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

[Fragony]

Have yet to touch Fallout 3, keeping it for the dark days, too restless when it's sunny.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

Empire Earth and Age of Mythology back some years ago.

[rajpoot]

Medal of Honour Pacific Assault. Bought this when I finished playing Medal of Honour Allied Assault, which I'd gotten as a gift. Never got around to playing it though, by the time it was shipped, I was back to AOE2 and AOM.

Loki. This one was available cheap, so picked it. Installed it, but didn't like it, so removed it within the hour.

And finally ETW. It just won't work. Tried everything.....literally. Finally I came to the conclusion that it's due to my dual core processor which is 2.0 GHz insted of 2.4 GHz.....so I'm waiting until something comes out to optimise it for Dual Core.

[Husar]

And finally ETW. It just won't work. Tried everything.....literally. Finally I came to the conclusion that it's due to my dual core processor which is 2.0 GHz insted of 2.4 GHz.....so I'm waiting until something comes out to optimise it for Dual Core.

Heh, that is not your problem if it won't work at all, since I updated my laptop to 4GB of RAM it even runs fluid on it on roughly medium detail and my laptop also has a 2.0GHz dual core.

[rajpoot]

Well, actually it's not totally unplayable, I can play the grand campaign smoothly enough. It crashes before all the real time battles though......so, I'm pretty sure it's due to the processor.

Edit : And I just have 2 GB RAM... :(

[TinCow]

Spore - As mentioned by others. A sandbox game minus the game is just a sandbox. I am not 4 years old.

Empire: Total War - Bizarrely, I like this a lot more than M2TW but haven't played it much at all. I start a campaign, then realize that the idiotic AI hasn't been fixed 10 turns later and quit. Unless it is evenually fixed with patches/mods, this likely signals the end of the line for TW games for me.

Fallout 3 - Played through it once, which does amount to many hours of playtime, but it was a fraction of the amount of time I put into Morrowind and Oblivion. Haven't bought any of the DLCs and don't plan to. Unless there's a major mod that totally redoes the entire thing, I likely won't be back.

The Witcher - Tried to finish it twice. Both times, I got about 2/3 of the way through and just stopped. I love the world and I think the combat is very fun, but (even with the EE version) the dialog is just horrible and the sex stuff is over the top. This game goes so far overboard on language and sex, that it is no longer 'mature' and wraps back around to being childish. The swearing and sex seem incredibly forced and don't fit well into the storyline. It's an immersion-breaker for me and I get fed up with it before I can finish the game.

Mass Effect - I don't understand the praise on this one. There's no freedom in this game at all. Sure, I can pick which planet I want to go to, but once on a planet it's a straight NWN-style linear quest progression with the bog-standard good and evil choice of actions and dialog. Inventory management is the worst I have ever seen in a game (and that includes PS:T and FO1/2). The 'rover' missions are generic and totally uninspiring. I played it through once and haven't bothered picking it up ever since.

FarCry 2 - Currently installed on my HD and I just don't have the inspiration to finish it. The beautiful world is spoiled by endlessly spawning enemies and no sense of immersion whatsoever. A sandbox game where exploration is pointless and unrewarding. Never thought I'd see that one.

[drone]

M2TW - bought it when it came out, went hunting for a better video card to play it, and just never got around to installing it. Read the local reviews and impressions here at the Org, and realized that it's probably not worth starting up (especially with my limited gaming time). Didn't buy the Kingdoms expansion, so I probably couldn't get any use from the existing mods.

Doom3 - played it some when it came out, but my PC was woefully inadequate at the time. This meshed with the video card search mentioned above. Once I upgraded, I just couldn't get back into it. I've come to realize that single player FPS's are just not my thing. Especially when duct-taping the flashlight to your firearm is not a built in option.

[Zenicetus]

X3: Terran Conflict
I thought this might be a little better than the previous one (Reunion?), but ended up bailing on it after a week. The economic side is good, but flying the ships just isn't much fun. I just couldn't get past the slow feel of the ship's movement (there is a speed limit cap, and it's very low), the very small areas between jump gates, and the poor enemy pilot AI (just simple turn and burn, no real tactics). I've been forever spoiled by Independence War 2. I want that game engine for ship movement and combat, and the large feeling of open space, combined with X3's sandbox economic sim. Now that would be a good game. Why do all these game devs feel they have to recreate Wing Commander when they do space combat?

Dead Space
It was fun for about a third of the way into the game, learning how the weapons worked. It has a nice stripped-down UI that looks good and works well. But after the novelty of the slice-'n-dice weaponry wears off, it's just another boring corridor crawl/horror space survival FPS with an unimaginative, derivative plot. Also, I hate games like this that don't let me save whenever I want to, and force me to reach checkpoints where I can save (or the game auto-saves). In a shooter, that imposes an artificial tension-release dynamic. It's the game environment that should be making me nervous and cautious, not my distance from an arbitrary save point.

Neverwinter Nights 2
I loved the first NWN... it wasn't perfect, but for Baldur's Gate fans it was the next logical evolution, and the best of the user-made modules were very, very good. The default campaign in NWN2 wasn't bad, but what killed it for me was the klunky game engine. The camera was difficult to control even after it was patched up. Archery was useless due to the very short engagement/aggro distances. The game had endless pauses for loading.... almost every time you open or close a door. There were constant loads in the outside maps because the maps were ridiculously small in area. The mechanics of managing your party members were also clumsy. There was no way (in the default game without mods) to get a wizard through a dungeon door and into the back of the room, protected by the melee members of the party, without insane amounts of micro-management and character control swapping.

It probably didn't help that I had recently come off a 2 year binge with WoW and its huge, seamless game world and (relatively) smooth interface, but I just couldn't deal with the awful mechanics of the game engine. I got about halfway through the default campaign and quit. I never got around to seeing if any user-made modules were any good, which is a shame, because that was a great outlet for creative writing in the first NWN game.

Mass Effect
Well, it was okay. I can't quite get as far as saying I didn't like it, but I don't think it lived up to some of the hype I've seen here and elsewhere. The problems were noted in other posts, so I won't expand on it. It just seemed like some areas were rushed to get the thing out the door, and I hope they're spending a little more polishing time on the sequel.

Empire: Total War
A mixed bag.... the land battles are fun, although the units on each side are now more identical, which limits replay incentive (why would I want to fight another campaign where the main difference is the color of the uniforms?). I miss the wild disparity between armies that we had in RTW, and to a lesser extent M2TW. The diplomacy is either broken or CA can't figure out where it wants to go with that side of the game. Time will tell, and if they tighten up the diplomacy I'll still play it for a while. The naval battles are a joke, but they can be auto-resolved. This is a game niche where we desperately need some serious competition for CA.

[Lemur]

Silent Hunter 3. Bought it, played it a little, decided it was just too much work. I don't dispute that it's a great game, just a little too intense of a sim for my blood.

[Azathoth]

Jesus Christ, there's a lot of blasphemous sentiment in this thread.

My list: Half Life: I got stuck in that alternate dimension place where there are a bunch of small floating platforms. I didn't know what to do (cuz it was a long time ago and I was pretty noobish, always played games on easy setting, etc.) so I jumped a long way down to a fairly large island with a cave, survived with like 5 health, and that was that. I plan on reinstalling and finishing this one day. As for the expansions, I think I finished Blue Shift but didn't get that far into the other one (where you play one of the soldiers sent in to clear out Black Mesa).

Half-Life 2: Got halfway through but then got caught up in CS:S (MMO's really do suck up time) and didn't manage to finish it. That was, uh...3 years ago now? I'll probably finish this one before getting to the original, though.

Sins of a Solar Empire: I...just didn't find this phenomenal, as so many others did. I think it was because of my genera disillusionment in RTS at the time, and the lack of any actual story or campaign. Definitely the latter played a big role in it. Why wasn't there a campaign? It would have made it 10 times better! What was the point of the opening cutscene? Why the backstory if it has nothing to do with the actual game? Also, the pirates were retarded - I had to DL a mod just to tone them down a bit, cause often enough the pirates would come out of deep space and raid all my planets on the edge of the solar system, even while I was thrashing the AI factions with my mad huge armadas (no unit cap would have been beautiful here). I spent a few dozen hours playing custom missions, found a patch months later and played for a day, and then just stopped.

[Motep]

Star Wars: Empire at War - I got it as a gift and installed it right away, expecting something more that what it was. I cant think of anything specific, but it just bored me, and I stopped playing after half an hour.

Age of Mythology - I find it to be rather shallow, and I dont like the wall building system. Never got into it...

Age of Empires III - AoE I and II are among my favourite games (I played the first one a couple hours ago, in fact) but ensemble really screwed up the third one. The feel of the game was all wrong, and reminded more of Rise of Nations than it did of Age of Empires. This ruined my opinion of Ensemble, and I doubt I shall ever play it again.

Metal Gear Solid 3 - I just cant get into the game, and I stopped playing about halfway through.

Rise of Nations - I just dont like it for some reason. Maybe the music, maybe the whole city system, I just dont know why I dont like it.

Medieval II Total War - I do have fun with it and all, but it just makes me miss the original, so I dont play it very much. Also, I have to complain that my allies always attack me unless I give them money, and that I cant play an extended "conquer everything" campaign without boredom becomming a rampant issue.

Starcraft - Okay, I liked it and installed it, but my brother broke the disc after only a week of having it, so I didnt get to fully experience it...

Shogun Total War - Vista hates me.

[lars573]

Medieval Total War, that's right the first one. I know most of you consider it a religious document. But I don't. Here's one of those sequels that has all the originals problems, but due to other changes (setting, # of factions), amplefies all of them. I'm talking about the strategic game not the tactical one. I never got into the tactical TW game. Even though post Rome it was actually playable. Not like the counter intuitive mess of Shogun and Medieval. First the AI was horrible. Stiff, robotic, and highly predicable. And it was totally fixated on you all the time. Shogun had all these problems, but as the ultimate goal was being top dog in Japan. I can forgive. But in Medieval where supremacy isn't the goal, CA purpetrated their most henious crime against the end user. Glorious achievements. My biggest hatred if MTW is GA mode. Objective that don't make sense, forcing you into wars with 3 or 4 factions at once because conquering is 5 provinces for 1 GA point. And objective that change without you being told. I shudder when ever someone demands this be brought back. It's dead, and rightly so. Senate missions in RTW and guild/noble missions in M2TW may not be perfect, but they are in every way superior to GA mode.

Starcraft: Trying to cover up a poor RTS design with a half baked sci-fi story ripped from the pages of Gamesworkshop. No thanks.

Warcraft 3: Solid proof that Blizzard is not capable of producing an actual RTS game. Just a bad RTS/RPG hybrid. Brimming with infirior story lines and fancy FMV cut scenes. Stick to MMO's your actually good at that.

[pevergreen]

Starcraft: Trying to cover up a poor RTS design with a half baked sci-fi story ripped from the pages of Gamesworkshop. No thanks.

Warcraft 3: Solid proof that Blizzard is not capable of producing an actual RTS game. Just a bad RTS/RPG hybrid. Brimming with infirior story lines and fancy FMV cut scenes. Stick to MMO's your actually good at that.

Cause tyranids are zerg, right? And Eldar are Protoss?

Yeah, of course.

Warcraft 3 and Starcraft are the biggest RTS's out there. Add in C&C and you've got the RTS genre.

Starcraft has 3 races, warcraft has 4 and heroes. Heroes are a crucial element.

Stick to the MMO based in the warcraft universe that depends on the other games, that they hadnt released yet?

Do not blaspheme against Blizzard. They made Lost Vikings, Diablo and Rock 'n' Roll racing.

Oh, and Warcraft.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I hate anyone who likes WoW

[lars573]

I blaspheme plenty. WC rips off the Warhammer fantasy battles you know. Alliance is a wierd combo of the the empire, Dwarfs, and high elves, The undead are the old Undead (before they split them into vampire counts and tomb kings), The Orcs are the Greenskins, and the Night Elves are the Wood elves. And Warhammer rips-off D'n'D, which ripped off LOTR. Still doesn't make Warcraft worth 0.0001% of the praise it gets. I couldn't even bring myself to actually play the missions after a while. I just cheated for victory. I outgrew it, same with AOE. Which is where all of WC design elements come from.

[Ramses II CP]

Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. It's a rare game that I purchase and don't finish, I don't spend those dollars on games lightly, but I could just never bring myself to knock this out. The whole hero dynamic bothered me so much, and it was even stronger in the expansion than the original. In fact the missions become just one big 'exploit X super-ability, wait for it to recharge, and repeat' mess until I want to tear my hair out. I will admit that I tried out WC3 MP and got severely annoyed by it before I bought Frozen Throne, so that probably hurt my desire to finish it as well.

Black and White. I had fun with this game. I genuinely thought it was cute to develop a little pet into a big critter, and throwing villagers around cracked me up for a good while. Then I got to the part that was broken. You couldn't pass it (Except under certain completely luck based circumstances) and the patch took months to come out. I didn't feel like waiting, so I uninstalled and never looked back.

The X-com series. I bought these out of a bargain bin knowing that they're legendary in some circles, but I've just never managed to sit down and install them to play. Maybe someday?

GTAII: San Andreas. I installed it. I played for awhile. I got to the point where my character has to get on a treadmill in order to progress...

I own a treadmill. It isn't fun, but actually getting on it myself would make me feel better and maybe even get me laid, so...

This game is still installed on my laptop because I love driving around sometimes, but I actually like the driving better in Vice City, so I never play it and I've never progressed past the treadmill 'game.'

I'm sure I have others, can't think of them at the moment.

[Azathoth]

I blaspheme plenty. WC rips off the Warhammer fantasy battles you know. Alliance is a wierd combo of the the empire, Dwarfs, and high elves, The undead are the old Undead (before they split them into vampire counts and tomb kings), The Orcs are the Greenskins, and the Night Elves are the Wood elves. And Warhammer rips-off D'n'D, which ripped off LOTR. Still doesn't make Warcraft worth 0.0001% of the praise it gets. I couldn't even bring myself to actually play the missions after a while. I just cheated for victory. I outgrew it, same with AOE. Which is where all of WC design elements come from.

In your opinion.

[Decker]

All for PC:
ACW: The Blue and the Grey by AGEOD: Played the tutorial and never played it since. Heck, it's still on my computer. I liked it but never got back into it

Starcraft- Eh... never got into it. Plus the fact it was a ripoff off of Gamesworkshop turned me off nearly completely.

World of Warcraft: Got this because a friend said I should try it out... *yawn* lame, boring, generic. Waste of my time when I could've played other games or read a book. Most other mmo's like Lineage also give me the same feelings. The only good mmo's I've played were Planetside and WWII Online.

Madden Football: After the first 4 games it was boring. Playing against friends was okay but I smashed em every time. Still a boring game nonetheless. Basically sports games in general bore me.

Medal of Honor: Mostly the entire series got boring. Never played mp as CoD 2 and United Offensive were my favorite mp games.

Combat Mission Series (the first 3 games, CMBO, CMBB, & CMAK: All classics and I've played them quite a bit. But they are very time consuming and I play in spurts, especially the HUGE scenarios, thos take forever

GTA Vice City: Got this for my PC from a friend and never installed it, let alone taking it outta the box! And I don't think I'll ever load it up. In fact the GTA series is quite tedious and boring. Tried to get into it but the only fun was using cheats to cause everyone to fight and get the tank.

GalCiv II or something like it: Got this after hearing a LOT about the series. Was bargin bin so I figured it wouldn't hurt. Got really frustrated after a while and just uninstalled and never tried again. My next "classic" is X-Com tho I hope it works for Vista

[Ja'chyra]

Warcraft 3 was pretty pants tbh.

[kazzan]

World Of Warcraft: Hate it.

Starcraft: Couldn't even beat the easy AI, don't like these fast paced rts games.

C&C Tiberium Wars: Didn't like it.

Red Alert 3: All that hype, i just disliked it....

(Most opininons are: I dislike it )

[el_slapper]

Hotel Giant : that's not a game

Industry Giant : can't make it work, even under XP, on several machines. Shame, as Transport Giant is nice(and music awesome)

Great Invasions : 250 hours the grand campaign? Mamma mia, should never have bought that.....

War in the Pacific : see great invasions. Though 250 hours is a very low estimate, there.....

The Guild 2 : spending my time watching my hero walk? No thanks.

Combat Mission : Shock Force : hell, the first mission I could never pass through on easy

[Ibn-Khaldun]

Empire Earth II - Just don't feel like playing it.

Medieval 2 Total War and Kingdoms - I only keep them because games in Throne Room use them.

Battlefield 2 - Haven't had the urge to blow something up recently.

Imperial Glory - Occasionally I reinstall it to play some naval battles but that's it.