Games that you grew to appreciate.

[legato10]

What are some games that you did not like on your first few attempts, perhaps as a kid, and then later learned to appreciate? For me, it was old 8 bit NES RPGs like Dragon Warrior. I didn't have the patience at the time, and I got pissed when a damn slimb killed me.

Of course, as you can imagine after reading the title, I grew to appreciate the game.

What about you?

[IHatedSega]

Fighting Games in general, I didnt think of it like I do now. Now I can appreciate the technique they require. I never really got into them since the arcades were dead when I was old enough to really go to one, and I played some really bad ones my friends had. That Star Wars one on the N64 I particularly remember, yuck. NOw I discovered the Neo Geo franchises and gotten more into Street Fighter, I still dont like Mortal Kombat though.

[Bubble_Man]

I didn't like 1st-person dungeon crawlers years ago, but now I enjoy games like Phantasy Star and Megami Tensei.

[retroman]

This sounds weird but the Little Mermaid on the NES, never gave it the time or day back cause it was a girls game..yuck..now in my thirtys, my wife got me to play it, and its not that bad..pretty good for its time.

[Schiggidyd]

Growing up I always hated scrolling shootemups, now I'm crazy for them! They fit my busier lifestyle and I don't have the time to concentrate on an RPG like I used to.

[Rickstilwell1]

I used to hate Kid Icarus for NES because at the beginning you barely have any life and all you do is climb straight up. If you never saw a gameplay video or pictures of the game, you would think the whole game is like this. One big climb to the top with jack squat for moves and little way to defend yourself from the faster enemies like those little grim reapers that come flying when the big one freaks out at the sight of you.

With the help of savestates I finally discovered that once you get out of that first set of levels the game starts getting levels that scoll sideways and you finally start getting powerups and increases in the life meter. As well as occasional healing springs to step into to replenish your life meter. It is still a challenge but it is not so bad after all.

[Gregger]

The first game that pops into my head is Myst, it's not that I didn't appreciate the game as a kid, but more that I didn't appreciate it like I do now. Playing the game through without a strategy guide is an experience to be remembered. I can't wait to really delve myself into the ipad version on a long train trip I'll be taking in the reasonably near future.

[evildead2099]

Red Faction 2 (PC / Xbox / PS2)

Because regenerating health was still new to first person shooters and I did not know that RF2 used that feature, my non-stop shootouts with enemies made the game considerably more difficult than it should have been. Not only that, but the lack of a compelling intro movie (i.e. something comparable to Red Faction 1's intro movie) conditioned me to pay minimal attention to the game's cut scenes. Consequently, I thought the game's plot was boring until I finally beat the thing.

The plot twists that take place toward the end of the game inspired me to re-play the game. I found that I liked it a lot more the second time around - partly because I had a better sense of the game's story and partly because I learned to use regenerating health to my advantage.

Even though I like RF2 more than I used to, I consider the original Red Faction vastly superior to its sequel.

[Edmond Dantes]

By some cosmic coincidence, the first three posts in this topic are also things that happened to me, almost to a T.

[wiggyx]

Okami. I bought it because everything I read about it told me I would love it, but I had a really hard time getting into it (probably because of the culture barrier). I gave it another try about 6 months later and couldn't put it down. Just took the right mindset I guess. It's one of my favorite games at this point :D

[Bubble_Man]

Okami. I bought it because everything I read about it told me I would love it, but I had a really hard time getting into it (probably because of the culture barrier). I gave it another try about 6 months later and couldn't put it down. Just took the right mindset I guess. It's one of my favorite games at this point :D


I got the wii port and lost interest pretty quickly. Maybe I should give it another go.

[treismac]

Okami. I bought it because everything I read about it told me I would love it, but I had a really hard time getting into it (probably because of the culture barrier). I gave it another try about 6 months later and couldn't put it down. Just took the right mindset I guess. It's one of my favorite games at this point :D

Okami is one of my all time favorite games. The whole experience is nothing short of magic for a Lafcadio Hearn-esqu Japonphile such as myself. I think the game is the most fun on the PS2 but the Wii version's controls aren't too much of a hindrance. I've beaten the game twice on the PS2 and once on the Wii, and I imagine a fourth time will be forth coming on the Wii sometime in the next two to three years.

[sparf]

I have a few games like that, but honestly the biggest mental shift in gaming I ever made involved systems.


See, where I'm from, there are lots of little redneck towns of a few hundred people tucked away in valleys and hollows. My town was the sort of main hub to which they all connected before opening up into the much bigger (still small) cities nearby. In my town, everyone I knew who played video games owned an NES. I was trapped with an Atari 2600 for a long time after all of them were playing things like Super Mario Bros. and Metroid. What made it worse was that I was a big fan of the Mario and Captain N cartoons on Saturday mornings, and I had a subscription to Nintendo Power, so I was trapped in this world where I had all this knowledge but nowhere to apply it.

One day I was looking at video games at the toy store in the mall and was fascinated by this white box with this futuristic looking black console in it. I had no idea what it was. I'd never heard of it. It said Master System on it, and it came with a light gun just like the NES did. I don't remember the details but I remember my father referring to it, specifically, as a piece of junk. So I put it out of my mind and that Christmas I got my NES with Castlevania taped to it.

Fast forward, the SuperNES came out and my friends all got them and I was stuck playing the NES. I finally got a SNES a time later. But the big thing that happened was that I met students from another area of my county as we all joined at the same middle/high school. Their video game experience was quite different. They had had a Master System growing up, and they had a Genesis now. Well I wasn't about to acknowledge a console by another company as being anywhere near as good as my beloved SNES, where I could play Zelda and stuff. Oddly, I never once as a kid saw the Genesis Does commercials. I only ever saw WELCOMETOTHENEXTLEVEL and the Sega Scream.

So anyway, I went about with my horrible attitude about Sega products for a long time, and not even seeing Sonic 2 being played in the local Wal-Mart electronics section could stir me. Then one day I was sitting at the fire department (where I spent much of my time growing up, with my father) and one of the other kids of the department came in with his Genesis. I wasn't happy about it but I was bored and didn't have my SNES so I figured I could put up with it. He popped in Jurassic Park and, while it gets a lot of harsh retro-reviews now, as a kid this game was AMAZING. Playing as the Raptor and hunting Dr. Grant, or playing as Grant and having that arsenal of weapons, just made it really fun. And the graphics were gorgeous! THEN my friend put in Sonic and Knuckles and... holy crap. I was like "but, this plays so smoothly. It's gorgeous and the music is catchy! Man, what have I been missing!

I didn't get into SegaCD or 32X or any later Sega system until far after their demise, either. But that was the moment when I put to rest forever the console-war/console-fanboy mentality. There was no need in comparing which was 'better'. Were the games fun? Did I like them? That was the measure. And that's the measure I stand by to this day.

[Superman]

Growing up I learned to appreciate any game that I received. So there are a few games that many people don't think are that good, but I don't think they are that bad.

Reading through some of the responses, I see a couple of games that I will try to give another shot at: Dragon Warrior and Kid Icarus.

Growing up, I wasn't into RPGs at all, but over time I have found some that I did enjoy, such as Phantasy Star. I do remember giving Dragon Warrior a shot at my friend's house one time and getting killed by the blob. I think that is part of the reason why I didn't get into RPGs. But maybe if I get into it some more, it will pick up...

Along the same lines, over the years, I heard people keep talking about how great Kid Icarus was, but all I ever saw was some slow moving game that you had to take your character up, all the while with only some dinky arrows for a weapon. You're right Rick, I thought the whole game was like that, and it didn't appeal to me, so I never went any further.

[Froboz]

I'd never really liked Donkey Kong that much, so at first I didn't really give Super Mario Bros a chance. But it was the only game I had besides Zelda for the NES at first, so after I completed Zelda I got bored one day & started playing it, and soon found that it was loads of fun. Then when Super Mario World came out for the SNES, forget it... I tend to prefer Tolkienesque fantasy games, but Super Mario World won me over with its amazing game play, a good balance of fun & challenge, secret areas, underwater worlds, ice worlds, secret worlds, all that good stuff. But if it wasn't for the fact that I couldn't afford that many games at first, I might never have known how good the Mario Bros games were (including Donkey Kong Country, which I still miss playing sometimes).

[Polygon]

I can't really list one game specifically, but I can include an entire genre. For it's RPGs. As a kid I never cared for them. However, as those elements have crept into other genres I've grown to appreciate them and now I have quite a few on my wishlist.

[Andy]

I've come around on the whole 16-bit era, to be honest. Despite having both the SNES and Genesis, I remember around the early 90s I was really sick of mascot platformers and side-scrolling shooters and was hungry for something different. I'm not sure what I really wanted - I guess I missed the creativity of the early arcade/pre-crash era and yet I also wanted the kind of free-roaming gameplay we wouldn't start getting until later on with the explosion in sandbox games - but in retrospect I should have stuck with those 16-bit systems more because I overlooked a lot of great games, and now I think the aesthetics of 16-bit games are really beautiful. I like slick 3D graphics, sure, but well-drawn sprites get me most of all.

[IHatedSega]

By some cosmic coincidence, the first three posts in this topic are also things that happened to me, almost to a T.

Do you like Mortal Kombat? Im gonna play them soon, but Im having so much fun with Capcom vs SNK. Im only playing Mortal Kombat cause two of my close friends like it, and Im interested in learning and mastering every fighting game I can, so eventually I was gonna play this.

[Steven]

RPGs... and SNES Doom.

[Graham Mitchell]

In kind of like sparf in that I learned to appreciate a whole format, not just individual games (though there have been plenty of those).

Specifically, I used to dislike the neo geo. from what I could see of the system at arcades (which isn't much) the games didn't seem that much better than a snes game, and that what I perceived to be zero depth. Plus that plethora of fighting games that snk spewed out towards the end all seemed identical to my untrained eye. But a few years ago I snagged that snk collection for ps2. I started to really appreciate the subtleties that make the neo stand out from its contemporaries: huge sprites, detailed animations, liberal use of audio samples with minimal compression...plus I saw the grandeur that is neo turf masters. I ended up getting a consolized mvs and I now have a pretty huge neo collection. It's something special and unique, and I really appreciate it now.

[psychopat]

Gran Turismo.... I remember having a demo for it and hated cause I couldn't control the cars now it's my favorite racing game!

[Froboz]

I can't really list one game specifically, but I can include an entire genre. For it's RPGs. As a kid I never cared for them. However, as those elements have crept into other genres I've grown to appreciate them and now I have quite a few on my wishlist.

RPGs of the Final Fantasy type I could never get into until fairly recently. I don't mean necessarily the kind where you wander around with your group and then when you encounter hostiles the fighting is turn-based, I actually loved Curse of the Azure Bonds and would probably have loved Pool of Radiance as well. What I didn't like specifically was how the characters and enemies were fixed (immobile) during the entire battle. In other words, you couldn't run around behind the enemy, or fan your characters out, or flee, etc. I disliked this because it detracted from the realism. I preferred the games like Curse of the Azure Bonds, or like Legend of Zelda (where you just had one character & weren't stuck in one place during a battle except when you encountered the big bosses, when there was usually a realistic reason given for why you had to stay and fight, such as being locked in a room with the monster, etc). I remember I would rent a game sometimes without really reading the description carefully, thinking it would be similar to Zelda or CotAB in gameplay, only to be disappointed when it turned out to have a fighting system similar to Final Fantasy.

This all changed, however, when Lord of the Rings: The Third Age came out. I fell in love with that game and didn't mind that it used a similar battle system (although it did bug me that you couldn't employ all of your party at the same time... I mean, where are the other characters when they aren't fighting? Hanging out behind you having a smoke?)

Anyway, to make a long story short (too late!) because of that game I got used to this type of turn-based gameplay and gained a new appreciation for it. In fact, I can honestly say that I actually like it now! So of course now I'm dying to play all the Final Fantasy games, but especially the earlier ones because they remind me a lot of Legend of Zelda.

[SpaceHarrier]

Zelda 2

When I was a kid my parents rented this game for me and I thought it was weird, weird, weird. Didn't buy it until 2005, then I thought it was too difficult. Finally in 2012 I'm actively trying to play through the game, and enjoying it quite a bit. I still suck at it though. But now I enjoy the suck.

[Froboz]

I never bothered with it when it first came out because I wanted something similar to the first Zelda. I was so happy when Link to the Past came out! But you know, now that you mention it, I should really give it a try.

[A.C. Sativa]

Gran Turismo.... I remember having a demo for it and hated cause I couldn't control the cars now it's my favorite racing game!

I hated that game when it first came out too but eventually came around, mainly because when I started driving real cars I realized how realistic it is, and could apply things I did on real roads to the game.

[IHatedSega]

I finally beat Zelda 2 this past month, I cheated haha. I never got far in it as a kid, but i loved the graphics and music a ton so id play it and mess around. I like it more than the first one now that I beat both, but its really really hard.