I don’t like your games.

We all have our wheelhouse of games. Everyone has that one genre they excel and and that they adore. Now, I want to talk about the genres that you don’t enjoy. Tell me what kind of games or game, you really don’t like. What do you not like about the genre, and are there any exceptions for you? What could the genre do to maybe get you into playing them?

Justin “KillerWolverine” Testa
I love playing games, and because of that, I have a couple of favorite genres. It doesn’t mean that I am good at them. In fact, I suck at playing games. But I still love them. All of them. Except for the genre that bores me to sleep: turn-based RPGs. There really is nothing I like about this genre. I never got the whole premise of them. You attack/defend/whatever once then you have to wait 20 minutes to do another action. That’s just not fun to me. And yes, I have tried to play Final Fantasy (the number alludes me right now because I may have slipped into a coma trying to play it), for like 15 minutes. I just could not get past that mark. Usually, I love a good story in my games, but these don’t hold my attention… probably because I can’t get past the first half-hour of the game. That or they are completely off the wall that they are borderline laughable.

I know it takes a certain amount of patience to play this genre, and it is a patience that I will never have. You can try to tell me about the story of a Final Fantasy or whatever, but the only thing you will succeed in doing is putting me to sleep. Mention the genre to me and it results in a groan and then snoring. There is absolutely nothing anyone can do to get me to play through an entire turn-based RPG game. You could slap a pair of (real) boobs on the packaging and have it offer me sexual favors while throwing money at me, and I still would not pop the disc in my system. If I had to say one positive about the genre (besides curing insomnia) it would be about the music. I do like the soundtracks. Of course, that really isn’t saying much because I love videogame music anyway. But at least I like something about the genre. That’s something, isn’t it?

Jeff “Scorched Angel” Borsick
I would say out of games, the one that I stay away from the most is the fighting genre. I feel this way because the games have a huge barrier to entry. I really feel I cannot sit down and enjoy my time, because I have to learn move lists or combos and things of that nature. I just can’t enjoy myself when I am playing these, because I feel I have to have an encyclopedia of knowledge to learn about how each character plays and so on. I have tried multiple games to get me into the genre such as Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and even quirky games like BlazBlue, but not many of these titles have really given me the “in” that I needed to fulfill the fun factor.

However, in the last few years, there are a couple of games that I have found as exceptions to this rule. The Soul Calibur series has been a favorite for me, and I find that I am able to enjoy the franchise without learning too much in-depth information. Also, I have found that the most recent Marvel vs. Capcom game is very fun when you can just button mash and do interesting looking things.

It’s not that I hate the fighting game genre, because as you can see there are some games that allow me to test the waters. Ultimately, I just feel that other styles are most accessible to me, so I steer clear of fighting games, yet still dabble in the ones in which I can button-mash my way to victory.

Kelsey “rinelk” Rinella
Sports, racing, rhythm and fighting games are probably the best examples of genres I avoid. I don’t think I’ve intentionally purchased any of those since the original PlayStation (though PGR4 was bundled with my Xbox). All of them have tended to involve a great degree of dexterity or reflexes, which is difficult to compensate for with slower-paced decisions. I never really feel in control of those quick responses; much like games with lots of dice, it’s important for my enjoyment that good play in other regards be able to mitigate the effects of what feel like effectively random events.

Persistence can be one method, though it can also magnify the effects of those rapid-fire decisions if it’s set up to do so. I’m likely to get Injustice, hoping for something along these lines (and I’m encouraged by the things I’ve read about their interest in story). I strongly considered a game in the Football Manager series a while back, and I still suspect I’d be able to enjoy one, but I no longer follow soccer as I once did. That seems like a pretty big part of what people enjoy about most sports games: the connection to the real world. The basic structure of football is fascinating to me, so I can certainly see myself developing an interest in it and then exploring that through games. Especially if I were to discover that there were a football game released with a reputation as an effective teaching tool to take a beginner all that way up to a moderately high level of strategic comprehension (like a Rocksmith for football, which I also found tempting), that could be really interesting.

Drew “FrustratedFury” Leachman
The genre I have the worst time tying to get into would have to be the Real-Time Strategy games. I don’t know what it is; maybe it’s because it always feels like a long, drawn out tug of war or maybe it’s the resource management that is involved, but I seem to always have trouble getting into those games. I love RPGs of any kind, and I never have a problem with turn-based strategy games like Civilization and Advance Wars. I honestly think it boils down to having to multitask while still trying to advance in the game.

The only solution I can think of to helping me get into the genre would be to maybe have a lite version of the game. Playing a game that didn’t require too much management all at one time. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried most of them. Old school WarCraft: Orcs and Humans, Command and Conquer and even StarCraft back in the day. I just don’t know if anything will ever bring me to enjoy and fully understand RTS games. I guess my brain is simple and can’t comprehend all that information all at one time.

That’s it for this week’s Reviewer Rodeo. Tell us what genres you have a hard time liking and what could be done to get you into them more. Maybe make some suggestions on games that may help us get into the genres. After all, people that like the genre may know more about how to get non-players into them.