Now-classic games you didn't like when they were new

Phediuk

Member
I remember being disappointed by Mario 64 when I first played. I was expecting a straightforward action game like the previous Marios, and found the open-world structure confusing and the controls weird.

Crash Bandicoot was pretty much exactly what I had envisioned a 3D Mario game would be like, so at the time I vastly preferred it over Mario 64.

Of course, Mario 64 grew on me later, but that's not the point of this thread.



anyone else have an experience where you didn't like a game now considered a classic when it was new?
 
Metroid Prime 2, or just Metroid in general. I just couldn't get into them when I was a kid. Now it's my favorite franchise.
 
I didn't like Uncharted when it came out, still don't really care about the series but now it is one of the biggest in the industry.
 
mario 64.

i remember beeing a kid and waking up the first morning after i got it and didnt have the immediate urge to play it. that felt strange. I was like "I should want to play this right now, but i dont...".

Still dont like it.

Still feel to this day that mario shouldnt have taken the step to 3d.
 
Baldurs Gate. I picked it up thinking it was a Diablo clone and was completely disappointed. It's now one of my favorites that I have played through several times.
 
For me it is Deus Ex.

I wrote about it here.
Deus Ex isn't a game like that for me (always loved it), but this is exactly how I play it:
The funny thing about Deus Ex is that it is one of my most replayed games, and no matter what I do every replay boils down to this process:
1. Spend about 15 minutes planning exactly how I am going to play the game, in a completely different way to how I have played it before, using different equipment, different augmentations, and upgrading different skills.
2. Encounter the first enemy.
3. Throw out the new plan, and revert to playing it exactly the same way I always play it.
 
I didn't care about or like Halo at first. It didn't look appealing, I wasn't really into shooters outside of Doom. My first time playing an Xbox I preferred Star Wars Obi Wan over Halo.

Fable was the game that made me buy an Xbox, and since it was cheap enough at the time I picked up Halo to go with it just to play LANs with my friends. It was two months before Halo 2 came out that I finally realized how good Halo was. I was on board with the series ever since (well...until 5. Now I'm a bit cautious, but that's for another thread).
 
Ocarina of Time.

Tried it as a kid, as a teenager and as an adult. On N64, Gamecube, Wii and 3DS. Just can't get into it. And I love Wind Waker. I love Twilight Princess. I love Alundra.

There is just something offputting about it that I cannot put my finger on. It's the only game I intend to force myself to play trough one of these days just because of it's status. I'm just hoping that one of these days it clicks and I ''get'' it.
 
I never liked the Total War games. The last one I tolerated was Medieval II, the rest are just lame.

The only thing I find enjoyable about these games is zooming in and watching all the little dudes fight each other. The actual playing portion of Total War is slow, clumsy, and boring.
 
Uncharted.

Dunno if it counts as a classic game, but the original game came with my PS3. I absolutely hated it, made it up to chapter 18 or something before I finally called it quits. From that point, I never understood the love for the series.

Then I got the remastered trilogy collection for free, and I wanted to play Uncharted 4 upon release. So I played through all three games, and surprisingly, I had a really good time. The original is still pretty subpar, but it was more tolerable than I remember.

Still have yet to play 4, but the series is good.
 
I've never really cared for Tomb Raider from the very start. I even recall becoming happier as each sequel began to get criticized more and more until Angel of Darkness came and killed off the series for a few years.
 
Metroid Prime, or just Metroid in general. I just couldn't get into them when I was a kid. Now it's my favorite franchise.

Pretty much the same. I hated back tracking when I was a teenager/child. Straight up refused to do it. Now I absolutely adore the exploration and puzzle solving.
 
Pokemon Snap, tho I still think it's a rather lame game so I don't know if that counts

My friend was all excited about his new Wave Race 64, but it only had 1 on 1 versus, 4 racers max in singleplayer, 7 or so tracks and this weird buoy powerup system I really didn't like. More or less forced him to boot up Mario Kart 64 multiplayer instead when I was around.
It wasn't until months later when I could borrow it that I really got into it, eventually beating all the cups. My friend was done with it, so this time my requests for multiplayer were denied. Karma I guess :P

I didn't think Starfox on SNES was that hot either. Sure the 3D models were pretty amazing, but the low framerate never made me feel like I was fully in control. The planes also flew like they were barely keeping it together. Nowadays I can appreciate what they managed to pull off on the SNES tho.
 
Final Fantasy VII for me. As a kid, I couldn't understand why anyone would want to sit through those slow, tedious, turn-based battles. Now? JRPGs are arguably my favorite genre.
 
- World of Warcraft. I never cared about it and my friends were driving me crazy when they would not stop talking about it using "mmorpg-speak" terms (aggro, dps, etc.. Agro is Wander's Horse, for fucks sake). When the game started losing pupularity around Warlords of Draenor is when I began playing and loving it.


- Halo series: Used to hate it. Many years later I would play the pc ports out of boredom, and end buying a 360 to play Halo 3. But doing a literal 360, I started to hate the franchise again after the switch from Bungie to 343i.
 
A lot of early PlayStation games like Crash Bandicoot, Jet Moto, Resident Evil, etc. I just wasn't impressed by the early 3D graphics and controls. Especially compared to allow the quality 2D stuff that was coming out around then.
 
Diablo 1 and 2
As a kid I only really liked Japanese RPG's. A frient lent me his Diablo games, played both for like 1-2 hours and then was like "meh, back to Final Fantasy".

It's funny because aside from The Souls games and Dragons Dogma I kinda preffer western RPG's now
 
It took two iterations to get me to like the Smash Bros franchise. I only got around to it in the very last days of the GameCube.

I also wasn't too keen on Super Metroid back in the day.

I still have my problems with some aspects of the Windwaker art style, although I've gotten used to it by now.

Actually, many if not most 3D games of the PSX/N64 era utterly failed to entice me. I only got on the 3D train when the Dreamcast hit. Stuck to sprites and 2D stuff until then. In fact, I still have a bias against 3D games, including even the broadly praised and cherished ones like Mario64. No polygons for me! Gib pixels pls.
 
Paper Mario TTYD. Because it was a blatant copy of the first game, right down to puzzles and sidequests being identical. Nowdays it's probably the one to replay because it's slightly prettier.
 
Baldurs Gate. I picked it up thinking it was a Diablo clone and was completely disappointed. It's now one of my favorites that I have played through several times.

This for me too.

Came free with our first family PC we got at christmas along with a copy of Final Fantasy 7 that I begged for.

After giving FF7 a good working on decided to try Baldur's Gate and I was quite intrigued...until I got to the Friendly Arm Inn and got my ass handed to me by Tarnesh. I tried a few attempts (think I was solo) and just got whooped everytime. Then I wrote it off as broken.

I don't think I heard anything about it being a classic or whatever I just went back to it after being bored with my other games and beat Tarnesh in one go and didn't stop playing it for what must have been almost a year. No guides or anything (no internet at the time) just kept exploring all the little corners of the game. Quite possible the best game experience I have ever had even over Baldur's Gate 2.
 
I didn't like PS2 platformers at the time they came out, and I made a thread about Ratchet & Clank last year when I fell in love with it. I played Jak & Daxter too, and the Sly trilogy. I'm a huge Sly fan now.
 
I found the original Tomb Raider confusing and too difficult originally. As time has past I've appreciated it more and more and appreciate how special the level design was. Each modern game being just a shooter with tombs tacked on the side makes me respect the original more and more.

I've also grown acceptance of it's tank controls to the point of now liking them.
 
Does Half Life 2 counts?

I loved Half Life, it was so much fun to play!

But the HL2... the only thing I liked was the use of the Physic, that was incredible for the time.
But the game was so boring... there was also Doom3 coming out in that period, and I liked it much more in comparison!

Still don't like HL2...

EDIT:
Also I'll add this:
Not a Classic probably, but my first play of New Vegas on PS3 was a mess... so buggy...
Then I bought it on steam some years later and I loved it... :\
 
Although I really love 2d platformers, I have never been able to get into donkey kong country--something about how it moves. I'm also not really a fan of the aesthetic.

Also, pretty much anything with fixed camera angles and tank controls. My brain doesn't work that way.
 
Quake. Coming from Duke Nukem 3D, Quake was a bit disappointing. I expected iD to blow away the competition like they did with Doom, but they didn't. Quake was technically impressive (and ran like shit on my PC), but it looked so boring, everything was brown and muddy, the enemies and weapons were meh and there was almost no interaction with the environment. Duke 3D was a lot less impressive but also a lot more fun to play. You could see bullet holes in the walls, use toilets, play pool, the weapons were crazy, and it was full of movie references and set in somewhat realistic locations.
 
I can't really think of anything I played which I actually flat out disliked. But Half-Life didn't exactly set me on fire. It was just another shooter to me. The whole cinematic presentation just failed to register with me and flew right over my head because I've never cared about those things or deemed them important (I guess in the same way how some people fail to see the big deal about Fury Road and think it's just about driving somewhere and then deciding to turn around).

On top of that it had the kind of gameplay/gunplay I disliked about 3D shooters from that era with excessively bullet spongy enemies. With several years of hindsight I now realize that they designed it this way because 3D polygon enemies were a lot more resource-intensive than sprites, so they compensated for the lower on screen enemy count by buffing their HP. I still hate that and can't really say I'd particularly enjoy playing through Half-Life to this day.
 
Most classic games w guns/shooting segments as a main focus of the game.

Wolfenstein, Doom, duke nukem, uncharted (1-3), all gears games, any call of duty/medal of honor.

This is mainly because the genre doesn't appeal to me, but back in the 90s when the genre was brand new and all the rage, it still didn't appeal to me, even as a novelty.
 
Grandia games. Big rpg fan but hated them back then and don't like them now. Believe Grandia 2 is considered the most classic.
 
The whole Spyro The Dragon series, the game was just boring to play and I always used to get lost.

Ocarina of Time.

Tried it as a kid, as a teenager and as an adult. On N64, Gamecube, Wii and 3DS. Just can't get into it. And I love Wind Waker. I love Twilight Princess. I love Alundra.

There is just something offputting about it that I cannot put my finger on. It's the only game I intend to force myself to play trough one of these days just because of it's status. I'm just hoping that one of these days it clicks and I ''get'' it.

Hmm interesting, I wonder if it's because compare to Windwaker, Twilight Princess and Majora's Mask Ocarina of Time just comes off as being a little bland as it isn't as memorable as the others.
 
Goldeneye. Couldn't stand the control schemes available and it was pretty ugly. I got it $15 used one time a couple years later and was able to get into it some. I appreciate the mission and objective design that so many games could use. Still, I didn't grow up playing this game multiplayer and have zero nostalgia for it in that way.

I'm with you on Mario 64 too. It was just such an abstract hodgepodge of concepts and visual styles to me. I barely cared about it for the first year or so it was around, but I 100%'d it a few times and have a little nostalgia for it nowadays.
 
Mario 64. 3D platforming was brand new, and I didn't like how it looked and controlled compared to the snappy, precise 2D platforming to which I had grown accustomed as a child. A few years later I revisited the game and loved it, however, and now I consider it to be deserving of its place on the pedestal. 3D platforming-wise it's still peerless in terms of the freedom of movement offered to the player by Mario.
 
Madden never appealed to me even though I tried to get into it over the course of several generations of hardware.

I enjoy the sport in real life, but I'm not much of a play-caller. I think that's where I always got hung up and felt out of my depth.

Feels like it's easier to "fake it" with other sports genres like hockey and basketball 'cause they're more action-oriented.
 
Diablo. Thought I played it wrong because just furiously clicking on enemies and collecting loot surely could not be everything there was to do.
 
Dark Souls.

It took about 3 years until it clicked and now that's all I ever post about here.

Definitely this...I tried each Souls game when it came out, and finally Dark Souls 3 did the trick. I blasted thru it and went back and started Dark Souls 1 recently. I'll likely end up playing them all in their entirety now.
 
Monster Hunter.

Was living in Japan, tried Monster Hunter G because of the hype, didn't get it. Tried MH2 Dos because of the hype again, at first, I still didn't get it, and after 9 hours of play time, it grew on me, and now it's one of my favorite game series ever.
 
Metal Gear Solid - couldn't stand the camera perspective and the way you ended up looking at these tiny dots in the corner instead of playing the game. Also hated the game you couldn't just shoot everyone and run about.

Strangely, I'd already played and enjoyed Thief at this point but still didn't really understand what was special about MGS.
 
Gran Turismo. When I first saw the trailer for it I was so impressed by the graphics that I was convinced it was going to be the greatest racing game of all time. Of course having grown up entirely on a diet of arcades racers I was horrified by the game's handling, and proclaimed it to be utter shite.

I avoided the series after that, skipping over Gran Turismo 2 and 3. Eventually I picked up Sega's F355 Challenge (because AM2 automatically got the benefit of the doubt), and the racing line in that helped me to learn how I should be approaching driving in these sorts of games, and I began to really enjoy it, and eventually no longer required it. I picked up Gran Turismo 4 afterwards and fucking loved it.

EDIT: This was the trailer.
 
Demon's Souls at FIRST. I was like "Why the fuck did i buy this". Sat on the shelf for almost a year. Took me a while to understand it but when i did i loved every moment.
 
Monster Hunter 1 on PS2. Thought it was PSO with dinosaurs at launch, was really taken back at how different it was and returned it immediately. Then Tri released on Wii years later and I fell in love. Hundreds of hours combined into Tri, MH3U and 4U and I am now a mega fan.

Grandia 1 as well. Loved the massive scale and world, but the progression was so padded and the skill-upgrading so grindy, that it wore me down real fast. Years later I gave it a second chance without allowing my OCD tendencies to take over and I fell in love with its humble cast of heroes and the charming quest they go on.
 
I couldn't get into Final Fantasy X back in the day, but now I'm able to enjoy it despite its flaws.

Conversely, I used to love Mario games when I was young, but nowadays I can't really enjoy them like I used to.
 
Back when Mass Effect came out I hated it. I gave up on one of the boss fights (the arena style one with the asari I think). I came back a couple of years later and loved it.

Now it's one of my all time favorites.
 
Megaman. All of it. To me, he's like a Gex or a Bubsy who somehow got included in all this love by being in the right place at the right time. I find the games unremarkable.
 
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