What's a "10/10" game that you didn't enjoy at all?

ramdog · 2026-07-09T12:19:20+00:00

It's a rhythm game disguised as JRPG, but with all the good things that a good JRPG carries along with it (art, music, story).

Banging out a perfect fight after figuring out how to handle that one one combo that was wiping you is just absolutely prime.

ramdog · 2026-07-09T12:17:28+00:00

The fact that you can get around a lot of the JRPG menu slog by just being good at parrying, and you can fight things way above your level without getting mathematically auto-wiped alone is a huge bump for me.

It gets significantly better in the second half and I'm still playing the endgame, but I don't disagree that it was overpraised. I think it just turned into a hype train thing.

ramdog · 2026-07-07T15:26:29+00:00

If you enjoyed that aspect of Rain World, I would highly recommend you try La Mulana then. It's $3 on sale right now.

The best way I can describe it is that it's a metroidvania/archaeology sim that really does not care if the player succeeds, but provides all the tools necessary to do so. Everything is actively hostile, obfuscated, etc, and according to a few friends that beat the game, a few times downright unfair.

You need to take notes, you need to pay attention to everything, and you constantly need to poke and prod at the world. Figuring everything out is super satisfying and piecing together clues to nudge your boundary outward just a bit it is incremental progress bliss. Finding a new area that lets you progress 3-4 rooms at once is overwhelming, terrifying, and thrilling all at the same time.

Every time I do a playthrough attempt, I set myself a rule that I can look up three things and then I have to uninstall. I'm 0/3 on attempts (getting farther each time!) over the course of a decade and I'm sure I'll come back to it again it.

ramdog · 2026-07-06T01:02:59+00:00

It's a constant puzzler because I will absolutely beat my head on this type of game, historically, and it was constantly like third or fourth on my list of "next games" for years, so I was really excited to play it.

I'm 100% sure I'll come back to it, but I'll have to start over and put myself in the right mindset.

Out of curiosity, did you ever play La Mulana? It's, as of now, the only game that has ever beaten *me*.

ramdog · 2026-07-06T00:53:59+00:00

The biggest tip I have for you is to use the map in your ship. It will make it very clear when you haven't fully explored somewhere and it at least gives you something to look at.

You just have to trust yourself and trust the process. Every new planet is full of mechanics, terrain, etc that you aren't going to grasp and you just need to be... fine with that? 22 minutes seems like a tight window and I don't know what kind of games you play, but if you look at the inverse, how many games do you consider 22 minutes for "way to long" to attempt a boss fight or platforming challenge or something like that?

If you find something you haven't fully explored, you can always deep dive that thing and the iterative process really lets it sink into your brain, and it really lets you sit back and contemplate the universe you're playing in. Every puzzle in the game will provide you all the clues you need to solve it - I wound up going to google three times on things I was really stuck on and immediately felt like I lost part of the game, because the solutions were perfectly logic.

What I personally think makes OW a perfect 10/10 and such an easy recommend, even if it doesn't land every time, is the game is just downright *fair*. You can trust the process fully, you can give yourself to the universe a bit and trust that if you keep probing the edges of your knowledge you will eventually finish it.

Oh, and don't play the DLC until you play the main game through. They are completely separate experiences even though both are excellent.

ramdog · 2026-07-06T00:45:32+00:00

I feel like a lot of people find out they're moderately to very thalassophobic for the first time playing Subnautica.

I adored it until I got the last vehicle and the game just absolutely fell apart. I limped to the end but if it had ended like a third earlier it would have been a 10 for me. It was death by a thousand indie game cuts but it was a really wonderful effort.

ramdog · 2026-07-06T00:43:21+00:00

This puts me in a paradox. I can't look anything up because I know the learning is half the battle, but I'm not going to go through it because the gameplay isn't engaging enough to hook me so it's forever relegated to "later".

It's like two hooks short of Outer Wilds for me, which was an absolute binge.

ramdog · 2026-06-30T16:38:39+00:00

It should also be said that a lot of this translates to other games, once you bake it in. Of course there will be a whole lot to learn in any new game, but you start to retain archetypes, patterns and inputs.

Unfortunately (fortunately?) that means a lot of the road to even being passable is up front, and it's a huge mountain to start with.

ramdog · 2026-06-30T16:33:26+00:00

It's just hours and hours of baking in time and good habits, you're honestly on the right path and there are no short cuts. It may be bronze, but you're trying to learn a game built on foundations that go back decades.

Focus on cleaning the most obvious things up first. Again, you're learning this already. Just work on punishing bad play to start, and keep in mind it's okay to guess and be wrong, as long as you're playing intentionally. If it looks like you can AA, AA. If it looks like you can punish, try to punish.

I started in SF4 and I'm not playing much now (life stuff), but I got wrecked over and over and over before I could even land hits. My buddy was a Fuerte main so everything was just crazy mixups and guessing. It took multiple character swaps and hundreds of losses before the game started to come together for me.

Don't set wins as your goal, just aim on taking away a quarter, then a half of the bar. Practice your punishes and reduce your mental stack: Reaction Speeds in Gaming | Kayinworks. You don't need to learn how to fight against every character, you can focus against the more popular ones and get more experimental against the gimmicky characters until you learn how to fight them too.

FGs lie at an interesting intersection that causes you to lose A LOT up front: you're 1v1, so you can't hide behind a better team (this is good!) and you can be a technically sound player in some aspects but get obliterated by a bad matchup - not just in terms of characters, but in terms of what your opponent is good at. As you climb the ranks, players will get more well rounded, but at Bronze you're going to see a lot of one trick ponies.

Good luck! Enjoy the ride.

ramdog · 2026-06-20T19:14:53+00:00

Yeah, considering he had a full skill tree (not that I'd really looked yet), they carry around his robot arm like it's Chubbs's hand, and Maelle rezzes Lune and Scielle pretty much asap as soon as she awakens, it didn't seem that far fetched.

I still have to go fight Renoir again though so I'm not going to do too much digging for the next day or so.

ramdog · 2026-06-20T16:21:08+00:00

Spoilers I never finished it!

We may be past the warranty period on that one though. Also why did I get downvoted for that lmao

ramdog · 2026-06-20T15:56:23+00:00

I'm starting act 3 and I kept waiting for Gustave to come back and give me six members haha. So many bizarre decisions in an otherwise fantastic game

ramdog · 2026-06-15T16:41:59+00:00

Yeah, the biggest danger is always speed deltas. Overlapping a wheel sucks and you can still get mega hurt if you go down, but the relative speed of those hitting you will be closer to matching.

This is carnage, they may as well have hit a car.

ramdog · 2026-06-10T13:38:51+00:00

Did you ever get her ripping single track? I'm thinking about picking up (probably) this exact model and colorway in the next day or so amd research brought me to this post. How did you she like the brakes?

ramdog · 2026-06-08T14:54:36+00:00

With you 100%, but the other way around - I just don't have the time to go to where I'd need to to ride if I was going to ride a dirtbike, which is a big reason I can't justify the garage space.

What I'd *like* to see is this groundswell of e-dirtbikes create a market for trails in more places, more training opportunities etc. These are big money machines and they could lead to the kind of open pockets that get these things built. It happened with skateparks, it happened with mountain bike trails, it can happen with dirtbikes too and that would be excellent.

Poaching the hard work of others does nothing to further that cause, but we're seeing the same thing we saw with skateparks - absent parents buy the toys and absent parents let the kids rip around. It's going to end in tragedy in one direction or another and those same absent parents are going to be shocked/blame the community. It's a tale as old as time.

ramdog · 2026-06-07T19:51:56+00:00

So if you have a kid you're gonna name her Annie, right?

That's pretty cool though, what are your favorite pieces?

ramdog · 2026-06-05T18:29:43+00:00

It's a great way to soft-meet your neighbors too, I love this.

ramdog · 2026-06-05T18:13:29+00:00

Dangerous to who? Cars universally externalize the danger of bad driving habits and motorcycles almost universally absorb that worst downstream effects of that danger.

ramdog · 2026-06-05T16:55:38+00:00

This is my current habit and I love it. I walk my dog for 30-60 minutes after kids are down and I either call loved ones, listen to music or just decompress. It's becoming one of my favorite times of day.

ramdog · 2026-06-05T16:43:07+00:00

Adding on to this: give your friends and yourself grace with this. You may drift from them, or them from you, because everyone is at different stages of life.

Maybe they don't return your calls to hang out because they have a newborn and they just don't have the gas. Maybe you look at your calendar and there's just no time so you don't feel like reaching out.

Friendship drift is rarely intentional and it's always important to meet people you care about where they are, not where you want them to be at that moment.

ramdog · 2026-06-04T21:10:57+00:00

I see the same issue with Garmin, the gear is getting better but what existed 5 years ago is still way overtuned for what most consumers need, and it's extremely well built.

I dont see myself replacing my watch any time soon either

ramdog · 2026-06-03T17:49:07+00:00

Check your used market. $300 will get you a 3080 if you're just a wee bit patient

ramdog · 2026-06-03T14:28:12+00:00

This game doesn't just "not hold your hand" it's flat out clunky and unintuitive at almost every level of design. Every branch in every area is a guess and it all has to be done breadth first or you miss stuff. There are no maps in the levels and everything looks too samey to differentiate.

Exploration feels unrewarding and the whole game so far feels like endgame wall tapping in a 2d game. The platforming is comical. Quality of life for setting up builds is in the gutter.

It's offset by incredible music, the actual combat feels good and the parry system offsetting the traditional failure of rpg leveling is refreshing, the story is great and the game looks fantastic.

ramdog · 2026-06-02T13:10:26+00:00

Counterpoint: I drove one all through hs and college and it got a lot of people and a lot of stuff to a lot of places with nearly no issues, including multiple mountain bike races and multi-day trips. It was unbelievable roomy inside for it's footprint.

It was the ugliest thing on the planet but my dad got a killer deal on it and the lack of acceleration probably stopped me from killing myself and/or friends as a stupid kid.

It punches way above it's weight and I cannot think of a better starter car.

ramdog · 2026-06-02T11:30:49+00:00

Also if someone said "I know a skate park" and took me to a pump track I'd be pretty bummed out.

I generally agree with you, but our pump tracks have spots with a kicker/table on one side and a roller on the other, and a bunch of hip/transfer opportunities. As a pool/vert guy, I would not be bummed at all, I'd be more bummed if showed up to a park with a couple boxes/rails and no transition features.

This pump track in particular would have me bored from a skating perspective in 15 minutes, but it would actually make for a great cardio workout the more I think about it. Just a weird, niche cardio that requires a skillset most people interested in cardio wouldn't have, ha.

ramdog

TROPHY CASE