Your Silly Reason for Not Playing a Game

[starburst]

We all have our preferences about games, our likes and dislikes, and even our guilty pleasures which contradict everything that we just said. However, this topic is not about the genres that we do not enjoy, or the different aspects that might have disappointed us in a game, but about those silly, most likely illogical, personal reasons not to play games.

Let me give you an example.

• I do not play RPG’s where I cannot see my characters within the battle screen.

Like the Shin Megami Tensei series, where one only sees the enemies in first-person view during battles and your party is only represented by text. That is an instant “no” for me. And I can enjoy simple battle systems, like the “bumping” of old Y’s games, so this is not about the complexity of the battle system. I can also enjoy the Final Fantasy battles of the Nintendo era, where your characters only had a single back-and-forth animation for all actions, so this is not about the modernisation of the battle animations. What matters to me is that if I am going to spend the great majority of the time battling enemies, why would I do so without ever seeing my characters on the screen!?

• I do not play games that feature ridiculously oversized swords.

That gigantic metal banner from Final Fantasy VII is the prime example, but we also see them in Monster Hunter and Xenoblade. I get it, it is a fictional world, and complaining about the ridiculous length of swords is completely arbitrary; for we may have magic, dragons, taking monsters, spaceships, alien races and time travel in the same scene. Well, I never said I could back this up, I just draw the line at the swords. 😬

• I do not play first-person dungeon crawlers; I get dizzy almost immediately.

I can play or watch some first-person shooters, and I understand that the perspective is part of the immersion and the thrill. But I simply cannot play games where one explores a labyrinth in first-person. I could not do it with Doom back in the day, nor with Etrian Odyssey or Persona Q today. It gives me a headache.
(Note that I have no problems playing racing games.)

I mentioned this last because this may not be as silly and unfounded as the other reasons, I actually feel sick with these games. 🤢

 

My loss, I know. It might be easier for me to skip these games because I did not play RPG’s back in the day. Thus I have an enormous catalogue to discover, and get my way without ever touching these titles. 

What is your silly reason for not playing a game?

[JAZ_2002]

One of the major things that keeps me from playing a game are the character designs. If i don't like any of the main casts designs,  I become very reluctant to play the game. Very petty, i know, but i can't help it.  Unless there's an avatar creation. If there's that i'll give said game a shot.

 

Another one of my reasons for not playing a game is i simply don't have the money.

[AnonymousSpeed]

I, too, sometimes use character designs as a reason not to play a game. Character designs can give you a pretty good idea of the tone and spirit of a game.

Sometimes I also won't play a game just because I get a feeling that goes, "don't play it, it's probably bad." Then I don't play it and usually feel vindicated.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Character designs are also one of my biggest turnoffs. It kept me out of Dragon Quest franchise for a while, and I refuse to watch One Piece or play the One Piece Pirate Warriors games because the OP art style is absolute balls.

 

Aside from that, it's hard for me to really think of "silly" reasons for me to not buy games, because I consider to be serious, legitimate reasons what some might consider to be silly. I rarely play first person games, because I consider first person to be an inferior trade of gameplay for "immersion." I don't buy games that don't offer difficulty settings or make fun of the player for picking lower ones, and I don't think we should be encouraging games to be unique only in that they don't offer players a choice of difficulty (aka, Dark Souls should have an easy mode). I don't buy games with survival mechanics, because I think they make games more tedious and less fun.

[Callie]

Mostly all points above. But the biggest part is charater attack animations. I really like to see that. Currently I'm grinding Continent Of the Ninth Seal, to max level of all classes. To see their skills. 

Edited May 3, 2020 by Hong Nhi

[Lightcosmo]

Games that have awful/unresponsive camera controls really turn me off playing them. It can be irritating to know that I lost a specific boss fight because the camera decided it wanted to go haywire at the worst time.

I'm not sure this would be considered "silly" or not, but games that have awful load times turn me away as well.

[Callie]

4 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

Games that have awful/unresponsive camera controls really turn me off playing them. It can be irritating to know that I lost a specific boss fight because the camera decided it wanted to go haywire at the worst time.

I'm not sure this would be considered "silly" or not, but games that have awful load times turn me away as well.

I think you mean Fatal Frame game ?

[Fabulously Olivier]

6 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

Games that have awful/unresponsive camera controls really turn me off playing them. It can be irritating to know that I lost a specific boss fight because the camera decided it wanted to go haywire at the worst time.

I'm not sure this would be considered "silly" or not, but games that have awful load times turn me away as well.

I have still never finished Tales of the Abyss due to its minute+ load times after every.... single.... fight.

 

A Switch remaster like what Tales of Vesperia got would be so great.

[null]

I'd have to agree on character designs being a huge turn off from playing a game. Fates Conquest anyone?

[Fabulously Olivier]

36 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

I'd have to agree on character designs being a huge turn off from playing a game. Fates Conquest anyone?

Oh, god, yes. I can't stand Conquests' character designs. It's the only FE where I dislike more characters than I like. 

[JAZ_2002]

59 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

I'd have to agree on character designs being a huge turn off from playing a game. Fates Conquest anyone?

Oh definitely. The only saving grace was Laslow 

[Ottservia]

1 hour ago, Etheus said:

Oh, god, yes. I can't stand Conquests' character designs. It's the only FE where I dislike more characters than I like. 

You don’t gotta dunk on my boy Kozaki like that like come on

[DragonFlames]

Gotta echo the character design thing. If the characters don't appeal to me from a design standpoint, then that game is an immediate "nope"!

Though I place a huge importance on characters in general, especially in RPGs (which is almost the only genre I play these days :P). Bad characters can ruin a game for me, even more than bad gameplay or a bad story. Depending on how bad the characters are, I may even decide to quit a game entirely.
Case in point: Mary Skelter 2, where the godawful protagonist killed all my interest in the game in about 5 lines of dialogue.

My other reasons for not buying a game include:

• a very annoying community
• a terrible soundtrack
• the publisher being either EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Naughty Dog, Bethesda, 2KGames etc. - I wouldn't touch any game with their name on it with a ten-foot pole
• it's a fighting game, because I completely suck at those
• it's a platformer, because I completely suck at those
• I don't have a console to play it on
• I don't have the money to buy it
• the premise doesn't interest me

Dunno how many of those can be considered silly, but there you go.

[The Roger The Paladin]

9 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

a very annoying community

Came here to say this one. There's a reason I've never touched Undertale.

11 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

the publisher being either EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Naughty Dog, Bethesda, 2KGames etc. - I wouldn't touch any game with their name on it with a ten-foot pole

This would depend on the reason, and considering I can hazard a guess at the reason with a good chunk of them without being overly invested in it... yeah. I'd say that's more voting with your wallet.

12 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

it's a fighting game, because I completely suck at those

I used to completely suck at fighting games not three months ago. Then I got a bunch of the old SNK games on the switch... and now I've managed a perfect on the infamous KoF '94 version of Rugal Bernstein. The guy the developers made to take on your whole team of three. Practice really does wonders. Same applies for the platformers. That said, if you ever do get into fighters... they can be rough on your thumbs. If you feel the strain, an RPG is a great way to have something to play while they recover without getting carpal tunnel.

Anyway... other reasons I've not played a game other than an irritating fanbase.
 

• First person view. I know I make exceptions on this, but most games that have a first person view point annoy me. I grew up on platformers damn it.
• Excessive use of memes. Looking at you Borderlands.
• Being on PS3. I don't have one. I'm too slack to get one. I can't think of enough games on the PS3 that I can't get on another console to justify getting one. You know

[DragonFlames]

1 minute ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

Came here to say this one. There's a reason I've never touched Undertale.

Same here. It also helped my decision to jump off the Pokémon train.

1 minute ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

This would depend on the reason, and considering I can hazard a guess at the reason with a good chunk of them without being overly invested in it... yeah. I'd say that's more voting with your wallet.

Exactly. I'm wasn't particularly invested in their games from the get-go, but I do follow reports on game industry BS pretty closely, because I find it very entertaining and those publishers have shown themselves to be the scummiest of scum. Though they are living, breathing proof that evil for the sake of evil in fact does exist.

3 minutes ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

I used to completely suck at fighting games not three months ago. Then I got a bunch of the old SNK games on the switch... and now I've managed a perfect on the infamous KoF '94 version of Rugal Bernstein. The guy the developers made to take on your whole team of three. Practice really does wonders. Same applies for the platformers. That said, if you ever do get into fighters... they can be rough on your thumbs.

The closest thing to fighting games I play are action RPGs like the Tales series and Warriors games. These about cover the extent of my abilities in that genre. I have conceded that a long, long time ago. And the only platforming game I ever completed was Super Neptunia RPG.

[Rapier]

RPGs with abundant filler quests, which are more proeminent nowadays in MMOs. I just lack the patience for these quests.

Any game that requires a lot of dedication and training to get into. Fighting games in general are like this.

Games with excessive description texts, as if they were (and sometimes they *are*) digital D&D campaigns. Old C-RPGs tend to be like this, especially due to graphic limitations.

Anything with pre-SNES or early SNES graphics, save a few exceptions.

Games whose gameplay doesn't attract me at all, regardless of having good characters, a good story, soundtrack etc. That's why I can't get into Persona. 3's Tartarus bores me, and 4's dungeons might as well not even exist due to how simple designed they are. I want to give 5 a chance, though.

Edited May 4, 2020 by Rapier

[starburst]

I see that some of you mentioned character design as a reason not to play a game. I would not call it a silly one, though. Nor is it shallow or petty. I mean, unless you are familiar with the developers, the publisher or the series, and have thus faith that the game will be good despite your disliking its presentation, there is no reason why you should buy a game that you dislike. Why would you need to overcome such displease? Again, you would need some certainty that everything else makes up for it, and even then, you might ultimately not enjoy it.

More than character design, I think that I focus on the art direction. I would never play Undertale or a WarioWare game, for example. They might be the best games ever, but I would never know. They look hideous to me. However, I do not find my disliking silly; it is a clear preference.
Same goes for genres or difficulty: Celeste might have won the Olympics, the Nobel, the Oscar and whatnot, but if you do not like platformers, you are going to have a hard time trying to enjoy it. Or if you pretend that games should be easy and let you win just because you do not care to learn new skills, well, do not play, say, the classic Mega Man games or Cuphead; they will certainly give you a hard time.

Another silly reason:

• I skip games which are "too much anime."

The Persona series and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are some examples. About the latter, I did try Torna, but disliked and never understood its battle system. Since I had already skipped its "parent" game, I might have been expecting that it would disappoint me at any moment.
How exactly are Persona and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 more "anime" than, say, an Ys game, Tales of Phantasia or Fates: Conquest?! I do not know, I told you that it was silly. 🙃

[Etrurian emperor]

I don't think I'll ever touch Tales of Graces due to feeling personally slighted by the game. I was very much into Tales when it came out so Namco repeatedly changing their minds on whether a filthy pleb like me could play the game wasn't to my liking at all. First the game was Japanese exclusive on the Wii, then they decided it came to the west after all but only on a console I didn't own. 

''No you dirty pleb! You and you filthy western hands won't get this game!''

''Okay we'll localize the game. You can play it'

''Lol we decided you can't play it after all!'' 

As it turned out it wasn't a particularly good Tales game so its not too big a loss but I still resent how the release went down. 

I also got very annoyed about Death Stranding because about 90% of the marketing was just teasing us about how mysterious it all was and I lost all interests as a result of it. 

Edited May 8, 2020 by Etrurian emperor

[Shahrivar]

IMO it isn't silly, but lots of people might think so:

Censorship. I haven't played/bought Tokyo Mirage Sessions because of it (although I'd love to) and even considered dropping FGO because of Demiya (and I would have If they censored Abby).

Edit: I forgot to add publishers (not strict here, but I try to avoid stuff like EA or Blizzard) and extra launchers on PC. I've played exactly one Ubisoft game on PC because of the latter one.

Edited May 9, 2020 by Shahrivar

[Anacybele]

Even though I'm someone that would always say graphics don't make a game, I'm going to have less interest if the art style and graphics don't appeal to me. I mean, those are kind of the first things I see/notice when I'm introduced to a new title and first impressions can mean a lot. I can still end up liking the game later, of course, but it's so much easier to be interested if the visuals are appealing. Xenoblade has been the prime example of this for me. Xenoblade 1 looks so bland and washed out (the original, anyway. The new Switch version actually looks so much better) imo. But as soon as I saw Xenoblade 2 for the first time: "Ooh, I'd like to play that! The colors and characters look so bright and pretty." I'm generally into bright colorful stuff and Xenoblade 2's art style only made it look even better.

Sometimes, the opposite has happened for me as well, where I really like the visuals, but ended up disliking the game. Example: Zelda: The Wind Waker. But more often than not, I'm probably going to enjoy a game with nice visuals. 😛

Generally, I don't play shooters either. Those just pretty much always bore me to tears. So I see any kind of shooting aspect as the main gameplay/focus, it's instant nope.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Anacybele

[Morgan--Grandmaster]

• Any game that markets itself as an "Other Game-Killer" especially if the game, or games, on the receiving end is a Nintendo game, SEGA.
• A shameless clone of another game
• Grimdark
• Games that contain a lot of gratuitous gore, sexually explicit content, sexism, harmful racist/ethnic/orientation stereotyping, swearing, and the like (As much as I enjoy Final Fantasy VII and its remake, they really dropped the ball on the last one, and I am not looking forward to meeting Cid in Part 2)
• Also, treatment of Luigi directly affects my hype/enjoyment of a game.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Morgan--Grandmaster

[Anacybele]

9 minutes ago, Morgan--Grandmaster said:

Also, treatment of Luigi directly affects my hype/enjoyment of a game.

I thought I was the only one that thought poor Luigi was treated as a punching bag too much! Metaphorically sometimes, but still. I don't love him or the Mario series less simply for that, but I do wish that Nintendo would cut Luigi a break here sometimes. Sheesh.

Still, if Luigi was given absolutely terrible treatment, I'd be turned off as well. He's my favorite video game character of all time along with Ike.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Anacybele

[Lightcosmo]

4 hours ago, Morgan--Grandmaster said:

• Games that contain a lot of gratuitous gore, sexually explicit content, sexism, harmful racist/ethnic/orientation stereotyping, swearing, and the like (As much as I enjoy Final Fantasy VII and its remake, they really dropped the ball on the last one, and I am not looking forward to meeting Cid in Part 2)

What was wrong with FF VII remake? 

[Morgan--Grandmaster]

13 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

What was wrong with FF VII remake? 

Vulgar dialogue is just a touchy subject for me, especially when it's voiced. 🤢

Edited May 19, 2020 by Morgan--Grandmaster

[Lightcosmo]

2 hours ago, Morgan--Grandmaster said:

Vulgar dialogue is just a touchy subject for me, especially when it's voiced. 🤢

Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable!