Great games you own but don't like or never even installed

Anyone else have a collection of unplayed or quickly discarded games that are considered "classics" by others?

I am pretty bored of most of my games, but have a lot of titles highly regarded by others that are just sitting untouched on my shelf. Somehow, I can't summon the energy to get into them or even to try them. I am not sure why. They just seem to lack a sufficient hook to get me over the energy activation barrier required to perserve or even try them. I just place them on a mental pile of "too hard" or "too bleurgh". Anyone got similar lists or want to persuade me to amend mine?

Of the top of my head:

Thief I & II - widely praised, and I did love System Shock 2, but have not even installed these. I loved cowering from zombies in SS2 with my wrench, but the idea of creeping round to steal stuff just isn't as appealing.

Mass Effect - there is no Bioware RPG I have not loved, except this slow fuzzy shooter thing. Got to where I was about to pick up the last recruitable NPC and lost interest. Maybe it's just the dull voice of the male protaganist that makes something inside me die?

Half-life - wanted to see if I liked shooters. Enjoyed the opening tour, then when the monsters starting spawning decided I don't like shooters. Too stressful - decided to make a cup of tea instead.

Operation Flashpoint - the idea of fighting in a war sounds awesome, but when I tried it, I found myself lying confused in a field of battle, vainly trying to shoot some soldiers far off in cover and decided a soldier's life was not for me.

Hidden and Dangerous 2 - having enjoyed the original Ghost Recon, I figured this tactical shooter sounds my cup of tea, but I have never installed it. It's reputation of being knee-cappingly hard may have something to do with it.

The Witcher - supposed to be a good recent RPG (and boy, do we need those), but has not grabbed me enough to install it. Something I read about mixing herbs to poison your weapon to beat a boss just made me think "bleurgh".

Gothic II - I really want to play a massive fantasy type RPG, but could not engage with this one at all. Just seemed too clunky and give me a mouse cursor please!

Swat 3 - sounds intriguing - I always wanted to be a policeman - but confronted with selecting a team from a whole preccinct full of officers, I just quit and uninstalled.

Max Payne - played Max Payne 2 enough to unlock the happy ending, but never installed the first. I think it's a victim of the reversed temporal ordering - somehow a fraught revenge story does not appeal after the love story of the second.

Guild Wars - I loved World of Warcraft, but this free MMO makes me flinch. Despite it's high quality graphics, I find it aesthetically awful and the world soulless. Running around as a butch male warrior in a leather mini-skirt probably did not help. My son swears by it though.

Half-Life 1&2 as well as Counter Strike. All came in the same box. I never played any of the games apart from HL1. Played it a bit; then I got stuck somewhere, and the game never felt that exciting that I bothered to search further for the..uh..path onwards.

Homeworld. I like Homeworld 2 just fine, just a shame about the uninspired plot/scenario design (which has gotten a lot of flak from the first game's fans too). But the original Homeworld...

The game operates on the 'rock-paper-scissors' principle. Say you've got Interceptors, that are quickly dispatched by corvettes, which die messily upon contact with assault frigates, who are highly vulnerable to bombers, which tend to explode upon encountering an interceptor. Units die incredibly quick when they encounter their designated counter, so you have to keep your interceptors away from enemy corvettes, and your corvettes at a long distance from enemy assault frigates, and of course you need interceptors to give your frigates fighter cover so they don't die when attacked by bombers, and make sure there aren't enemy interceptors around when you attack enemy frigates with your bombers (or else they'll get massacred), and make sure to keep an eye on your combat support and resourcing ships so they don't get massacred by any random combat unit that happens to be nearby, and don't forget to use your ships' special abilities too, and keep building more units and give orders to your research ships, and manually pick out damaged combat units and order them to dock for repars and and and ...

There's just a ludicrous amount of stuff going on at once, you need to micromanage everything and every second you're not 100% on the ball, you lose units; and as such, the game doesn't leave much room for learning or experiments. I've installed it twice, and uninstalled it soon after both times.

Thief II - Same. Couldn't get into it as much. Thief I was great and a classic but had little replay value for me.

Mass Effect - I'm going to see if I can't force myself to play this one again, and maybe end up liking it.

Earth 2150 - $5 budget game, just never installed it. Meh.

Ghost Recon - Huge stinker. Hated this, it paled next to Operation Flashpoint, which was a bugfest. It was installed for maybe an hour total before being promptly uninstalled, never to see the light of day again.

Call of Duty 4 - Disappointingly shallow game. Crysis blew this away hands down in every category. I made it through one playthrough, forcing myself, and that was it. The only thing that made me not regret buying it was the AC-130 mission. Sad, huh?

Star Wars Empire at War - Poster child for how NOT to make a stupid RTS. Glad I bought this as part of that budget SW game pack for $30. I tried it when it was released and said screw it after 30 minutes.

Far Cry - Doom 3 far outshadowed this. The gameplay was boring as snot. Lasted a total of 15 min on my HDD. Thank god for budget games

Splinter Cell - Horrible, awful port to the PC of what's probably a great console game. Again I forced myself to play about 2 hours and it got uninstalled. This one was free, so no regrets.

Age of Empires 3
i loved AoE2. i hated AoE3. the reason? the time period. the game flouts having huge battles and the like with cannons and muskets and such. but, when you have cannons that can reach a third of the map away, infantry that know no tactics, and a 200 population limit, i found it hard to like. there is no real tactics in the game. if you have a lot of cannons and some anti cavalry units, you can defeat everyone. and i mean, everyone.
so, it sits in my shelf.

Ghost Recon Advanced warfighter
paid $60 to get the collectors edition. dont know why, mayve because i got a $70 gamestop gift card and i didnt know what else to buy. well, i got it then found out it couldnt run on my computer. put it away until last year. played the frst two missions, got stuck, uninstalled when my hard dive got wiped, played a bit of it a few months ago, uninstalled it to make room for ETW.
it was a tactical, but kinda lame, game. the tactical options were limited, and your stupid teammates always got themselves killed. i hte the non rebounding health meter becase there are some places where you get killed very quickly, or your health gets really low and you end up restarting because if you dont have full health for the enxt mission you would die in the next stage. as i sad before, tactical options were limited, and the multiplayer is the definition of lame.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Far Cry - Doom 3 far outshadowed this. The gameplay was boring as snot. Lasted a total of 15 min on my HDD. Thank god for budget games

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Doom 3?! Wow, Whacker, you just lost 20% of your Nerddom.

ARMA I
Occasionally I try to play it and enjoy it, but I just end up hating it more and very seriously considering using it as target practice.

CR

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Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit

ARMA I
Occasionally I try to play it and enjoy it, but I just end up hating it more and very seriously considering using it as target practice.

CR

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thats what i did with my Empire Earth 2 cd. shot it to hell with BBs.
i would have put it in my list, but its not considered a great game.

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Originally Posted by Reverend Joe

Doom 3?! Wow, Whacker, you just lost 20% of your Nerddom.

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I liked Doom 3 a lot. In fact I just got done re-playing it last night. id Software is one of the few dev houses that I've been essentially 100% loyal to over the years. Only game they co-dev'd and I didn't buy or like was Quake Wars.

I feel the need to comment on some of those, some of it is about taste of course.

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Originally Posted by econ21

Hidden and Dangerous 2 - having enjoyed the original Ghost Recon, I figured this tactical shooter sounds my cup of tea, but I have never installed it. It's reputation of being knee-cappingly hard may have something to do with it.

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If someone says H&D 2 is knee-cappingly hard then they haven't played H&D1. :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by econ21

The Witcher - supposed to be a good recent RPG (and boy, do we need those), but has not grabbed me enough to install it. Something I read about mixing herbs to poison your weapon to beat a boss just made me think "bleurgh".

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That's actually pretty much the reason I never tried The Witcher either.

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Originally Posted by econ21

Gothic II - I really want to play a massive fantasy type RPG, but could not engage with this one at all. Just seemed too clunky and give me a mouse cursor please!

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Heresy! I've never really missed a cursor and it would ruin the immersion, admittedly the game has it's own style but when they tried to make it more mass market compatible with part 3 it really lost a lot of it's charm, one could even say all of it, resulted in a big desaster and reputation hit etc. It's perfectly possible though that the german version has far superior voice overs and a lot of the charm could be lost in translation.

As for my personal list:

FarCry 2 - Was really looking forward to this one but it turned out unbelievably lame and shallow. I played it to the end just to see the outscome, which was even more lamerer than the game itself but I could have saved some money there.

Cossacks 2 - I know some here liked it but as a big fan of the first part and American Conquest I didn't like it at all, you have to micromanage every single formation, the AI steamrolled me in every skirmish attempt I made and combined with the performance problems it had at the time I just dropped it. Later learned it had Starforce so I won't ever pick it up again either.

If they won't patch ETW to improve the campaign AI and diplomacy it could make it onto this list as the TW game I spent the shortest amount of time with. Even though it's a pretty good game in many respects.

I've also suspended playing ArmA II, but I hope they will patch it to the point where it's worth picking up again so i wouldn't consider this a closed case yet.

Call of Duty and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

They're both installed on my computer, but I've barely touched either one. I'm not sure why that is, unless I'm subconsciously worried about getting motion sickness while playing them? I don't know. :shrug:

Call of Duty 2 - It's so incredibly arcade and easy, I dropped it after 20 minutes. The PPSh can be fired as a machine gun with almost no recoil whatsoever.

Guild Wars - For some reason I paid 110$ for the Collector's Edition. The only thing I have used where the headset and the music CD.

Civ City: Rome - Another big dissapointment. Recommended by an avid gamer who had his own shop, I was about to ask for my money back after playing 1 hour of it.

Sins of a Solar Empire - Got it dirt cheap and thought "Hey, I've heard great things about this game." I played it a couple of times and was intrigued by a few aspects of it... but I just could never get into it.

This pretty much describes my gaming habits in the last few years: Get game, play for 1 hour, shelf it.

Baldur's Gate 2: I know it's widely loved but it starts slow, the interface is clunky and I suck at making characters.

Devil May Cry: Picked it out of a bargain bin, played for a few minutes, haven't touched it since.

Medieval Total War II: Have barely played it, just doesn't match up to the original.

This thread definitely has some incendiary potential. :laugh4:

Bioshock

Game that pretended to be art, but failed horribly. It was way too easy - so easy that it made no difference how you played the game. You could just run through without thought, without consequence. Somehow it felt like the game had been totally sacrificed for the story and setting. I quit before halfway.

Medieval 2

I guess I was just burned out on TW games. MTW multiplayer was fun, RTW MP was occasionally somewhat amusing, but it just wore off. Could never get into MTW2. I never really cared about TW singleplayer, except for Shogun. The tactical battles had always been the heart of the franchise.

The Witcher

Stodgy and boring. Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation got it spot-on.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...22-The-Witcher

GalCiv 2

I couldn't get around the underdeveloped space battles. For me, a grand space strategy game must have massive fleets blowing the crap out of each other, and preferably look good while doing it.

Spore

Not really a "great" game per se, just a much hyped one. It was a shallow shadow of a game, period. But, I guess I'm a sucker.

Mass Effect

I actually finished it, but not without some pain. People (and critics) kept saying that it was the definitive Bioware RPG, but for me the gameplay just wasn't enough of a step forwards. In all honesty though, the hardcore sci-fi setting, research and background material were very good, as well as the dialog to a lesser degree. By all accounts I should have liked it.

Neverwinter Nights 2

Again, the gameplay failed to deliver. Some of it might be because I tried the Warlock class first; an antithesis of good game design. (The Warlock uses the same few spells time and time and time again, over and over. Other D&D caster classes are much more appealing to me.)

Titan Quest

Dunno if it counts as a "great" game, but anyhow. I can mostly blame myself for this one. I played Diablo (and Diablo 2) to the death, so I had high expectations of this one. However, Guild Wars had redefined the action RPG genre for me - I just couldn't stand the old-fashioned gameplay of TQ.

It's somewhat interesting because quite a few people on these forums have expressed a definite dislike for GW. Perhaps it could be that those people put much more emphasis on story than me? (I always consider gameplay to be the of the first and foremost importance with computer games - they are games, after all. If I wanted to experience a good story, I'd first look to a book or even a movie.)

EDIT: A couple of counterpoints

Gothic II - I thought it was a fun little game. Had no problems at all with the controls even though they felt a bit console-y. It had a nice, semi-seamless world and somewhat novel combat mechanics with player skill included instead of just number crunching.

Far Cry II - It's a shooter that works. No pretentions (Bioshock, I'm looking at you! :whip:), no nonsense. Just a pretty sandbox world with lots of dudes to kill. Almost Painkiller-ish, though nothing can really beat Painkiller, of course.

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Originally Posted by Crandaeolon

GalCiv 2

I couldn't get around the underdeveloped space battles. For me, a grand space strategy game must have massive fleets blowing the crap out of each other, and preferably look good while doing it.

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I totally meant to post this, but I forgot. Honestly with the depth of the rest of the game you think they could have at least put some effort into the battles. Just killed the game for me.

Neverwinter Nights - I just dont like it. Any part of it. At all.
Medieval: Total War - Yeah, its the original, I can't stand the battles. I'd rather play Rome.

Only ones I own that I havent gotten into. Theres plenty of others I rented though.

Call of Duty: World at War - (XBOX 360)

My grudge match with CoD:WaW is legendary. I didn't like this game, i didn't like the concept, and I didn't like the MP beyond the first month. A wholly uninteresting game that demonstrates quite proudly everything that is wrong with WW2 shooters. With all due respect to the developers of these sorts of games, enough is enough.

Soul Caliber II (Playstation 2)

I've never really liked SC games, in fact I've been more of a Street Fighter rat, but the Soul Caliber series has really gotten under my skin ever since this game. 2 was the very first game I ever bought under my own money, earned from a job, and I have to say I regretted it from day one. The combat felt stiff, combos were cheap and half the characters had one move that could be spammed for eternity to cheese opponents. :skull:

Spore (PC)

One word: :daisy: I played this game for thirty minutes before ripping it out of the drive and nearly took a hammer to it. After all the hype, after all the build up, this game showed me (as ETW would after) that hype can never be trusted.

SW: KOTOR II (PC)

I.. i really wanted to like this game. I did. It had a great story, great gameplay that improved on the original and compelling twists along the way that kept you interested. The only problem? Obsidian Entertainment has never been able to finish a game technically. This game to this day regularly crashes on my ATI based comps. I gave up on ever playing it again last year.

Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (Playstation 2)

I hated this game. It made me so frustrated on the higher difficulty levels where the AI would spam 8 button combos that could take you from 100%-0% and there was nothing you could do. This is the only game I have physically destroyed.

Ghost Recon (PC)

The original was an interesting game that built on the pretty successful formula from the rainbow six series. The only problem? The AI was a cheating :daisy:. Instant headshots from over 500 yards with an AK is not my idea of a fun time. The only way you could make it through a mission without casualties would be to get extremely lucky. I heard the later expansions fixed this, but honestly I didn't care by then.

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Originally Posted by Monk

Spore (PC)

One word: :daisy: I played this game for thirty minutes before ripping it out of the drive and nearly took a hammer to it. After all the hype, after all the build up, this game showed me (as ETW would after) that hype can never be trusted.

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This man speaks the truth. I'm still :daisy:ed off that I paid full price for it.

I think the only game I've left totally collecting dust is Half Life. Bought it to play Counter Strike, back in the day.

But not even trying The Witcher is a... it is.. it's blasphemy! Do not let the herbs fool you! :smash::clown:

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Originally Posted by Tratorix

Baldur's Gate 2: I know it's widely loved but it starts slow, the interface is clunky and I suck at making characters.

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:dizzy2:

Warcraft 3: It feels like a mish-mash between AoE and WoW, and fails at both.

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Originally Posted by Crandaeolon

Far Cry II - It's a shooter that works. No pretentions (Bioshock, I'm looking at you! :whip:), no nonsense. Just a pretty sandbox world with lots of dudes to kill. Almost Painkiller-ish, though nothing can really beat Painkiller, of course.

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That would have been fine had they marketed the game as a successor to Doom 3, I hadn't bought it in the first place and would have never complained. They did however say it's a huge immersive world (actually mostly consisting of linear corridors between mountains), that you could do lots of interaction with your friends (that was reduced to a standard game mechanic of they spare you the reload once), that you could play out the different parties against eachother (that was just part of the linear plot), that you could be the big fearsome evil man or the nice guy and help civilians(the civilians thing was a VERY linear and scripted part of the linear plot, your behaviour did not seem to have any influence on anything) and that it would generally be a very immersive world (a country with 10 civilians where every militia, friend or foe, shoots at you regardless with the cheap excuse that you're hired as a super secret superduper mercenary). :dizzy2:

I mean yeah, the shooter part was kinda decent but I expected sooo much more from this game and in the end it was just a stream of running from A to B and then back to A while shooting endless streams of ever-respawning dudes on the way. :shrug:

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Originally Posted by Subotan

:dizzy2:

Warcraft 3: It feels like a mish-mash between AoE and WoW, and fails at both.

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Now that I take offence to.

It is a typical RTS.

and WoW was after it. Don't get me started on that game. I hate it and everyone who plays it. Everyone associated with it.

If you want a more AoE feeling play Warcraft 2. Races are basically mirrors except for higher tiers.

You can tell me a game in which this happens is bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2AsWctZ_Wc

Half Life 2 - Got bored of the game pretty quickly. For me this was overhyped in the manner of ETW.

Call of Duty 4 - there's no reason to play either SP or MP after a while - usual frustations of a mass appeal FPS wrapped up in a shinier package.

MTW II - this was the 'wtf' moment when the TW series started to go wrong for me. Most things were less intuitive than you would expect from a dev team who have had 6/7 releases (games + expansions) to polish stuff. Also - hard to care as much for a less superior game for its time after spending countless hours on MTW and STW.

I thought homeworld was excellent - eye bleedingly hard when games were getting easier so everyone could complete them easily on standard settings.

Penumba, got it for £3, but never got around to playing it.

Bioshock was stupidly cheap on Steam, £3.49 or something, and The Orange Box for a great price on a Steam sale. Never actually downloaded either....

Thief II - Never actually installed. I got burnt out on Thief (which is a good game but some of the later levels get too frustrating) and decided not to take it further.

Morrowind - Walking and walking and walking, then running up to someone and rapping on the keys as fast as possible in what is apparently referred to as "combat". Then talking and clicking through line after line of pointless dialogue wondering if I should be remembering any of it.

System Shock 2 - Wandering about aimlessly with weapons that break after three or four uses etc. (yes I know it's a classic but this game depressed me.)

Medieval 2: Total War - For me this was the worst TW game so far. RTW was bad enough but this thing has so little to redeem it. I've not played ETW and probably won't now. I probably played M2TW two or three times before uninstalling it and throwing it on the shelf.

Unreal Tournament III - For some reason I've never felt inspired to take this out of the box. It seems like it might be UT2K4 with a makeover and I don't play FPS much anymore anyway (I picked this up in the 'bargain bin').

Good to know I am not alone. I just want to put in a plug for Ghost Recon I - not a great game, but well worth perservering with.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Ghost Recon - Huge stinker. Hated this, it paled next to Operation Flashpoint, which was a bugfest. It was installed for maybe an hour total before being promptly uninstalled, never to see the light of day again.

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The first mission is not that great and you probably need more than 1 hour to get acclimatised to the unforgiving stealth based game play. The strengths of the game are:
(1) the tactical aspect - things like carefully setting up your three squads to perform a deadly cross-fire assault on the enemy camp in the first mission are fun.
(2) the variety of missions - it really is extraordinarily good, from night time prison break to urban evac to armoured assault to night time recon etc etc. The first mission is perhaps the most bland and not characteristic of the game.
(3) selecting, upgrading your squad after XP and kitting them out with gear makes a nice SP hook to the campaign.
The more recent Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter sacrifices all these virtues.

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Originally Posted by Monk

Ghost Recon (PC)
The original was an interesting game that built on the pretty successful formula from the rainbow six series. The only problem? The AI was a cheating :daisy:. Instant headshots from over 500 yards with an AK is not my idea of a fun time. The only way you could make it through a mission without casualties would be to get extremely lucky. I heard the later expansions fixed this, but honestly I didn't care by then.

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The later expansions made it worse, to be honest. The first game is easier. You have to play it like a stealth game - he who sees first, wins. The AI is no more accurate than you, I think. It's just very accurate and bullets are very lethal. The one shot one skill aspect of the game is the worst feature, IMO, as it just makes it not fun for most mortal players like me. You have to save and reload. And you eventually learn the map, so that you predict the AIs position. These things are particularly egregious in the timed missions and similar where you need quick and near perfect play to progress. Both things are bad and stop the game being great. (As does never being able to see your gun, grrr). Still it is one of the few games on my shelf I would consider replaying in the near future.

Got Civ IV lying around somewhere. It was a gift but I don't have a computer capable of running it.

(Not sure if it's a great or highly-rated game and I'm not a huge fan of RTS games but it comes to mind as one that's never been installed).

Half-Life 2 Never got into it...but bought it for the mods, which ironically I never ended up playing anyhow.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Dunno, just something that put me off.

Medieval 2: Total War I hated how generic the armies were (after Rome, but also I felt MTW1 had better unit lineup) and most of all the lack of immersion/believeability. If I had good relations with another faction it did not matter, they would attack you anyhow even if they had 3-4 other enemies. Think I played more Broken Crescent than M2TW vanilla.

Empire: Total War Spent 10-15 hours on the campaigns total. And that was before the patches.

Crysis: Shiny graphics, good enough UI, but just wasn't interesting.