I apologize for the lack of activity in the past months. Well, actually, I take that back. I blame the games that failed to engage me sufficiently to complete them and write a full review of them.
There were several games that ended up on my "probably will never finish these" list. I'd still like to say a few words about why some failed at entertaining me.
Let's dive right into it with Doom (2016) This game was almost universally praised yet I only played 2 hours of it, then never went back. You might think I'm becoming a journo hating on games that gamers actually like, but it's not that.
I liked the game initially, it was fast paced, well balanced, difficult, but not too difficult (I played on ultra-violence). Then why didn't I finish it? Easy, there was literally nothing to invite me back to continue playing the game. The story is so vague it might not even exist. The maps are fun for gameplay, but completely uninteresting to explore, the characters are more caricatures than something I'd take seriously. The 1993 Doom had a more engaging story, and that had almost no story to speak of, just a few images and a short text when you finished a chapter.
Next up Far Cry New Dawn (2019). It was a no brainer to buy for me, it was half the price of a normal game, and I enjoyed Far Cry 5 well enough, even if I found the story extremely tedious, the gameplay was very good, excluding the bossfights ofc.
All they needed to do is more of the same and I'd have been satisfied. But noo, they had to make the game unnecessarily grindy by adding tiers. Which is nothing but an artificial barrier to progression. They added tier 1 tier 2 and tier 3 etc enemies, and of course weapons. Meaning you have to unlock the same goddamn weapons multiple times, because tier 1 weapons are almost completely ineffective against tier 2 enemies and so on.
But if the grind was natural, I might even have taken it standing, as I liked AC:Odyssey regardless of the grind. But there grind only meant you had to do most of the sidequests to progress. In New Dawn however, you have to do tedious side activities multiple times, because doing every story mission and side mission doesn't nearly give you enough XP or whatever it is called in this game to naturally progress. And it will be a cold day in hell when I'll allow myself to be forced to liberate then loot the same godforsaken bases multiple times. Or randomly roam the wastelands to fight random enemies for the sole purpose of farming XP. That I WON'T do.
So I did the only option available to me, downloaded a trainer for the game, and upped my tier to match the enemies that were at the next story mission site. And I have to say it is ridiculous how much you're expected to farm in this game, not just for XP but for other resources, because you have like half a dozen facilities at your base you have to upgrade one by one, and even those have multiple tiers.
Eventually I lost interest in the game because believe it or not it felt tedious even with the trainer at my fingertips, allowing to get any resources instantly. Since I said "fuck this game a million billion times" about FC5 I Have to multiple that by a few magnitudes, so fuck New Dawn a trillion billion times.
Avoid like the plague, if you didn't like FC5, then for that reason, if you liked FC5, then for that reason. We shouldn't let Single Player gaming be reduced to MMO level grinding fests.
This is the biggest disappointment of all, Rage 2 (2019). I expected the game to be very much like Mad Max, except it isn't. If someone brought a giant vac to Mad Max and suctioned all the fun out of it the result would be Rage 2. I blame Bethesda, because Avalanche Studios proven they can do a great game under the right tutorage.
I played the game for 5 minutes and was already bored. The story is generic, so generic it could pass as any random MMO backstory. In fact I'm not entirely sure that this is not actually an MMO re-purposed as a single player game.
I tried to enjoy it but it gave me no enjoyment. What a waste of money this has turned out to be. All they had to do is literally copy & paste mad max in it's entirety with a new story and I'd have praised them to heaven. I'd not recommend it unless you have a fetish for generic shooters.