In my copious free time (that's an old college joke, I don't actually tend to ever have "copious" free time) I've managed to try some games really quickly care of free games on Epic Game Store, and then also from buying the Xbox PC Game Pass to see if I still kind of find Sturgeon's Modified Law (wherein the remaining % has Sturgeon's Law applied recursively) to apply... and, yes, yes I do. Oh and hey, the Xbox PC Game Pass app thing on Windows is, surprise, kinda broken terrible UX to boot.
A few things conspire to make it hard for me to enjoy video games any more: First, most games have just terribly broken UI and UX from they very first screen, through any and all menus, right on into the game itself. Not to mention the horrible UI and UX of all app stores or login-to-our-stupid-account-system-before-you-can-play systems. Second, I am actually pretty grossed out over doing nothing but shooting people as the main gameplay. (Although I still count the Bioshock series in my top favorite games ever.) Third, I just do not like anything that relies on darkness for any length of time. It is stupid and not a fun experience. Same thing goes for movies or TV shows in my opinion. Fourth, I do not like 3rd person console-pandering hell. Fifth, I get bored with slow stories. Sixth, I really do not like anything that has "double jump" unless it is an old school 2D side scroller. Seventh, I donated my fancy graphics card to another person so I am running things on a GTX 770 2GB nowadays which is probably "like a dog playing chess."
Some of these I played for 10 minutes then uninstalled them. Some I played for a sum total of a few days at most. Some are just from watching over the shoulder of somebody else playing them.
- Doom Eternal Standard Edition: pretty, but pretty dumb and boring really quickly. I am not a fan of double jumping in almost any game, and 10x more not a fan for 3D FPS games. The scenery / architecture was ok, sorta well done, but then the fights to me were just mostly really annoying and I never had enough ammo.
- The Outer Worlds: pretty, but repetitive (visually and story-wise) and quickly boring. Has kinda slow loading, and all sorts of other bad UX things also found in other similar games like the Fallout series. Digital shoe leather. Very bad difficulty ramping, too, I feel.
- Alien Isolation: pretty, but stupid and boring very fast, with entirely too much shoe leather.
- Among Us: fun at first, but very quickly just meh. Maybe better in person? Definitely has helped us while away a few weekend nights with friends we'd not otherwise hang with during covid.
- Alan Wake: har-hah, one word: flashlight. I know this is a game from like 1972 or something, but still.
- Wolfenstein Youngblood: just a horrible, horrible UX right from startup. Terrible console menus. Terrible broken audio bugs. Terrible gameplay and world that is sorta pretty but it also randomly stupid in many ways, like oh I can't actually shoot that little portable radio there, it is indestructible. And then the difficulty ramp was stupid as well.
- WWZ: meh, just not my kind of game. Way too frustrating.
- We Happy Few: way too slow. Sorta funny and satirical but sorta not so wow. Was a bit lost at the start of what even to do.
- The Surge 2: I just don't like 3rd person games in the first place.
- Sunset Overdrive: dumber than a dumb stick. Additionally, I don't like 3rd person console style.
- Subnautica: Wanted to love it based on the reviews, but the physical movement and story progression was way too slow.
- Shadow Warrior 2: stupid, crass, dumb... but I mostly had fun playing it. Looking forward to the next installment.
- Rage 2: big fat meh. Sorta nifty world, but sorta frustrating driving, and really bad confusing mission UI UX and everything is very quickly way too repetitive.
- Observation: Wow! Utterly horrible! Just awful! Plain stupid obviously transparently bad! Wow! Yes, I was really hoping for something fun.
- No Man's Sky: a complete joke in terms of UX if you ask me. It took for ever to load, there was no useful progress indicator, and then the first 5 minutes of the game is some stupid boring confusing broken "you are going to die in 30, 29, 28... if you don't figure out how the stupid boring confusing broken ui works" type of setup. Just awful.
- Minecraft Dungeons: meh. The UX was kind of not great, and the whole thing was - guess! - boring.
- Halo of any kind: the same drek over and over and over and over and... I've been playing it since the original Xbox and it never was actually all that.
- Gears of War of any kind: puerile glorification and gamification of violence. And, all in 3rd person bad console style. Also I really strongly dislike any kind of sticky mechanics like cover because inevitably I end up figting it.
- Void Bastards: fun for 1 ship. Then you see that yes, it is one of the most trite and repetitive games evar.
- Fallout 76 PC: just painful. Sloowww loading, and that was back on my GTX 1070. I'd rather stick to replaying Fallout 4 or New Vegas.
- Deep Rock Galactic: asinine. People can fly through space but they cannot bring a flashlight that works, instead they have flares that go out in 10 seconds? Why would I care about this?
- Deliver Us The Moon: oh, right! I also despise walking simulators.
- Crackdown 3: whatever.
- Comanche (game preview): just really not fun. Kinda terribly frustrating flight mechanics. Maybe it is "realistic" or something, but that was not fun for me at all.
- Fallout 3: wow, stab me in the eye with a broken hell impossibly confusing metro system why don't you. Ok, the final battle had some really funny lines, and there were a few interesting missions, but: meh. I've been attempting to play it for years now, originally on an old Xbox 360 and then more recently on PC. Utterly a living hell on console I'll say. 1/10th as hellacious when using keyboard + mouse on a PC.
- Fallout 4: sorta meh overall. Well done world. Terribly slow loading. Terribly bad confusing awful UI/UX for the settlement building stuff. But I did very much appreciate learning to re-appreciate what we have in terms of civilization right here, right now. As in, go have a soft drink, and really savor it!
- Fallout New Vegas, with all the extra DLC: has problems, but was engaging and sucked me in pretty well. Probably one of my favorite games ever, mostly because I started out with really low expectations.
- Warhammer 40K Space Marine: actually a pretty great ambiance, like the voice acting was great. But the gameplay was of course boring and stupid, and the compressed depth from whatever insane focal length they used made me want to claw my own eyes out.
- Titanfall 2: pretty dumb from the get-go. I don't like double jumping, it is just dumb. The whole wall running thig is like some old SNL skit from the 90s where they have 1 idea and then kill it dead over and over because that is all they could come up with. Also it has some sticky mechanics which, like cover, always inevitably makes me rage. There is so much potential in the engine and then the gameplay is just blah, either in the campaign or in the coop defense multiplayer. Also the overall UI/UX is pretty bad. Also it crashes a lot. Also it requires Origin no matter what. Also, also, also...
- Destiny 2: Ugh. Lots of the things I find broken about other FPSs here too. Things like lame story, and confusing broken bad dumb UI/UX for missions. And, you know, any ooh so spooky dark environment stupidity where I can't see jack. Flashlight == epic fail in my book. Overall it felt, surprise, like just another Halo. The enemies even moved around like Halo enemies. The speeder bikes even were as horrible to try to drive as hover things in Halo.
- Dishonored 2: I guess I just don't really buy into the world design, aesthetically. Things are sorta cool and steampunky but then also a little too weird and fragile looking to me. And the story is kinda meh overall, even while playing it.
- ReCore: just laughably bad, and with double jump in the first 60 seconds!?
- Borderlands (various): Too much shoe leather. Too much confusing bad UI UX. Too much "we're so cool look at us" design that gets boring fast (the cartoon style). Just kinda not fun.
- Elite Dangerous: Heck, I grew up on 8 and 16 bit Elite, so I do have a soft spot in my heart for the series, and I loved Frontier on the PC, even with all the bad bugs, and I loved Zarch on the Archimedes, but... this game is to my way of thinking just not good. The controls might be realistic on the one hand, but frankly I think the kind of suck right out of the gate. And then the actual quests were really confusing UI UX to me. So, yeah: no.
- Ghostbusters: What a complete joke of unusability. A completely classic failure to make something that is either usable or fun. So utterly full of itself thinking it should just force cut scenes about the original movie down my throat, etc. Should be taught in school.
- Watch Dogs (various): Painful. Just, painful.
- Fortnite / Overwatch / Valorant: so incredibly not my cup of tea, and I find their UI UX to be pretty outright confusing bad quite often.
- Just Cause 4: painful for all the usual reasons.
- Hitman: pretty, but boring.
- Tacoma: pretty, but too slow. I did very much like the way the holographic playbacks overlapped, but it really wasn't enough to keep me interested, and quickly became more annoying on balance.
- The Witness: boring, failed to make the environment captivating enough to make the puzzles interesting. (Whereas, for comparison's sake, things like Portal and Portal 2 did a great job at that, for the most part.)
- Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon: Fun for a while. Quickly peters out. But still, worth trying if you have any 80s nostalgia at all.
Even though all games have big problems from what I can tell, there were a few that I nevertheless would say are worth trying: The Outer Worlds. Shadow Warrior 2. Fallout New Vegas. Fallout 4. Warhammer. My favorite "modern" games are probably the Bioshock series.
