Among Us.

My friends kept suggesting it for game nights, but the social demands are just not compatible with actually hanging out with your friends.

When everyone's out and about, doing their tasks and getting murdered, we're all discouraged from actually talking with one another, for fear of revealing a dead body or whatever. Whenever there's a meeting going on, sure, we're "free" to talk again, but there's not enough time to talk about anything but the game. When you're dead, and thus finally relieved from the pressures of completing tasks or getting kills... there's still no chit-chat allowed, because ghosts "can't" talk.

It's worse whenever random players are involved; having to coordinate between voice chat with friends, and text chat with randoms, or worse, when the randoms are in a voice chat of their own, coordinating to be assholes.

The moment that finally made me say "I don't enjoy this game", was a round with two random players in it: one of them spent the whole round watching security cameras, and the other was blocking the one doorway into the room, both players working with each other and refusing to do their tasks. No way for the lone impostor that round to kill them both. When we started calling them out on this, they flat-out said "we're going to keep doing this just to spite you". Timer ran out with unfinished tasks. Crewmates lost.

Not an avid gamer and play mostly indie.

Tunic. Was recommended for fans of Outer Wilds (fantastic game), but I see no similarities. Tunic's cover art looks like a Zelda ripoff, world borrows from Hyper Light Drifter, and the game plays like a Zelda + Hyper Light Drifter ripoff, but very poorly tested, unfair, and misleading at times. I get the impression that game designers had zero external opinions and very little playtesting.

Exploration is "bump into every nook and cranny to find a way forward". Bosses are absurdly difficult, clearly catering to the "git gud" crowd, and do not feel fair (as a counterexample, HLD felt difficult but fair). Puzzles are all backloaded to the latter half of the game, they are mostly fun, but at least one relies on a mechanic that is never hinted at nor used in the game otherwise. The untranslated manual, main gimmick of the game, is misleading at times. Midgame apocalypse / dark world is not that, it's... Night time (not putting the spoiler because that is just absurdity)

Yes, I finished it, and got the good ending, which only elicited "Um, ok?" from me.

Wizard101.

I probably have over 10k hours in that piece of shit. Autistic obsession for like 5 years straight. Been playing on and off since it came out. Fuck Kingsisle, fuck microtransactions, fuck them lying about it being "free-to-play", fuck features that only exist to incentivize paying. I still like the game in some ways, it just isn't a good game.

Battlefield 2.

I only got into it because my gaming friends did. It was never very good, but my friends liked it because it was a much slower game compared to the arena shooters we played before and they wouldn't admit their reflexes were getting bad. The game isn't very realistic or very fun. You can bend realism for fun gameplay or you can have an unbalanced game if it's for realism, but BF2 was neither.

oh and another thing. The official maps are very repetitive and because stat tracking only works on them, they would be the only ones ever played. I've played some custom maps that were much better at LAN parties, but those rarely got played because a bunch of grown adults needed to have their rank for all to see.

Porn games

Warframe. After 5k hours and multiple accounts, I cannot recommend it whole heartedly.

And for a lot of people that one is not going to make sense. The game itself is not bad or poorly made. My issues with that game are so small that for a majority of the players they will never experience the issues I've had. It's been a death of a thousand cuts, and unfortunately soulframe (the next thing they are making) has also left a bad taste after trying out. Each issue stems from the way in which the development team set about doing things (it's been 7 years, some people have moved on, they might have gotten better)

Darkest dungeon

Cyberpunk 2077. The game seems so perfect for me, but after 4 hours, dropping it, trying again for 4 hours, it just wouldn't stick.

I do wonder if it was 3rd person if I'd enjoy it more. I tend to love visual environments, and I think the first-person perspective hurts the game (for me).

PGA Tour 2K25 and EA Sports WRC - both iterations of previously released "sports" games. I know not everyone's cup of tea for "gaming".

I play both cross-platform with my family in other locations and it's a nice way to stay connected with them.

But for the golf game, forcing us all to buy new versions that don't improve on anything (or arguably make it worse than the previous release) while shutting off access to the previous is maddening.

For the rally game, similar sentiment, but also for not living up to the potential of the license/previous releases, not fixing issues that have been around since first release, killing off codemasters, and squandering the WRC license just to abandon the title.

Elite Dangerous. The early game up is brutal and you don't get much help. Mid game is very long and a grind. I'm only on a few engineering trees and still haven't left the bubble.

I haven't even gotten to end game.

I can't even do PvP because I get gonked too fast.

Mine is MTG Arena. I don't really have anyone I can play with locally so it's basically my only option but my God it's like a textbook example on how to make the greediest and shittiest user experience

Lego: The Hobbit

I give this answer in every one of these threads to raise awareness. My wife and I used to get a little drunk and play Lego games. It's a lot of fun, and a decent couch co-op.

We get into the Mountain, start screwing around with Smaug, and he flies off to burn Laketown. Roll credits. Game over. The 3rd movie flopped so hard they never finished the game. They don't say it's 2/3 of the story, and at that point it's way too late to return it.

Fun game, terrible experience.

Elden Ring - Beautiful game, but without the context of other FromSoft Titles, I'm not sure how you are supposed to enjoy it. Most people would say "well you're not supposed to enjoy it!" but it feels a bit like one of those restaurants where the gimmick is they are rude to you. The story is impenetrable, the "tutorial" pop ups lie, and quests are hidden behind specific actions that 90% of players would not organically try. That said, I completed it.

Pretty much any moba. cs, r6, overwatch, lol, dota