Games you bought for the graphics and regretted

RetroGamingUK

RetroGamingUK

Member
Ever bought a game for the graphics and almost instantly regretted it?

Here's a couple of mine…

Porsche Challenge (PS1, 1997)

For early 1997 there was nothing like this, it looked incredible with several graphical features not seen in a home driving game before…

- Real time lighting
- Gouraud shading on cars
- Fully modelled and animated 3D drivers
- 3D trees and polygonal leaves kicked up from track

…shame it's probably the dullest driving game I've ever played. Just felt so slow and lifeless, I exchanged it for the excellent Rage Racer




Virtua Striker 2 (Dreamcast, 2000)

Me and my flatmates were loving the Dreamcast, but we were desperate for a good footie game to play on it. ODM had a video on one of their demo discs which looked so amazing I went out and bought it. Wow were we disappointed…

- Camera is so close you can only see about 3ft in front of your player
- Incredibly laggy controls
- Players that would move away from an approaching ball like there was a force field around it

…we gave up trying to find a decent footie game on Dreamcast and settled for NBA 2K instead!

 
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Final Fantasy XIII. It was overly convoluted story-wise. The battle system is weird, but not in a gripping way. Most of the characters were unrelatable.
 
Haven't had that happen. I bought Hellblade 2 for graphics and ended up loving it.

The order, same thing.

I love graphics
 
Ghost of Tsushima

I know damn well that I don't like the open world formula and "more is more" design, yet I bought it because it looks amazing and I love samurai flicks. Predictably I played about 6 hours on auto-pilot and never touched it again.
 
Anyone remember The Bouncer by Squresoft for PS2?

Looked graphically amazing for 2001, completed it in a couple of hours and never felt like playing through it again…

 
TerribleAtThisGame said:
Ghost of Tsushima

I know damn well that I don't like the open world formula and "more is more" design, yet I bought it because it looks amazing and I love samurai flicks. Predictably I played about 6 hours on auto-pilot and never touched it again.
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Shame, once the combat clicks it becomes quite addictive
 
Nothing really.

I suppose Crysis 3, but I was going to get that anyway to "finish the story". Little did I know they turned that murderer Prophet into the protagonist. Major disappointment.
 
TerribleAtThisGame said:
Ghost of Tsushima

I know damn well that I don't like the open world formula and "more is more" design, yet I bought it because it looks amazing and I love samurai flicks. Predictably I played about 6 hours on auto-pilot and never touched it again.
Click to expand...
I enjoyed GoT, but whilst I expect to be arrested on charges of heresy. I actually thought it was overrated graphically. It was good, but not as amazing as many made it out to be. For me many of the areas looked bland and just covered with the same foliage.
 
Ghosts of Tsushima

Not a fan of the setting, bought it just after release because it looked so good, played or an hour or two then didn't touch it till earlier this year when I thought I'd give it another go. Still can't get into it
 
RetroGamingUK said:
Anyone remember The Bouncer by Squresoft for PS2?

Looked graphically amazing for 2001, completed it in a couple of hours and never felt like playing through it again…

Click to expand...

^Literally this.

Also this:



I was excited this game was going to use NURBS, and then I played the game and it was boring as shit.
 
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FIFA 2001 Ps2.

Endlessly replaying TTtournament was getting really boring while waiting for GT3 and GTAIII to drop....but not as boring as Fifa 2001.
 
RetroGamingUK said:
Anyone remember The Bouncer by Squresoft for PS2?

Looked graphically amazing for 2001, completed it in a couple of hours and never felt like playing through it again…

Click to expand...


Duuuude this was my biggest disappointment in a game ever. I was so hyped by the trailers and when I got the game I felt like crying. It did nothing that I was expecting.

So how people complain about downgrades now was how I felt (and beyond back then).
 
I can usually like a game just for its graphics, sometimes its not enough
The Last of Us Part One - Shouldve just sticked with the tv show, game offers nothing that hasnt been done better already outside of impressive visuals/audio
Final Fantasy 15 - The graphics were amazing for the time, but the narrative made no sense and gameplay was not even half as good as DMC series that it has tried to mimic
Atomic Heart - How could anyone write that dialogue?
Dying Light 2 - Gets old really fast on top of having story so boring it makes games with mediocre writing look like Witcher 3 by comparison
Ghostwire Tokyo - Amazing visuals, nice rt effects, but it just feels like playing an inferior and more boring version of far cry
Hellblade 2 - didnt really buy it, played through gamepass (which makes me regretting playing it even worse), but it was so overly long and boring i almost fell asleep
Shadow of the tomb raider - Thought itd be a dark story, game never does anything risky or interesting
Black Myth Wukong - Playing it right now because its a great Nvidia showcase title, but ive been sort of forcing my way through the game for the first 2 chapters, started to love it as i got a futher into the game and now i am in the chapter with scary looking spiders, playing it with my eyes closed, just going by the sounds and hating my life. Ill probably stop regretting it once i get past those parts.
 
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Can't say I've ever bought a game just for the graphics. I did however play a demo of that Porsche game you mentioned. Even as a kid I thought it stunk.
 
Gran Turismo 5 on PS3. Game was beautiful. Game was also the most boring driving game I ever played in my life. Haven't paid for a sim racer since. I tried Forza Motorsport when it hit Gamepass recently and same thing. Beautiful but terribly boring. It took longer to download than it took me to play it before I deleted it. The sim racing/sim driving genre is definitely not for me.
 
Beyond when I was a child (and had to choose which game I wanted using only the back of the box screenshots), I honestly can't think of an example of me doing this. Even though I could afford it, I'm very guarded with my video game dollars, which is probably a side effect of growing up very poor. Maybe the closest example that comes to mind is the Tomb Raider Reboot, but I ended up really liking it.

Edit: as soon as I posted, an example popped into my mind. I really don't spend much time with racing games and I still bought the Lego DLC for Horizon 4. I thought it looked amazing graphically and I probably only spent an hour with it, in total.
 
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Wukong. Played for 15 hours and regretted buying it.

I will not stand for the Porsche Challenge revisionism. Stellar game when it came out.
 
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RetroGamingUK said:
Anyone remember The Bouncer by Squresoft for PS2?

Looked graphically amazing for 2001, completed it in a couple of hours and never felt like playing through it again…

Click to expand...

My buddy and I still talk about how disappointing that game was. Early footage showed destructible environments and stuff.

For me, FFXVI. I figured it would have been a good showcase for the PS5, etc. The game was laughably bad to me.
 
ReBurn said:
Gran Turismo 5 on PS3. Game was beautiful. Game was also the most boring driving game I ever played in my life. Haven't paid for a sim racer since. I tried Forza Motorsport when it hit Gamepass recently and same thing. Beautiful but terribly boring. It took longer to download than it took me to play it before I deleted it. The sim racing/sim driving genre is definitely not for me.
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you need to love cars irl to like those games, niche market tbh
 
Assassin's Creed Origins.

Ubisoft games are all shit but they do tend to look nice. This one looked extra nice for me because i love the mystical ancient Egyptian aesthetic. It was one of the reasons i loved stuff like Serious Sam and Talos Principle.

But then again, it was still an Ubisoft game.
 
Can't say I've bought any game only for the graphics. But good graphics for the time usually make a game more enjoyable for me. The Last Ninja, Shadow of the Beast, Shenmue, Heavenly Sword, Ryse, The Order, MS Flight Simulator, Cyberpunk, Hellblade 2, Black Myth. The graphics is often a big part of my enjoyment.

It's much more common for me to regret buying a game for supposedly great gameplay. Often highly rated everywhere and then I find out it's just not my thing. Surfing the boards those times makes me feel like a confused metalhead at a Taylor Swift concert.
 
Didn't buy it, but waited so long for the "press up" Angry Gums Senua Simulator known as Hellblade 2. Couldn't even finish a 5 hour game.
 
Fess said:
Shadow of the Beast
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You mean the Amiga original?

I remember that shit! The only thing that looked good was the outdoor parallax scrolling stage (and it played like shit). The rest of the game did not look like that. It's like they slapped a scrolling demo in an unrelated game.
 
nkarafo said:
You mean the Amiga original?

I remember that shit! The only thing that looked good was the outdoor parallax scrolling stage (and it played like shit). The rest of the game did not look like that. It's like they slapped a scrolling demo in an unrelated game.
Click to expand...
Yeah on Amiga 500, it was amazing at the time. The indoor segments looked worse but it was still a very good looking game overall. I played it for the visuals and music. The gameplay was… bad.
 
T4keD0wN said:
I can usually like a game just for its graphics, sometimes its not enough
The Last of Us Part One - Shouldve just sticked with the tv show, game offers nothing that hasnt been done better already outside of impressive visuals/audio
Final Fantasy 15 - The graphics were amazing for the time, but the narrative made no sense and gameplay was not even half as good as DMC series that it has tried to mimic
Atomic Heart - How could anyone write that dialogue?
Dying Light 2 - Gets old really fast on top of having story so boring it makes games with mediocre writing look like Witcher 3 by comparison
Ghostwire Tokyo - Amazing visuals, nice rt effects, but it just feels like playing an inferior and more boring version of far cry
Hellblade 2 - didnt really buy it, played through gamepass (which makes me regretting playing it even worse), but it was so overly long and boring i almost fell asleep
Shadow of the tomb raider - Thought itd be a dark story, game never does anything risky or interesting
Black Myth Wukong - Playing it right now because its a great Nvidia showcase title, but ive been sort of forcing my way through the game for the first 2 chapters, started to love it as i got a futher into the game and now i am in the chapter with scary looking spiders, playing it with my eyes closed, just going by the sounds and hating my life. Ill probably stop regretting it once i get past those parts.
Click to expand...
Jeez, seems you just don't like games.
 
Heavenly Sword for PS3. What a trash game — Ninja Theory get way more credit than they deserve. Gameplay always seems to be an afterthought.
 
Jimmy_liv said:
Jeez, seems you just don't like games.
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shook-muppet.gif
 
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I don't think I ever bought a game because of the graphics. I always bought games based on if I would like them or not or fun factor. Graphics were only a bonus.
 
- Assassin's Creed 1 (mediocre)
- The Witcher 3 (mediocre animations/combat)
- Uncharted Collection (boring gameplay, Uncharted mp betas were fun though)
- Crysis 1 & 2 (playstation) (mediocre)
 
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