• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Series in which you went from rabid fan to having a casual interest. What lost you?

Not series, but rather I used to be a big fan of Ubisoft's games. However nowadays I don't even have a passing interest in them anymore after they abused their game design from Assassin's Creed and Far Cry and stuck them in nearly all of their major IPs.

Even when they veer away from some of their ideologies, it just doesn't come off as graceful as it should. While watching the Origins demo, all I could think of is how much they had to study The Witcher 3 and Horizon to make it less cumbersome.

Just incredibly burnt out from their stuff.

Best wishes.
 

Lindsay

Dot Hacked
Pokémon! Ontop of being burnt out on it at the time, the leadup to Gen 4 lost me. Screenshots made Diamond/Pearl seem ugly, videos showed off how miserably slow the gameplay had fallen, an they seemed full of Gen 1 pandering which wasn't doing anything for me coming off the boring Fire Red/Leaf Green games. Worst of all the one big feature I was really waiting for didn't come. Trainer customization! Only took 'em 2 more gens ta get that going huh? -.-
 
Not to be a broken record, but Mass Effect. I absolutely adored the first game, devoured every last bit of lore I could find in game and then turned to the novels and comics when I couldn't find any more. I had a few minor problems with ME2, but I still loved it. ME3 started off on the wrong foot with so much auto-dialogue from Shepard and that ridiculous kid dying/PTSD shit, and then got worse as it went on. I mean, it definitely had some wonderful moments, but the overall focus on dropping what I liked about Mass Effect in favour of an ever greater emphasis on shooting waves of dudes in arenas in every mission was so depressing, and then that ending. I actually chose the wrong 'option', because I was confused by the way they were presented to you and you don't get the opportunity to ask the hologram for any further details (or even just to repeat anything), but then I found out that it didn't matter anyway.

I haven't played a Mass Effect game since. I played 1 and 2 probably ten times each, but I can't bring myself to replay them when I know where it all leads; I honestly don't think I've seen a fictional universe ruined with more decisiveness than ME3's ending. But I was still kind of ready for Andromeda. They were starting from the cleanest of slates, sweeping everything under the rug and going to a whole new galaxy. How bad could it be, right? And then the reports of shitty animations, lacklustre writing, bugs galore, boring quests and Ubisoft checklist-ticker game design came out, and I just said no thanks.
 
Probably Pokémon. Gen 5 was the last gen where the latest mainline Pokémon game was a near-immediate buy. Oddly enough, it was my love for the series that changed things. I started really getting into the spinoffs, and they all highlighted some problems I'd started to have with the mainline series. Trozei showed just how borderline generic the artstyle had become. Mystery Dungeon showed how dull and lifeless the stories and characters tended to be. Ranger showed how half-baked the regions and environments were. Colosseum showed how limited in scope the games had become. Then I played Y and was extremely let down in spite of some of the best new Pokémon designs ever, and a new problem appeared - a lack of significant content beyond the main story. ORAS ignoring the Battle Frontier only added fuel to that particular fire.

I still haven't picked up Moon. I will for sure, along with Ultra Moon, but I just don't feel like I'm missing out on much besides new Pokémon and more mechanical improvements. I haven't seen or heard anything that screams "get this ASAP!" I'm still a fan of the series, though.

Other than that, I find myself becoming more distant from fanbases rather the franchises themselves. Perhaps I just have bad luck in the fanbases I get interested in (like Sonic, Pokémon, and Fire Emblem). There's almost always some form of "generation wars" present in every conversation, and it's kinda annoying.
 

Haganeren

Member
Both Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi. M&L to a lesser extent - those games are just mediocre now - while the last two Paper Mario titles have been bad games (even if the scenarios in Colour Splash are plenty creative, the actual game parts suck away all the fun).

Same but reversed to me. M&L is way worst, they lose a LOT of their touch with each new entry (I think i never finished Paper Jam.... Catching Toads, really ?) and the fact the remake don't have animation as over the top as the original makes me more than worried with the franchise... Oh yeah, the gameplay is the same as ever i guess but slowly and surely, it's starting to get too old for me.

Paper Mario Sticker Star/Color Splash made me cautious about the serie alright, but at least Color Splash story have been creative and surprised me a little.
 
Final Fantasy.

Final Fantasy 13 lost me. I could have even gotten it for free but used my points (goozex) on something else. I never played it, but what I saw just didn't interest me.

I get to buy FF 12 again if it comes to PC though, I could also get it on PS4, but I'll wait since I can use my PS2 non IZJS version to play it on PC (which I do regularly.

Gah! Why would you do this? At least get the patched IZJS version in English.

I love Final Fantasy XII, to death, but there is no reason to play the vanilla version of the game ever again, IZJS is so much better it's not even funny. I can't wait to try Zodiac Age.

As for which game made me a casual fan of a series. It was probably Halo 5. Not entirely the game's fault as it came out on the Xbone which I didn't get until recently, but the campaign was shit, and the story was even worse. Halo 4 didn't set me on fire either though, so there was that.
 

FHIZ

Member
Harvest Moon. The 64 through early DS days, I'd drop countless hours into them, but the more games that came out, the more they had mechanics they kept trying and I didn't like many. There was stuff like Magic Melody (whose art style turned me off too) having a Harvest Sprite collectathon or the portable one where you had to sell most your stuff at a bazaar every week. They just became an annoyance.

Thankfully, Stardew Valley got back to the core loop of that series and added mechanics that felt like logical advancements to what was already there.
 
Halo when Bungie got off the train

I finished Halo 4 but anything other than fond reminiscence has evaporated.

I suppose Microsoft are partly to blame for releasing a console I didn't want to buy this time around too, but by all reports Halo 5 is a shit show in comparison to the golden days.

I even read the Fall of Reach when I was about 14. Halcyon days. The halo lore was really cool, sad to see it go the way it did.
 
Halo lost me after 3
Final Fantasy lost me after X
Metal Gear Solid lost me after 4
Resident Evil lost me after 4
Mario lost me after 64
Mass Effect lost me after 3
Assassin's Creed lost me after 3
Gears of War lost me after 3
Call of Duty lost me after Black Ops 2
 
Halo is a big one for me.

None of my friends were ever really into it so I mostly just played solo online or with friends I made online. But most of them jumped ship to Playstation this gen, and most of those remaining are great guys but they are so into the game and are so good that it isn't fun to play with them. I just get destroyed over and over and it lost its luster.

That plus the campaigns of Halo 4 and Halo 5 being very, very lackluster. Halo 4 was just boring. It seemed like nothing happened. I played through it one time and then said screw it. Halo 5 campaign legitimately made me mad. Master Chief was nerfed and became a side character to this scrub Locke dude. I am going to go back at some point and play through them again, but man, my desire is so low to do that.

Even the books and comics have ventured away from what made the story (in my opinion) great: badass Spartans doing badass things. There hasn't been a memorable Spartan moment, IMO, in the last five books. Master Chief hasn't been in a book in like 10 years. The comics lost me a way back so who knows what is going on there anymore.

Other ones are Resident Evil, Mass Effect, and Call of Duty. Variety of reasons for those.
 
Halo perhaps, which I really dig up to 4, inclusive. It was the combo of not being crazy about changes I heard about in Halo 5 (less Chief, no splitscreen, ehh on story) and the MCC apparently being busted at first delayed my picking up an X1....still tbd when.

Mass Effect had a true collapse in interest with Andromeda after being middling on ME3 (and DA:I).
 
Halo lost me at Reach and I haven't looked back. It went to call of duty for me.
First post nailed it for me. I was a Halo fanatic for 1-3. I didn't buy Reach on release day (though I eventually bought it). And I only borrowed Halo 4 & 5 and didn't like either. I'm pretty much done with Halo.
 

Ploid 3.0

Member
Gah! Why would you do this? At least get the patched IZJS version in English.

I love Final Fantasy XII, to death, but there is no reason to play the vanilla version of the game ever again, IZJS is so much better it's not even funny. I can't wait to try Zodiac Age.

As for which game made me a casual fan of a series. It was probably Halo 5. Not entirely the game's fault as it came out on the Xbone which I didn't get until recently, but the campaign was shit, and the story was even worse. Halo 4 didn't set me on fire either though, so there was that.

IZJS version cost $60 on amazon at the time and I can wait to see if a PC version is coming. If it doesn't I can get a cheap PS4 version.
 

Peltz

Member
Halo: Halo Reach then 4 just didn't have that same spark.

Smash Bros: Melee still feels most fun for me to play.

Pokémon: one iteration was enough for me I think.
 
Pokemon, kind off. I didn't like Y. The story was boring, hated the other characters and the game looked ugly. Didn't like the engine. Now Sun & Moon look a whole lot better. Still, I think I'm going to wait for the Switch Pokemon. If they hit that one out of park I'll be jumping back into Pokemon hard. A mainline full blown Pokemon game on a console. Man, I owe it to my kid self to play that.
 

MrBS

Member
I'm sure this isn't the only one for me but Gears of War. I really enjoyed the first game and was hyped the second but it ended up such a turn off that I skipped the later entries and only went through 3 & Judgement recently. The third entry is quite solid, will have to play through 4 at some point.
 
Uncharted 4 killed my interest in the new game. I hate the direction they took the game story wise and gameplay wise, more so gameplay wise. Its not the same Uncharted, which is a shame. The new Game/DLC looks to be like Uncharted 4.1 which i will pass on for now.
 

Offline

Banned
I wouldn't say I transitioned from a rabid fan to having casual interest in the franchise but rather went from being a huge fan to having serious doubts about the franchise.

It's Pokemon after Sun/Moon. It's the only Pokemon game I didn't completely beat within 2-3 days and replay again immediately back to back, I even did that with X and Y and actually loved that game but with Pokemon Sun and Moon I stopped around halfway through and was left feeling disappointed.

The experience in Sun/Moon for the first time in my history of playing Pokemon games was just simply not fun, the sense of adventure, exploration and even just a little bit of challenge was gone. One of the major and recurring issues I had with the game was how mindbogglingly easy it was yet how excessively the game controls you and your playstyle and coddle you at every step and corner and how afraid it is of letting you stray from the beaten path and actually explore things and take on different challenges at your own pace and choosing. It felt like I was being forced to play an already boring game due to the an unremarkable story and uninteresting cast of characters in the most boring way possible. I just couldn't believe what I was playing.

I even look to the criticisms people have for X and Y but for me it still carried the Pokemon DNA and had it's adventurous hook where as Pokemon Sun and Moon is a game I can hardly recognize from a franchise I've love dearly. It used to be written in stone that I would buy any system that has Pokemon on it or coming to it but now, I'll be looking toward the reviews and if the next mainline Pokemon game is anything like Sun and Moon the franchise may as well be dead for me because it just seems to have lost it's magic along the way. Very tragic
 

D.Lo

Member
Castlevania. It was a great action game with great art, music and lore. It started to become nice and varied, Noctune/Symphony was a Metroid clone, Castlevania 64 a great atmospheric take on the action platformer in 3D, and Chronicles kept the action alive with a nice rerelease of the obscure old PC title.

It was killed by becoming a bunch of repetitive crap Metroid clones. And the alternatives were the crap flat PS2 dungeon crawlers, and the insanity of the Wii fighting game. Noctune/Symphony, while kind of messy, was once a breath of fresh air in the series, but became a template for its destruction.
 
Halo

For some reason, it just wasn't the same after Halo 3. Both Reach and Halo 4 were fantastic games. But I never felt the need to go back to them after beating them once.
 

Gulz1992

Member
Warcraft.

Went from having an almost rabid obsession with the series to a dwindling decline in interest after the Wrath era. I now barley pay any attention to it anymore.
 

Naked Lunch

Member
Team Fortress 1 and TFC: huge fan. All day every day kinda player.
TF2 was casual trash. The biggest disappointment of my gaming hobby.

BF4 and BF1, same story. Catering to the masses killed the franchise for me. The series is dead to me. Its a shame because I used to hope and dream what the Battlefield series could become after the PC's BF2. We should have 300 player battles and dozens of classes by now with multiple commanders, an ongoing dynamic war with multiple fronts, and 100s of vehicles. I never imagined the series would have regressed so much.
 
I was a rabid FF fan, then I played 10, 10-2 and 12 and my interest died a lot. Then 13 was just ok and 13-2 was surprisingly good. Lightning Returns sucked ass and 15 is complete trash. I'm really over this series now. Last good game was 9.
 

wbEMX

Member
Probably Uncharted after 4. And Call of Duty is kinda losing me, although I will give it one more chance with WW2, this time on the PS4, though, because this franchise is pretty much dead by now on PC and I don't want to bother with empty lobbies in everything but TDM anymore.

Pokémon also lost me after White. I skipped XY and tried a bit of Omega Ruby, but unless the upcoming Switch game is game-changing I won't play a Pokémon game anymore.
 

Jaraghan

Member
Halo. After MCC being a complete fuck up, I was on alert at 343. Then H5 comes out with barebones multiplayer content and an awful campaign. I was a huuuge fan of Halo before MCC. Books, comics, shows, games, figurines, etc. Now I really couldn't care less about it.
 
There have been a few for me:

Halo - just lost interest after 4. The quick time boss battle at the end killed it for me. That was probably the biggest letdown of any game I've played in a long time. Plus the Promethians were probably the most annoying enemy in the series. Never played Reach. Destiny has definitely taken its place for me.

Mario games in general. Don't know, something about Sunshine turned me off and I stopped caring about Mario games after that. In fact I think that, combined with the Wii, killed my interest in Nintendo period. Switch Yoshi might bring me back though it looks awesome.

Bioware games. Jade Empire was their last game I enjoyed and even then I never beat it. Just sorta lost interest and I haven't really cared for their games since. Mass Effect never really pulled me in although the lore of the game is pretty cool.
 

Mephala

Member
Halo - Lost its magic after Reach in my opinion. There was some good and enjoyment in the series left but it wasn't for me. Prometheans, tone shift, weapons all felt uninspiring or boring.

Final Fantasy general - Became more about a graphical showcase with wacky stories. The latter being a lot more interesting when I was younger and did not have as much to compare it to.

Street Fighter - I'm not sure what it is. I enjoyed moments of 4 but the series just doesn't excite me as it used to.

Mortal Kombat - Similar reasons. I think the animation is a huge turn off for me.

Mass Effec
t - Tired of the bioware formula. Gameplay progressively pushed to the action side of things and writing, stories and characters didn't really get better much. I still certainly have a casual interest and inside I want it to succeed and be good but I have little faith and 0 hype at all.

Dragon Age - Pretty much the same as Mass Effect. Maybe even worse. At least ME1-3 felt a bit more coherent. DA while somewhat enjoyable on their own are quite different from each other and have flaws of their own.

Star Ocean - Combat system alone will no longer save this series for me.

Guilty Gear - Love the gameplay, love the sounds, love the aesthetics but I feel ASW just repeatedly shits on the AU maybe even EU regions. Higher price, slower updates, slower releases and then add in revisions to the game sold for full price while we're still updates behind on their current release... Yes, I am salty.

God Eater - Back in PSP days this game was a lot of fun. It certainly shows its age now, in design more than anything. The world and lore might be interesting but execution of everything outside of combat is still stuck in PSP era. The combat itself is tied down by countless easy missions before you get any where at all. Too many. It simply becomes boring. Armors having no bonuses is a bit boring though I guess it lets you play fashion. UI could use some work... Soul Sacrifice, Monster Hunter, Freedom Wars and Toukiden spoilt me in many different ways and it left GE at an odd place.

Castlevania - Konami happened. I prefer the 2D games but enjoyed Lords of Shadow 1+2, 1 being better in my books.

Fire Emblem
- A bit burnt out, glad of its success but I am a bit bored of the same formula and the style they seem to be pushing for on some characters annoy me.
 

ngower

Member
FIFA/PES/Football Manager

FIFA became generic and iterative rather than evolutionary or even just mildly improved upon.

PES became a chore with the licensing, and though the game is still strong it's nowhere near what it should be.

Football Manager is way too time-consuming.
 
Not exactly a series but WoW. I loved Vanilla and Burning Crusade. Spent literal months playing and raiding. But about halfway through Wrath I cancelled and have never really looked back. A few different reasons, some of them no doubt petty, but just lost interest completely with what was on offer.
 

Forward

Member
Street Fighter.

The odd numbered iterations after 1 happened. The second of those was the muted death knell of my ***ks given.
 

Txαi

Member
After beating Twilight Princess and playing a little of Skyward Sword, I realized shrine puzzles aren't exactly my cup of tea anymore. The formula became old to me no matter how much they reinvent the Zelda universe. That and I don't have much patience to play games that requires too much time to beat these days. My casual interest in the series is more on the music and sound effects aspect.
 

Raptomex

Member
I'm going to go with Halo. I played the first 3 games so damn much after 3 released. I beat 4 when it came out and never went back. I haven't even played 5. I don't hate the series anymore I'm just kind of tired of it right now and it's been years.
Sonic

They all suck!
You have a casual interest in a series you think sucks?
 

NimbusD

Member
Halo. The reason was halo 4.

I even read the damn books, lol. I even attended an mlg tournament and got my ass kicked.

Really doubt I'll ever get into it, in my mind the series is over.
 

SKINNER!

Banned
Pretty much every game franchise this gen. MGS5 was the final nail.

I dunno, maybe I'm just not rabidly interested about video games anymore.
 
Uncharted. I was crazy for the first three games, but by the time the fourth game came out, I was burned out. I wanted to play other games with new concepts and stories. I still played U4 of course since it was a big part of me originally buying my PS4, but it didn't get me as excited. Especially the multiplayer.

Thankfully, it sounds like Naughty Dog is ready to move on to other things as well.

Also, I really like CoD 4: MW, Word at War, and MW2, but by the time Black Ops came out, I was burned out on Call of Duty. Things started to feel the same, and Black Op's multiplayer just felt so much less responsive and full of lag compared to MW2.
 
Mass Effect

Everything about Andromeda lost me. From the moment I saw the game had a dedicated button to go into a scanning mode I knew I was in for a bad time.

Walking around an open area pointing your camera at everything and holding down a button when it glows a certain color isn't fun, it's tedious and no game should require it.
 
Assassin's Creed.
Just stopped after Black Flag. Loved it but was getting tired of playing one every year, and in the end I just haven't gone back. Probably would've played Rogue if they'd released it on PS4.
 
Top Bottom