'Games I should love in theory but I don't and it bugs me' list
Playing a bit fast and loose with my criteria but it boils down to games whose premises resonated really strongly with my personal tastes and should've left a stronger mark than they actually did.
10 Games
DIshonored feels like an immersive sim that's embarrased to be an immersive sim with how aggressively seventh gen a lot of its writing, tone and approach to player empowerment is. Stunning environmental and level design aside, much of this setting's potential themes of industrial alienation and marginalisation is wasted in the hands of Corvo, the silent badass royal protector who blinks his way through enemies to rescue the most privileged person in this city. Through Corvo I can see the immense potential of these immaculately designed spaces but I cannot feel and breath in these spaces the way I do as Garrett in the City or JC Denton in Hong Kong. Despite being one of the most gorgeously imagined cities, Dunwall never goes beyond being a set of fun levels.
A modern Morrowind-like open world that also has some of the most beautifully three dimensional and complex linear spaces in any Fromsoft game? Sign me up. I really liked Elden Ring but I never loved it. Playing this game made me realise I love the Souls games for everything besides their bossfights. I play for the tense journey through the sights and sounds of these beautifully imagined virtual worlds, in which I tolerate the occasional bossfight. And I think I had to tolerate too many of these bombastic, acrobatic, projectile heavy, limb flailing fights to get to the stuff I enjoy. And while that kind of sounds hypocritical given the sheer amount of space in the Lands Between, I found traversing that space a bit too frictionless for my liking and the sites of grace a bit too convenient to impart a sense of hostility. I return to Morrowind.
I love the KCEK Castlevania games (with the slight caveat that I haven't quite played Legacy of Darkness). Though their stewardship of the series was brief, there was nothing like their games in the series before and after them. I love Castlevania 64 and its low poly industrial horror and earnest storytelling. As far as I'm concerned, it is the definitive 3D Castlevania experience and that contest is not even close (at the very least its the only 3D vania that's actually interested in being about platforming and exploring in three dimensional spaces). What was I talking about again?
Would be one of my favorite games if it didn't betray itself so severely with that final boss.
A sunny swashbuckling adventure across the Mediterranean where the size and density of every island makes Black Flag seem quaint. It has the best combat in the series, marrying the flair and expressiveness of old assassins creed with the friction and verisimilitude of the new trilogy, to create a fun gameplay loop. For the first 20 hours I thought it was the best open world game I've experienced. And then I played another 20 hours and it started to lose some of its lustre. For all its lovely qualities, Odyssey is a fun 20 minute game loop of killing and looting methodically repeated across hundreds of hours. Its beautiful world is eventually reduced a series of near identical camps, ruins, forts and caves in which you just kill people.
