Please don't hire a hitman to go after me ... psychonauts. I tried it yeas ago and just couldn't get into it. Last year I tried again and got a little farther, but into the drill sergents experience I got stuck at the machine gun obstacle course. Generally I found the actual play controls hard for me and then for this particular part they changed the rules.

I got fairly deep into psychonauts on pc, but I ended up letting it collect dust in favor of newer games I had bought.

Pretty much any JRPG out there. I am simply unable to feel joy, anger, despair etc. when a bunch of blue haired manga smurfs screams out epic dialogue with K. Kondo music in the background. Generally, I can't stand static battles where I have more or less no control over what my character(s) do. A simple choice makes the character perfom a predetermined action based on skill points or whatever. A perfect recipe for mindblowingly boring battles.

The Sims and, albeit to a much lesser extent, Spore.
I have no concept how anyone could find the Sims fun... I'll just nod in agreement with whoever I manage to offend with that sentence and say I was wrong.
Spore is easier, as there is a game beyong creating and messing around with creatures. A shallower game than I would have prefered, but a game nonetheless, with good chances of it being expanded and improved, given Maxis' trak record on its previous games.

my girlfriend says she likes it because she likes designing the house and the intricate relationships and interactions between sims.
personally, i think I'd have more fun trapping their babies in dark rooms w/o food or water.

Oblivion.
Loved Daggerfall and Morrowind, but this TES game just felt emotionally empty for me. Wondering around the countryside wondering, 'just what is the point in spending time with this thing' caused me to uninstall it rather quick in comparison to earlier titles.
Also: One of those Splinter Cell games, can't remember the actual name, but I had the PC version. Control system was abysmal, I think I spent more time trying to config a way of making it possible to play than I spent playing.

Edit: ah I misread your thread.
I agree Oblivion is horrid, Daggerfall is my favorite pc game of all time.

Assassin's Creed....
I went into it expecting something similar to Prince of Persia, what I got was a ridiculous story (ancestral memories stored in DNA...um yeah we have 95% homology with a common mouse so those memories must include life as a rodent) and lame combat.

Yeah, in Oblivion I played until I got vampirism. then I uninstalled the game.
The thing I hate the most about it, is how it's levelled. The enemies level up with you. And then once you get to a certain level they stop levelling up and start adding smaller lower level enemies to your encounters. It's retarded. I sure as hell hope they leave that out of Fallout 3.

Just out of curiousity what games do you enjoy? Most games are fiction and the majority will no doubt have an element of fantasy or unbelievable sci-fi. Even The Sims had Makin' Magic.
Karl

Pretty much the same experience for me. Level-scaling really ruined it. I expect there is a mod out there that fixes it, but I just could not be bothered by that point.
From what I've read, Fallout-3 will stay closer to the original SPECIAL point/skill/perk system. If your low-lever character wonders into a high-level area, expect to be thumped.
Hope for the best eh?
edit: http://fallout3.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/the-definitive-story-on-level-scaling/
A little bit of info, it's a bit of both.

you know, I don't know what it is they have against grinding. I like a little bit of grinding, it gives you a good perspective of the combat system. I mean, I don't want to have to grind throughout the whole game, but I mean, I think it's nice if there are points within a game where they say 'lol, you can continue the storyline AFTER you check out some sidequests, or if you're suicidal you can try to beat the final boss now.'

Level scaling sux big time. It ruins one of the rpgs best things:
making your character total badass (and showing it)
Like in PS: Torment.
A room full of bandits, a dozen of them. No matter what I do my party dies, i use up all healing potions and still lose the battle. So i don't fight them but sneak out instead.
after ten or so hours of gameplay...
I came back.
The slaughter was very satisfying.

I absolutely agree. I could never complete this game no matter how hard I tried and I never understood the fuss about this game.
I remember reading some thread a long time ago about games that make you feel emotional and quite a few pointed out splinter cell. Apparently the cut-scene where the splinter-cell guy (whatever his name is) spoke to his daughter was touching.
I admit I cried while playing splinter cell but that was tears of bore.
Good to know I am not the only one who thought the beginning of kotor sucked.
Really? I completed Mass Effect. I thought the starting of mass effect wasn't that great. Ok it wasn't as bad as taris but the game doesn't get awesome until you become a spectre.
They really should cut out the initial boring stuff from these RPG games.
For a long time, I could never get myself into Turn-based JRPG game. But I tried Lost Odyssey and I was hooked and I recently just bought fallout from gog. That damn game is addictive.
Oh and another game, that I couldn't get into was Freespace 2. I am a great big fan of space games and I actually bought a joystick to get into Freespace 2. But I didn't find it very appealing. But that was probably because I only recently completed freelancer.
I intend to buy Freespace 2 from gog at some point and give it another try.