Games you hated at first but grew on you or were later loved

Brazillian Cara · Post by **Brazillian Cara** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 5:57 pm

Frieza2000 wrote:I missed this at first too, but Fusion (and I think Zero Mission) shows the item locations on the map screen. That at least narrows it down to which room you need to carpet bomb.

But where is the fun if you know where to find it?

Post by **G.Silver** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 10:47 pm

I would opt to SM's flat, austere surroundings any day, they just had so much more atmosphere.

I know what you're saying here, there's a certain alien surreality to those flat and barren surroundings, but you could just as easily say that they have <i>less</i> atmosphere because the tiling is so much more obvious.

aso · Post by **aso** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 2:12 pm

The first Fatal Frame.

Arguably one of the tougher 'scary' games out there, with absolutely no learner's curve. It starts off relatively easy with the first 'Boss' ghost but quickly increases in difficulty from there, particularly when the entire house seemingly becomes flooded with Blinded or when you have to battle four Wandering Monks to get different shards of a mirror, only to have to battle an even tougher ghost two times afterward.

It took me a year to really get into the first FF1, but once you finally have your camera up to a respectable level of strength and have a decent stockpile of healing items, it becomes a bit more fun and a bit less horribly frustrating.

Baba O'Reily · Post by **Baba O'Reily** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 3:11 pm

Speaking of games with nonexistant difficulty balancing, I'd like to bite my thumb in the general direction of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. I may have mentioned this before, but the absurd rise in game difficulty may be one of the few times where I've actually been pissed of at gameplay-plot continuity in a game.

BlazeHedgehog · Post by **BlazeHedgehog** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 9:55 pm

Yeah, the Metroid Series was a game franchise I really felt "meh" towards at first, but after Fusion, I really started to play others in the series.

The same goes for Castlevania. CV3 nearly turned me off of the franchise (for it's difficulty), but SOTN instantaneously made me a hardcore Castlevania fanatic. Just... the depth of everything. The myths and lore, the storyline, the amount of items that nod to other Konami games, other franchises...

Rayman 2 was another one. I was pretty "meh" toward at first, but by the end of the game I was convinced it was one of the best 3D platformers in history. Just the right difficulty, great level design, awesome music, a wonderful hand-painted visual style...

j-man · Post by **j-man** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 11:24 am

I recently rediscovered Warcraft II after finding it for the ridiculous price of Ã‚Â£2.87 in a sale, which led on to me finally learning to appreciate RTS games as a whole. Now I know why people buy PCs to play games. I'd previously only used it to attempt to run WoW and download the obligatory Folder O' Porn stashed cunningly within my college video project folder.

Zeta · Post by **Zeta** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 5:36 pm

Are you . . . IN any of this porn? : 9

FlashTHD · Post by **FlashTHD** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 7:49 pm

When my unreliable 1019 memory card (first party, thanks) decided to up and take away all my saves, following a bit of silent mourning and disbelief, i've gradually set about restoring my files. That meant playing through Billy Hatcher again.

Until now, I could barely stand to play it for any length of time. The root of almost every issue with the game is the control mechanics when rolling an egg around. They didn't put enough thought into it, which led to poor and cheap level design in a number of places, which led to restricting gameplay choices (Billy is utterly helpless without an egg), which led to unecessary frustration...it's like watching a stack of dominoes. Oh, and the core game "borrows" so much from Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine that you'll find yourself wondering how much thought they put into it in general.

And yet, when I started the game over, it didn't seem all that bad. I take none of what I just said about ripping off M64/Sunshine and having irritating controls back, but somehow, the game isn't quite the case of bird flu I made it out to be at first. I'm a bit better at racking up high ranks and combo counts on a consistent basis, which might be part of it. Overall, i've come to appreciate it a bit better now. This does not cover up the fact that the game badly suffers from Bottomless Pit Syndrome™ and gets annoying as hell on occasion. Nor can I stand most of the voice acting - I would have preferred crappy american voice actors to loud japanese voices. Regardless, it's easier for me to look past those mis-steps and enjoy what's good about it now...sort of.

I'm starting to make substantial headway into the game again, and it's also starting to wear out on me once more, so i'm quitting it for now. I still have no plans whatsoever to complete it 100%; S-ranking everything is more effort than I care to put into it. This says a lot, because I usually stick with a game like this until i've wrapped the whole affair up.

And since Metroid has sort of gotten ahold of the topic...I never could stand to play through the NES Metroid legitimately. It's downright maddening to even get anywhere at the start without an inhuman amount of patience. (I have a save file placed in Tourain with the Justin Bailey password in effect so that I can beat the game whenever I have a few minutes to kill. That's good enough for me :p) I'd rather try to beat Zero Mission with 15% items, and I gave up on that grueling expedition not long ago.

Post by **Squirrelknight** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 7:53 pm

I wish my college assigned projects like that :P.

Anyway, I was playing Samurai Legend Musashi awhile back and realized it really isn't that bad. The voice-acting and story is shit, and the game starts off slow and repetitive, but the fighting actually gets pretty fun once you learn some extra techniques.

As for Metroid, I never got into it until Prime. The older games were a bit too hard for me when I was a little kid, so I watched my older brother play through the original and Super Metroid, but now that I'm older and suck less, I should really go back and play through them. I don't have any feelings either good or bad toward the two GBA releases, even though I played through both. I understand that they're both really good games in terms of gameplay and design, but I couldn't help but feel indifference towards each one. Prime, and Prime 2 to a lesser extent, however, give me a raging erection everytime I think about them.

FlashTHD · Post by **FlashTHD** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:02 pm

Fusion is linear to a fault and the one major, legitimate sequence break in the game is difficult beyond all human comprehension. It's a not a bad game, just not really Metroid. Zero Mission, however, is exactly how a remake should be. The attention to detail in the environment design is very impressive; you can break sequence in a variety of ways and be rewarded handsomely for it. They definitely had the fans in mind when they made that one.

Neo Yi · Post by **Neo Yi** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:16 pm

Anyway, I was playing Samurai Legend Musashi awhile back and realized it really isn't that bad. The voice-acting and story is shit, and the game starts off slow and repetitive, but the fighting actually gets pretty fun once you learn some extra techniques.

You forgot the save point. I don't know about you, but I absolutely hated the fact that you could only save in Musashi's room, making for a tedious load of backtracking. Them continue points located in each level certainly didn't do much.
That said, I agree with you on everything else (although I admit the actor who played Rothschild was pretty damn good).

Baba O'Reily · Post by **Baba O'Reily** » Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:52 pm

Zeta wrote:Are you . . . IN any of this porn? : 9

I've never understood the fascination people have with watching themselves copulate.