30 Day Gaming Challenge: #29 – A Game You Thought You’d Hate, But Ended Up Loving

Welcome, one and all, to the second-to-last entry in the 30 Day Gaming Challenge! So, what does Day 29 ask of me? It wants me to name … a game I thought I’d hate, but ended up loving.

Halo. Any of them. Honestly, growing up, FPS games were my primary go-to on PC. Well, that and sport management sims. I still remember the fun we had in high school when the head of IT left the door to his office open and someone hid a copy of the original Doom on the school’s servers. At home, we had Quake, Blood 2, Unreal Tournament, and Shadow Warrior. As the days of console gaming took over, we had things like XIII, Goldeneye, Turok 2, and Lifeforce Tenka.

All of those games were great fun. But as the years marched on, I found less and less to enjoy in the First-person Shooter genre. It all just… stagnated for me. Playing online wasn’t as much anymore, and the console stuff just didn’t feel as exciting. So, I stopped playing that type of game.

Until Halo. You see, when I left my last job, my colleagues were kind enough to have a collection for me and got me a decent sized shopping voucher. I ended up spending it on an Xbox One S that came with a copy of Minecraft and one of the Tom Clancy games. I had no interest in the Tom Clancy game, so I traded it in. I really wasn’t sure what to buy instead, but my brother had been recommending Halo to me. Given that we both used to enjoy the same games, I figured … why not? So, I picked up The Master Chief Collection.

halo 4 master chief cortana FPS
Come … return to the FPS genre …

My expectation was that I’d get bored and either my partner would enjoy it or we’d trade it in again. As it turned out … I loved it! I’m hooked on the series. It’s soooooo good! The story is excellent, the characters and excellent, the gameplay is excellent … it helps that I’m good at it too. Such fun though!

But what about yourselves? What game did you expect to hate, but actually loved?

21 thoughts on “30 Day Gaming Challenge: #29 – A Game You Thought You’d Hate, But Ended Up Loving

  1. Mine was Fallout 3 – bought it as my mates liked it and ended up loving it. I put 70+ hours into it in the end.

    Halo is an odd one for me, I can appreciate it but I don’t enjoy it much. Multiplayer is fine, but single player is a grind. I remember gritting my teeth through Halo 3…I really found that one to be hard work!

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    1. Fallout 3 is on our list of games to get around to. Well, pretty much any of the Fallout’s would be good.
      See, I’ve not played Halo multiplayer due to not having an Xbox Live subscription. The signel palyer stuff I do enjoy too as the story engages me.

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      1. Ah, fair enough – Halo’s story is over my head as I’m not really into sci-fi.

        I recommend Fallout 3 or 4 highly. Bit of a time sink, but worth the investment.

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      2. That makes sense. Sci-Fi is one of my favourite genres, so it fits well for me. You’re actually the second to recommend both 3 and 4 to us. We don’t get as much time to play longer games these days, but we try to take on one or two at least.

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      3. Thing with Fallout 3/4 is you can dip in and out – there is story, but it’s not heavy enough that you would forget it if you didn’t play it for a month or two.
        I struggle with Sci-Fi and Fantasy games really, anything too far in those directions and I’m lost. Maybe my brain can’t handle all the terms and details – after a while Halo 3 just became ‘shoot all the blobs!’

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      4. That’s useful, as you never know when you’re home be able to grab some time to play. If anything, it sounds ideal.
        That’s fair enough. I could dear that sums of the early FPS essentially ended up like that too did to the peak of a detailed story. Like, the original Doom kinda felt like ‘find the keys and keep shooting’ to me a lot. I enjoyed it still, but there never felt like there was a story to follow.

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      5. Aye. It was part of the fun of it. I think that’s a sign of how thing shave changed though. People seem to want bigger stories now. it’s the same with TV shows, you see less monster of the week stuff and more long running tales. It’s all fun if it’s done well though.

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      6. That’s a pretty good summary. Both plots have their merits. Sometimes I quite like just shooting things, sometimes I want a story to get my teeth into.

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  2. Halo is definitely one of my favorite games as well (all of them 😊). I even bought the delexu helmet verions of halo 3 back in the day, that’s how much of a fan I was of the series. Great story, wonderful characters and terrific gameplay 😊
    When I think back I think Battlefield 3 was for me a game that I expected to hate, but ended up loving. It became my favorite online game. Played it to death, and I loved the fact that you didn’t even have to be a very good player, but could still end up on top by doing support things like healing other players, repairing vehicles, etc. Yeah…so many good memories 😊

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    1. I loved the look of the deluxe helmet edition, but at the time I wasn’t playing the games, so never bothered. It is such a good series though.
      In a similar thing though, did you ever see the deluxe xenomorph head edition of the Alien films? That was beautiful looking.
      I’ve not actually palyed any of the Battlefield games. Was 3 all team based or was there single player too?

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      1. I really was a fan of the Masterchief at the time, and that helmet just looked so amazing I just had to own it! 😊😊
        I did see it, and was very tempted to buy it…but I had already a pretty good boxed set, and in the end decided not to go ahead with that.
        Battlefield 3 did have a single player, but the multiplayer is where the game really shined! 😊😊

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      2. I first saw the set before I had the DVDs but when I had no money with which to buy it. I think you can get the head for around £10 on its own sometimes now though.
        There’s a lot more focus on multiplayer games these days I think. It’s not a bad thing in itself, but my word my time on randomly assembled teams has been mixed.

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  3. Ooooh Halo is actually a good answer for me! I never really got into FPS games, but playing Halo with friends was awesome back in the day. I ended up enjoying many afternoons playing it XD

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    1. I fell out of love with FPS games for a long time, so discovering Halo was a real surprise to me. So much fun!

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