Aztaka

I think I'm done with this game. It was actually better than expected, a nice early indie metroidvania with an original setting and interesting point-and-click magic / energy mechanics. And I actually got quite far in it. But then I started to get more and more annoyed at its flaws.

For one, some abilities you get are badly explained and if you don't know how they're actually meant to be used, your experience can get quite frustrating at some point and even turn into a game stopper. The wall jump only works if you press jump again at the right moment, but without pressing any directional key. This is never mentioned in the tutorial text, but if you instinctively press the key of the direction you mean to jump in, the wall jump is immediately aborted. Then there is a spear jump, the description of which which I missed completely for some reason, but it is essential for one spot in the game. Anyway, I found out about these jumps on the internet, so okay, that didn't stop me yet. But the challenge to bridge that one spot with the spear jump does not only require good timing, you can't even see where you're jumping as it's offscreen, and the bats you're supposed to jump on don't have a fixed pattern but move randomly. On top of that, you can accidentally kill the bats by jumping on them, which can happen quite easily, and then you have to leave and re-enter the area to make them respawn. Really terrible design.

After I looked it up on the net, I got it right the first time and thought I could move on, only to find out that I was missing 5x gold energy to unlock the next part. So I had to leave the area anyway and grind 5x gold energy in some different place, which is another issue in the game. Randomly spawning loot used as puzzle keys is a pretty lame and tedious mechanic, IMO. When I got back with the energy and tried to do the spear jump across the gap another time, I ran into the same issues described above again and I couldn't make it.

This is almost as sad as that broken jump mechanic at the end of Anodyne. Both are quite nice games in principle that are ruined by extremely frustrating design decisions introduced shortly before the ending. :(

This reminds me of the wall jump in Super Metroid. In order to wall jump, you have to press away from the wall *before* you press the jump button (IIRC), or the jump will not occur. Fortunately, you can beat the game without wall jumping, but if you fall into the one part of the game world that requires this technique to escape, it can be frustrating. (The animals there don't help as much as they should; they demonstrate wall jumping, but do not show the inputs needed to actually pull it off; if I were in charge of remaking the game, that's one thing I would fix.)

Lumo

(I played this game on PS4, although it’s also available on GOG and other sites)

This game is a cute 3D puzzle platformer.

It starts out very easy, but there is a sharp difficulty spike in the platforming later on (somewhere around 1/2 to 3/4 of the way through I think), partially due to the poor isometric perspective making it impossible to see which direction you’re supposed to jump except by trial-and-error. I’m quite poor at platformers at the best of times, but I was enjoying the game up until I started getting screen after screen of difficult platforming sections and I stopped enjoying it and gave up.

Path of Exile

It's an incredible game (think Diablo 2, but with a lot more depth), but it's a massive time sink and I keep disconnecting from the servers. So in a lull of excitement regarding the future prowess of my character after reading up on some proper builds, I did the wise thing and decided to put the game on ice. I'll probably try again one day when I've managed to obtain a, hopefully, unshaped connection. And perhaps by some miracle a South African server will also be created. In any case, by that time the ginormous expansion will also have been released that, it seems, will more than double the game's content.

Ah, you're so close to the end though. I know exactly what part you're talking about. Using that one red bat to make it across the chasm in the Monkey Cave. Usually, and I'm assuming you're just running past enemies like I did near the end of the game, the red bat will be in the perfect position for your pogo spear jump during your first run through of that part. Sadly, there's another brutal jump (no bats this time) after that part that gets you to the last area of the game. My tip for that is is to do your second jump at the peak of your first (after the sparkly wall jump), instead of timing your second jump as you're falling. Don't shelve it yet. There's a nice surprise near the end waiting for you, depending on how meticulous you are concerning one of your sub-quests. Last fight is a good one, too.
Either way, I'm glad to read that you played it, and enjoyed it for the most part.

Legend of Grimrock.

Got to a room with a grid of trapdoors to cross. They open and close in a closely timed pattern. I was thinking I was just too slow to keep up (perhaps I am), but saw on some other Grimrock forums that it could be down my XP system is too slow (microscopically, but enough) and the keypress response times can't keep up. Shame I was enjoying it.

It puts me off playing Grmrock 2 which I bought at the same time, as I figure I probably couldn't finish that either.

Don't get old. It's not a game for sissies.
A bit late...but have you thought of watching some Youtube Lets Plays? There are often playlists that act as a walkthrough, giving you a good chance to see how things work. I use them regularly as a "review" before I buy a game.

<accidentally posted this in 2016>


Puzzle Quest

Bought this game on sale yesterday because I'd actually liked the match 3 play of uhhh....that other match 3 game.

Puzzle Quest is just annoying. The story is beyond cliche, and the combat really isn't that fun. You either get a lucky streak, or you don't. When I win I don't usually feel like I "played well" and more than half the time I lose I haven't made any clear mistakes.

Strategy is minimal because the board moves too fast and you may make what looks like the defensive play only for your opponent to have 5 in a row fall in his/her lap. Repeatedly. I haven't been playing long, and at one point I was winning by 40 (roughly 50% of my health) and then lost within a few turns.

The bigger problem really is that most things don't scale well. At level one a play to match 4 xp is great! At level 15 matching 4xp is a nigh complete waste of time. And 20xp for completing a quest is nothing.

So when stuck against quests that outlevel/outgear you, your only option is to go back and grind...the same boring catapult fight...5 times in a row. All of which would be fine if the combat was engaging, but even though it's complex I didn't really get the appeal.

But I will say, this game actually made me better appreciate what HuniePop does well - while the characters are stereotypes, they're well voiced, and for a dating sim game, several of the characters are actually kind of interesting. When I won in that game I felt like I'd made smart moves (with some RNG sure). And the conversation between match games actually had some thought to it. Even on hard difficulty, I had to do minimal grinding, and when I did it was pretty enjoyable.

In this game it feels more like just trying to get through it. Over. And over. To save ....some completely 1 dimensional kingdom or something

Misery (mod for Stalker Call of Pripyat)
------
The grinding kills it. After 6 hours of playing enough money for basic armor.
Also disliked the "enemies generate bullets from fingers" balancing, the one like in another disliked game: Ja2 Wildfire.
It makes vanilla SPAZ grinding (I fixed it with my mod) look like pancakes.

<span class="bold">Alphabear</span> (Android)

It looks like I'm only quitting Android games this year, and here's another one. Alphabear is a very good word puzzle game which offers two types of challenges: timed boards and regular ones. Each board starts off with some uncovered letters and you need to use them to form words before they expire: they only last for a certain number of turns, and the earlier you use them, the more points you will score. After a letter is used, the ones adjacent to it will be revealed. The game goes on until you clear the whole board, you cannot form any more valid words, or the time runs out (in timed boards).

So far so good, but the really cool thing about this game is its sort of progression system and pseudo-RPG elements. You see, if your score in a board exceeds a certain threshold you unlock a bear (hence the name of the game). Each bear has its own score multiplier and a particular power or ability: e.g. certain letters last longer, or are worth more points, or appear more frequently, or you get some precious extra seconds in timed boards. These multipliers and abilities are upgraded each time the bear levels up, which happens when you get the same bear again after completing a board. You can equip up to 3 bears per round, and depending on your bear roster you'll have to adapt your strategy in order to maximize the score (i.e. sometimes is better to ignore some letters until they are about to disappear, as some bears give you a huge bonus for using them at that particular time). After you've acquired (and upgraded) as many bears as you can, it's time to try to defeat a boss bear in order to get into the next level, with harder boards but better rewards... and bears.

Of course, being a mobile game it's got its own microtransaction system in place: in order to play new boards you have to spend a certain amount of honey, which is automatically but slowly replenished over time. This is not what I disliked about this game though: in fact I saw it as a nice feature, since it prevented me from playing it non-stop. What drove me off it was something else, a teenie-weenie flaw: it's an always-online game. I can understand it needs to connect to the internet in order to get new levels (although I'm not really sure about that, since I suspect they are randomly generated), or at least to download the boards corresponding to special events that are held once a month, but that's no excuse for forcing you to be online all the time. Being offline prevents you from starting any regular match, and instead it forces you to play some stupid small, easy beginner boards. That's what happened to me the other day while I was travelling by train and I couldn't get any signal for a good while. I wonder what happens if you lose your signal during a game: would you be kicked out of it? I'd be pretty mad if I lost a boss board because of that. Well, I guess I'll never know now...

Witcher 2
I have played games since the late eighties / early nineties, but never encountered a game that would have such a dissonance between its story and gameplay like Witcher 2. Geralt is portrayed as an unstoppable badass, a man that can take punishment like a tank and dish it out like a gatling gun, as nimble an fast as a wild cat, a legend, an 'ubermensch'. At least that's how it goes in the story, the cutscenes and even in dialogues. But, as soon as you enter combat, Geralt becomes a parody of himself where even fat shovel wielding peasants can beat him up. All of a sudden he becomes an awkward to control brick with huge delays to even the most simple sword swings while being unable to survive more than a few blows or even properly block attacks.
I gave this game a sporting chance, I even imported my save from the first game, I wanted to enjoy this. It was a plan to go through the trilogy, transferring saves in between games. The whole story told.
The fight with Letho taught me that I wouldn't enjoy the rest of it. I tried experimenting with bombs, using signs, fighting patiently and methodically and at the end I switched to the easy difficulty. The difference between those two challenge modes was, at least for me, a question: 'Do I want the game to be unfair for my opponents, or for me?' The whole thing just felt unfair, not difficult. And certainly not fun.
At the end, I didn't have a reason to continue. My plans to go through the trilogy are as of now, on hold.

What a coincidence, that's exactly where I quit the game as well. But I mostly blamed myself: I didn't anticipate the fight so I hadn't used any potions or oils in preparation, and since I wasn't saving the game regularly, my only two options after my first death in that battle were: 1) keep trying it without any buff by loading the auto-save just at the beginning of the battle, and 2) load my last manual save which was from unacceptably earlier in the game.

I chose option 1 about 10 or 15 times before rage-quitting, and I havne't touched the game again ever since. :(

PIER SOLAR AND THE GREAT ARCHITECTS

This game has all the flaws of games from a bygone era but practically none of the upsides.
- bad to no documentation of (important) spells
- places you can't go back to anymore
- terrible save system
- mandatory grinding in not fun to play battles
- flat story
- quite unclear missions and random running around talking to every npc multiple times to make progress
I've tried hard and endured a lot but in the end I had to abort it during the final bossfights since you can't rest/heal in the last town and if you've reached the last save point, you can't even go back to the last shops and are stuck with whatever you got. If you didn't grind enough to stand a chance in the 4 bossfights (which prevent you from healing in between by the way) , then you are screwed.
In order to see both endings you even have to endure this twice.
You can set the random encounter rate in the game manually between 0% and 800% at any time, which made me set it to zero and only up if I needed to level up for a boss. That isn't feasible in the end anymore though since you can't rest or shop anymore.
Since I've reached the final boss with no way back but not enough grinding beforehand, I had no other option but to abort since the fights would have been extremely frustrating if winnable at all.
There were several unreachable chests in the game I thought you'd need to go back to but then I've read online that there's an opening spell for those you got at a completely random point in the game without much notice.
This game doesn't seem to have been designed to be fun, kicks you in the face out of nowhere for no good reason at some points and often lets you wonder why you're stuck again now and what the last gained spells are actually for.
Not fun, feels like I've wasted my time and money.
Oh and the "HD" version sucks since it is imcomplete and still randomly using low res sprites, so I played in the more consistent low resolution style.
I won't buy from those people again for a while.

I have over 3,500 games in backlog

I've quit many the past year after completing their tutorials

I insta-quit if the game the game doesn't support my game pad and it's too
much of a pain in the ass to map it in Pinnacle or there's some other compatibility issue
(usually indie games)

Rise of the Middle Kingdoms

I really thought I had this one. I flew through all of the campaigns up until the final one and it just got appallingly hard. :P

Always depresses the shit out of me when I rage quit.