Dark Souls

This game has me constantly switching between "I freaking love this game, 10/10" and "What the hell is this crap!?".

I really like the non-linear approach to the world and getting to good vintage points to get an idea of how different parts are connected or discovering new shortcuts is very satisfying. The downside is, despite the "open world" the game seems to be designed with a specific path in mind and more often than not I feel like the game punishes me for exploring on my own instead of following a walkthrough. My first exploration of New Londo was completely pointless as I ended up lacking a key item needed to proceed, and if I hadn't chosen to check out a certain place before revisiting New Londo and getting another key item my second visit would had been a waste of time as well.

I enjoy the difficulty but when the difficulty is replaced by sheer tediousness I'm not having a good time. Knowing that I will have to replay boring and annoying parts if I die means I'll play it safe and not take any chances, which in turn means the game becomes less exciting. There are sections like a certain spot where you're facing two very unfriendly archers where I want to go in and try to fight my way through like a champ but where failure would get me punished so hard that I pick the easy, boring alternative instead (meaning I use the goddamn bow). The aforementioned open-world design that really isn't that open, apart from being annoying also messes with the difficulty as leveling up while exploring the wrong place means you'll be over-leveled once you get to where you're supposed to be. S&O didn't annoy me close to as much as they should and bosses like Seath and Four Kings burst into flames merely by touching me. Then there's my enemy numero uno. The freaking camera. The game works well in bigger areas with lots of space but in tighter places fighting the camera is more difficult than fighting the enemies. Sometimes the camera just loses it and starts to spin or go into a flickering frenzy. When I fought the Zombie Dragon on the bridge I luckily was way overpowered because each damn time I got close enough to the dragon so I could hit it the camera went bananas. I didn't fear the dragon but I guess the camera did...

World of Warcraft. Love the game but I constantly hate the changes it brings in to simplify the gameplay for casuals. But the game keeps bringing me back to it somehow.

Tekken series. I love Tekken but I haven't played T7 since season 2 update. Tekken evolved into some weird juggling thing in 6, was rediculous in Tag2 and in this while most of that was removed, it still had a lot of cheese. Things like holding classic characters behind a paywall, people who have 4000 wins in unranked beating on a guy just having fun with a new character with 2 wins and it's general lack of stuff to do. In T6, you had the PvE mode, tonnes of items and customes to unlock, you could really change the look of your character, Team Battle. Then in 7, Team Battle was removed, customisation poor, and Lei behind a pay wall. If it didn't have online Tournament, don't think I'd play it as much as I did. T5 is the best.

League of Legends - Yes, I play it, never played ranked and never spent a penny on it. 4 years of playing soon. I love the game, it's mechanics, the idea behind it, the characters but as someone who has given up on the main map and only plays ARAM, I just think it's a mess. The 'balance' changes made to the game have added damage out the arse, new champs are overpowered and always pick/ban in pro and everything done feels like it's done to speed games up but it's become less tactical (if it ever was) plus they change Aatrox to whatever he is now and that just isn't fun either. I still enjoy many aspects of it, and addition of TFT is fine enough. Just wish they'd do more to help the game overall instead of just making it appealing to watch and giving the same champs skins over and over.

So much this...

Uncharted 4. Bought it at launch and still don't even know I feel about it to this day. The game was beautiful graphically, had some great music, and the gameplay was fun. But god DAMN the story was a mess.

It was good in the beginning but went downhill FAST once it hit the Scotland part imo and only recovered for a few brief moments in the rest of the game, the whole Avery pirate story line was boring as shit too, though it led to some cool areas to play through. Every 20 minutes they for some reason felt the need to constantly repeat "AND DID WE MENTION HE HAS A BROTHER!?!?!". LIKE OK DAMN I GET IT. Doesn't help that Sam wasn't even a likeable character either and they basically retconned a portion of the other games (particularly Uncharted 3) just to make room for him. Like, if using a grappling hook was something Nate and his brother apparently did so often then why did he not use it at all in Uncharted 1-3? Did he just fuckin forget? I can maybe forgive this because introducing anything later in a franchise can spawn the same question, but if they were gonna retcon it that hard then at least have an explanation.

Then there was the pointless shit like the "optional dialogue" choices in the cutscenes which felt like nothing other than throwing random shit in just to check another box on the "new feature" list. There wasn't even a single set piece like the other Uncharted games were known for, with Uncharted 2 you had the train sequence, Uncharted 3 the plane sequence, etc. I can't remember ANYTHING memorable like that in Uncharted 4.

Honestly, the overall vibe I get when playing through Uncharted 4 is that it feels like Naughty Dog didn't wanna make another Uncharted game, so instead they tried to make it more like The Last of Us - more serious/grounded but it was just a mess that felt like it had no clear direction.  Either that or they wanted to find ways to advance/grow it, but the ways they went about it just didn't work. 

Multiplayer is a blast though, started playing that again a bit the past dew days and it's still great, so they did a really good job on that. I've had The Lost Legacy ever since it released but still haven't even bothered playing it just because I think Uncharted 4 was so disappointing to me that I just don't care anymore to play this other one lmao.

I'm currently playing FFX and i really like the story and the characters, but i loathe the Sphere Grid and the grind is awful.

Also, Fuck Seymour.

So, how about: No items, standard kart only, Rainbow Road.

Sorta same for me, except I played 1 and it was clunky as all hell, and tbh, I still feel like all 3 have terrible combat. 1 because it was clunky, 2, because it was semi clunky and 3 because a lot of the combat involved "commit to action" style combat, which I absolutely hate, and the mods that "improved" combat made it worse for me.

I love roaming the lands of Witcher 3, love the characters, the setting, lore etc, but I fucking hate the combat style. Give me a slight pinch of DMC 1/3 combat and I'm golden, or something that isn't Witcher 3 crossbred with Skyrim. 

Plants vs. Zombies 2

I didn't even try the first one until it was released on console, but then I loved it. PvZ 2 is mobile only. It has tons more content than the first game, but I really hate that I can't play it on console. The worst part is all of the microtransactions packed into the game. If they just released a complete version on a console I'd give them $60. As it stands now I haven't given them any money, because I just hate microtransactions, and these are the pay to win style. So frustrating.

Cobra Command on Sega CD has to be the top seed for me. I could always get to about 3/4 through the final level, but could never beat the game. This was back in the day when running out of lives meant starting the whole game over again. I don't remember ever feeling so frustrated.

I was a pretty young kid at the time, and I would get raging pissed and curse and scream at the TV. Then my mom would not let me play games for a few days. After those days were up, I try Cobra Command again, and the cycle would repeat.