Genre which you once hated..... that you now love!!

[Smashed Brother]

I couldn't find any other threads pertaining to this, so I figured that I'd start one. Sorry if I'm stepping on someone else's toes!

So, I'm curious.... has anybody done a 180 on a videogame genre that you absolutely despised in the past? Like, for example, as a kid, if you hated RPGs, thinking that "they're games that only nerds play", but now, you can't wait to invest another 100+ hours in the latest "nerd game"?

Let me start off with some of mine:

Back in the day, I absolutely detested puzzle games. Tetris, Bust-A-Move... anything of the sort. My mom always used to kick me off of the PS1 so she could play Bust-A-Move and I would just go cool my heels elsewhere. But now, I love puzzle games... I have all of the aformentioned titles and then some and I've logged dozens if not hundreds of hours on all of them collectively.

I also used to hate Turn-based, Tactical-Strategy games. It's not that I 'didn't get it', but I just found them to be too slow to satisfy my need for twitch gameplay. But, after picking up FF Tactics about 6 years ago and investing over 100 hours in it, I was hooked. Playing through most of the heavy-hitters in the genre has only made me crave more.

So, how about the rest of you? What are some of the genres that you didn't look twice at before, but now can't get enough of?

[ssjlance]

I've always had a hard time getting into strategy games, whether they're turned based or real time. Some friends of mine introduced me to StarCraft and I couldn't take it. It looked great, but no matter how much I practiced, I would fail miserably.

A little while later, I switched to using Linux exclusively. Of course, games and Linux don't have the best history. It's really a case of one or the other. So, I browsed to find some good Linux games. One that caught my eye was Battle for Wesnoth. Turn based strategy game. Much simpler than most, and it got me into it. Ended up playing Final Fantasy Tactics and loving it.

Still, I can't play StarCraft.

And on a side note, another game I found was Armagetron. Tron bored me to tears whenever I played it, but this 3D recreation of the classic lightbike game is still played often between my brother and I.

[DigitalSpace]

I wouldn't say I hated puzzle games as a kid, but Dr. Mario was the only one I cared to play back then.

[DeputyMoniker]

RPG. I didn't have any and I didn't understand them until the 32 bit generation. I got a hold of BoF2 for my SNES in 1997. I loved it!! I regret missing out on them when they were new.

[Fuyukaze]

Racing games. Back when Pole Position first came out, I loved it. After playing the 2600 version I hated it. For the most part during the nes, snes, and PS1 days I still hated racing games. It wasnt untill I played Tokyo Extreme Racer on the Dreamcast that I started giving them a try again. After I got that, TXR2, and MSR, I came to love racing games again. There are a few franchises I wont touch unless I'm paid (burnout, need for speed, test drive, EA in general) but now days, I'll even play series I'm not overly crazy over like Gran Turismo.

[DeputyMoniker]

Racing games. Back when Pole Position first came out, I loved it. After playing the 2600 version I hated it. For the most part during the nes, snes, and PS1 days I still hated racing games. It wasnt untill I played Tokyo Extreme Racer on the Dreamcast that I started giving them a try again. After I got that, TXR2, and MSR, I came to love racing games again. There are a few franchises I wont touch unless I'm paid (burnout, need for speed, test drive, EA in general) but now days, I'll even play series I'm not overly crazy over like Gran Turismo.

You don't like NFS? Have you played Hot Pursuit or High Stakes? Those are the two I like most. How about Ridge Racer or Wipeout?

[JunkTheMagicDragon]

growing up, i hated jrpgs because of final fantasy. i though it was pretty stupid for my guys to just stand there and get hit when they could hit as fast as my thumb could go in other games.

was finally convinced to try them again when my friend got ffx. hated it at first, but i grew to love the tactical combat and the story. still not a big fan of the anime art style or some of the genre conventions of some jrpgs (stupid hair, anyone?), but i'm working on it.

intermittently working my way through ff12 now (i'm 40hrs in and i'm not even halfway through the storyline). want to try lost odyssey next.

[GnawRadar]

Fighting games in general used to be my worst enemy. I remember playing Mortal Kombat with my little brother and he would always beat my ass and all he would do is button mash. It totally ruined the experience and over the years whenever we played a fighting game he would do the same thing and whoop my ass, until recently that is. I just got back into the fighting scene about 4 months ago with DOA4. I picked it up just for fun and in the beginning the button-mash ass beating did happen, but then I slowly learned how to block and counter and learned the moves and no matter what he did he couldn't beat me after that. Then hanging out at Next Level Videogames in South Jersey at one of the South Jersey Classic meetings I just decided to play Mark of the Wolves on his Neo Geo MVS and my life changed. I wasn't good at first but now I'm addicted to that and 2D fighters in general and since then I've bought King of Fighters 2002/2003, 2006, XI, Guilty Gear X2 Reload, Capcom vs. SNK 2 and an arcade stick for my PS2 and XBOX 360. Also, whenever go to Next Level you'll probably see me playing MOTW on the MVS and because I love it so much I'm gonna have a MOTW tournament next month! So in the last 4 or so months I've completely turned a hate of fighting games to a love of them.

[PentiumMMX]

RPGs. No matter what, I just couldn't get into them (I kinda liked Pokemon, but I was worse than the kids who had 4 fire moves on Charizard at the time) until Paper Mario came along. I loved it, and since then, I've moved onto bigger RPGs (Chrono Trigger, EarthBound, etc.)

[RulerStabInTheEye27]

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[TheBenenator]

I used to play FPS games like Halo until many hours of playing i came to a realization that these games are terrible. Eventually i got into Doom and Ken's Labyrinth and immediately i fell in love with the genre again.

...Doom *is* a FPS.


As for me, there are several genres I used to hate. For the most part, I still hate all of them (sports titles and arcade-style fighting games, mostly).

But...I definitely like action RPGs more than I used to. Not enough to finish Occarina of Time before Final Fantasy 8 or Megaman Zero 4, though.

[Drixxel]

...Doom *is*a FPS.

Right, the poster said it acted as a reintroduction to FPSs. There may have been a misunderstanding.

...i fell in love with the genre again.

The closest I've come to this complete turnaround of opinion on a genre is with sports games, I'd say. I'm still totally disinterested in the incremental yearly update sorts, but arcade style sports games have definitely risen in appeal over the years.

[TheBenenator]

Right, the poster said it acted as a reintroduction to FPSs. There may have been a misunderstanding.

.... Heh heh....sorry.

[Shriek of the Mutilated]

Well, I wouldn't say I love the genre now, but for most of my life, I absolutely despised console RPGs. I just couldn't get myself to perceive them as anything other than simplified and "kiddified" computer RPGs. That was until I played Arc the Lad, which tickled me in all the right places and made me give other, similar titles a try, including Suikoden 1&2, both of which now belong among my all-time favorite games.

[Ryudo]

RPG's

I hated RPG's for the longest time. In 2004 I was bored of games and had no idea what to play. A buddy of mine suggested Skies of Arcadia. I LOVED IT! Then he got me on Grandia II. LOVED IT! Ever since it's my most loved genre.

[Sparkster]

Yeah, I think I was anti-RPG at first too. And it was for no good reason. I never really played them, thinking that it was all about plodding gameplay, fetch quests - like 2600's Raiders of the Lost Ark, but on a much bigger scale. I tried Dragon Warrior, and loved the idea of getting stronger, upgrading weapons, talking to people to get clues on what to do next, non-linearity.

It's possible that I didn't want to play RPGs because my big brother was anti-RPG. Back then it was important to me to fit in with the crowd.

[kupomogli]

Third person shooters. Shmups, third person shooters, first person shooters, doesn't matter. I still dislike most shmups and first person shooters, but because RPGs and platformers have mostly sucked this gen, I put more time into different genres and third person shooters have become some of my favorite games.

[BydoEmpire]

Honestly, no. There are lots of genres I'm pretty much done with (either due to lack of time or I feel like the genre has gotten stale), but none I used to hate and now love.