Games that make you feel like you wasted your time

[rusty_shackleford]

I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's some games I play which cause me to feel like my time was wasted. It wasn't even an entertaining experience, no new story was told, no social activity, etc.,

The most recent example was No Man's Sky:

I played some more NMS because I just wanted to get lost in a game for a while and had nothing better, tried to start over in survival and meh… I walk away from the game feeling like the experience was a complete waste. It's not particularly enjoyable, you don't feel like you're engaging in anything. It just feels like a treadmill with no interaction, and really, no goal.

The game is designed for consoles through and through which creates a ton of UX issues, but even still, the core game is fundamentally not good.

Uninstalled it.

The game is very, very sparse on story and most of the game is either randomly generated or copy-pasted assets. When I play it I feel like I'm playing something that was made by people who didn't even care enough to make the game so it's just a bunch of randomly generated slop.
Perhaps they've worked very hard at making a good treadmill over the years to keep people playing to make them feel like they got their money's worth.

I'd rather have spent that time with a good book or playing something unique. Maybe that's the real issue, the game just has so few unique things to show you.

[logincrash]

Starfield. Peak Bethesda slop.
Starbound. Peak Bethesda slop but 2D.

[ThulsaDoomer]

The entire Borderlands series, or at least the ones I've played. One to three. I did all three co-op with friends. Originally it started out well and we generally didn't think neither that good or bad of the first game, it had its moments. Then the second game came along, and I found out how to glitch the golden key system that gave us unlimited chest pulls. Never had to grind anything which allowed us to blitz the content. In hindsight, that was a mercy.

Three comes along and the hype isn't there, but no ones playing anything so we bring the co-op squad out of cryostasis. Bad decision. The entire experience was a ******* inane slog of terrible dialogue, unbearable cringe villains, and comedy I'd dare say was unfunnier than a recent stand up event with Bill Burr. Hell, maybe Amy Schumer joins him. That may actually be funnier than this dogshit game. We tried glitching the golden keys again but it didn't work to my dismay. The last haul of finishing Borderlands 3 resulted in me ordering pizza and eating it as my two friends wrapped up quests.

I cannot fathom the unhinged mind of the person who plays these games solo. Beyond the brief and I must reiterate BRIEF moments of barely passable comedy, it's pure boredem. We laughed more at insulting how ******* awful the game was more than anything. At the end of Borderlands 2 I developed a fever and ragequit, which I should have taken as a divine sign from God to end it there. Instead I chose to suffer with company.

[rusty_shackleford]

Starfield. Peak Bethesda slop.
Starbound. Peak Bethesda slop but 2D.

I'd have to say agree for both. It's just something about procgen with such broad strokes that makes games feel like your time wasn't respected.
It's not the same as a roguelike. Those still have a lot of constraints on what it's generating, and generally aren't trying to create entire planets with alien lifeforms, etc.,

Nethack has one dungeon, with a couple others added over the years that connect to it. There's a lot of designer guiding hand going on to make sure certain areas are where they should be, monster ecology, AI behaviors, etc., It feels like a curated experience. Not the result of a random maze generator with randomly generated enemies placed randomly that just wander around doing nothing.

(Starfield doesn't have runtime procgen, but the planets were generated procedurally)

[Atlantico]

Gone Home. It was the equivalent of wasting two hours of my life reading government pamphlets on how immigrants enrich our nation and then being yelled at by a danger hair **** that I should stay in my lane and check my privileges.

Genuinely made me angry to have played that "game". Walking simulator. Whatever. Slop.

[rusty_shackleford]

I cannot fathom the unhinged mind of the person who plays these games solo.

I played BL2 solo and enjoyed it, but I never replay those kind of games on the higher difficulties. So I just played it like a FPS-rpglite for the story, which was OK.
2012 was still early enough for games to have decent writing, even comedy games.

[ThulsaDoomer]

I cannot fathom the unhinged mind of the person who plays these games solo.

I played BL2 solo and enjoyed it, but I never replay those kind of games on the higher difficulties. So I just played it like a FPS-rpglite for the story, which was OK.
2012 was still early enough for games to have decent writing, even comedy games.

It wasn't that great, even for a looter shooter rpglite. Handsome Jack salvaged what was overall a mediocre slopfest. Not saying he was a legendary character as some depict him to be, it was just a scrap of slightly amusing unhinged dialogue from an otherwise boring cast of characters. Borderlands 3 decided to double down on that underage loli bait Tiny Tina and make her an integral part of the plot or some ****. We were mostly just ****** off at the end that the game wasted our time on such a gay *** finale. I'd sooner play the Frontier mod.

[Bertram_Tung]

I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's some games I play which cause me to feel like my time was wasted. It wasn't even an entertaining experience, no new story was told, no social activity, etc.,

The most recent example was No Man's Sky:

I played some more NMS because I just wanted to get lost in a game for a while and had nothing better, tried to start over in survival and meh… I walk away from the game feeling like the experience was a complete waste. It's not particularly enjoyable, you don't feel like you're engaging in anything. It just feels like a treadmill with no interaction, and really, no goal.

The game is designed for consoles through and through which creates a ton of UX issues, but even still, the core game is fundamentally not good.

Uninstalled it.

The game is very, very sparse on story and most of the game is either randomly generated or copy-pasted assets. When I play it I feel like I'm playing something that was made by people who didn't even care enough to make the game so it's just a bunch of randomly generated slop.
Perhaps they've worked very hard at making a good treadmill over the years to keep people playing to make them feel like they got their money's worth.

I'd rather have spent that time with a good book or playing something unique. Maybe that's the real issue, the game just has so few unique things to show you.

Felt very similarly during my short time with it.

And keep in mind, this is the game the journos and all of leddit says is "THE GREATEST COMEBACK IN GAMING HISTORY".

Truth is, the game has always been total ******* ****.

[KnightoftheWind]

You DO realize No Man's Sky is developed by a team of archetypal soyjaks, right?

[rusty_shackleford]

Felt very similarly during my short time with it.

And keep in mind, this is the game the journos and all of leddit says is "THE GREATEST COMEBACK IN GAMING HISTORY".

Truth is, the game has always been total ******* ****.

I played(and beat) the game at release, and some things in the game now are just surprising that they've lasted that long.
e.g., Every system has one space station, and that space station is nearly identical except for some color/flairs. It has a handful of NPCs who exist for you to talk to so you can learn one word from each, they have nothing actually unique to say. The same exact shops are in each station, etc.,
It's pretty much exactly what I remember from when I first played it with very little change.

Fundamentally, the game itself did not change and the game itself is not good.

[psychic_dream]

Horizon Zero Dawn — leaving the tribal settlement and beating random robotic dinosaurs felt fun at first, but it got boring fast with all the mundane fetch quests and crafting shenanigans.

I think I’ve said this before, but I stand by the belief that it’s a forced franchise heavily pushed by Sony. Not a lot of people are genuinely interested in it, it’s just a slightly more polished Ubisoft clone, nothing more.

[Tweed]

Bioshit Infinite is one of the worst things I ever suffered through. Bioshock 1 and 2 are mediocre, but playable. Infinite is a bunch of Jewish kvetching done extremely poorly. You're supposed to be wowed by le quirky siblings and enamored with Levine's action girl so that you don't notice the thousands of glaring plot holes or ridiculous level design. The ending makes it even worse and it left me ****** off that'd I even gone beyond the lighthouse puzzle.

I could tell you ten thousand things wrong with Starbound, but nobody listens to me. Suffice to say that this is what happens when a guy who majored in business turns to game dev. He spends all his time trying to get other people to do the work for him. Starbound has about 5% original content and everything else is stolen from some other game and worst of all it's boring as ****.

Fallout 3 - **** Todd, **** Emil, **** Three Dog, **** President Eden, **** this stupid ******* plot, **** the vault, and **** the ending slides for calling me a coward for wanting to use a perfectly immune ghoul/robot to turn off the magical radiation machine. And double, triple, quadruple **** Little Lamplight. **** this ******* game and everyone in it.

[KnightoftheWind]

Horizon Zero Dawn — leaving the tribal settlement and beating random robotic dinosaurs felt fun at first, but it got boring fast with all the mundane fetch quests and crafting shenanigans.

I think I’ve said this before, but I stand by the belief that it’s a forced franchise heavily pushed by Sony. Not a lot of people are genuinely interested in it, it’s just a slightly more polished Ubisoft clone, nothing more.

It's Herman Hulst's baby, that's why he's shilling for it even harder now that he's co-CEO of PlayStation. Not only is there a Horizon 3 coming, but also a Horizon multiplayer title and/or an MMO.

[Tangerine]

Borderlands 3 decided to double down on that underage loli bait Tiny Tina

For whatever reason, women love Tiny Tina, which is why I think they doubled down on her for 3.

[Tangerine]

I could tell you ten thousand things wrong with Starbound, but nobody listens to me.

I'd listen to you. I hate that game.

[Tinky Winky]

"I Am Alive" is the most recent one I can think of. I love the post-apocalypse setting, and the game is overwhelmingly hailed as the forgotten (good riddance lol) gem, but it's actually ******* terrible. The game is basically composed of two things : The script based tedious parkouring, which serves nothing other than wasting your time, and the equally horrible combat. The combat is so ******* bad that it forced you to tackle all encounters the exact same way the game "designers" intended unless you are playing on easy. The only positive thing about it is that it only lasts about 4 hours, but it still feels like a waste of time.

[KOS-MOS]

With most Bethesda games, my usual thought has been, 'Why am I playing this ****?' and I still haven’t found the answer.

[psychic_dream]

Playing video games is a waste of time. It’s no different from doing drugs or jacking off to porn. The managerial elite would rather have you occupied with beating game levels than take up arms and remove their corrupt, tyrannical world order.

[Nooneatall]

Fantasy life has an end game that is time gated like a mobile game so it feels like a huge waste

[Nooneatall]

Playing video games is a waste of time. It’s no different from doing drugs or jacking off to porn. The managerial elite would rather have you occupied with beating game levels than take up arms and remove their corrupt, tyrannical world order.

You're alright

[Capuchin]

Resident Evil 3 Remake: A remake far from the quality of the original. Fortunately, they didn't make the same mistakes in RE4 Remake.

Dragon Age Veilguard: I was in desperate need of a new Dragon Age game...

Gothic 3 Forsaken Gods: The first two games are great. I love the third game despite all its faults, but Forsaken Gods was full of repetitive quests and pointless design.

[TKVNC]

All games are a waste of time. But the ones that really -feel- like a waste of time are exploration / sandbox RPG's - why?

Because it's not even so much as dumb entertainment, it's actually a fake replacement for real progress.

[J1M]

There's a whole subset of games these days where what you get out of the box is not the actual game. It is something you have to waste hours and hours on in order to unlock the real game. I hate all of these. I much prefer the model of granting access to bigger challenges as the player gets better instead. Example: a roguelike where you are set up to fail repeatedly until you unlock more item types that are added to the loot tables.

Similarly, any game like Diablo 3 where I have to tune the difficulty by selecting from multiple difficulty modes because the designers weren't able to do that is a waste of my time. (Offering a standard and a "journalist difficulty" is not the same thing.)

[rusty_shackleford]

Playing video games is a waste of time. It’s no different from doing drugs or jacking off to porn. The managerial elite would rather have you occupied with beating game levels than take up arms and remove their corrupt, tyrannical world order.

Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work

[Nooneatall]

Playing video games is a waste of time. It’s no different from doing drugs or jacking off to porn. The managerial elite would rather have you occupied with beating game levels than take up arms and remove their corrupt, tyrannical world order.

Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work

Rusty publically confirming its okay to goon multiple times a day

[TKVNC]

Playing video games is a waste of time. It’s no different from doing drugs or jacking off to porn. The managerial elite would rather have you occupied with beating game levels than take up arms and remove their corrupt, tyrannical world order.

Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work

To be fair, Warfare is a game, as is hunting. It's a set of rules, and you play accordingly. So maybe there's something in that.

[Statesman]

Open-world games, specially collect-a-thons are an automatic no-go to me.

With most Bethesda games, my usual thought has been, 'Why am I playing this ****?' and I still haven’t found the answer.

Agreed...except for Morrowind. Skyrim was carried hard by its modding community, Oblivion was clunky and mostly hyped due to nostalgia, while Daggerfall was baby's first procgen.

Playing video games is a waste of time. It’s no different from doing drugs or jacking off to porn. The managerial elite would rather have you occupied with beating game levels than take up arms and remove their corrupt, tyrannical world order.

But what if you are part of the managerial elite?

[Manny V]

All games are a waste of time. But the ones that really -feel- like a waste of time are exploration / sandbox RPG's - why?

Because it's not even so much as dumb entertainment, it's actually a fake replacement for real progress.

and yet we can't help ourselves but go back to games like Warband and Kenshi ay lol

[Nooneatall]

All games are a waste of time. But the ones that really -feel- like a waste of time are exploration / sandbox RPG's - why?

Because it's not even so much as dumb entertainment, it's actually a fake replacement for real progress.

and yet we can't help ourselves but go back to games like Warband and Kenshi ay lol

Time to install warband again

[Nemesis]

Outer Wilds and The Outer Worlds. Both were boring, and I uninstalled each after a few hours of gameplay.