumbling away from the force of your arrow
Elder Scrolls games by and large suck out of the box. The prolific mod community is what makes them worth buying / playing. I've got a few hundred hours in Skyrim and I've never actually finished the main storyline. Don't know how it ends, don't care.
Skyrim does have a lot of combat overhaul mods to make it feel like you want it to. Of course ideally you shouldn't have to, but the option is there at least.
Ghost of Tsushima is touted by some as a "game of the decade" candidate when in reality it's just a somewhat more polished Ubisoft open world game, that's also highly monotonous and repetitive for its very long playthrough length.
YES thats what I thought whenever someone tried to get me to play it!
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I had been told to just play Sekiero or one of the AC remasters.
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Breath of the wild.
Complete disapointment as a Zelda game, it felt just like generic ubi-slop with a coat of nintendo paint, complete with a pointless crafting system and the ridiculous "swords can ony hit a dozen times before breaking".
Yeah I failed to understand the hype around this one. Played it to completion and it was... Ok. Very well polished but there was nothing original about it. Maybe original for a Nintendo game but it didn't do anything that I haven't seen dozens of times on other consoles and PC.
Disagree. Exploring the world of botw was fun, combat is fun, cooking is cool.
The problem is it's a pretty big genre shift. Nintendo clearly thought it was time after Skyward Sword and the market agreed... But I personally couldn't stand basically everything they did beyond the base idea of going all in on an open world.
There was, quite frankly, too much meaningless filler content for me to really care, and the disconnect in tone between the main story's genuinely emotional attempt at creating a sense of urgency and the open world "take your time bro lmao Zelda's already been doing this for a century" drove me up a wall.
I understand why people like it though, they absolutely nailed the exploration and mechanics... If you weren't already tired of them.
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Im not sure if witcher 3 was hyped but I recently played and did not get passed a few of the initial quests before I yawned out.
TW3, and The Witcher as a series in general, is one of those slow burn games. Its strong point is the characters and building story. That said, given the time investment required to get to that point, I can't blame anyone for bouncing off if they weren't already into the series.
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I finally bought the Claire Obscure hype after seeing tons of group cosplays of it at DragonCon. I thought I had bought a turn based RPG, but it's actually a rhythm game in disguise. I do not like the dodge or die mechanics.
I felt the same way. I turned it to easy mode and enjoyed the visuals and story. Good riddance to the combat frankly.
- Tomb Raider (2013) - I want to like that game and even tried the mindset of "Try treat it as just a standalone game" like I did with Resident Evil 4 but unlike that game, the game is boring. The constant hold-handling which the combination of the reboot trying to be cinematic feels jarring. "Survival" mechanics feels like a gimmick and felt in late-game, it went just being generic shooter game.
- Doom 3 - I only putting it here as there's fan saying it underrated but to me, it feels like a tech demo at best (a really good one as love the shadows) and at worst, it's a poor-man's Half-Life. It was at first, scary the jumpscare but that's more just emeries' placement which felt there for cheap scare which ruins the atmosphere a bit they just set up. Personally, I think Dead Space is everything what Doom 3 wishes it could of be. One thing I do like is you can listen to logs and read emails to try find out PINs for various lockers around the place which I thought that was cool.
Doom 3 was historically overwhelmingly panned
Trust me, I know. Like I said, I only added it as there's ton people saying it underrated and act like it's a universal liked game and TOTALLY not disliked by many and said why it isn't good.
I love Doom 3, but I totally get what you're saying. Dead Space is for sure like a better version of Doom 3. But I have a soft spot for personally and I love the sci fi environments and world building.
Hmm I think most rogue likes. But that's probably a me issue. I just don't enjoy having to restart and play the same gameplay loop again. Hades was the closest one that I seemed to enjoy more as I liked the story bits between each run. I recently started cult of the lamb and I enjoy the base building so that might help too.
It's interesting that you mention DS3. I quite enjoyed my time with it(once I got my bearings. I had to restart a number of times) but I'm super curious if I would enjoy it as much if I went back and played DS1 again to compare.
I can completely understand the environment complaint. I really liked sekiro for all the varied environments and themes.
Did you ever give Slay the Spire a go? I was also quite sceptical about roguelikes, but now it is by far my most played game ever at a whopping 600 hours.
The beauty of it is that it is quite easy to understand, but with an incredible amount of depth to it. You'll start out having trouble winning your first ever run, but that's when the fun begins. There are 4 characters, each with their play style and cards, and there are 20 ascensions to unlock, each being a more difficult version of a standard run. In the end, you'll gain such a deep understanding of the balancing and tradeoffs at play that you can't not be amazed at this achievement in game design. Baalorlord is a great YouTuber and Twitch streamer who is also one of the best players in the world. He was able to do a consecutive winstreak of 20 wins on the highest ascension, showing that this game is RNG based but has a tremendous amount of skill involved too.
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OMG, I just watched a streamer do an all bosses runs of DS3 yesterday and was reminded of how much I dislike that game. I played Demon Souls and DS1 right before it(also ER), and found my prefered build(magic) heavily nerfed to the point of having to min max my most mana efficient spells to even get through areas.
Also watching the playthrough I was reminded how there is not a single area in that game I looked at fondly or found beautiful or enjoyable to be in. I understand why thematically, but everything is so dead and drab and lifeless compared to even DS1 which has plenty of lush green areas or bold alien crystal caverns. It really feels like DS3 wants you to hate your time with the game, throwing enemies in locations that are as infuriating as possible for no reason(dlc is even worse about this somehow). The runs to get back to bosses are also infuriating and such a time waste(I am so glad Elden Ring mostly removed these)
Now I want to try DS2 to see if I actually like or dislike it more than DS3. Overall, it just feels like DS3 wants to make you suffer with no payoff or reason, just because its "hardcore" or "edgy" and in 2025 I don't really care for that mindset anymore.
Balatro.
It is a mechanically very dense game. There is a lot of depth and complexity to its gameplay. I get why a lot of people enjoy that. But I just kind of bounce off that, I need something to motivate me to engage with game mechanics. I need a story, or like, some kind of theming that I can project a goal on to. Poker but weird just doesn’t do it for me.
Like I adore paradox games, but I can project a broad world buildy-esq self built narrative and goals on to that, even when the mechanics are as broad as an ocean but as deep as a puddle.
The hype building up behind CP2077 made me curious, but I couldn't care about it after ten hours in. I'm still not sure if it's not my type of game/storytelling, or that I wanted too much from it (or was prepared to hate it as an ordinary reddit contrarian), but I feel like I don't understand why people liked it or want to replay it now.
In contrast I do know Doom: Ethernal was definetely not my type. I'm a huge Doom/Quake fan, and jumping puzzles, gimmicky mapmaking, maraudeurs, resource farming routine, the fact you can't kill stuff without constant QTEing were frustrating. The way they constantly show you how awesome and brutal you are in the cutscenes is just damn cheap. For me it was a downgrade from short but breathtaking Doom 2016. I'm happy it makes money to do great remasters with new episodes though.
As a counter example, as I played Like a Dragon games back to back, I've seen the sentiment that the third game, the first unremastered game in a chronological order, is the worst one for a modern gamer, even called Blockuza for enemies behavior. While I can understand that, I find it's bearing one of the greatest emotional moments for the main character, as well as the less confusing storyline that 4 and 5 tried to pull. The 6th game revisits the same vibe space, but does so in a more technologically advanced and experienced way, and it means a lot. So I think the antihype there can be unfair too.
Doom Eternal was such a freakin disappointment to me. It was fine, thats all to me.
I'm pissed most youtubers cherished it like a God's own baby. It led me to finally unsub from Angry Joe I forgot I followed from earlier years. There were just a few bloggers who said they didn't like it or pointed any problem with it.
I've dumped 300 hours into Cyberpunk 2077, I played it on launch, loved it, and periodically through to the end of Phantom Liberty.
I just like the gameplay. Especially after the perk overhaul, which made melee builds sensational. It's so fun to quicksave before entering an area and just go wild.
I think Yakuza Kiwami 3 is coming out early next year
Whaaaaa..?
That's wild. And an instant buy too.
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Pokemon Legends Arceus. I bought into the hype after it released cause my friends were playing it non-stop and assured me that anything I thought I wouldn't like about it wasn't actually in the game or wasn't as bad as I thought. I got it and could only play till the Lilligant battle before dropping it. I still adore most mainline Pokemon games (although Scarlet and Violet might be my jumping off point cause I didn't like the story or open world), but this was way too much of a departure from what I liked about Pokemon for me.
My list would be too long, so I'll just mention the most recent one: Expedition 33.
I think it has a fantastic intro and decent ending, but I found the story to be kinda weak and it lost me at the Gestral village, and never really recovered. I still finished it as I knew it was pretty short and I was hoping for it to get better.
The gameplay tho is what I really can't tolerate. I think both dodge and parry are overpowered, as they completely negate damage, making the rpg part weaker - healing becomes useless, turn order is less significant, there's less stats. It ends up encouraging you to build for damage, making everyone a glass cannon. This is made worse by the fact that the equipment is focused mostly on boosting damage (often with multiplicative effects).
Fuck, I don't like most video games so I can throw a rock and hit one, but I'm gonna go with the genres I like just to make it interesting.
Fighting games: Mortal Kombat—I'm sorry, I like the hyper violence as much as the next guy, but the gameplay doesn't do it for me at all. Entertaining to watch, but it stops there for me.
Action games: Suda51 overall. Like, play No More Heroes but steer clear of the rest. It's mediocre combat wrapped in nonstop nonsense.
Shmups: ZeroRanger. I can't stand that game.
Red Dead Redemption 2
It's the same old Rockstar formula of having you travel back and forth over the map just to do a normal mission and falls short of giving the cowboy fantasy everyone touts it as being. They added enough detail that your horse's balls shrink in the cold but made it so easy to get money that whilst your merry band of outlaws are complaining about how little they have, I struggled to find more things to buy with immense hoards of cash. And the bounty system doesn't work. And the multiplayer was total ass. And part way through the fantastical cowboy simulator, it adds goofy sidequests of time travel and robots. Rockstar couldn't decide what to make the game so they tried to make it everything, leaving it lacklustre.
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