Summary
Every gamer worth their salt has specific video game genres they love over others. Action, adventure, first-person shooter; whatever your preference, it’s easy to gravitate toward games within a certain genre, just because you know that, for the most part, you like the stuff that genre produces.
But frankly, I’ve been burned too many times by this logic. And, there are some games that I’ve seen in genres I love that I don’t really think I’ll ever play, and it’s usually for not a very good reason. Here are some games from genres I love that I personally will never play and why.
I’m a huge fan of simulation and management games ever since I was first old enough to learn how to insert Roller Coaster Tycoon into my parents' computer, which, yes, was in a separate room of the house called ‘the computer room.’ If you’re wondering what that sentence means, congratulations on being young.
However, while the Two Point franchise offers a wide host of great simulation games, I’ve never felt compelled to play them myself, and that’s for one very petty reason: nostalgia. Frankly, I do think my love of simulation games comes from the nostalgia of playing The Sims or Zoo Tycoon for hours on a Saturday. Maybe in ten years, the nostalgia factor will be there for me.
I’ve been a longtime lover of detective and mystery games for as long as I can remember. However, frankly, most of the time I think these types of games aren’t done correctly. There are tons of great mystery games out there, like Return of the Obra Dinn and The Forgotten City, but one of the most popular, LA Noire, is one that I promise you’ll never see me play.
Why? Well, in my opinion, from what I’ve seen of gameplay, the game just seems to lead people right to the answers. The vibes are immaculate, but good vibes do not a great game make.
If we want to talk about petty reasons, this is far and away the most petty reason on this list. I love a good platformer, and when I first got my PS5, I devoured the Astro Bot demo they put on the console for free in a matter of hours. I find Astro to be a great flagship character for PlayStation, and an even better game.
But to be honest, I just can’t justify paying full price for a larger version of the same game. Yes, by all accounts, Astro Bot is a huge improvement over the original. But I still have the original downloaded, so why pay full price?
Humankind is, by all reasonable metrics, a fantastic turn-based strategy game that I will never, ever put my hands on. And that’s because I am a die-hard Civilization fan.
When I wasn’t playing Roller Coaster Tycoon in the computer room, I was playing Civilization (it’s true, I was not popular in my youth if you may imagine). Humankind, while fantastic, is just a rip-off of Civilization. It would honestly feel like a betrayal to pick this game up, no matter how tempted I might be.
I’ve been playinghero-based shooter gameslike Overwatch and Marvel Rivals for years now. It’s truly one of my all-time favorite genres. There’s nothing more exciting to me than seeing a giant new hero roster to learn, all with exciting abilities and dynamics.
However, while this has become more common in the hero-based shooter genre, I won’t play Valorant because of how high-skill and unforgiving the gunplay is. Come at me and say it’s a skill issue (it definitely is). When I play a hero-shooter, I want to focus on strategy, not just gunplay.
Minecraft
Minecraft is arguably one of the most popular video games of all time. And it’s also true that age ain’t nothing but a number, but frankly, I feel too old to play this game.
I love crafting games and always have, but no matter how many times a younger cousin, niece, or nephew explains Minecraft to me, something in my brain short-circuits. I just don’t see the appeal or the point. But, I’ve resigned myself to being old and out of touch in this regard. Sometimes you just can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Though Apex shares similarities with the hero-shooter genre thanks to its roster of characters, to me, this game is ultimatelya Battle Royaleala Fortnite, which I’m not always the biggest fan of either. However, I have a particularly petty grievance against this game, which has literally nothing to do with gameplay, mechanics, or anything else actually worth complaining about: its graphics.
I just don’t like the way this game looks visually! In hero-based shooters and Battle Royales, I tend to prefer a cartoonish, vibrant style. Also, I have terrible eyesight, so something about the grittier locales in this game makes it harder for me to play. Yes, yes, I know: skill issue.
I’ve listed Bloodborne as an Action RPG, but there’s an actual genre within the genre going on here that I’ve always been intrigued by, but haven’t really dabbled in for one reason alone: fear. The genre I’m talking about within the Action RPG space? Well, that’s the dreaded Soulslike game.
The sheer number of times I’ve been pitched this game, rebuffed the suggestor by saying that it sounds like too high a degree of difficulty for me, only to be met with ‘skill issue,’ is astounding. At this point, I’m digging my heels in. No Soulslike games for me out of spite for those recommenders.
Similar to games within the Two-Point franchise, I’m also a big fan of factory simulation games in which you have to understand and create complex synergies. A great game in this genre will get my head buzzing and swimming faster than any other video game genre out there.
Satisfactory, by all accounts, is an amazing game in this genre, and truth be told, I was seriously considering playing it for a while. However, I realized something. If I did play this game, I would never go outside again. I made a choice to maintain a game-life balance, and have sworn never to pick this game up. I won’t play it because it actually looks too fun.
1Resident Evil Village
Horror
In film and television, and games alike,I love horror. I was also a huge fan of Resident Evil: Biohazard. Many of the third-person, older Resident Evils didn’t work for me, but something about putting the franchise in first-person really started to resonate with me. This, combined with the more grounded aesthetics of Biohazard, really made this franchise feel new to me.
However, I never felt the urge to pick up Village because, in my opinion, the groundedness got lost along the way. That’s not to say that the game doesn’t hold merit, but I want to truly be scared during a Resident Evil game. Something about witches and supernatural beings doesn’t do it for me in the same way a disease-ridden family does.
