• any 3d Zelda games. I didn't play OOT until I was in my late 20s and it was awful (specifically controls and camera). I tried watching people Speedrun it or do the randomizer, but the sound link makes when rolling (which most did most of the time) drove me crazy. BotW seemed like something I would like on paper, but Nintendo just had to work their new controls into some shrines and I found it frustrating. Also didn't like the breaking weapons. Link Between Worlds (神様のトライフォース　２) sits in a weird place. I mostly liked it, but hated the gimmicky 3d bits on the 3DS.
• goldeneye for the same reasons - felt like a step backward and I had no nostalgia for it, playing it for the first time in my 30s.
• anything with the N64 controller for the same reasons. It felt so unnatural and weird.
• most roguelikes (but not all). Losing to random chance is annoying. Some randomness is of course fine
• dark souls and the like. Watch boss. Die. Try again. Die. To me, that's boring. I'd rather have in-world ways of learning about the boss.
• pokemon. I was already in high school, working part time, and doing a lot of school stuff (band/theatre/sports) and just never got into it. I tried Pokemon go and didn't care for it (but did like Dragon Quest Walk that came out later)
• Final Fantasy 7 -- hated the camera and other similar things. Story and all was fine
• Most 3rd person shooters (with the exception of Just Cause). I would line up the perfect shot in Sniper Elite only to shoot the few pixels of the corner of something I couldn't see because my character's dumb body was in the way
• starfox. I was already playing better games like that on Amiga and other platforms, so it felt like a step back to me

All the recent PlayStation Studios games.

I've never been a fan of the direction the Fallout series took after Fallout 2. FO Tactics and BoS aside, Bethesda's handling of Fallout 3 and onwards really didn't resonate with me.

As someone who enjoyed the story and RPG aspects of the earlier games, the shift to fast-paced shooter mechanics was off-putting.

Back in the day, getting my ass handed to me in Quake III, Half-Life, and Unreal Tournament wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs, just something to endure. Discovering turn-based combat where I could strategize and plan my moves, rather than relying on quick reflexes, made me actually enjoy gaming. The shift away from that gameplay style made the series lose its appeal for me.

Outer Wilds: too boring for me.

RDR2, Horizon series, probably many more others I don't even remember: a lot of busywork in an empty uninteresting giant open world.

Souls-like: I understand why people like them but it's not the kind of challenge I like.

Star Wars anything, Shadow of Mordor, Hogwarts Legacy: couldn't care less about the setting.

I think these are about it for "generally liked" kind of games. There's some more about less popular stuff but in general this is it.

Hard agree on the Zelda example.

Survival elements without base building?

Combat that feels closer to Dark Souls than Zelda? Odd.

I'll add in a genre rather than a game: Battle Royal games.

We used to play a variety of games. Halo, warcraft, Smite, League of Legends... Now I have no gaming friends left as they refuse to play anything other than Apex Legends or the latest greatest Call of Duty.

Any sports game, like FIFA or Madden.

I'm gonna get a lot of flak for this...

I really don't like Sekiro. Like, at all.

I played the inspiration for years (Tenchu) and loved that so much, but Sekiro just feels hollow in comparison. I know it's not a stealth game, nor is it trying to be, but I can't help but feel like the cliffs and stuff are just "cheap" ways of making the game more difficult. Idk, maybe I'm just not ninja enough lol...

Speaking of stealth, Dishonored. I REALLY wanted to love this game. It's just not open enough for my taste. There's only usually one main walkway to the objective (I say walkway, but there are of course roofs and stuff you can teleport to - I'm just saying, I wish you could get on the actual roofs of buildings Assassin's Creed style or explore the city open-world style). Cool story, cool theme, but the gameplay falls through for me. I felt the same way about MGS4.

Also Red Dead Redemption was meh for me. Could have been better, could have been worse. Undead Nightmare was great though.

Souls games, cod and most other FPS games namely the multiplayer, god of war, RDR2

The 2 that you mentioned and God of War 2018.

I honestly don't get what people love so much about that game, the combat is simple and kinda sloppy, boss and enemy variety is non-existent and traversal is a joke.

I get that the story is good but it's not so good that I can look past everything else, it even has a few big issues like the amount of times the game throws a dumb obstacle in your way to justify some fetch quest like the black mist.

For games that are in genres that I'd actually play:

Final Fantasy 6 (3): I grew up with the NES, and when we got a SNES I got whatever games I could from the $20 bin at Toys R Us. I had some friends who were a bit better off that loaned me some games, and I eventually managed to get my hands on a copy of Chrono Trigger (as well as other RPGs like Breath of Fire), but when I borrowed FFIII from one of them I was just... underwhelmed. I didn't really care for the characters, it felt pretty slow initially, and I remember getting to a bit with a bunch of moogles in the party and I just put it down and never went back.

I've since tried to play it a few times here and there, but it never really manages to hook me... but people sing the praises of it high and low and I just don't really get it because I can't get over the hump.

The Witcher 1/2/3: I just really don't like the combat, honestly. I've tried playing all three, and managed to get enough time into them to appreciate the good bits (voice acting, story, quest lines) but the main meat and potatoes for me in a game are exploration and combat, and only one of those really works for me in those games. I had a better time in the first game, all things considered, because I guess I was willing to allow a bit of jankiness from an older game, but I bounced off Witcher 2 pretty quickly combat-wise, and didn't manage to get more than many 1/3 to 1/2 way through Witcher 3 before I just admitted that I wasn't having fun.

Persona 3: I got into the games with P4G on my Vita, so part of this is 'going backwards is hard' in terms of QoL improvements and what not. But I also played the PSP port of Persona 2 (whichever one was actually ported in English) and had a good time (not so much with the PS1 version of the one that didn't get the English PSP port... that one was rough) so I guess its just the game didn't resonate with me as much as the other ones did... Maybe it was the characters or maybe it was the cuts that were made for the P3P version of the game, but it just didn't hit the same.

Otherwise, a lot of military-style FPS games (stuff like Halo or Destiny or Timesplitters or even Goldeneye 64 are/were fun), the more recent sports titles (up to the Dreamcast/PS2 I was fine with them, but more realism doesn't do anything for me), and stuff like MOBA or visual novels or 'walking sims' or battle royale or whatever those asynchronous horror games just don't tick the boxes for me in terms of what I want from a video game.

The ones you mentioned, as well as:

• GTA V - I disliked the characters, story was uninteresting, and gameplay felt like a downgrade from GTA IV; graphics were the main attraction there, and that's not enough for me
• Borderlands - my fastest "nope, not for me" game I've played; I don't like loot in games, and that's basically the entire point of the game
• Skyrim - found it very bland coming from Morrowind; side quests weren't as interesting, which is pretty much the entire reason I liked Morrowind
• any competitive FPS (Apex Legends, COD, etc) - I play most games once the get the story, mechanics, etc

Kingdom Hearts. I like action RPGs but KH is too weird and I don't dig the whole Disney crossover thing at all.

Unless Pokemon counts, I don't think I have ever enjoyed a JRPG. I have zero idea what people see in these except weebs getting horny over anime girls.

Dark Souls 3 and only Dark Souls 3. I love Dark Souls 1 and 2, Elden Ring, Bloodborne is my favorite game, and Sekiro. But Dark Souls 3 is just so boring and unfun. Even the ingame world feels uninterested in this game, (because it kinda is over the whole age of fire thing.) Everything is gross and brown it just makes exploring kind of icky. DS1 had a good balance of gross and majestic locations and enemies. DS2 suffered from too few monsters and too many generic armored knights, and locations felt too clean and empty.

It feel like this game does not like you to diversify your build. Armor is basically cosmetic, and offers very slight damage protection. Poise sucks, and is basically removed, so making a tank build kind of sucks. Its so damn fast and doesn't give you a ton of options like Elden Ring does. DS3 is certainly the most actiony of the action rpgs, and idk, I'd like more rpg. I remember watching a video about how playing these games at level 1 is the intended and best way to play. I can kind of see that, I think that discredits a lot of the rpg elements in these games. I always saw permadeath runs as the more fun way to play, especially in DS2, that game was like designed to be run as an arcade game.

The game also feels like it rides on nostalgia pretty hard. Anor Londo? Thats here. Andre? He's here. Firelink Shrine? Thats here, too. Artorias? There's a whole cult trying to cosplay as him. I actually think DS2 handled this sort of thing better, it being so far it the future from DS1 that most characters and places from 1 are only legend or ancient history. I think it gave 2 a sense of discovery, even if DS2 certainly has much less coherent lore lol.

There are good things in this game. The dlc is fantastic. Certain areas look downright stunning, often helped by the muted color palette. A lot of the bosses are fun when you use the correct play style for them. Pontiff Sullivan or Champion Gundyr is my favorite boss on my most recent playthrough, but I haven't gotten to Gale, the Twin Princes or Midir yet.

I don't dislike it, it's brilliant, the epitome of SupergiantGames' beautiful craft, but I just can't play Hades, it released after I had already burnt out on Dead Cells, Curse of the Dead Gods, Grime, Enter the Gungeon, Blasphemous, Gunfire Reborn, and whatnot, I can't bring myself to play it because I had already explored the genre so many times...

BioShock Infinite. Mostly because I hated all of the characters, with the exception of the Luteces, and even they were on thin ice, mostly because of Rosalind. And Elizabeth as a NPC companion? I would prefer Ashley from Resident Evil 4 over Elizabeth any day. It didn't help that every time I tried to listen to a voxophone, she'd start talking about some bs, so I'd wait for her to finish and start the voxophone over, only to have her start talking again. When it happened 4 times with one vox, I had to take a break from the game. I just wanted to listen to the damn recording.
Gameplay is great though. I'll play the heck out of the Clash in the Clouds dlc. I get the fun action, and none of Booker and Elizabeth's constant whining.

Hogwarts Legacy: To be fair it is a big Openworld but it doesn't catch me. The Story is kind of lame the voice sounds a little bit too Much like a crappy TTS. I tried to finish it but I always stop after like 30minutes played.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt I dislike that the Openworld is like a movie. You don't need to think where you want to go, you just follow the little dots on your minimap until your are there. Its so utterly boring. I love the souls franchise, you see an NPC, walk up to her talk to her and write the important things down on your Notepad. To be fair, Wircher 3 looks absolutely beautiful after the recent patch.

Edit: I really really dislike Fortnite. Its highly overrated and it isn't even original.

I don't actively dislike it, but for me RDR2 is also the main one. Apart from competitive shooters etc which aren't really my thing either. The thing is, I like the type of game that RDR2 is. But I just have nothing with the setting. I played it right after Cyberpunk, which I loved for multiple reasons. One major thing is that I controlled V, and thus could create my own story. In RDR 2 I was forced to play someone I have nothing in common with, who does exactly the things I wouldn't do, and who lives in a shitty time period where basically every woman basically has the same rights as cattle. That may not be inaccurate, but it just didn't vibe with me. I just got so frustrated with the main character talking shit to people who were right, or drinking a lot and getting into trouble in a very predictable way. Despite the beautiful and interesting world I just couldn't feel anything but frustration.

I do get why people like it though, I don't think it's a bad game. Its just not for me.

First person games

I think Portal is the only one I'm fine with, probably because there's not as much action. First person puts me on edge and not in a way that I really appreciate. I also really like to be able to see the character in general.

To that end I also don't really like horror games, but I don't think that's as divisive an opinion.

Dragon Quest XI - I am a huge fan of the 8-bit and 16-bit DQ games. But I just couldn't get into DQ11.The atrocious music probably didn't help.

Assassin's Creed Origins the gameplay started getting repetitive very quickly. Even though I liked the ancient Egyptian settings and the beautiful graphics, I couldn't follow the nonsensical plot.

Burnout Paradise - this game is unplayable. You have to either look at the mini-map the entire time, or memorize the map.

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I can't think of a large open world game I liked. Skyrim, RDR2, the new Assassin's Creeds, Biomutant, Horizon Zero Dawn, GTA5. I feel like they sacrifice the story to fill a world with so many random side quests that it seems like I'll never be able to finish it. I miss games that I could complete in less than 25 hours of playtime.

I would also choose Zelda: BOTW and RDR2.

Zelda: BOTW is a soulless Ubisoft game clone shamelessly inhabiting the dead shell of the Legend of Zelda franchise. It contains little to nothing that makes the Legend of Zelda games what they are. Gone are fascinating cities and towns, no colorful cast of characters, no real dungeons or temples, no progression system so the entire game is just 50 hours of the game exact same copy-pasted things over and over and over with no change in difficulty or approach. It’s like the first Zelda game in history without a memorable score, in fact there’s hardly any music in it at all. Theres no plot to speak of. It introduced some novel systems, and they deserve credit for that, but it’s just not a Legend of Zelda game at all.

RDR2 is a bland on-rails march from shooting gallery to shooting gallery, with an incredibly lifelike and immersive world that… doesn’t really give you anything to do. And what it does give you, there’s no reason to do. The game revolves around your camp and allies but the camp hardly serves any purpose. You can’t customize it in any significant way, keeping everyone happy and supplied does very little besides reduce the amount of audible complaining. And the game shoves so much money in your hands from the word go, that you never have a reason to do any money making activities, and it upends the plot of the whole game “We just need a bit more money” Dutch says as I have $10,000 stashed in my saddlebags. Everyone seems to love Arthur as a character but he’s just such a bland, indecisive milquetoast guy who doesn’t hold his own opinion on anything. He doesn’t have any personality to speak of until the last third of the game, and then they expect you to have an emotional reaction to him by the end. John was hands down a better protagonist and it’s not close.

Skyrim, Limbo, Stardew Valley.