I can't help but shaking my head....

I just read this entire thread in Ryan Reynolds voice and I'm extra confused with extra confusion sauce on top. help.

I disagree that any of the above are necessarily required for a game to be great. I can see that those are what you personally like in a game.

Provide the universally source/evidence that the criteria you propose are required for a game to not be trash and the conversation can continue.

Otherwise, I’ll just decide that you are a troll and carry on with my life.

Also, Space Invaders. Hugely compelling and playable. No real story, no NPCs, no sense of humour and no real battle mechanics beyond move and shoot. Considered one of the granddaddies of games.

Space Invaders is a great example, but I can take it further.
How about the best selling game of all time: Tetris.

There isn't one person in here who hasn't gone insane with the glory, frustration, and pure raw drive of that game, and yet it fits virtually none of his criteria.

Shit, sometimes I dream in Tetris. Anyone who has ever done that knows EXACTLY what I'm talking about. :P

Amen brother.

Bless those falling blocks.

Interesting start.
You find me partially agreeing.

Any example of game you found outstanding?

Well you know video games are like movies, when you've saw some of the best stuff everything looks less interessting. Personally I've been playing games for almost 20 years but I still find something new to enjoy because obviously I haven't played everything.

For example recently I’ve been playing a lot Pathologic Classic HD, the game have so many flaws it would take all day to explain them all but I love it. Some people may argue the game is bad because XXXX has done it better, but I don’t know any other games like that and because of my lack of knowledge I’m having a blast playing this one instead.

If you think most games you’re playing are trash, just try something else. Something you don’t know, something you’ve always avoided thinking it wasn’t for you. At some point you'll realize that there’s still a lot for you to discover. And if you feel more interested by older titles then just play old games and don't bother yourself with the recent releases :P

that's the problem. I don't think he is playing or has played any of the games he is calling trash.

I would imagine he would admit as such, and I leave him to.
If I am wrong I will offer my most sincere apologies.

My god.

I am still utterly unconvinced.

It's coming. It HAD to happen.

My collection of bad reviews about all the games I researched and thought I'd buy (or bought). Subjective? I think NOT. :)

The common themes are:

1. Boredom and tedium
2. Nonsense and tripe stories and worlds
3. The battles are a mess

in short, all I mentioned at the start of the thread.

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DIVINITY ORIGINAL SIN 1

don't get how this piece of garbage has won so many awards and gets such high ratings. At best this is Dark Souls level challenge strategy game, not an RPG in the least. Its difficulty isn't its worst flaw though. It has a steep learning curve with very little guidance. The "tutorials" are vague and incomplete. The interface is clumsy and the control scheme is unintuitive. NPC dialogues constantly run in the background which are annoying as hell. Combat mechanics are often inconsistent making certain things much harder than they should be. This game looks great, and has an interesting concept. But it's steep learning curve, crappy control and interface, and inconsistent combat mechanics make this train wreck no fun to play at all.

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This game sucks. I wanted to like it, I really did. But it's just not good. There are aspects of it that are good. The combat is fun, but you have to slog through over 10 hours of the most mundane detective quest ever conceived. The NPCs are dull. the jokes are painfully unfunny, the medieval lord is named... Jake? Not Jacob, or any remotely appropriate fantasy sounding name, but Jake. They might as well have named him Zippy or something. It's just awful. One of your companions is a knight that sounds Texan, another is a fully voiced MUTE! Because apparently people who can't speak should be voice acted. I want to punch the person who thought that was a good idea right in the nose. I do not understand why this game is so popular. It's garbage, I deeply regret buying it

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Many of the reviews mention the good things this game has to offer. And the dev's got a lot right in DOS..EE. But, none of these positives make up for the long winded, boring, mundane fights. At level 17, I've had enough of them and the "action points" and will move on to a different game. For decades I've been a fan of turned based battles, and all the positive reviews convinced me to spend my money on this game. Companions, story, gear, etc cannot and do not, make up for these long, drawn out encounters. I guess I could go shampoo the carpet while I'm waiting for it to be my turn again. Maybe the developers thought it would be entertaining to have the player, sit there watching the screen while the enemy slowly, very slowly, plays out their parts. NOT SO.... boring. And, while waiting for your turn is a feature of turn based fighting, I can't remember spending so much time just sitting there doing NOTHING, since these fights move at a "snails pace" and there's nothing for you to do but wait, wait, wait. Then you get to do it over, again and again. Have a book at the ready so you have something you can do during the long, drawn out fights. This review would be different if the battles didn't drag on the way they do. If they had some "snap" to them. During most of the encounters, I issue my order then sit, twiddling my thumbs while the boring battle, drags on and on and on..... During some of the "spider" battles, I actually left the game and went to get a cup of tea. It was still going on when I got back. Boring does not equate to enjoyment. I'm convinced now more than ever, that some of the "glowing" reviews are written by developers and stockholders.

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I know that I am in the minority on this, but I really did not enjoy this game. I will start off by saying I have played all the great cRPG's in this mould such as Baldur's Gate all the way to the uninspiring Dragon Age Inquisition. I saw the screenshots of this game and immediately thought "No", but then I read the reviews and thought that I had to give it a go, so I did. I got past the graphics, which I really dislike, everything is too 'clean' and the characters are oddly shaped (Really look at the female model while viewing underwear - no I am not a perv, this is a force choice at character creation). Character creation is a real letdown, there is little explanation of why you would pick any particular power, no real options for how you look, no choice of weapons and the class choices pigeon hole you into a class but then let you break out of that class by allowing you to completely swap your points, which I find rediculous (Why does this page think I can't spell rediculous?). One or the other please! There is also the horrendous necessity of creating 2 characters! How can an RPG have you playing 2 characters?! RPG is about getting into and ROLEPLAYING a character, adding more characters just breaks immersion. Not that this game has any real immersion. So I let that go and got into the game. Didn't even meet a single person and I had picked up 10 shells, of 4 different types so my inventory (Which isn't shared, so I still have to drag items from one character to another as if I was in 1984) was already cluttered with stuff that provides no explanation as to why I might want to pick it up, other than the worry that I was missing something important Fast forward an hour or so and I had so much junk I could leave wherever I was, get an old rusty van and become a rag and bone collector! Combat. Where to start with this abortion of a concept. Baldur's Gate arrived with the active pause feature, which was the most wonderful revelation in turn based combat since turn based combat. This goes backwards. Everyone taking a turn, very few action points to you can't actually do much when it is your turn (Yes obviously it will get better, but that doesn't mean it isn't boring to start with), no real ability to react as a result. Yes it might be balanced for this, but I felt betrayed and let down. I carried on, finding *cough* cleverly *cough* placed Rain scrolls to put our fires (For example) in an attempt to showcase mechanics which feel forced rather than natural. In Dragon Age you cast a spell and then another might synchronise (Yes spell check, with an s) with it, that was something you had to discover for yourself and felt an organic part of the game. This game feels like it has those mechanics just because other cool games have them. In fact that is how everything feels, like an amalgamation of bots of other games they thought might be cool, but without anything that looks like substance. Crafting (Which I didn't get to) feels like an exercise in gathering rather than having an actual point. I don't know which game turned crafting into a junk haulage simulator, but more and more games are heading this way and it makes me sad (Looking at you Fallout 4). Anyway, 3 hours in I have had one fight (Numerous character rerolls because the character creation left me with no affinity for who I was playing), no NPC interaction, a bag full of junk and enough of this game.

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the very first review is obviously written by a discerning and intelligent person. And the other ones offer objective criticism.

I could do that for almost every other game I can think of. I said it before and will repeat it: the best reviews are often the negative ones.

Most games are just mindnumbing, and their quality almost always falls short. It makes me question why the hell I would sit doing something mindnumbingly boring when I could watch a documentary on black holes, for example, or 'The story of all of us' or 'the story of Earth' and be strapped to the chair from start to end.

But hey, it's your brains ;)

I don't disagree that there's a ton of crap music & tv shows etc..

For me though, the difference is that I can listen to music 12 hours a day, every day, and not run out of things I enjoy listening to. I don't get sick of the old music I discovered 15 years ago, nor is there a shortage of new stuff to listen to. By contrast, it's really difficult for me to find games I can enjoy for 2 hours let alone 12..

Why? It's simple.

You want to entertain yourself with something "dumb" and "simple" after your X hour long shift and other activities (like sports for example). Some people drink, some people sleep all day and some of them play "stupid" games and watch "stupid" movies. It doesn't mean that people don't watch documentaries about space. It just means they want to take a rest.

Remember: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

You cannot think for 20 hours a day.

To put it more succinctly,
Schindler's List is a great movie, but when I get home from work, I want RoboCop!