Sacred Cow: A game/series/Dev that is held in the highest regard that you hate

[gf78]

There are many games that I just "don't get."  People rave about them.  They have garnered industry acclaim and have scooped up obscene amounts of awards.  They've sold bajillions.  People pine for sequels/remakes/re-releases, etc.

For me, it's Valve and Half-Life.  I.  Just.  Don't.  Get.  It. 

In my opinion, Half-Life did nothing to advance storytelling like the fans claim.  It was clumsy.  It had poor graphics compared to other FPS of the time.  You were a mute tool with a pocket protector, glasses and a crowbar.  Your mainstay enemies were possessed scientists with crabs latched onto their heads. 

What's so great about it?  Doom opened interdimensional portals years before Gordon Freeman's hapless @$$ did. 

I occasionally read through forums and comment sections and every single time I see somebody post "Half-Life 3 confirmed!" or just about anything about Half-Life...I literally want to punch someone in the face.  It goes right through me.

Newell and company are perfectly content to sit on their asses making dough from Steam and laughing at everyone pining for a new game in a series that frankly sucks. 

What do you guys & gals think?  Any games you just can't stand that everyone gushes about?

[badATchaos]

For me it's the Halo games. I fail to see how it's this huge phenomena. From what I can tell it's just popular because Bungie nailed FPS controls on console... and that's about it. Aside from that I didn't really see them bring much to shooters.

I feel that Halo relied on the naiveté of the younger/console player base. PC FPSs laid the base and Bungie brought it all to the console. Many designs were recycled from the Marathon series. Many themes where lifted from Larry Niven's Ringworld and other classic science fiction novels from way back. I felt that weapons were really basic and flat especially for a sci-fi game. Probably the most unique weapon in the game, the Needler, was ripped-off of Half-Life's Hivehand.

I remember playing it for the first time and being completely underwhelmed and unimpressed.

[dreama1]

There are many games that I just "don't get."  People rave about them.  They have garnered industry acclaim and have scooped up obscene amounts of awards.  They've sold bajillions.  People pine for sequels/remakes/re-releases, etc.

For me, it's Valve and Half-Life.  I.  Just.  Don't.  Get.  It. 

In my opinion, Half-Life did nothing to advance storytelling like the fans claim.  It was clumsy.  It had poor graphics compared to other FPS of the time.  You were a mute tool with a pocket protector, glasses and a crowbar.  Your mainstay enemies were possessed scientists with crabs latched onto their heads. 

What's so great about it?  Doom opened interdimensional portals years before Gordon Freeman's hapless @$$ did. 

I occasionally read through forums and comment sections and every single time I see somebody post "Half-Life 3 confirmed!" or just about anything about Half-Life...I literally want to punch someone in the face.  It goes right through me.

Newell and company are perfectly content to sit on their asses making dough from Steam and laughing at everyone pining for a new game in a series that frankly sucks. 

What do you guys & gals think?  Any games you just can't stand that everyone gushes about?

Absolutely agree about half life.

For me the zelda series.

Jet set radio

Shenmue a little.

Only ones that come to mind right now. Only realising now how bad fanboys can be when overhyping a game.

[kamikazekeeg]

Grand Theft Auto 4 I thought was actually a terrible game.  I remember people praising it, it was getting all the accolades, it sold gangbusters, but I hate it so much.  The story isn't good, I don't like Nico, I hate his cousin, I hate the vehicle physics, I hate how there isn't much for you to really buy or customize, I don't know what everyone was on with this one.  It played well and looked good at the time, but that was it.  At the same time, Saints Row 2 came out, which was AWESOME.  It was funny, ridiculous, there was lots of side things to do, good customization, it was everything GTA4 wasn't to me.

It's kinda rare for me to hate a game, dislike something sure, but that one really got to me just on sheer disappointment.

Another I could maybe add is Super Mario Galaxy.  That's a weird one in that I think a lot of it had to do with the Wii itself at the time.  I bought the system at launch, but as whats kinda become common for Nintendo it seems, they didn't have a lot of great games for launch.  So I was abit soured by that and how I wasn't liking motion controls.  Super Mario Galaxy had kind of that baggage added onto it and what I felt was taking a wrong direction in the series.  At that time, I didn't want to see them abandoning the hub world, which they were starting to with the first one, and I didn't like the space setup. 

Maybe it was more disappointment due to potential for a Mario game, in that I wanted to what was Super Mario 64 and even Sunshine, but expanded.  You got better tech, lets see some crazy awesome worlds, but the little planetoids you around with waggle mechanics just wasn't doing anything for me.  Super Mario Galaxy 2 then just went for more standard Mario stuff like the line connected overworlds of Super Mario 3 and I've stated before how I don't think that should be a 3D Mario thing.

I do actually need to go back someday to play those again and see if I still have those feelings, but that was how I was at the time. 

[olly88]

Uncharted. Boring. I actually feel the same way about most "cinematic" action games, but this is probably the most popular so I'll just name this one.

GTA San Andreas. Again, so boring. I must have started a new game almost ten times times trying to finally get into it on both PC and PS2, but each time I just get so bloody bored.

Mass Effect. I've only played the second and plan on giving the first a shot sometime, but I found it, here's that word again... boring. My friend was over one day and wanted to play it and I nearly fell asleep while he was playing. I'm not exagerrating at all.

There are probably more, but I can't think at the moment.

[telly]

This is tough for me, but I would have to say GTA as well.

As one of what I would call the "holy trinity" of the casual gamer (along with Minecraft and COD), I always hear about how great GTA V is from tons of people including my brother (who thinks it's the greatest game of all time) Sold millions and millions of copies... I just don't get the hype. I'll admit that I've only played through III and dabbled a bit in IV. I really should give V and the others a try. But so far, I just don't think it's that great. With every iteration make the games "better" by just making the world bigger and then thinking about things that you can do in real life like mini golf, and then adding them to the game, and people think it's this huge deal. Still need to play the game first before I can really form my opinion though I guess 

In response to other people's choices (some did pick GTA!), I've only played Half Life 1, but I also found it kind of underwhelming and a little over hyped. I think that people praise it so much because it works as a shooter and also has a underlying interactive story that can be interesting (don't think Doom has much of a story haha).

 I've only played 2 Zelda games and I enjoyed both, especially LTTP, and I also don't really see the massive HALO fan base but, that's just me!

[aliensstudios]

Any Call of Duty game released recently. I have friends who will lap up anything and everything from that series but for me it has gotten so old and stale it's not worth bothering with at all anymore.

[foxhack]

Counter-Strike.

[kamikazekeeg]

As one of what I would call the "holy trinity" of the casual gamer (along with Minecraft and COD), I always hear about how great GTA V is from tons of people including my brother (who thinks it's the greatest game of all time) Sold millions and millions of copies... I just don't get the hype. I'll admit that I've only played through III and dabbled a bit in IV. I really should give V and the others a try. But so far, I just don't think it's that great. With every iteration make the games "better" by just making the world bigger and then thinking about things that you can do in real life like mini golf, and then adding them to the game, and people think it's this huge deal. Still need to play the game first before I can really form my opinion though I guess 

You really can't say a game you've never played before lol Before GTAV came out, I was worried about its quality after the utter failure that was GTAIV, but I thought it was great to the point that I bought and beat it on PS3 and did the same when it released on PC.  It's a pretty good game.

[telly]

Yeah - you're totally right. I guess I just dislike it because it's soooo popular. But maybe that popularity is deserved! I admit that I can't really make an honest opinion about it I'll have to play it to get my feel for it.

[kashell]

Any FPS title. Seriously, I don't get them one bit. Halo, Doom, HL, CS, CoD, MW, and all in-between.

[telly]

Any FPS title. Seriously, I don't get them one bit. Halo, Doom, HL, CS, CoD, MW, and all in-between.

What do you think about the Shock games? Like System Shock, BioShock/ BioShock Infinite? Those have a bit more of a story to them at least

[gf78]

Any FPS title. Seriously, I don't get them one bit. Halo, Doom, HL, CS, CoD, MW, and all in-between.

First-person is just the perspective from which you view your in-game environment.  Many western RPG's like Skyrim allow you to switch between first and third-person views.

Now as for shooters, many of them are dull & lifeless to me as well. 

[telly]

Any FPS title. Seriously, I don't get them one bit. Halo, Doom, HL, CS, CoD, MW, and all in-between.

First-person is just the perspective from which you view your in-game environment.  Many western RPG's like Skyrim allow you to switch between first and third-person views.

Now as for shooters, many of them are dull & lifeless to me as well.

But he said FPS, which stands for First Person Shooter, unless I'm mistaken haha

[gf78]

But he said FPS, which stands for First Person Shooter, unless I'm mistaken haha

I agree and got that.  But many people use FPS as a catch-all for any game viewed from a first person perspective.