Post Your Retirements

A fusion of Post Your Wins and What happens when you do not enjoy a game?, here's a thread where we can vent about the games we tried, but decided they weren't worth counting in the "backlog" anymore. Needn't be as image-heavy as Post Your Wins, but if you want to screenshot your ragequit moment, that's fun!

My inaugural retirement: Jet Set Radio. Got it as a gift, so I put in like five hours trying to power through in hopes something would click. But between terrible button mapping choices ("spray graffiti" and "recenter camera" are the same button, so if you miss the often-tiny window for spraying a thing, the camera whirls around and disorients you), blistering difficulty, and generally janky gameplay, I couldn't do it. I'm guessing the series got traction for its music and its cel-shaded visuals, not its systems...

Tour are France 2014, my only retirement this far, one of the dullest games I've ever played, I actually fell asleep with the controller in my hand once whilst playing!

Medievil : Everyone seems to love it, I just can't get into it.

Resident Evil Revelations : It's a linear game where you have to progress from point A to point B with awkward camera angles (3DS)

Rayman Origins : I find it boring.

Even though I completed it, I "rage" retired and uninstalled Operation Flashpoint: Red River around mission 6 I think it was. It was a night mission, and like nearly every level in that game it ends with you basically running away from the fight, so you're falling back, holding a location for a while fighting off waves of enemies then told to fall back a bit further to another location to do the same. On the last segment of this you are told to hold the position a little bit longer so that your teammates can fall back first while you cover their escape. The very moment that objective popped up, the team I was supposed to defend would die, with no ability from me to even get to defend them, and you'd have to do the whole charade all over again. I can't stress how annoying it was to do that repeatedly and have it fail the same way multiple times in a row.

Usually after I rage uninstall something (not like it happens often) I usually have an idea I should have tried earlier, so I loaded it back up and made sure to baby sit those NPC's the whole way back so absolutely nothing at any stage would interfere with them, and it paid off, but it just wasn't worth the hassle at the end of the day. I disliked it a great deal and would suggest to anyone else to treat it as an instant retirement game unless you really, really want to play an ugly, watered down mil-sim wannabe.

Killzone 1. Dated controls, floaty movement, uninteresting characters, despite being an interplanetary war felt like a crappy WW2 game. Never again

Only Outlast 2 that games was just a run for your life,no strategy,no stealth just run. Enemy always find you if you try to hide. And running was awful,one rock and you will be stoped.

There is only 2 games I can think of, The Stalin Subway: Red Veil and Painkiller: Resurrection.

One is a low-budget FPS developed in Russia, which is so bugged and unfair, you'll be hitting F5/F9 more than you shoot and that's no fun for me. Enemies would have inhuman hitscan accuracy and always hit you first, no matter what strategy you used. There is one particular level where you stick out of a car and shoot oncoming vehicles and they would shoot you before you had chance to even realise where it came from. Or their vehicles would not appear at all. Yeah, no.

The other is a standalone expansion for the original Painkiller made by an Austrian team. Atrocious loading times, huge empty levels with nonsencical secret locations (yes, the original wasn't all that great with secrets, either), enemies popping out of thin air with no indication and ridiculous requirements for Tarot card unlocks. And that's just a fraction of all the bad things. Quit it after barely finishing the 3rd level and never gave it a second chance.

Medievil : Everyone seems to love it, I just can't get into it.

Resident Evil Revelations : It's a linear game where you have to progress from point A to point B with awkward camera angles (3DS)

Rayman Origins : I find it boring.

Rayman Origins : I find it boring.

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This site says I have retired exactly 50 games so far - with that in mind, I will just highlight the two most recent games. They are Project Snowblind and Warhammer 40K: Fire Warrior, both for the PS2. Both FPS' that have aged poorly and I was having absolutely zero fun with.

Rayman Origins : I find it boring.

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This site says I have retired exactly 50 games so far - with that in mind, I will just highlight the two most recent games. They are Project Snowblind and Warhammer 40K: Fire Warrior, both for the PS2. Both FPS' that have aged poorly and I was having absolutely zero fun with.

I need to stop recommending games to people :P

@TheOro44, don't blame you for dropping Painkiller: Resurrection, it was quite dire indeed.

I need to stop recommending games to people :P

@TheOro44, don't blame you for dropping Painkiller: Resurrection, it was quite dire indeed.

I bought Project Snowblind for like £1 before I asked you about it, so no sweat!

Rayman Origins : I find it boring.

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This site says I have retired exactly 50 games so far - with that in mind, I will just highlight the two most recent games. They are Project Snowblind and Warhammer 40K: Fire Warrior, both for the PS2. Both FPS' that have aged poorly and I was having absolutely zero fun with.

50's not bad, but I recently hit my 300th game retired -- as compared to ~450 completed. Some recent highlights on that list have been Sunset, Persona 4, The Witness, and Undertale, all of which I think are good to great games, just not for me.

Even though I completed it, I "rage" retired and uninstalled Operation Flashpoint: Red River around mission 6 I think it was. It was a night mission, and like nearly every level in that game it ends with you basically running away from the fight, so you're falling back, holding a location for a while fighting off waves of enemies then told to fall back a bit further to another location to do the same. On the last segment of this you are told to hold the position a little bit longer so that your teammates can fall back first while you cover their escape. The very moment that objective popped up, the team I was supposed to defend would die, with no ability from me to even get to defend them, and you'd have to do the whole charade all over again. I can't stress how annoying it was to do that repeatedly and have it fail the same way multiple times in a row.

Usually after I rage uninstall something (not like it happens often) I usually have an idea I should have tried earlier, so I loaded it back up and made sure to baby sit those NPC's the whole way back so absolutely nothing at any stage would interfere with them, and it paid off, but it just wasn't worth the hassle at the end of the day. I disliked it a great deal and would suggest to anyone else to treat it as an instant retirement game unless you really, really want to play an ugly, watered down mil-sim wannabe.

I actually started having fun with re:r near the end, but i forgot why since it was a month ago!

Also to add my two cents to the topic, i have retired games but not that often. The first may have been bomberman hero for the nintendo 64. I remember there was a forest level i could not lass where you had to wall jump, and i could not figure out what to do.

Final Fantasy 4 heroes of light. I started playing this many years ago and then got stuck, tried to pick it up again but I'm at a point in the game where directions are vague and would need some form of guide to get up to speed. The thing is this game is kinda old school too so not easy to put down and start playing again. I haven't written it off entirely but close to, a shame since the FF series is my main and favourite one, but I also have so many other games to play (like FFXV!) so perhaps when (if) the backlog is empty..

I'd be here all day! I have retired almost 200 games, which is half as many games as I have completed.

Sometimes this is because I got rid of a system and never completed a game. Sometimes it's because of save-game corruption or loss, or a game breaking bug. Sometimes it's because I got distracted by other games and couldn't get back into it. And sometimes it's because I've got stuck at a particularly difficult point and I can't get past it.

But mostly it's because I've not liked the game, or not enjoyed it and got bored, or just because it was completely and utterly rubbish.

And I'm ruthless in that regard. Life's too short.

Only Outlast 2 that games was just a run for your life,no strategy,no stealth just run. Enemy always find you if you try to hide. And running was awful,one rock and you will be stoped.

I was really disappointed with Outlast 2 as well, especially since I really liked the first one. I retired it as well.

I've got over 400 retired games, so I really shouldn't list them here, but I am very quick to retire games I am not enjoying. Most of it is PC games, since that is my primary platform, though a small chunk is SNES from when I decided to try playing each SNES game alphabetically to see how far I would get. I really underestimated how much of each console's library is crap.

Hah, I wasn't expecting people would post their entire retirement history, more comment on them as they happen. (No more than Post Your Wins is about listing every game you've ever beaten...)

I only have like 10 'retired' games here on howlongtobeat, so I could mention at least a few of those.

//N.P.P.D. Rush// - The Milk of Ultra violet - This is probably one of the worst games that i've played (Well, from games that are actually playable without any major game breaking bugs). It's apparently about 5-30 minutes long once you know what you're supposed to do, but I never really understood what that is. You're apparently some kind of police officer that is supposed to enforce law and do something about the junkies in the city. Maze-like level design, short camera distance, bullet hell and weird screen effects make it extremely hard to get anything done. Where i'm supposed to go and where am I now are questions that you constantly ask yourself while you're trying to figure out what's going on. Apparently there's some deep market manipulation stuff and whatnot that you're supposed to do to get anywhere but I never saw such things in the game. Forums are filled with the developer showing his love for his creation and asking people to beat his best scores for rewards even though there's barely anyone playing this game. If you try to ask what you're supposed to do in the game you're most likely considered a troll and you'll never get an answer.

Thomas was alone - This is one of those games that I never really understood. It's usually praised by everyone, but I personally got bored after 35 minutes of playing. Puzzles are very repetitive and simple. Sure there's some "deep" story behind all of it, but I really didn't find it worth it since the gameplay was quite boring. If it was more challenging, sure it could be a good game (I checked some youtube videos for the later levels, and those weren't much more challenging).

Wasteland Angel - Never even got to play this game. I tried playing it but the controls didn't work. So I tried to rebind them but they didn't think about controller dead zones so it instantly set everything to right or left controller stick and then I wasn't able to play at all anymore. I was too lazy to even bother with reinstalling the game to get working keybinds.

Atom Zombie Smasher - One of those games that I actually enjoyed playing, but for some reason it started freezing and crashing so I never got to finish it.

That's about it. I retire tons of games, but I rarely "retire" them here on HLTB. Now that we have a thread for it, I might post here some thoughts why I retired some games in the future.

At first I thought that a retired game is a game that you stopped playing but will continue to play in the future... Hmm... I gues there should be a category for games "On Pause" or "On Hold" then.

I have 2 games "On Hold":

1. Empire: Total War. I have completed the "Road to Independence" campaign. My plan is to play the main campaign in the future...

2. Fallout 3: Game of the Year. I have completed all the main quests and all possible side quests in the main game. The Capital Wasteland map is completely explored. My plan is to play the remaining DLC's in the future...

I like to separate the main game from DLC's and play these separately to avoid getting bored after playing for too long. ETW is an exception because I didn't expect my Road to Independence campaign would take so long.

I have noticed that most of you people have a ton of "small games", indie games and simply "not AAA" games playing or in the backlog. I only have about 40-50 games on my mind. Some of them I already have and some I'm going to buy, but they're all AAA games. My backlog will take many years to complete so I can't even think about indie games. I'm a perfectionist so I need double the time normal people need to complete the game and that doesn't mean 100%. I simply like to take my time and observe the environment and stuff...

I only have like 10 'retired' games here on howlongtobeat, so I could mention at least a few of those.

//N.P.P.D. Rush// - The Milk of Ultra violet - This is probably one of the worst games that i've played (Well, from games that are actually playable without any major game breaking bugs). It's apparently about 5-30 minutes long once you know what you're supposed to do, but I never really understood what that is. You're apparently some kind of police officer that is supposed to enforce law and do something about the junkies in the city. Maze-like level design, short camera distance, bullet hell and weird screen effects make it extremely hard to get anything done. Where i'm supposed to go and where am I now are questions that you constantly ask yourself while you're trying to figure out what's going on. Apparently there's some deep market manipulation stuff and whatnot that you're supposed to do to get anywhere but I never saw such things in the game. Forums are filled with the developer showing his love for his creation and asking people to beat his best scores for rewards even though there's barely anyone playing this game. If you try to ask what you're supposed to do in the game you're most likely considered a troll and you'll never get an answer.

Thomas was alone - This is one of those games that I never really understood. It's usually praised by everyone, but I personally got bored after 35 minutes of playing. Puzzles are very repetitive and simple. Sure there's some "deep" story behind all of it, but I really didn't find it worth it since the gameplay was quite boring. If it was more challenging, sure it could be a good game (I checked some youtube videos for the later levels, and those weren't much more challenging).

Wasteland Angel - Never even got to play this game. I tried playing it but the controls didn't work. So I tried to rebind them but they didn't think about controller dead zones so it instantly set everything to right or left controller stick and then I wasn't able to play at all anymore. I was too lazy to even bother with reinstalling the game to get working keybinds.

Atom Zombie Smasher - One of those games that I actually enjoyed playing, but for some reason it started freezing and crashing so I never got to finish it.

That's about it. I retire tons of games, but I rarely "retire" them here on HLTB. Now that we have a thread for it, I might post here some thoughts why I retired some games in the future.

You didn't miss much with Wasteland Angel. It's not a terrible game, but it's not particularly good in any way either. It's vaguely competent, but it starts recycling enemies and objectives just a few levels in, making it get really repetitive and tedious really quickly. It's filed in my "worthless crap" category on Steam.

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome, PC- Just really not my kind of game. I feel like it could have been fun but I didn't enjoy it at all. Might possibly return to it in the future to try it again but I'm not too hopeful it'll escape the retired list.

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, PC- It was fun with a friend, but I couldn't handle the stress from being alone. I know fully well that it's one of those games where practice makes perfect but I couldn't. It was too much. Tried for like a week to get into it but I raged way too much for it to be enjoyable.

Deus Ex: Invisible War, PC- It was bad and after like 4 hours of trying so hard to get into it it wasn't working out.

Evil Genius, PC- I feel like this probably is a good game, but the tutorial was long and boring and civilians kept getting into my base and messing it all up before I could do anything. Just really frustrating and that made it not fun.

Gish, PC- Didn't love the controls and couldn't get into it, in large part because of that.

Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns, 3DS- So far the low point of the Harvest Moon series after they kicked out the original developers. I didn't mind A New Beginning but this just felt... not good. Gave it a good 6 or 7 hours to try to get into it, since HM games tend to be long-haul type games, but the mechanics felt too simplified, the separation of animals and crops was an interesting concept but felt wrong, and overall it just wasn't enjoyable.

Ibb and Obb, PC- If I'm controlling more than one character at the same time it has to be SUPER simple controls, otherwise I get confused and mess up, dumb as that probably sounds. I think it's co-op so if I could find a friend that wants to play it I might un-retire it, but the chances of that happening are probably slim so I've moved on.

Jolly Rover, PC- The pirates are dogs. There are dog puns. That's all it has going for it. I know point and click games tend to be pretty random in terms of using items with items but this had some of the most convoluted solutions I've ever seen. Add in the loading time between screens being too long and it was the opposite of fun.

Metrico, Vita- Eh, it was fun enough but I just couldn't get into it. Moved on to better things.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky, PC- Everyone seems to say that this was the better of the first to STALKERs, but I didn't see it. Tried picking this one up like 5 times and every time it fell short for me, so I had to draw the line.

Super Monday Night Combat, PC- Couldn't get into it.

The Journey Down: Chapter One, PC- Boring.

Trouble in the Manor, PC- Got this one for free from the developer so a friend and I could play on our youtube channel a few years ago. According to the reviews it's a good game but we uh... had a different experience. The menu had placeholders that went nowhere, there were no servers to play on (and even after creating our own by opening up ports to host nothing showed up), and even after hours of trying we couldn't get it up and running.

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome, PC- Just really not my kind of game. I feel like it could have been fun but I didn't enjoy it at all. Might possibly return to it in the future to try it again but I'm not too hopeful it'll escape the retired list.

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, PC- It was fun with a friend, but I couldn't handle the stress from being alone. I know fully well that it's one of those games where practice makes perfect but I couldn't. It was too much. Tried for like a week to get into it but I raged way too much for it to be enjoyable.

Deus Ex: Invisible War, PC- It was bad and after like 4 hours of trying so hard to get into it it wasn't working out.

Evil Genius, PC- I feel like this probably is a good game, but the tutorial was long and boring and civilians kept getting into my base and messing it all up before I could do anything. Just really frustrating and that made it not fun.

Gish, PC- Didn't love the controls and couldn't get into it, in large part because of that.

Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns, 3DS- So far the low point of the Harvest Moon series after they kicked out the original developers. I didn't mind A New Beginning but this just felt... not good. Gave it a good 6 or 7 hours to try to get into it, since HM games tend to be long-haul type games, but the mechanics felt too simplified, the separation of animals and crops was an interesting concept but felt wrong, and overall it just wasn't enjoyable.

Ibb and Obb, PC- If I'm controlling more than one character at the same time it has to be SUPER simple controls, otherwise I get confused and mess up, dumb as that probably sounds. I think it's co-op so if I could find a friend that wants to play it I might un-retire it, but the chances of that happening are probably slim so I've moved on.

Jolly Rover, PC- The pirates are dogs. There are dog puns. That's all it has going for it. I know point and click games tend to be pretty random in terms of using items with items but this had some of the most convoluted solutions I've ever seen. Add in the loading time between screens being too long and it was the opposite of fun.

Metrico, Vita- Eh, it was fun enough but I just couldn't get into it. Moved on to better things.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky, PC- Everyone seems to say that this was the better of the first to STALKERs, but I didn't see it. Tried picking this one up like 5 times and every time it fell short for me, so I had to draw the line.

Super Monday Night Combat, PC- Couldn't get into it.

The Journey Down: Chapter One, PC- Boring.

Trouble in the Manor, PC- Got this one for free from the developer so a friend and I could play on our youtube channel a few years ago. According to the reviews it's a good game but we uh... had a different experience. The menu had placeholders that went nowhere, there were no servers to play on (and even after creating our own by opening up ports to host nothing showed up), and even after hours of trying we couldn't get it up and running.

Evil Genius is such a weird game, it's an interesting premise and decently executed but on the whole it's just so tedious and mediocre. It gets much worse once Special Agents start showing up to your base, they are invincible and unless you make very elaborate traps they just wander around causing havoc. And I agree with you on Gish that's one I retired a while ago, I may attempt it again at some point but wrestling with controls instead of challenge put me off the game too.

I'm surprised to hear that about Stalker: Clear Sky being considered the better Stalker game though, nearly everything I've read on the Stalker series has Call of Pripyat coming out on top and to skip Clear Sky entirely. Always made me a bit sad to see since I liked it a fair but I've never seen or heard good things said about it, though I can understand why people wouldn't enjoy it as much though.

Yay more people who couldn't get into Gish. People made such a big deal about it back in the day, but I had the same problems as both of you.

Evil Genius is such a weird game, it's an interesting premise and decently executed but on the whole it's just so tedious and mediocre. It gets much worse once Special Agents start showing up to your base, they are invincible and unless you make very elaborate traps they just wander around causing havoc. And I agree with you on Gish that's one I retired a while ago, I may attempt it again at some point but wrestling with controls instead of challenge put me off the game too.

I'm surprised to hear that about Stalker: Clear Sky being considered the better Stalker game though, nearly everything I've read on the Stalker series has Call of Pripyat coming out on top and to skip Clear Sky entirely. Always made me a bit sad to see since I liked it a fair but I've never seen or heard good things said about it, though I can understand why people wouldn't enjoy it as much though.

I really REALLY wanted to get into Evil Genius but the tediousness and stuff just totally ruined it for me. But I love the idea of being an evil mastermind and growing an empire... they're making a new one though so maybe it'll be better? And yeah, when the difficulty is making the controls work and it's a challenge to get across one screen it's uh... not great.

To be fair I haven't talked to TOO many people about the Stalker series. Played and loved the first one (aside from that final section with the super high pitched anomalies, that was legit painful) and the friend that got me into it raved about Clear Sky. Said it was hands down the best... although at the time Pripyat was either not out yet or had just released, so... xD

Well, all right. If we're dumping out our lists, I'm down! I have 22 entries in the list, and some are not especially noteworthy, but here's a few that are worth mention.

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs: I loved Dark Descent, so I eagerly pounced on this sequel once it reached a decent price... and I immediately got stuck. Not a puzzle I couldn't solve or a monster I couldn't figure out how to evade, just a situation where I'd explored everything in sight but there was no indication of how I was supposed to move forward. I put it aside, started a new game a year or so later: same result. I could probably hit up a walkthrough if I'm desperate, but the letdown has me unexcited about the possibility.

Braid: Indie darling. Everyone loves Braid. Except me, apparently! I enjoyed its core gameplay, but some of the puzzles got to be so obtuse and precise I wasn't enjoying the constant bafflement and failure. When I discovered that you basically need to 100% the game in order to beat it, I noped out.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Skyrim: I get a huge kick out of futzing with mods. Once I get twenty-five hours or so in to the game itself, I burn out. Not enough variety to the action, perhaps.

Hammerwatch: AKA "Dungeon of Kiting". Tried this a couple of times, love the visual style and exploration. It just drags on too long with "same stuff, bigger numbers", and some of the boss battles are unpleasant and unfair.

World of Goo: This game has a super clever concept, but there's something about the physics-based nature of it that grated on me. If I've figured out the solution to a puzzle, I don't like spending hours fine-tuning the execution of it in order to get a passing grade--the "aha" should proceed swiftly to a "what's next"?