According to Steam I bought around 70 games in 2024. I tried out a bunch of them, completed 11 and ditched around 14 midway for various reasons. I feel like as I get older I have less patience to power through games that don't fully hold my attention. Some of them were rated pretty high on Steam reviews so I thought I might share my reasons on why I couldn't see them through to the end.

Octopath Traveller 2

Visually this game looks amazing, the 2d pixel art constructed in a 3d environment is a great way to modernize the retro aesthetic. The lighting is great, the particles in combat is great. I think what gradually got me was how it differed to my expectation of multi-character rpg. When I heard Octopath, I hoped for eight characters that had a mingling adventure with intertwining storylines. In reality it's eight different characters who just happen to travel with each other and do their own thing. It's really jarring when a character enters a cutscene, gets backstabbed and the evil man starts monologuing all whilst my three other party members just stand in the sidelines watching as if they ceased to exist. There are some very short chat sequences but otherwise characters rarely acknowledge, let alone have meaningful interaction with each other. (They might later on, sue me if this happens past the point I quit). I think one game that got the intertwining format right was Mother 3; I would've preferred if there were say only four characters, if it meant there was more interaction between them.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

I'm not the biggest fan of the JRPG format but I'm able to enjoy some that are above and beyond the rest like the Persona series. In the same vein I was able to complete Yakuza: Like a Dragon just barely despite its grindy combat and 100 hour storyline but I just couldn't get through its sequel because of how much extra content there is that don't cohesively contribute to the main gameplay loop. I know these are all optional and I did ignore most of them like the Sujimon system but I had to the put the game down when I was bought to the island building sequence. It felt like I was constantly being pulled away from the main storyline which was already paced slowly enough. I know there is a strong story underneath everything, as can be expected from the series but it was just watered down too much for me.

Amnesia the Bunker

This game is too scary.

Children of the Sun

This game has a badass protagonist, a captivating art style and a solid shooting mechanic in the form of bouncing a bullet through enemies in a level. But it's basically this single mechanic multipled by 26 levels, it was a bit too repetitive for me.

Astroneer

The core mechanic of this game is really fun, namely vacuuming and teraforming a planet like playdough but the issues to me lied mainly in the UX. There is a rudimentary screen that explains the basic movement but beyond that there are no prompts that explain the myriad of tools and slots that exist in the game. It took some time to realize that I even had a vacuum that was mapped to E and even more to realise that there the slots on the bottom of the backpack were a crafting sytem. Every new mechanic you are introduced to requires some random trial and error because nothing is explained. On top of that basic camera orbitting is really floaty (probably intentionally) and feels imprecise to navigate. I think this game could look at Factorio for a good example of base-building UX. Camera and menus are snappy and there are frequent prompts that explain how new mechanics work.

Portal: Revolution

This is a fan made mod using Portal 2 that essentially brings extra content to series. It's overwhelmingly positive on Steam but there were two things that didn't really hit the mark for me. The first is puzzle design. The puzzles in the official Portal games aren't excruciatingly difficult or anything. You can look at Mario Maker to see that simply making a frustratingly difficult level is fairly doable to even the layman. If anything Portal is made so that everyone can play through to the end so the cleverness lies in designing a level with just the right difficulty that makes the player feel like a genius without them realizing the intentionally designed difficulty curve. On top of that each room often has a central theme or mechanic that they dig into like 'converging multiple lasers with a lens' or 'making a speed ramp with goo'. The level designs in Portal: Revolution didn't seem to have either of these so the they don't feel cohesive and also lack the 'light bulb' moment when completing them.

The second issue is Stirling, the games bot companion. GLaDOS is sadistically sarcastic, Wheatly is loveably dumb. Stirling is straight up cringe. The comedic humor is on par with Claptrap from Borderlands. His accent sounds like a bad anime dub. The constant downwards inflection in every sentence is so grating.

Scorn

I got this game because I really digged the bio-mechanical, body modification themes which this game absolutely nails. The gameplay loop is that you complete a puzzle or task to then be 'rewarded' with a gory cutscene. Whilst these are impressively disgusting, the tasks you do leading up to them are so menial which made me realise I could just watch a YouTube playthrough to see the good parts, which were indeed pretty cool.

Withering Rooms

This game could loosely be described as a 2D soulslike with gothic/eldritch horror elements which on paper seems right up my alley. But unlike Dark Souls, combat is the weakest point of this game. You can't really tell from a gameplay video but there's a constant stiffness on every action like rolling or attacking which makes basic enemy encounters kinda awkward. It's a shame because atmospherically, there are a lot of interesting enemies, items, location and mechanics but the core fighting just isn't very smooth.

V Rising

I thought this game would be about fighting vampires but it turned out to be a base-building game.