Most regretful purchases?

[Nifft Batuff]

Diablo.

 

[Hag]

No real regrets, except for the few early access games I deceived myself into buying.
Mostly Valheim, which gave me a solid dozen hours of MP fun before getting disgusted by the barren world and awful grinding.
And My Summer Car, which gave me well over a dozen hours of solid SP fun before getting saddened by the huge potential of the game wasted by pointless nitpicking and game breaking bugs. The fact that you can't really play without the wiki may be the biggest culprit. In a game based around repairing a car, you should have basic in game resources about engine tuning. Like, you know, in real world.

 

[Mikeal]

Fallout 3 and Thiaf 2014.

 

[SixDead]

Usually I don't regret any purchases, my psychology makes me defend any shit I gave money for (Dungeon Siege 3 for example), but Ash of Gods: Redemption... was painful, played it with original language, awful writing, like, B-category Russian fantasy.
Silverfall, dind't bought, stole the disc from my work, but still, it was baaad, gameplay and story-wise. Offline MMO shit.

 

[DeepOcean]

My greatest regret was not pirating every single kickstarter RPG, developers love to play victim and cry abuse of publishers but when you are giving money directly to them, they are more than okay of stealing your money, throwing you under the bus by changing the course of projects midway through without giving a damn about your trust and then whoring themselves to publishers anyway. Fuck them, they deserve the whips on their backs, they were so shitty that they made me pity publishers and most publishers are already scum.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Just going down my Steam lists and a bit of my memory:

Offworld Trading Company - Boring economic sim that I couldn't ever be bothered putting the time in to learning.
Reigns - Fell for the hype from TotalBiscuit at the time. Shit mobile balancing act game with an awful art style.
Rust beta - Trash. Giant empty world with nothing worth finding in it. May the most exceptional individuals win.
Town of Salem - Good party game until the retarded devs had their servers compromised and locked everyone's account until you register on some sketchy looking forum to get your account back. "No, I don't think I will.jpg"
Supreme Commander 2 - Red Alert 2 with everything that made it memorable stripped out. So off-brand it didn't even have command sounds for units.
Diablo III - Isometric WoW. Devoid of atmosphere. A soulless corpo cash-in.
Conan Exiles - A good survival game that keeps getting worse with every patch because of awful design decisions and pandering to console players.
Interplanetary - Nice gimmick but completely imbalanced by design. Overpriced for what it is.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Neverwinter Nights 1 - not the worst game I've played, but it's up there as one of the most disappointing. And unlike some other shit, like Fallout 3, I've paid money for it, got a nice looking boxed copy and everything. Wasn't worth it.
Banner Saga - great artsyle and music, too bad about everything else. Though I got it for cheap during a steam sale, so whatever.
I also bought a Wasteland 2 + Tides pack, this was after W2 was out and Tides still in production after its kickstarter. Wasteland 2 is not great, but I wasn't angry that I bought it, parts of it were enjoyable enough. Tides - I'd rather admit was a waste of money than play it again.

I was very close to backing Pillars on kickstarter, but I saw they were already like 200% funded and I didn't, so a close call there.

 

[Tavar]

(...)
Diablo III - Isometric WoW. Devoid of atmosphere. A soulless corpo cash-in.

Shit, how could I forget about this? I know I'd be on holiday in the US when it came out, so I thought it would be a good idea to preorder it at the local GameStop so that I could pick up once I was back in the country (it was my first time dealing with GameStop, so I didn't know better). So, I arrive three days after the release, completely jet-lagged of course, and these fuckers tell me that they sold my copy to someone else as they were running low and that they had no copies left. Nevermind, that I told them that I'd only pick it up once I was back and that I already paid for it partially. As all shops were out, I had to get it in the Blizzard store for 60€ and then it turned out to be complete and utter shit. Terrible, muddy graphic, non-sensical story and level design and a boring, dumbed down character system. I finished the game on normal, uninstalled and never bothered with it again. Huge disappointment and the end of Blizzard for me.

 

[ultimanecat]

I’ve bought maybe half a dozen survival games thinking somehow they will scratch that STALKER itch, only to play them for two hours and uninstall. I just want to poke around a nice big map and find interesting stuff, not spend my all my waking hours clubbing trees to build a stovetop.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

My brother was a boxed PC game hoarder that just had to buy a game that had a space theme whenever he went into Comp USA. He never played them, or resold them... just had all these crappy MS-DOS games unopened and still in their shrink wrap lying around in his house so I stole a random one. It was called Absolute Zero. I felt bad about it. The game was terrible. Anyway, that may not have been my most regretful purchase but it was certainly my most regretful theft.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

Two words: Early Access.

Made me realize that the industry has us by the short hairs. There was a time when they gave away that shit for free. They called them demos.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

How could I forget? Guild Wars 2 as well. Dumbed-down skill customization, incredibly easy yet still filled with damage sponge time wasters. The only thing I remember is how awful it felt to play second fiddle to a salad near the end of the game in Orr.

 

[Silverfish]

The Outer World's - I didn't listen and bought it despite the year of advance warning before it came to steam... I have to admire how the two veterans created what is best described as peak mediocrity, 100% pure blandness in all areas. The game's design in all areas seems to underline why it can be said that "compromise is a solution that satisifies neither side of the argument", it is that in game form, something that's just plain offensively average. If it was at least pure hot garbage of shitty quality we would get memes mocking it or something, instead we got a dud.

This is probably way off base on my part, but everything I've ever seen in relation to TOW screams "shit episode of Futurama".

No Man's Sky (after 5 billion updates supposedly fixing it) - as mentioned in that thread by me the "updates fixed it" talk is bullshit to lure in suckers as old adopters hope their features get added, if enough schmucks gib hello kitty games, or how those guys are called, more money. It's superficial in mechanics and not fun to explore or indeed do anything.

Honestly, I can't get enough of the No Man's Sky copeposting. Hello Games took the NMS from blatantly unfinished dreck to bland dreck that even Bethesda would turn their noses up at and dudes will still try to sell that as a turnaround.

Diablo III - Isometric WoW. Devoid of atmosphere. A soulless corpo cash-in.

It was even worse if you were a Diablo newb like I was and thought paying attention to the story might be important.

 

[Ivan]

BONEWORKS, a VR game that looks great in videos, and is absolutely atrocious to play.
One of the main gimmicks is that your body has physics, allowing you to knock over things, climb seamlessly, etc. This results in cool experiences such as your hand getting stuck in a shelf while reaching to pick something up, but of course in real life its not stuck, so your real arm gets disjointed from your virtual arm and it feels surprisingly bad. Its just bad feels seeing your virtual arm spazz out like a bad ragdoll. Your brain doesn't like seeing that.
Also the fast movement associated with jumps and falls is really good at moving stomach juices up your throat, I found.

Was rejected a refund despite writing a big post about how the game is torture, and ended up paying $30 for about 3-4 hours of trying to make this whole thing work, in 30-40 minute sessions, regret, and "lets try again" next week.

Have you found any worthwhile VR titles? I'm thinking of picking up Alyx during the spring sale.

 

[Old Hans]

definitely Destiny. that game was such a pile of shit

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Definitely the first NeverWinter Nights and the campaign being dog shit but then BioWare saying stuff like “the good stuff will come when you make it.” Suddenly just releasing mod tools as a game was considered to be a good game.

 

[Kev Inkline]

This is probably way off base on my part, but everything I've ever seen in relation to TOW screams "shit episode of Futurama".

I don't think Futurama has shit episodes, tbh. At least not that kind of central station wc bowl level shitty episodes TOW would be.

Someone compared TOW to Rick and Morty in the game thread, and while I've only seen Rick and Morty trailers, I think that pretty much nailed it. Some source even claimed the old professor dude (who's forgettable) was modeled after the old dude in the said cartoon. "OOH it's all so ZANYYYY!!"

On topic: My most regretful purchase is probably GW2, at least in terms of hours spent/money spent.

 

[Ivan]

Had I known how it would turn out, Torment Numanuma

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Bought Oblivion on release. Didn't buy another game until 2021.

 

[whydoibother]

Have you found any worthwhile VR titles? I'm thinking of picking up Alyx during the spring sale.

Beat Saber is the best use of the hardware, but involves rapid movement, so if you sweat and your face gets hot you may find it makes it hard to see. Still my top VR game.
Half Life Alyx is good, its a linear single player story where you enter an arena, often with complex corridors and verticality, shoot up everything, then explore for loots and solve puzzles, then get a bit of story, and move forward. Looks good, sounds good, hadn't had bugs.
SUPERHOT, Skyrim and Fallout 4 have good VR versions, but you needs mods for a lot of things (most obvious one is high resolution text, since signs are unreadable when zoomed in first person). Obviously now old games that you've already played, and still buggy at times. Menus are awkward, and so is pausing to drink a potion or whatever, feels bad in VR.
Pavlov VR is the best shooter in my opinion, its VR Counter Strike, plus the modding scene. The issue being that it has a small player base, and the ones playing are very good, so you end up getting smoked. This is the way Quake Live also died, all remaining players were too competitive and new people couldn't get into it.
Elite Dangerous is allegedly good in VR, as are other space trucker games. Makes sense, you sit on a chair and press buttons. Moss is a PlayStation game you can pirate for PC VR, its a fun side scrolling platformer thing, except its all in very real 3D with the moving camera. You play as basically divine intervention that helps the guy get across levels, and its themed after Japanese myth stuff.


Honestly Beat Saber, Half Life Alyx, and Pavlov VR are the only great dedicated VR games. And of those, only Beat Saber is a unique game. So far the games haven't done the hardware justice.
And I guess you can play VR Chat, if you want to pretend to be anime lolils with another fat american NEET.

 

[Üstad]

Bought Oblivion on release. Didn't buy another game until 2021.

I've bought oblivion a few years ago, I didn't even install the game.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Black and White in 2001, I think I paid 60DM $\approx$ 40€. I have no idea why that game has such high ratings, a handful of interesting ideas cobbled together don't make a good game.

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

Have you found any worthwhile VR titles? I'm thinking of picking up Alyx during the spring sale.

Arizona Sunshine and Gorn are good fun, if low brow.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Have you found any worthwhile VR titles? I'm thinking of picking up Alyx during the spring sale.

Wipeout Omega Collection is you have PSVR.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Bought Oblivion on release. Didn't buy another game until 2021.

So that really kept you occupied then, huh?