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Discussion Are there any games that you like thinking about/watching more than you like playing them?

Joe

Joe

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Maybe an esoteric subject, but I was wondering if anyone else has games that you really like the concept of but playing it doesn't appeal to you that much. You may spend a good portion of your time thinking about it and/or watching videos of it, but when it comes to you actually getting the controller (or mouse and keyboard) in your hands, you lose interest quickly.

For me, it's The Sims 4. I was a big fan of The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 in my younger years. I love the series, and I frequently get into cycles where I think about The Sims all the time, consuming as many videos about it as I can, and thinking about all the fun things to do in it. Then every time I actually boot up The Sims 4 again, I lose interest almost immediately. The cycle repeats itself many times. It's a game I love in theory, but for whatever reason, playing it can never hold my interest anymore. I have no idea if that's The Sims 4 specifically or if I just lost my taste for playing that type of game now that I'm older.

Another one for me is Pokemon. I love the world and characters, but I never really get much thrill out of actually playing a mainline Pokemon game. That's why I stick to the spin-offs like Pokemon Snap, because it lets me enjoy the world without having to experience the RPG gameplay that doesn't click with me.

Is anyone else with me on this? If you can relate, please share the games that you love thinking about more than you enjoy playing them.
 
All fighting games for me. I like watching fighting game tournaments but don't have the time to put hours and hours and hours into them nonstop to compete. Smash Bros I'm always more excited for the trailers than for the actual game, the game feels like an afterthought sometimes.
 
I'm feeling this with Tekken 8 right now. Don't like the state the game is in, either the gameplay mechanics or the predatory updates.
Shadow of the Colossus is theoretically one of the best games of all time. It plays like shit, and not the fun kind.
Metroid said:
Rule of Rose is one of my favorite PS2 horror games

Would love to play it some day
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Persona fan?
 
I think about playing Dragon Ball FighterZ all the time, but as soon as I play I get curbstomped.
 
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Basically all the multigame horror franchises designed around getting streamers to react and theorist to speculate. I love watching story analysis of them but I find playing them to be boring at best and broken jank at worst.
 
This usually happens to me with older games that i have a lot of nostalgia for. For example, Final Fantasy 8 and Diablo 2; seeing videos of it and hearing the music and sounds of those games bring a great sense of nostalgia and confort, so much so that i bought both of them for the Switch to play them again and... i've played a few hours each and deleted them.

I've come to understand that i prefer new experiencies with games, and that's why it's hard for me to replay older games, unless is a short burst to scratch some itch; but to play them for dozens of hours and to finish or complete them... nope i can't do it.
 
Yeah, most fighting games for me. I do genuinely love Smash but rarely stick with other games for long, but I enjoy the characters/music/watching the competitive scene.
 
Oh, another one for me: the Parappa the Rapper/Um Jammer Lammy series. Obviously, I like the series a ton, hence my Lammy avatar, and I have a reputation among my friends and other communities for being a big Parappa fan. But whenever someone asks me where to start with the series, my answer is "go on YouTube and look up playthroughs, that's the best way to play it." If you're not playing them on original hardware with a CRT TV, they are basically impossible since they weren't made with modern displays in mind. I love everything about the series other than the gameplay: the music, the characters, the art style, the stories, the vibe, everything makes for one of my favorite series ever. But playing the games? I 100%'d all three of them back in the day but I doubt I'll be able to do it again unless they remaster them all to work on new displays. Even when they do work, they're not the most forgiving games by any stretch either.
 
Honestly I like talking/thinking about games more than actually playing them.

/s

Joe said:
I love the world and characters, but I never really get much thrill out of actually playing a mainline Pokemon game.
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This is my actual answer though. I love gushing and about Pokemon designs, imagining new Pokemon concepts, making silly sketches of Pokemon, watching Pokemon animations, etc. but I don't really care about playing the mainline games.
 
Its usually fighting games and real time strategy games that fall into this category for me. I love world and lore of games like mortal kombat and Starcraft, but I don't really feel like I have the skills to play them good. But watching highly skilled players of these games is truly amazing to see.
 
Bethesda games. Really interesting conceptually, but the moment I start playing them I immediately want to put it down.

Maybe that's due to me playing them on console, think it'd feel a lot better on PC with keyboard and mouse.
 
Back in like 2014 it was fnaf. Very interested by the lore and theories but to hell if I was ever gonna play a horror tower defense game lol.
 
Jahranimo said:
Don't get me wrong, I've tried some of the games on multiple occasions. It (and the RTS genre in general) just aren't for me. I like Pikmin.

I'm glad the series is growing more on the Switch though!
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Even though I've played and beaten all four of the mainline Pikmin games, I totally see where you're coming from. The world and characters have a very unique charm that's hard not to love, but the gameplay isn't going to work for everybody. Pikmin 4 was where it finally clicked for me and I went from liking the games to loving one.

I want to like Pikmin 3 more than I do. The multitasking nature of it where you swap between three captains was so difficult for me to play with how my brain works. I came so close to giving up on it in the final level but I stuck with it and finally beat it.

Pikmin 1, for some reason I can't grasp, fills me with more dread than most horror games I've played. When I was 12 years old when it was new, the game absolutely terrified me and I basically brute forced my way to 100% completion while internally screaming. I thought that playing it 20+ years later when it released on Switch last year would come to me much easier now that I'm in my mid-30s, but nope! I get such a feeling of doom while playing that makes my skin crawl. Does anyone know what I'm talking about here? The other Pikmin games don't do that for me, but it must be something about the isolation, hopelessness, and ticking clock (as forgiving as it might be), that upsets me so much. They softened the tone on the subsequent three sequels much more (Pikmin 4 is downright relaxing) of which I am thankful. In theory, I love the atmosphere and vibes of Pikmin 1, but playing it sets me on edge so much.
 
Inscryption for sure. Have watched an infinite amount of analysis and video essays about it but never touched it nor do I think I ever want to.
 
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Every couple of weeks I'm like "yeah I really feel like playing for an hour or two" and then I zone out after a single race
 
Mario Maker is a great example, I loved watching folks create and play levels in the original game back when it came out.

I also enjoyed watching playthroughs of Resident Evil 2 Remake more than playing it. It's a great game but it's too stressful to play for longer periods of time.
 
Fighting games are just so incredibly cool to me conceptually, but I've never gotten into them much because I just don't really play multiplayer genres. I think about them a lot and occasionally watch a KI or Smash tournament, but I haven't ever spent much time with one. Maybe someday. I went online with my brother's copy of Strive once and did pretty well considering I'd never really played a traditional fighter for more than a few minutes and my brain can't quite grasp charge inputs so I was playing May mostly without the dolphin. I loved playing May though, the closest I ever got to that experience of totally clicking with a character in Smash was probably Project M Diddy Kong.

Pokemon is also sort of an answer? Amazing character designs, Go Ichinose is still one of my favorite composers ever and Hitomi Sato is great too, but I haven't been able to play the games under any conditions in like 6 years. It's just so boring. The only official Pokemon media I'd probably still enjoy is Adventures.
 
Almost all of them at this point, honestly. There's honestly a lot of effort to enjoy a new game, learn the systems, the controls, the camera, and I'm getting worse at muscle memory. Mods/cheats/easy modes can help.

Unless it has a fun movement system or something, or the gameplay immediately hooks me. I'm bouncing off a wide variety of titles a lot to the point I don't really want to risks spending on much of anything.

Which is a shame, because games have such interesting worlds and atmosphere these days, and lot of complex systems are very interesting from the outside looking in.

And Kart/Smash/similar games have slowed for me because I have no one to play with, communities are online at different time Zones, and frankly Nintendo's online is very poor to this day. Public online spaces are usually bad, and curating your own is usually a lot of effort with timezone issues and groups fizzle out kind of quickly, even with a lot of effort.

I almost want to second/third Pokemon, but rom hacking, personal customization, showdown and the wide variety of fan projects have really kept it alive for me, even gameplay. I didn't even bounce off Scarlet all that badly despite its myriad problems. I just enjoy in game team building and the novelty of the team star/ big boss Pokemon and the surprisingly good area zero stuff kept me going through. I actually really hope they can spice-up upcoming games going forward.
 
i'm not really playing or paying attention to in general any of them nowadays but card games

I can say without exaggeration that listening to a 5+ hour discussion of a new card set in a game I hadn't even played in years is a thing that I have done
 
For me it's mostly any competitive multiplayer game, namely fighting games. I adore Guilty Gear Strive and Street Fighter 6, but my old bones can't grind away on those games like I used to.

I'd also say League of Legends I technically watch more than I play, which is saying a lot because I still play a lot of it.

Also first post, hello.
 
I watched the hbomberguy pathologic video 3 times, I’ll never play it. And like most people here I really like watching and reading about horror games but I don’t play them.
But going for something else, fire emblem awakening is a game where I enjoy planning and theory crafting but playing the game is usually not that fun, especially after chapter 11 the game becomes extremely monotonous and mindless.
 
Anything Type Moon-related, I guess. I have a huge respect for the franchise's success, and immense contempt for how the setting actually works.

Other than that, Guilty Gear/Blazblue lore and music. I don't even want to play the games, just listen to the rock music while someone reads their 50 page essay on how the Backyard/Boundary works to create magic on Earth.
 
Kartina said:
I watched the hbomberguy pathologic video 3 times, I’ll never play it. And like most people here I really like watching and reading about horror games but I don’t play them.
But going for something else, fire emblem awakening is a game where I enjoy planning and theory crafting but playing the game is usually not that fun, especially after chapter 11 the game becomes extremely monotonous and mindless.
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I can relate to both of these because I've lost count of how much I've watched that Hbomb video but I have no interest in playing Pathologic ever, despite how fascinating it is.

And I wish I can say I haven't put in 150 hours of Awakening but alas. :v
 
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I've Pavlov'ed myself into getting sleepy when I watch OhTofu play Dead by Daylight by watching him before bed for a while. Now it's just part of my nightly routine.

Haven't played the game in years. After the Dredge came out I just bounced from actually playing the game. There's too many killers for me to remember specifically how to counter play each of them, IDK what 3/4 of the survivor perks do at this point. Something OhTofu has ironically covered in videos himself lol.
 
I can't really think of an entire game where this would apply, but there are various Minecraft mods and minigames where I'm content to just watch from the sidelines.
 
Fighting games, can’t get into most of them but watching people lock in and go bananas is awesome
 
Super Mario Maker/2 after hearing about Team 0%. I’d never really play it though. SMBW spoiled me
 
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Fighting games: the thread. I really enjoyed watching competitive Smash for a while. But playing it? I get destroyed by everyone online, and destroyed by everyone I play at in-person tournaments. Over 1,000 hours in Ultimate and I’m still trash at it.

I don’t bother playing the game multiplayer anymore, same with other fighters like Tekken 7 and Street Fighter 6. I stick to just fighting bots because anytime I think about fighting an actual person online I get demolished.
 
Another one that crossed my mind is Splatoon. I struggle to stay invested in any sort of online game regardless of how much fun I think they are, but damn do I love Splatoon as a concept. I know it isn't exactly a large pool to pick from, but it's easily the coolest new IP I've seen from Nintendo in literal decades.

Even if I'm not playing it, it's still fun to keep up with it and the worldbuilding they do.
 
Portal 2 at the moment for me. I'm like "this is incredibly brilliant, I can't wait to stop playing." It's the puzzle elements. I can't enjoy puzzle games.

Also Splatoon. Love everything about it except the upgrade system. The second I run into that system I have dropped the each of the three games. I will never buy another splatoon, they can't fool me a fourth time. I'm not a stupid guy, but the second they start talking about chunks and scrubbing and unlocking abilities etc my mind goes blank. It's the only game where when I go read guides for it, I say, wait, huh? What? Just let me buy cool gear and then choose what abilities I want to level for it... please!
 
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Resident Evil series for me. They are so fun to watch, and watch people play. When I do play them, I realize it's just more fun to watch people play and go back to that.
 
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