What universally beloved videogame you just can't enjoy?

FIFA. Every man and boy in England loves FIFA, except me. I find it totally boring and pointless.
- The game is popular but isn't universally beloved, even the fans hate it, but they got the monopoly in football games
  
  Yeah. I buy one every few years and usually regret it. They're terrible these days.
- Just like any sport game, I only enjoy FIFA in small doses.
  Sports games are literally the definition of "playing the same game over and over again". I can only ever do maybe a handful of games in a "season" before I start just simming and focusing solely on the management side of things. And even that doesn't last more than a season. I don't think there's any sports game where I've run more than one or two seasons.
  
  PES back in the day had an amazing manager mode. And become a legend mode was so much better than fifa career. Being just one player and starting in small forgotten clubs and going all the way up to the champions league plus trying to win the "fifa" World Cup was addicting back in the day.
- Sensible Soccer was the last football game I was able to get into.
  On the Amiga, not the shitty remake.
  
  Sociable Soccer isn't that bad. But it definitely doesn't beat SWOS
  
  Amiga games were so good.
- the only sports games I ever enjoyed were snes NHL 98 and mario hoops

Elden ring yawwwwn.
It's beautiful, and it seems like an interesting world, but learning exactly how to dodgerollattack for every enemy with deliberately delayed reflexes is not my kinda fun.
- I'll go ahead and say this also includes all "Souls-like" games for me.
  Combat seems clunky, buggy, and unnecessarily difficult. I don't have a ton of time to play games, so when I do, I want it to be relaxing.
- Very well said. I played with a buddy for like 50 hours before I admitted I just wasn't having fun.
  
  I hear the lore's really interesting and some guy linked me a YouTube channel full of elden ring lore so I might look into that.
  But playing it, not so much.

Any first person shooter. I'm just not into something that requires that kind of reflexes and precision, especially with a first person perspective where you can be killed instantly from behind.
- I agree. On top of that, I get motion sick really easily, so I can play a lot of FPS games for about 15 minutes max.
- First person shooters are just dumbed down point and click games.
  It is like they just removed the entire puzzle element, so you can play brainless.
  
  That's not fair, mostly within the context of multiplayer. The puzzle is outsmarting other players.
- Or if you develop wrist pain... most FPSs just go right out the window. Or you play on controller and get whomped by the mouse and keyboard players.
  
  Controller is actually better in most modern FPS games due to over tuned aim assist. Gone are the days of mnk supremacy in fps games
- Sucks to suck?
  
  If your need to feel better than other people is the only thing fun about a game, it isn't a good game.

Hollow Knight.
I played for probably a dozen hours or so, beat a few bosses and then just hit a boss I couldn't beat. (Don't recall which.) I would get to the boss and die almost immediately. Then I'd be sent back to a far away checkpoint. I'd slog back to the boss, and die. Repeat again.
I've played plenty of games like this. I get at some level that's the point. The problem is that I wasn't enjoying the game. I wasn't making progress. Just repeating the same over and over again.
I've played and loved similar games. Super Meat Boy & Celeste? Excellent. Ori and the Blind Forest/Will of the Wisps? Top games.
By all accounts I feel like I should like Hollow Knight... but I just don't feel they got it right.
- I accidentally beat the Mantis Triplets far earlier than I needed to because I couldn't find the path into the ruined capital city I was meant to take.
  Long route back to fighting the optional boss to enter a far too difficult zone for me. Only after beating them and discovering that that was not where I was meant to go did I backtrack and find the turning I'd missed to actually progress. (I rather liked Hollow Knight despite this, but you don't and that's fine. I just think it would be funny (, and a sign of poor map design if you made the same map reading error I did).)
- I broke through the exact same situation you had and finished the game beyond what most Hollow Knight players will achieve just so I can legitimately criticise this game that so many people apparently love.
  You’ve picked out the exact same mechanic that I also criticise. It wastes the players time and is anti-fun.
  I’d also add that the map mechanic is also terrible.
  My fun factor increased 10x when I found a hollow knight map online to use that had key locations marked. Ironically it was a very soft touch map that just gave general guidance without too many spoilers and this improved my experience of the game.
  
  It's a game I wanted to enjoy, and I had some amount of fun, but ultimately it just fell flat.
  The Ori games were so much better while following the same basic gameplay, but Hollow Knight gets all the extra attention. I do think Hollow Knight is bad, it's just a game that is ok, and by the next game will be enjoyable after they iron everything out.
  The other possibility I assume is that there is something Souls-like about the game that I don't get. I've only played DS3 and I found it boring quickly. I understood what the game wanted me to do, but I wasn't having fun doing it. Maybe some folks do, but not for me.

I've just never gotten into Pokemon. The games just feel like 99% grinding. I'm sure that's an incredibly unpopular opinion, but I still find them unspeakably dull.
- They came from a different era. If you didn't grow up taking long road trips with a Gameboy pocket/color for your only distraction then you probably don't get the nostalgia rush that most pmon fans do.
  
  I was born in 1977. I had a Gameboy. I just never cared for Pokemon.
  
  A significant number of pokemon fans had to make do with emulating the original gameboy games on the family computer. I know I did
  
  Exactly right. We spent hours and hours in a Ford van playing Pokemon red/yellow/blue in the 90s 😂
- It's weird, because Pokémon didn't invent turn-based RPG's, nor did they even invent the pocket monster genre because Dragon Warrior Monster arguably had a better game than Pokémon out around the same time - with more monsters, breeding, and a better storyline.
  But Red/Blue and Gold/Silver were great games of their time. Very basic, but great, mostly because of the world built around them. If you didn't appreciate Pokémon, it's probably easy to see why you'd find it dull.
  
  Worth mentioning, regarding Dragon Quest, the monster teaming up with the player was added in DQ5, back in 1992, something that was arguably first introduced in Megami Tensei 2 (1990). Dragon Quest Monster was released only in 1998, after the first pokemon games.
  What set pokemon apart from them was the amount of pokemon you could get. That Game Freak managed to cram another 100 in Gold/Silver, a night/day cycle, berries, friendship, breeding and the entire original Kanto region in a gameboy color cart is a small miracle
  
  I don't even mind some turn-based RPGs. I mentioned Wasteland in another comment, which I loved. Wasteland was basically remade as Fallout 1. Fallout 1, 2 and the Wasteland games which now have their own sequels are all turn-based RPGs, but they give you so many more options than Pokemon and they are also about team building since you don't play as a single character.
  I guess Pokemon was just not the game for me. 🤷‍♂️
- If you look at the first game from a historic perspective
  The first game basically was an open world RPG with 151 unique characters with each their strengths and weaknesses, and their own attacks, and all could be customised. Running on a handheld that previously could only play Tetris.
  It was a freaking coding masterpiece.
  But I agree the gameplay loop hasn't upgraded the way it should. It didn't evolve with the medium and stuck too much to its roots.
  Although the grinding in the newer games has been minimised. You can play through the games without grinding once.
  
  I admit I haven't played a recent Pokemon game because of my previous experiences, but I'm open to checking a new one out at some point if the grinding has been reduced. Thanks.

Pretty much every first party Nintendo game, especially Mario and the Zelda series. I've had some enjoyment from the 2D era Zelda games at least, but have yet to finish any of them as they just don't seem to hold my attention.
I'll reserve my judgement on the most recent Zelda game as I understand it's quite different from the classic 3D and 2D games, but I don't have any particular desire to give Nintendo money given their increasingly lawyer heavy behaviour.
- Trust me, breath of the wild is boring as shit. Very directionless.
  
  I agree. I cannot finish it. It shouldn't be a Zelda game.
  
  I really enjoyed Breath of the Wild although I haven't tried Tears for the Kingdom. It really suited me but it's lack of direction is how I play every open world game anyway. I actually can't go back to other AAA open world games without getting irritated by how hand holding and limiting they are of their own medium, but it wasn't just breath of the wild that made me realise that.
  
  yaaaasss. Empty world, repetitive mechanics, crappy story. I don't understand the hype.
- What about Wind waker?

Animal Crossing. I have friends who became obsessed with that game. They wouldn't stop pestering me about how much I would love it, and how I should start playing so we could trade turnips or some shit. Anyways, I bought it. What a weird thing to be obsessed with. It was boring, childish, and pointless. But it was hugely popular for a period of time.
- Covid did wonders for that game. It came out right before the lockdown, and people suddenly had free time and a reason to escape to a happy place.
- Fucking chore simulator. My roommates couldn't be assed to do their actual chores, but every morning during covid they'd get up and make sure their fucking farms had whatever the shit they needed.
- I bought it for the same reasons and also hated it. It just felt empty and boring. I then had to bite my tongue so hard when those friends would start gushing about their latest Animal Crossing thing.

I never really got into the Pokémon games. Don't find turn-based combat very fun. I mean, I guess turn-based is easy and relaxing for when you just want to put your game down and take breaks.
- Oh man I hate turn based combat. It's the worst possible combat system. If you try to fight enemies more powerful or numerous than you, you just lose and that's all there is to it. Anything besides turn based actually allows you to benefit from skill and strategy. Factors besides enemy numbers and level play a much larger role in how the fighting plays out.
  
  Low level runs are popular in many games with turn-based battle systems. There can definitely be a lot of strategy involved. Those kinds of games tend to have a lot of mechanics to play around with.
  
  Turn based > real time rpgs.
  
  Anything besides turn based actually allows you to benefit from skill and strategy
  korean mmos entered the chat
  For anyone unaware, pretty much every korean mmo game is a numbers game, where skill and strategy always lose to numbers.

Helldivers, the gameplay is fun but I just can't do GaaS games. The constant "seasons" and shit requires.more attention than my actual children do.
- Deep Rock Galactic has nailed the formula with seasons as ways of adding things with using them as FOMO. Missed skins and loot from previous seasons used to just get recycled into the RNG loot. Now they added a system to toggle and play missions as if you were a in a previous season and earn the old loot.

- I haven't been able to go back to Factorio after playing Satisfactory.
  
  That's funny, it's the opposite for me. Got into Satisfactory, loved it. Buddy bought me factorio, and now Satisfactory seems like an extremely feature-neutered version of Factorio.
- Picked up Satisfactory just a few days ago and I am pretty bored tbh. Does it get better?

Anything with that boring lazy Batman Arkham fighting system that they put in every game anymore.
It's such a shitty mechanic. I don't understand why people like it. It's just an extended QuickTime event. The same identical QuickTime event, over and over again, for fucking hours. It wasn't so bad in Arkham because the stealth was so fun that I never fought unless I had to.
But for 15 years it's infected every other goddamn game. Shadows of Mordor, Mad Max, Ghosts of Tsushima off the top of my head.
It sucks. It's awful. Harrumph.
- At first I liked it because it was good for people like me who like games but are really not good at them, but yeah, it's way overdone now.
- It's weird because I always think of it as the Sands of Time combat system.
- …ghost of Tsushima has the best and most satisfying combat system in recent memory.
  The Perry was the most satisfying in any game (imo obviously).

Overwatch and Fortnite. I feel like I'm catching ADHD just playing them. Strangely Apex Legends is quite enjoyable. Though I stick to HLL and Squad for shooty mcpewpews.

Well you picked two of my favorite games there... :p
For me it's Monster Hunter. There's no appeal to me fighting endless boss fights grinding for better gear. People often compare it to Soulslikes, which I do like. But IMO Monster Hunter doesn't have the best part of Soulslikes, which is the exploration of an intricate world full of mysteries.

Super Mario Brothers. The whole thing us based on ultra-precise timing, which is both miserable for me as well as inordinately stressful.
- For the love of your sanity please don't go anywhere near the modern platformers like Super Meat Boy or Celeste.
  
  Super Meat Boy, I forgot about that rage inducing game. That game was way harder than Mario.
  
  Céleste wasn't a cake walk but the unlimited lives and quick load makes it doable. Just don't try to 100 percent it, forget about the wack story and it's good
- I have a specific opinion about the older mario games; they expected a much more narrow game literacy than new games do, so the people who played them already had a little bit of transferable ability from other games. Nowadays, not just are precise skills less required because the games are designed to be easier, but the player base is starting the games with less skill due to their previous game being totally different.

I find Smash Bros uniquely frustrating and obtuse.
- Buttons go smash.
- If someone hands me a controller I'll button mash away because I'm just here to hang out, but I don't really like the game either. Ditto Mario Cart
- That's... an interesting one. Uniquely frustrating from what sort of perspective? Like, do other fighting games work for you but platform fighters don't? Or are fighting games in general just not your thing?
  
  The control scheme, the health bar system, and the general chaos just never hit right for me. I can appreciate the game in a party setting, but maybe a little begrudgingly. In maybe similar veins, I'd prefer Towerfall or Power Stone 2, for example.

Gacha games, but surprisingly not for the gacha elements. FOMO events, where you either play during a limited period or miss the event and its rewards forever, killed my interest in every one I played.
The worst are the ones that put critical parts of character stories in them, then never rerun the events. Genshin and other MiHoYo games were especially bad about this (Albedo's evil twin says hello).
- I’ve gotten into one of those games over the past few months for the first time and I’m still not even sure why. It’s so transparent what they’re doing, trying to milk users for money with artificially ridiculous drop rates for characters and gear, and just constant grinding to get anything. I’ve stayed F2P the whole time, but it’s kinda aggravating seeing stuff essentially locked behind a paywall. And the prices are absolutely ridiculous, I can’t imagine what kind of idiots would actually buy anything at their arbitrarily inflated rates for fake, digital crap. Yet I keep playing.
  
  The battle pass from Genshin/Star Rail boggles the mind. You have to grind like crazy or play almost every day to complete it, and the majority of the rewards are character and weapon advancement materials. You know, something you'd usually have to grind for.
  Escape the grind through more grinding.
  Oh, and you only get 1/6 of the battle pass rewards as a F2P player. It's ten bucks to unlock the majority of the rewards. And the headline feature, the weapon/star cone you unlock at tier 30 (only it you pay, naturally), is easily outclassed by stuff you'll get as a F2P player.
- fuck why did you have to remind of the double albedo thing. Which one survived?! He was missing the mark for a bit!! arggg....

Any MOBA

I just can't enjoy Skyrim, always found it so boring
- Me too, until I found a random thing on the way, when a bandit attacked me only to give me a better sword then I was watching fish in a river spotting a weird shadow realising it wad a flying dragon which I managed to kill somehow near a town. Beaten up went up to the tavern where they told me about weird things happening in the castle nearby so I went to see WhatsUp and they were crying on about a weird claw part of my main quest, I was about to quit tired from all that when my character took it out and completed the quest as soon as it began.
  Then I stole everything in the castle and couldn't run back to the store fast enough aaaaand... It was 500+ hours already
- Me too . Also don't really enjoy most Bethesda games . I tried fallout 3 and found most of the combat was walking backwards and shooting the enemy a hundred times.

Bioshock. I like the story and setting, but I find the actual gameplay to be boring
- Same. Played it through using cheats just to get through the story. Bioshock Infinte was a pleasure though.
  
  Bioshock infinite was amazing.

Baldurs gate 3. Just too much going on and I can't figure it out. Never passed the first board. Also elden ring can get fucked.
- First board? Not sure what that means... the tutorial? On the nautiloid? You are missing out on so much
  
  I think he’s thinking of Build a Gate 3, which is indeed the most confusing game ever. It helps to think in terms wood grain, and it really helps if you get the carpentry instruction from BaG 1 and 2.
  
  The very first thing you do. Whatever that was. Never got past it.
- I felt this way too, but my husband guilted me into sticking with it and I'm super glad he did, we had SO much fun playing split screen. I'm the type of person who has to look at the controller to see which one triangle is to give you some idea of my adeptness.

I tried to like FTL, I really did, but it's just too much RNG for me.
- I get the complaint, it feels like it could be so tactical and strategic but often you get fucked by bad luck. But that's kinda rogue likes for you I guess. Wonder if there was a way to design it differently.
- I'm having that problem with slay the spire currently. I've spent 50 hours trying to beat it with the witch character, and keep getting fucked by the RNG. FTL I've beat with every ship/variation on normal, but it takes a lot of Memorization or looking up events to make sure you're not screwing yourself. Into the Breach is way less RNG.

Minecraft and other open-ended games without much guidance toward specific goals.
While I do enjoy freely exploring a large open world I also lose track of the point of playing at all... add some quest objectives or something and it's perfect.
- There are mod packs that add a lot of content and progression. As much as I like Minecraft, vanilla gets boring fast. Check out curseforge if you want to check it out.
  
  Checkout minetest
- This was me with Space Engineers.
  Fucking loved that game until I got to the moon. I was doing 10-hour sessions I loved it so much.
  I played a scenario where I start in a planet, and there’s a space station orbiting the planet, and whenever I’m ready I can go to the space station and hit a button and then it’s basically zombie defense except it’s robotic drones.
  Well, I started on the surface and my first thing was I had no water to make hydrogen and there were mountains on the horizon with ice caps on them so the first like 50 hours of gameplay was me building a rover and finding a path around a canyon to those mountains.
  Finally I had a source of ice, hence hydrogen, hence fuel to get off the surface and into space.
  After a few attempts I got a flying craft into space. Bare bones basics on it: survival kit, basic refinery so I could make repairs to my ship, and I started exploring outer space.
  I tried the station with the defense thing and died instantly. So I decided I’d build up my ship, get more weapons, and try again.
  So I cruised around, my ship grew, got more and more features including tons of turrets. I went and did another run at the drones and got through like 10 waves instead of 2. Then I decided to go check out the moon. This was a long journey (30 minutes at max speed as the crow flies) and I stopped many times along the way to expand my ship, so it was actually days of journeying to the moon.
  Then I got to the moon, and landed, and it was cool and then … flop. All my motivation and fascination died all at once.
  Apparently it’s quite common with Space Engineers. I really wish there was some major sequence of goals.
  The drones goal isn’t beatable, I don’t think. And it’s the only goal like that. The reason it isn’t bearable is there’s infinite waves. I think.
  What would even make it cooler is a series of challenges that you have to pass. At locations, each with their own difficulty level.
  I mean there’s contracts where you can get money to trade like 50 steel plates for some space bucks.
  I tried multiplayer servers but none of the worlds persist. Either the servers themselves are persistent - but the world is wiped every 6 hours - or the servers themselves are just rented servers that are up for a few days then gone.
  I wasn’t able to find any public servers with long-term persistent worlds using the in-game browser.

Some friends tried to get me into Destiny 2. It seems really pointless. I recognize the mechanics and aspects common to other games but somehow it just never clicked with me.
- I put 1.2k hours into it during lockdown. Not enjoying Destiny 2 is probably the best thing that's ever happened to your wallet tbh
  
  I had a co worker a few months ago say they needed to head home to their second job after work, curious I Inquired further and it turns out he has just been busting out ~40 hours a week of destiny 2 for a few months now while also working 40 hours a week at our job.
  To be fair we work from home 2 days a week so I'm sure he had some cross over work/destiny time.
  
  As someone who enjoyed the tiny sliver of the free part of game, are the story missions worth paying for?
  
  seriously, I tried playing with my friends for like 2-3 months and had to spend at least $100 just to get the DLCs to play with them. Great investment at this point...
- Ditto. Dull as dishwater

Most of the Soulsborne games. The only one I’ve been able to enjoy is Sekiro.
In most Soulsborne games, it seems like difficulty is artificial simply because your character is so damned clunky. I enjoyed Sekiro specifically because the character was snappy and didn’t feel like they were running through waist-deep water. If I lost a fight in Sekiro, it was never because I was animation locked or because my character was too slow; It’s because I was too slow.
- It took me a long time to warm to them.
  The more armour you wear in the main Souls game, the slower and clunkier you are. It's kind of a gotcha, in that you instinctively think more armour will help, and it does the exact opposite because you get hit more often. There's a lot of shit that isn't really explained at all. Some people like that, but the Wiki is there if you don't.
  Parrying was all but impossible for me, I just went with sword and shield for most of it, switching to the massive zweihander for the DLC.
  Dark Souls 2 is the worst of them, I'd skip that if you ever try again. Way too many enemies in every area.
- I also just dint have the time to get good at them. I get maybe 2-3 hours a week to game on average these days. I'm not going to dump a year into getting my ass kicked for a single game.
- I tried Dark Souls and quit pretty early because I couldn't pause. I don't care about doing inventory or anything like that, but I'd like to be able to just stop things if I need to go check on the door or something. The outside world doesn't stop just because I'm gaming.
  
  IIRC, lots of people originally used the Home button as a sort of super-pause. But that’s not as easy on the PC version, where the game just keeps running in the background.
- I'm not sure about universally loved. I've never heard of this series...
  
  i can't deal with this take, i just woke up.
  
  "Soulsborne" isn't a series per se, it's an umbrella covering all the Dark Souls games, and FromSoft's other games using the same formula like Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring.

The entire Final Fantasy franchise, with the exception of Dissidia. I just don't like that style of game play where you have to stop in the middle of fighting, pick what you wanna do, then watch them do it. I'm also not a fan of Pokémon for the same similar reason.
- Final Fantasy hasn't been like that for a long long time. They make ARPGs now. Check out gameplay from ffxvi or the vii remake, it's high paced action.
- See, I don't like FF games since they changed to action games and stopped being jrpgs.
- See, I like that because I'm shit at action games.

Minecraft. I just couldn't get into it and it doesn't interest me.

Elden Ring. Didn't grab me at all.
Stardew is definitely in my top 5 ever.

Dragon Age Origins, I hate the combat and the story never grabbed me, I felt like an errand boy.
- I had a terrible time with DAO until I read one thing that helped improve the whole game:
  ‘Get Wynne’
  Once you unlock her character you will actually be able to progress at a reasonable rate without incredible headache allowing you to enjoy more of the story.
- I feel it suffers from a lot of the problems with RPGs of the time both culturally and mechanically. No one had a really good idea of where the genre could be taken. The story was fine though. I would suggest anyone getting into it to just read or watch summary and use the online tool for generating decisions/save.

Witcher 3 used to be like that for me. Everyone kept telling me to do the Bloody Baron quest; did it, didn't care for it, and stopped playing the game. Four years later, I decided to give it another shot and I liked it a lot and finally understood why people like it.
- When I tried playing it there were a couple quests near the beginning where you get to choose someones fate. Nether answer is a good one and I felt bad whichever I picked. I stopped playing at that point.
  
  I stopped playing after I saw how slow and clunky the combat was, and how the spellcasting is basically 5 different colours of the same spell.
  Doesn't matter how good the story is when the gameplay in between is a snoozefest.
- I didn't really like the witcher 3. Found the combat wasn't that great and I spent most of my time walking around talking to people or trying to repair my weapons . I didn't get very far into the game though so I'm not sure how much that changes later in the game . I did like the card game Gwent though .

Warhammer series as well as the Gears of War franchise. I like other strategy and 3rd-person shooters with cover mechanics. I just couldn't get into this world or the characters/groups.
- Warhammer or Gears of War?
  I can only think of one TPS currently released (another on the way) in the Warhammer series. It's more known for strategy and tactics games.
  
  Probably Gears of War, now that I think about it. That whole world just never interested me.

I’ve never really found turn-based games to be all that fun. A few have had a good enough story or some other mechanic to make them interesting but it’s just not really my thing, for some reason. (It’s not just a video game thing. A bunch of my friends play poker or complex board games and I’d usually rather watch than play.)
So, something like the Final Fantasy series or Pokémon games would be my answer. Everyone loves Final Fantasy and Pokémon. I’m clearly the weird one. And I probably would love them if they were more action-oriented.
- What was your last FF? They are action games now.
  
  I don’t know. It was awhile ago. I assumed they were all turn-based but if they’re not, I’ll definitely check them out.

KotoR and Mass Effect. They both just feel so stilted.
- I won't allow mass effect slander. Don't give a fuck about star wars, you can trash it
  
  Lol I'm the opposite. I won't allow KOTOR slander. Don't give a fuck about Mass Effect, you can trash it.
  KOTOR had a great story and I was finally in the Star Wars universe, just flying around and exploring the universe.
  I do admit the early part of the game is a bit slow, but once I was jumping from planet to planet it was awesome.
  (Come to think of it I found Mass Effect equally boring when I started it. If it had been Star Wars I probably would have stuck with it, but since it wasn't I just found it boring.)
  
  Tell me why you love it, I'd love to be able to give it a second chance.

Grew up on retro console and then fully grew with PC gaming as it grew and matured in the 90s. Tried Halo once in 2003 and the graphics and gameplay for death match were so consummately uncreative I pitied console gamers ever since.
- I never was a console player so I only got around to playing the original Halo a couple of years back. It was a decent shooter, but nowhere near as great as I imagined. IMO the original Half Life does everything much better and it came out three years earlier.
  I'm curious about Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but I kinda expect the same kind of disappointment.

It's not like I totally didn't enjoy it, but Red Dead Redemption 2. The game was good in many ways, and I totally get why it's so we'll loved, but I just have nothing with the setting. I don't like cowboys, I don't like playing as an asshole who makes bad decision after bad decision, and I also don't like a setting where women are basically property. Just not really my vibe. I just came from Cyberpunk 2077 and the contrast was quite big, even though Cyberpunk is supposed to be more dystopian
- As someone who both dislikes westerns and liked the first Red Dead Redemption, everything I've heard about RDR2 makes me think I would not like it at all.
  It sounds like they took a great game and injected it with mindless busy-body gameplay mechanics. I've barely ever heard people talk about the story, which doesn't really help sell a game that's a sequel to a story focused game.

I played one Resident Evil game for 5 minutes, and gave up because of the fucking stupid controls.
Outside of that, probably Halo. I've tried several of them because I loved first-person shooters, but they just felt a little soulless to me, and unbelievably slow compared to the likes of Unreal Tournament, Quake, and Doom.
- https://store.steampowered.com/app/562860/Ion_Fury/
  https://store.steampowered.com/app/1592280/Selaco/
- Resident evil is my favourite franchise so I can't agree. The og controls are there due technical limitations but work well and are much more responsive than other survival horror games of the era
  
  I thought the controls also helped with the horror factor. Unable to move completely freely and stuck in a mansion with fixed camera angles. But I also see why some would be put off by it.

Any of the soulsborne games.
If your game is advertised as being "extremely difficult", it just means it is lacking tons of quality of life features and goes out of its way to punish the player by making them repeat the same slog over and over. It is quite easy to make a difficult game, much harder to make a fun game.
Just imagine how much better and shorter Dark Souls would have been with a marker telling you where to go, instead of you fumbling around going through the same areas because you have no idea where to go next. It artificially lengthens the game.
But the worst part about those types of games is the community. They go insane when you even propose an easy or story mode. As if the the difficulty is the only redeeming quality those games have.
I don't have to "git gud", I can just close the game and never play it again while I enjoy actual good games.
- Eh, just wasn't made for you. Not everyone needs to listen to death metal either.
- I can just close the game and never play it again
  True and healthy!
  while I enjoy actual good games.
  blatant copium
- I'd like to make a counterpoint here, but first I want to acknowledge that you are 100% entitled to your opinion and maybe souls-like games are just not for you. It's a shame that people are kicking downvotes your way because this is in no way a new or controversial opinion, but like you said, the community can sometimes take their love of the game/series too far and blame the consumer for not liking the same stuff they like, which isn't fair and just makes the souls community looks like clowns.
  Anyway, my counterpoint is that I don't feel like these games are as difficult as people make them out to be. IMO, older games were just as hard, if not harder to complete even when playing optimally. In the framework of just about every Souls-like game, you have tools that you can use to almost completely trivialize the toughest encounters if you want. DS1 can be beaten by a complete amateur if you do the gravelord speedrun (which doesn't require any real speedrunning tricks and there are many youtube tutorials that you can follow along with, takes about 10-15 minutes from character creation) and get the gravelord greatsword which can inflict Toxic on all the bosses, so you can just hit them a few times and run away for the rest of the fight, waiting for the poison to finish them off. That's just one example. Just about every installment of FromSoftware's Souls' series has some overpowered cheese that you can research to essentially trivialize the game. Some people might argue that you're not beating the game in the "intended way" if you take such shortcuts, but I disagree. Any way you make it to the end is the right way.
  For a lot of people, part of the fun of a game like Dark Souls is the adventure, the discovery, and yes, pounding your head against a tough boss trying to beat it over and over. If you're the type of gamer who gets easily frustrated to the point where you feel like quitting when encountering a challenge that feels unfun or unfair, I can see it not being an enjoyable experience. The thing that keeps most people coming back is the dopamine hit that they get when they do finally overcome that challenge and they are rewarded with more stuff to explore, new items to pick up, and so on. I think if there were any argument to be made against making the game easier for yourself by exploiting broken game mechanics (or with an easy/story mode added or modded in), it's that you probably won't be super invested in the outcome and get bored easily. Without the challenge aspect, the Souls games are very much a bare bones experience. It's essentially a generic fantasy RPG with a story hidden behind item descriptions and cryptic NPC interactions. That doesn't exactly make for the most compelling gameplay, so there's no trail of breadcrumbs to keep the gamer uninterested in the challenge going. There's a sort of intrinsic value in these games that can't be quantified, because everybody gets something different out of it.
- Look I think there are valid complaints to be made about the Dark Souls franchise, but criticizing them for not giving you waypoints says more about you than it does the games themselves. The lack of any sort of hand holding was by far the most interesting thing for me when I first played Dark Souls and is the thing that got me hooked. The tension in exploring a new area, having no idea what to expect and being so scared you're going to die is a wonderful feeling, especially when you overcome it and survive to the next bonfire.
  You're making me want to write a boomeresque comment about how kids want video games to hold their hands. Don't you have a sense of adventure? Is exploration and mystery not interesting to you?
- The games usually have an easier mode that is still not easy. In DS 3 playing the Knight and using the shield heavily works pretty well and make a lot of bosses trivial.
  But yeah, it's not for everyone, grinding timings and level information can be really frustrating so if the satisfaction of beating a level is not enough there'd be no point.
  
  The real easy mode in Souls is to have you and three friends get burner accounts, then get anticheat-banned on purpose so you can co-op the entire game with low risk of getting griefed by some jerkoff PvP player, as the 'banned people' ghetto server is a ghost town. Played through the entire Souls trilogy like that during the 2020 lockdown, and had the time of my life. Never really felt "hard" because we could gang up on enemies. It did help that one of my mates was a veritable Dark Souls encyclopedia, and would give us pointers and strategies while also telling us about the lore. Great time.

I'm right with you on Stardew Valley. Might be because I'm a city kid but I just can't connect with the game. I know that it's supposed to be "cosy" but my idea of cosy is a downtown apartment, not a farm. It just doesn't work for me.
- Its not an accurate representation of a farm, just to make that clear. It's a very much romanticised little village - and there's plenty of indoors, if that's what you like. Eg, your house, which you can upgrade and decorate, the villagers houses and shops, the mines. That said, I wouldn't have described it as 'cozy', I would say more 'chill'.
- It's not cozy for me because I suck at time management. I heard there's a mod that disables the penalty for getting home late though

My first Mario Game was Super Mario World, as such I don't understand why Mario 1 and 3 are so beloved. Groundbreaking they might be, fun they are not.
Any time I got the Mario All Stars Cartridge out and said to myself "I am completing Mario 3 today", after a while my mind went "or I could actually enjoy a round of Mario World" and did that instead.
- I share your sentiment; but you need to remember that SM1&3 were both originally NES games, and even the All Stars remakes are largely hampered by the original consoles limitations.
  That’s why both SMW and Yoshi’s Island are such better experiences overall, they didn’t have to emulate those same limitations in order to preserve an original playstyle.
  
  I know that, what made you think I forgot?
  It's just not fun to me, yet online people describe Mario 3 as "the best 2d Mario" and "one I could always come back to". This has nothing to do with the NES' limitations, it's a difference in taste.

Warframe. Shooty and jumpy. OK. No strategy. Just shooty big guns. Boring. Compare to helldivers 2. No jumpy allllllll strategy. This or that syrategem? Throw or hide? Which objective first?
- I get it, I played Warframe a fair bit and the beginning is pretty one note. The game really opens up at some point but it's very far from the beginning. Not very friendly to newbs and it is a very very grindy game.

I'm with you on Witcher 3, I've tried 4 times to play and like it. Not happening.
- I can understand your feeling. I first bought Witcher 3 in 2016 or so and didn't touch it for years. Picked it up 2 years ago again and loved it. It's not he best combat, not the best complex game but the story really hooked me. Mind you, it does take a couple of hours for it to get going. And the secondary quests (side quests) are some of the most memorable I've ever played.
- God dam walking simulator.
  
  I wonder how big the overlap between it and RDR2 fans is
- The side quests are cool. I can see the appeal. But yeah, I never felt excited to actually play it (or any Witcher game).
  I bet the books are a riot though
  
  My opinion might be more controversial than disliking the game. I only read the book the Netflix series is based on, but it was kind of a terrible book. I enjoyed the story for the most part. The issue for me is the writing style is terrible. I kept losing track of who was talking or doing something because the author never reconfirms which character said or did the thing. It ruined the book for me.

Hearthstone, even back when it was new and not excessively monetized, I just couldn't get into it.
DotA, the original Warcraft 3 custom map, and every moba afterwards. I just can't find enjoyment in how it plays.

I agree with both of those and will add in Deep Rock Galactic.
- No rock and stone? sad granite noises

All Mario games except for any Mario Kart. I didn’t even like the games as a kid, and I still don’t get their appeal because to me the platforming aspects are simplistic and not engaging enough. I can enjoy other platformers though.
- Master, there is a man speaking blasphemy in the temple LOL

Witcher 2 with its semi-open-semi-linear gameplay has definitely been a better experience in terms of pacing and story. Witcher 3 had quite the environment to wander around in a slow pace and is a much, much larger game with a good enough polish in my opinion, but can be very overwhelming with how many hours it requires for a balanced gameplay.
- I played that for a while and I hated it too lol

I don't know if they're considered "universally beloved". But the Total War series of games theoretically should be directly up my alley based on every other game I play, but for some reason they've never clicked for me.

You gotta mod the shit out of Stardew. I quickly find myself spending more time playing around with code pertaining to it than actually playing lol
- I just don't like endless games about boring stuff.

Any battle royale games. They all look so toxic.
Most survival builder games. They're all the same. Only exception is Project Zomboid, but it has to be with friends.
Soulsborne games. If the game is hard, just to be hard it's not that fun for myself. I play games to escape the stress from my life. Not add to it.
Horror games. I have enough anxiety about mundane shit as it is, I don't need a game to give me more.

BioShock Infinite. The gunplay is very basic and it's world doesn't make sense.
Like:
How can Elizabeth be a up beat Disney princess like character? If she lived in her tower and being experimented on for all her life.
Why Columbia need slaves? When it haves robots and have control of quantum mechanics.
- I really liked the visuals, especially at the start, and there's some really nice beats, but the story fall completely apart as soon as the tears to alternate realities are introduced and given that the story ends up completely relying on that... yeah. I agree 100%.

Dave the Diver. FromSoft games. All online games. Sonic anything.
- Dave the Diver.
  I felt so lucky to realize that I wasn't going to like that game at all within the refund window.
- Playing Dave now, it feels a bit repetitive but the story is nice. I'm going to stop the second I finish the main story though.
  
  Finishing the main story is the whole game.

X4 is one that I couldn't figure out. There aren't a lot of ways to make passive income and the entry barriers to get to participate in anything cool seem extremely high. I'm not grinding quests, in the starter ship, making beans until I can buy a space station for example. $30k quests that only pop up sometimes and 1800 credit profit from trading isn't even close to good enough for that. I ragequit when I bought an affordable cargo ship, found that I could do NOTHING with it to gain passive income, grinded manual money making methods for another few hours and then got bored of it.
I expected this to be a spaceship game where I could tell npcs what to do instead of do all the stuff myself. Perhaps it becomes a management game instead of a grind game eventually, but I don't have the patience to play to that point. Starfield at least has fun gunplay.
- What? X is all about the passive income and telling NPCs what to do. You play long enough to afford a cheap cargo runner as a second ship, put an AI pilot in it, and tell them to run trade routes in the background while you do whatever you find fun. Your income snowballs from there as you buy more and bigger ships and unlock better trading automation, then becomes ridiculous once you start building stations and producing entire supply chains yourself.
  I say this as someone who also bounced off X4, because even with all that and time compression it still takes ages to get to the fun endgame stuff I actually enjoy.

Lol, the two games you listed are some of my most played games of all time, especially in the last few months.
- Isn't that the point of the post?
  
  Yes, but there are lots of universally beloved video games. I was saying that two they chose happened to be the specific two that I'd played the most recently.

I just can't get into one-player games anymore. My little brother, who's awesome in every way, got me these two great games for birthday and Christmas. Hades, and Witcher III: Wild Hunt. And I can't for the life of me get into them. I want to play with other people! Also, I'm one of those people that wants to explore every little bit of the world before going to fight the boss, because I hate being under leveled for a fight. Leads me to explore for an hour, find a bunch of sweet stuff that definitely will help me later in the game, then I die to a pack of flipping wolves, lose all my stuff and have to start over. Did that a couple times then stopped.
Started Hades, and the game started with blaring music that I couldn't turn down. Nothing in the game controls was doing it, so I turned it off.
Meanwhile I'm basically addicted to DOTA 2, and put over 1000 hours into SMITE just because that was a game my lil bro played. Soon as I got good enough to play SMITE with him, he stopped playing 😥
- Oof, I'm mostly the opposite these days. Multiplayer games either have too much toxicity from randos, or they're stuffed with progression systems that actively make me hate the game even if the gameplay itself is good.
  Still like coop games like Darktide every once in a while.
- Ditto here - I get bored super fast when gaming alone but put me on a server with others and I can easily play for hours
- I can't get into single player games either. Interacting with NPCs just doesn't do it for me and to me they're a tedious way to get a narrative. I hate having to grind to get to the next plot-point only to get stuck behind a boss and by the time it's beaten, I've forgotten the plot. If I'm going to entertain myself alone, I'd rather watch a movie or show, read a book, or work on a project than play through a single player campaign.
- Sounds like me, I love deep multiplayer games. Dota and tf2 are my biggest loves. I generally just get bored of single player games.
  The witcher 3 I got about 5 minutes into before giving up.
  That being said, I absolutely loved Baldurs Gate 3, so maybe that's worth checking out!

Dead by Daylight and that genre in general.
"Let's all play a horror game where someone running is like a person casually browsing the mall."

Battle Royales in general. It just doesn’t appeal to me. Despite the fact I’m pretty good, and usually finish in the top five.
- Same and same. There was a moment in PUBG's first moments that I found it fun because it felt like ridiculous gameplay in a good way. But lost it's appeal like everything else.

Breath of the Wild. The combat is fun but after that got old I realized there was absolutely nothing about the game I found engaging. The world was sparse and filled with the same enemies everywhere, temples were repetitive, the writing/acting was absolutely atrocious, and many of the mechanics were tedious as fuck. Climbing is tedious, cooking is tedious, gathering is tedious.
I genuinely do not understand why the game is so beloved.