There are two kinds of piles of shame when it comes to video games.
One is obvious: our ever-growing libraries of games we’re “going to play some day, I swear, the discount was too good to miss”. We never are going to. It’s okay to admit it. It’s fine.
The other type of pile of shame is more, well, shameful. It’s full of games we want to play. We tried to play. Good games! Top ratings and great ideas!
…and they just don’t click. We try, and we try, give chance after chance, and the moment of “ah, now I get it, let’s boogie” never comes. No fault of the game, no fault of ours, just dissonant vibes, what can be done.
We can’t be bothered to play them, for sure, but we can talk about them. Here come the best games the editorial team of G2A News could never enjoy despite their best efforts.
Crow Fitzroy:
I wrote recently about my relationship to roguelites, but of all the genres and licenses, I don’t think there’s one I wanted to love and play more than Total War. I thought Total Warhammer was going to be it, because I love Warhammer Fantasy and expected the thematic buy-in to carry me. Nope. Tried Total War: Three Kingdoms, for similar reasons, nope. The stars are not in position, can’t do it.
I’m not huge on strategy games in general, but Total War’s promise is really engaging, and I wish my brain was wired to resonate with it. No big cool battles for me, no putting faithbreakers in my Book of Grudges, and if I want to pursue Lu Bu, I must do it the old-fashioned way, in a Dynasty Warriors game.
At least I can appreciate all the details and lovely maps, I guess, since I bought the games anyway.
Luke Kyle:
Ravenfield.
The Battlefield-style equivalent of Skyrim when it comes to modding potential. Pretty much overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam.
And yet I have a really hard time getting myself to like it more.
See, it’s modding capabilities are serious business. You can download thousands of character models, weapons, vehicles, aircraft, maps, mutators, what have you.
You can totally, say, pit Stormtroopers against anime assassin girls and have them use Warhammer 40K weapons and WWI-era tanks and planes. Just as long as there’s a mod for it. You can also customize botnames and have bots – either friendlies or enemies – sport the nicknames of your real-life buddies, for example. The scope of customization here reminds me of the good old days of UT99.
Theoretically, this is a dream come true for a guy like me. Sadly, while the game is pretty fun, it’s very barebones at its core. Remove all mods and all you’re left with is a perfect candidate for a refund.
Gunplay feels off. Ragdoll straight up sucks (get the “No Knockdown” mutator – you’ll thank me later). Flying is pretty bad. Battles often feel more like a game of RV There Yet? or Fall Guys than, say, Battlefield 6. Install too many mods and the game will take long minutes to load.
See, I really enjoyed Easy Red 2. Not as moddable as RF, but each mission feels grueling (in a good way!) and when you complete it, you have a sense of a job well done. Here, not so much.
Don’t get me wrong: I like Ravenfield. I’m still quite fond of it. It’s getting more and more fun with each major update. Recently it got a rogue-like mode replacing the now obsolete Conquest mode. And it’ll have mod support, the lack of which deterred me from playing these modes back in the day.
But it’s simply not as enjoyable as Easy Red 2 or Call of Duty: Warzone are (or were) in terms of gameplay (side note: Ravenfield is single-player only, though there is this multiplayer mod, but no one plays it nowadays).
The fact that I spent more time customizing the game than actually playing it is telling.
Also, there’s a whole bunch of games that I liked back when I was a kid, but I no longer vibe with. Memories are sometimes best left alone.
Oh, and all Unreal Tournament games after UT99. The first one is one of the greatest games of all time. Yeah, one of its standout features is the option to thoroughly customize bots. You can totally have a team of your real-life buddies as bots fighting against, say, some other buddies of yours. The gameplay, the music, the visual style – it’s all top notch even to this day.
Unreal Tournament 2003, 2004, and III threw it all away. No bot customization this time around, plus they all had this weird vibe unlike the original. Everything about them – their visual style, music, gameplay, and so on – feels off. It’s just not Unreal Tournament. UT3 feels more like a fast-paced version of Gears of War than anything else.
They’re not bad games per se, but they just don’t work for me. And I’m not alone in this sentiment, as it turns out.
Also, I don’t believe in the concept of piles of shames and I definitely don’t consider the games I don’t enjoy one, either.
Ravenfield
Release Date: May 18, 2017
Genres: Shooter, Indie
Bartosz “Resurrect” Wiktor:
Well, I’ve tried so hard to like Red Dead Redemption, not only the second game, but the whole series. The concept is really cool, cowboys, robbery, horses and all, but man, are these games SLOW. And boring.
I get it. The “long, boring journey” is one of the main themes and many love RDR for that. I even loved Death Stranding which resolves around same concept. RDR is more action packed than Kojima’s work, but it just doesn’t click for me, no matter how many times I try.
Maybe next-gen edition of RDR2 will be the turning point, or just the final fantasy (heheh) of me liking it.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Release Date: October 26, 2018
Genres: Shooter, Adventure
Remember Remedy’s CONTROL? The game with a redhead woman as the main character, who can toss things with her supernatural powers and shoot left and right.
The concept and the whole vibe of CONTROL is just incredible. But my biggest issue was how hard it was to progress the plot. Maybe I’m just too dumb and I rely too much on handholding and showing me the right path, but if you ever played this game, you probably know what I’m talking about.
I just wish that upcoming CONTROL: Resonance will fix those issues (skill issue, I know, but blame devs, you know) because this game looks gorgeous and soooo sick!!!
Control
Release Date: August 27, 2019
Genres: Shooter, Adventure