Games that make you feel like you wasted your time

[Rienen]

My immediate thought was the entire extraction shooter genre. Exponentially, moreso if its PvP based.

[Statesman]

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

Were else can you properly roleplay as a conqueror?

[Atlantico]

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

Oh yes, the Outer Worlds that was a waste of time. Frustratingly boring, somehow no achievements are possible in it. It's just bad.

[Breathe]

Rusty publically confirming its okay to goon multiple times a day

Not sure you've learned your lesson yet.

[Vergil]

rpghq.org

[Vergil]

Not sure you've learned your lesson yet.

As expected convert vigor ran out

[Jordy]

Any game with 'Simulator' in the title.

[Eyestabber]

Doom: Eternal
God of War
Baldur's Gate 3

Basically every time I decided to "give it a shot" to obvious AAAA+ slop I ended up regretting it and feeling like my time was utterly wasted.

[Trickster]

JRPG from Atlus

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I began scrolling down to type Borderlands 2 and I saw that @ThulsaDoomer had beat me to it. The game was massively hyped up on the forums I frequented and on Youtube. I sank 15 hours slogging through that game waiting for it to become fun before abandoning it.

[WhiteShark]

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.

I don't know if you intended this as hyperbole, but there's clearly a difference. Games (real games, anyway, the only sort worthy of the title) reward effort. The enjoyment one gets from them is the joy of learning and discovery. Now, insofar as that effort could have been directed to learning and discovering things in real life, games are indeed a waste of time, but they at least exercise the brain, and the skills some games teach are not entirely untransferable. Drugs and porn don't even have those benefits. They crudely short-circuit the reward system and offer fleeting pleasure without substance. I'm much more concerned for the man who occupies himself with chemical highs and pornography than the one who plays video games all day.

[Demonic Fate]

Some people have posted games that simply sucked, and I don't think that was the point of the thread.

For example, I despised Dreamfall: Chapters, because the story was a bunch of wishy-washy kumbaya ******** with annoying protagonists and dreary gameplay. But I wouldn't say it was wasting my time. It was a defined experience with a start and an end, and steady progress through the content. It was just a mediocre experience with content that I felt contempt for.

On the other side, I still have fond memories of Destiny 2, which I quit some years ago. The gameplay was incredibly fun, the art was beautiful, even the PvP had its moments. But holy **** it would find every possible way to waste your time, and then some. Here's a fun mission - now do it a billion times. Here's a new level - get ready to backtrack through it a thousand times, and if it's too small we'll force you to do it on foot. Here's a major story development - you need to repeat the same challenge every other week to see the new story piece.

[ghardy]

I don't get the praise/love for Total War games.

[Tangerine]

When I first played Myst, I thought it was a really atmospheric but difficult game I was too dumb to get. Got a guide from the store and found out it was only hard because it used crazy moon logic, which killed any interest in finishing it because it felt like a waste of time.

[Demonic Fate]

I don't get the praise/love for Total War games.

The urge to yell "CHAAAAARGE" and watch your noble riders trample over unwashed heathen is a primal one in the heart of the Western man, and Creative Assembly had a virtual monopoly over it for a long time.

That virtual monopoly is also why they stopped trying to improve a long time ago.

[KnightoftheWind]

Games without any story or goals feel nihilistic to me. If the only "goal" is to accrue points like an Arcade game, or acquire better loot then what's the point?.

[Tangerine]

If the only "goal" is to accrue points like an Arcade game, or acquire better loot then what's the point?.

To be better than the other guy.

[rusty_shackleford]

Games without any story or goals feel nihilistic to me. If the only "goal" is to accrue points like an Arcade game, or acquire better loot then what's the point?.

If it's an actual arcade game where skill matters, then I can definitely see a point.
If it's just a treadmill that tries to keep you hooked by short-circuiting your brain's reward mechanisms, then it's fit for this thread.

---

An arcade game I can think of that gets very close to this is Dragon's Lair.

[Trickster]

Games without any story or goals feel nihilistic to me. If the only "goal" is to accrue points like an Arcade game, or acquire better loot then what's the point?.

This is why I can't get into retro gaming (old consoles) and platformers. I've tried to understand the appeal, but no matter how interesting the gameplay might be, without the artistic component, I just feels like button-mashing and I get bored.

[ghardy]

If it's just a treadmill that tries to keep you hooked by short-circuiting your brain's reward mechanisms, then it's fit for this thread.

Which would mean that Diablo 2 counts as a time-waster.

It's a fun game, of course. Very well produced and built, but there's truly little substance to it.

[rusty_shackleford]

Which would mean that Diablo 2 counts as a time-waster.

Yes.
I'm not a fan of the game.

[asf]

games cant waste your time, only you can waste it

[Nooneatall]

games cant waste your time, only you can waste it

Don't waste your time before time wastes you

[Element]

Easier to just list the games that did not feel that way

[Gastrick]

Sitting through this super-mediocre barebones-story game felt like that; decided not to use the run-away button to make it more difficult, but still cleared all the dungeons on the first try, all the bosses being easy as well, while being pushed along the linear route. Combat being generic and every character being a fighter-mage.

(The super famicom original version of it)

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Sitting through this super-mediocre barebones-story game felt like that; decided not to use the run-away button to make it more difficult, but still cleared all the dungeons on the first try, all the bosses being easy as well, while being pushed along the linear route. Combat being generic and every character being a fighter-mage.

(The super famicom original version of it)

I have heard so much praise for this game. Glad for the headsup.

[MC_Sea]

A game I would add to this list is Octopath Traveller 1+2. Both games waste your time in different ways:

The first game's combat is way too slow. The HP pools for common enemies and especially bosses are so high. This wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that you also have to break enemies in order to do any sort of meaningful damage so you will always have to spend 2-4 turns dealing with random encounters. You are never in any sort of danger either (unless you intentionally go to an area with overlevelled enemies) so it ends up feeling like mindless busywork. Bosses tend to overstay their welcome as well (even with optimal setups) due to always having multiple phases as well as summons. Then there's the fact that non-active party members don't gain EXP. [You can somewhat mitigate these issues by save-scumming to steal high level equipment early or spamming Peacock's Strut for high EXP multipliers but that just ruins any challenge the game has.]
The second game does a lot to improve combat but it ends up overtuning characters and EXP which causes most battles to be too simple instead.

Both games have overdrawn dialogue which ends up dragging the overall experience. It doesn't help that the main stories for all the characters are fairly predictable with maybe 1 or 2 twists that you might not see coming. NPC dialogue isn't all that engaging either.

Then there's the overworld actions you can do. The first game has 1 special action that 2 characters share. Each action has 2 ways it can go: either you get the action for free if you meet the level requirement or risk your reputation with a percent that gets higher your level. Lower your reputation 3 times in a row and you'll have to pay a fee to restore it. This wouldn't be awful if you could just check all the actions at once. Unfortunately, you have to change your current party with the other members to see the other actions which means you will have to sweep through towns at least twice to see everything available (your least used members may not meet the level requirements).
The second game does try to remedy this by adding seperate day/night interactions to make more of them overlap but only 2 party compositions make full use of every action which still makes it limiting and you need to change your party to check the other options.

While the main stories + combat waste your time, there is still some good parts so this isn't just me describing a bad game. The art and music are absolutely stellar. HD-2D art does a great job of bringing environements to life while the music is pleasant to listen to. (The combat themes in particular are very energizing.) I like how the secrets and sidequests reward you for paying attention to the areas and NPC dialogue.

Overall, I would not recommend these games due to how much time they waste when it comes to the main mechanics of the game. Most people stop playing halfway through the game and I do not blame them in the slightest. I'm glad I got the first game in the giveaway, otherwise time isn't the only thing I would have wasted.

[Vergil]

Metal Gear Solid V's story was a lot like this.

[rusty_shackleford]

Which would mean that Diablo 2 counts as a time-waster.

Yes.
I'm not a fan of the game.

To expand: I find it hard to understate the damage Diablo 2 did to the RPG genre. It's felt less so now, but for a while it was almost impossible to get a publisher to sign off on a game if it didn't have features from Diablo 2.
Less so is not completely free, however, and you see many of those mechanics designed to purposely keep you playing popup all over the place.

I could never understand the fascination with the game, playing merely to make the number go up so you can make the number go up further. Color-coded loot to activate the reward centers, and so forth.

[Oyster Sauce]

Cyberpunk 2077

► Show Spoiler

► Show Spoiler

Killing the protagonist 2-3 times including right before the ending, frig off