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There are a lot of games. God, there are so many games. And as much as I would love to play whatever I want, whenever I want, I do have a job. And that job demands I play certain games at certain times, and that doesn’t give me much free time. So in the precious time I do have, I try to use it on games I enjoy.
Except you can’t always know if you’ll like a game, can you? I can’t anyway. And I’m usually pretty generous on games. So trust me when I say that these games just bored me to the point I had to consider was the story really worth it. Were there going to be new things to drag me in, or was it going to stay like this?
10 Code Vein
TL;DR: It's Maybe God Eater?
Look, Code Vein is fine. Aggressively fine. And aggressively fine isn’t something I can spare 40 hours for. And the times when it is not fine, it is bad. It is rarely good. I love a good soulslike, but Code Vein is not that. It is a fine soulslike, and they are a dime-a-dozen. But it was on PS Plus, so I gave it a go.
I have to be honest, I did actually finish the game. I just can’t remember it at all. Something about people being very thirsty for blood. Weird monsters that might be from God Eater? I genuinely got through the whole game, it wasn’t even that hard. It just never did anything that enticed me to speak to anyone, nor was its story told in a way that was interesting. So I looked it up afterwards to refresh myself and see if I missed something to make it all click. I didn’t.
9 God Of War (2018)
TL;DR: Dad Is Sad, But Angry Too
Now, I did overall enjoy God of War. I’m more a fan of character action games that aren’t ashamed of their own genre, but it was still a flashy, if somewhat flat, game. I did enjoy its interpretation of Norse myth too, it had some inventive twists. The bigger picture was actually quite fun to see, especially with my own interest in various mythologies.
But oh my god, I get it. Kratos is a father. He doesn’t know how to be one. And trudging through him figuring out how to talk to his son in a normal way gets boring quite fast. There is a reason most character action games are quite short. God of War is not. It wasn’t even the main story that put me off, but the bouts of nothingness inbetween.
8 Mass Effect: Andromeda
TL;DR: Somehow, Liara Has Returned
I played the whole original Mass Effect trilogy and, even after the ending of Mass Effect 3, was still quite fond of the games as a whole. It respected my journey as best it could. Mass Effect: Andromeda dropped all that for a new setting. OK sure, fair enough. Except sadly, Andromeda did not have any of the flare of the original, and tried to add more free-form combat to make up for it.
There is a reason RPGs excel with curated content, and it is because usually, they have quite boring combat. Mass Effect had some cover shoot mechanics and companion commands. Gone in Andromeda. The companions were boring. The story was astoundingly short-sighted for a whole new galaxy. And the whole game was just too long. I did finish it, but I was ing a main quest log to see just how long I had left to completion.
7 Devil May Cry 2
TL;DR: It's As Canon As You Want, Basically
Oh man. I have a soft spot for Devil May Cry. The same way when you see a fly hitting off the glass of a very open window. You’re trying your best buddy, but you are annoying me and you are shockingly daft, so I’m just going to scoot you along now. Devil May Cry 2 is the fly here. Man, it just does not know what it is doing.
Now I did love having Lucia, and the customisable Devil Trigger was interesting. But the story was basically non-existent. Devil May Cry has always had very character-driven stories, but DMC2 had nothing. I finished my run with Dante by spending 30 minutes in every encounter shooting down helicopters, and just read up on Lucia’s campaign to save me having to use much weaker guns.
6 Vampyr
TL;DR: It's Absolutely About The Journey, Not The Destination
I do love the games Don’t Nod makes, and Vampyr isn’t an exception to that. It is such a buggy, broken game, but it has a beating heart in its decaying corpse. Interacting with the citizens of London is genuinely enticing, and having to balance sacrificing them for your own combat strength, and keeping the city healthy is a great premise. And for the most part, it works.
It’s everything else that’s the issue. Combat is straight from The Witcher 3, sans the prep and great enemy design. The exploration is drier than a desert. The main story is shockingly linear, and veers entirely into the supernatural when every other story was quite grounded, even amidst vampires. So after I finished the game, I had to look up the plot to see if was there was some thread I missed. Nope, there is just a blood monster god thing in the sewers of London. Go figure.
5 Bayonetta 3
TL;DR: The Femme Fatale Meets A Fatal Fate
I cannot tell you how excited I was for Bayonetta 3. The series is one of my all-time favourites. It is flashy, it is sexy, and it is oh-so-very confident. I think I knew, deep down, that Bayonetta 3 could never be great after such a long, troubled development. And I did appreciate that they made such big changes, the game needed to be different.
And while they didn’t all hit, they were still good. No, it was the story that really got me. It was just awful, no way around it. In fact, it doesn’t quite hit how bad it is until you hit the end, and you feel like you must have misinterpreted something along the way. But nope, the game just doesn’t tell its story. You get all the lore entries at the end that tell you what you apparently should have known, but didn’t. I trawled through them, and honestly? It still feels like more is missing.
4 Death Stranding
TL;DR: A Summary Might Have Helped A Bit
A preface — I love Death Stranding. I played Death Stranding to completion. It took me like a month, over around 100 or so hours. That’s a big time investment. And don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy the story that is being told in it. It’s just also the least interesting part of the game. And I’m playing Death Stranding 2 now and loving it! So where’s the issue?
Man, Death Stranding is just too long. I am not going back to that game just to refresh myself on the story when you only get a cutscene every ten hours. So I whipped up a summary online to bring me up to speed, and watched a quick playthrough of the Director’s Cut content because I could not be bothered trawling through this wonderful game again for that long. It’s just a lot.
3 Days Gone
TL;DR: Too Many Of My Own Days Were Gone Playing This
Days Gone is astounding to me. From the bizarre messaging of its previous writer to its extreme OK-ness, Days Gone was a game with a massive amount of technical know-how, and not a singular vision to unite it. Deacon St. John is a hilariously endearing character because he just can’t ever shut up, but literally never has anything interesting to say. I do love him in a rather unorthodox way.
Because honestly, Days Gone is not a good game. It’s not terrible, it all works and looks beautiful. But that is really all it is. There sure was a story going on there. And by god, it went on for so long. I recall the only thing that perked me up in its whole runtime was when you could get the bike from Death Stranding. I was periodically looking up story summaries as I played the game because I was almost asleep in every brain-numbing story moment. All the best to Deacon though. It’s a miracle his shouting hasn’t killed him yet.
2 Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories
TL;DR: Somehow, Completely Necessary And Plot-Relevant At The Same Time
I mentioned in the beginning that I have a high tolerance for boring games. I’ve finished just about every game on this list, I just had to check how long was left or refresh myself on them. I need to you know this so that this hits a bit harder. Kingdom Hearts: ReChain of Memories is one of the only games I have ever played that was so boring I never finished it.
I love Kingdom Hearts, but Chain of Memories is excruciating. The remake put it into 3D, and it simply doesn’t work. It is not fun like that! And the story is like 80 percent a recap of the first game. You might think you could skip then, since you probably played it as part of the collection. Wrong, because you will have no idea why Sora is in a giant pod in KH2 then! Or why Organization XIII does not, in fact, have 13 living members. And then Riku has a whole playthrough too, if you want the full story. Honestly, they should have made this one a movie since there’s basically no story in the Disney worlds.
1 Horizon: Zero Dawn
TL;DR: I'm Out Of Puns. It's Just A Bit Boring
The Horizon games are cursed to always come out alongside something that is infinitely more unique. Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring, Tears of the Kingdom, Metaphor ReFantazio. It’s actually shocking how it happens, because it is emblematic of the game itself. It is always living in the shadow of something greater, something more inventive. Something actually interesting.
The Horizon games are ‘fun’, in the most basic sense of the world. They are pretty, they have many effects. They have tools you can use. They have characters. They have quests. They have characters. But they don’t really have a heart. The most gorgeous, by-the-numbers adventure you will embark on. So yes, I have looked up the plot to them because I am not spending 100 hours on a shining pile of nothing.
