Skirmish-type strategy games that just throw me to the deep end of the pool, saying: "There's the world. Now try to win the game.". Probably also giving me lots of options how many enemy nations I want there to be in the same world, what is the size of the world etc.
To me it is a similar problem as playing a multiplayer FPS game against bots (deathmatch). Sure it can be fun I guess, but I prefer single-player FPS games with some kind of structure, advancing through different levels/missions, slowly increasing the complexity and difficulty level in each mission, maybe a bit of story etc., instead of a mere "Select the size of the deathmatch level (small, normal, large, very large) and the number and skill level of enemy bots. Try to kill them all. GO!". It feels more like some kind of simulated sports event, than a proper single-player game.
On top of that, such games tend to just shove lots of different charts at me, and I am supposed to make some sense of it. Like "Oh noes! The customer satisfaction level has dropped by 0.1%! It is probably due to too few toilets, so I possibly need to build more lavatories in the theme park to raise the customer satisfaction!".
This covers quite a long list of games, including:
- Civilization (not sure if the newer games in the series are different, I am still stuck with the first game, trying to make any sense of what is happening in the game and what exactly am I supposed to do, instead of just wandering around)
- SimCity series (probably, I have only dabbled with them so far)
- Master of Orion
- Master of Magic
- Enemy Nations
- Warlords games (not the Battlecry spin-offs, I think)
- Rollercoaster Tycoon
- Theme Hospital
etc.
The last two in the list are a bit of borderline cases. You could say they have different levels/missions, but they seem pretty generic, mostly just "try to gather enough money to win the level".
I haven't fully given up with these kinds of games, maybe at some point I will suddenly understand what is it that makes them so popular. At this point, they feel about as interesting to me as looking at some Excel charts at my work, and try to make some sense of them.
Post edited April 11, 2015 by timppu