re: Games you liked & others hated / Games you hated & others loved

Liked
Dragon Age 2
--I thought the art direction was much improved over the first game, and the combat had great visual appeal. I appreciated what they were trying to do with respect to the story taking place in the same location over a number of years even if the execution wasn't as great as it could have been.

Thief
--I understand why people don't like this game. It has framerate issues, frequent load times, and a confusing, nonsensical city layout, but I love the art direction and the mechanics available to you that make it really feel like a stealth simulator unlike a really popular game on my dislike list.

Assassin's Creed 3
--This might be my favorite Assassin's Creed from a storyline standpoint. Hatham Kenway has to be the most nuanced villain in series history, and I thought Connor was an underrated protagonist. He wasn't witty like Ezio, but that was by choice via the character's personalty and heritage rather than a poor script or bad voice acting.

DriveClub
--Absolutely stunning to look at. Pretty fun to play too. I don't think people really dislike Driveclub as the just find it utterly mediocre. Given that there's no real purpose to the game aside from random racing challenges and cups to complete outside of the online racing component, it's easy to see why the game flopped, but it's probably my favorite racing title on PS4.

Disliked
Dragon Age Origins
--I will admit to wanting to give this game a serious go some day once I have the time to devote to it, but unlike Mass Effect and KOTOR before it, Dragon Age Origins never hooked me. The world it sets up feels incredibly generic and looks even more-so with the color palet being little more than various shades of brown. In what time I spent with it, the combat already started feeling like KOTOR where if you build your characters the right way, you can absolutely trivialize the entire game.

Dragon Age Inquisition
--Another game I don't necessarily hate but couldn't find the will to finish. It carries over the visual appeal from Dragon Age 2, but BioWare swung too far in the other direction from a game design standpoint (and has me worried for Mass Effect). The game's main story probably isn't but 10-15 hours long, but the lack of level scaling gates it behind hours upon hours of mindless fetch quests and closing x of y rifts. None of the maps aside from the Hinterlands are all that interesting to explore and there are no towns aside from a pretty pitiful representation of that city in Orlais.

Destiny
--Given the game's lukewarm critical reception, maybe this is a bad game to put here, but a lot of people really love Destiny for reasons that elude me. I think the game has fantastic gunplay, beautiful graphics and art direction and haunting music, but you can play it for 5 days and literally see almost everything there is to see. The every game mode, patrol, story missions, strike teams, and even some raids, take place across the same maps so completing bounties and grinding missions is really just repeating content you've already seen over and over again. It's like an MMO with everything stripped out but the most repetitive parts.

The Witcher 2
--What is it about European studios and the complete inability to design solid combat systems for an action-RPG? CD Projekt Red proved with the original Witcher that they can write a script and proved with the Witcher 2 that they can make a beautiful looking RPG with a smallish dev team, but with the Witcher 2 was their first attempt to "consolize" the franchise. What they ended up with was a combat system and certain battles that so desperately want to be God of War or Darksiders but end up about on par with Bound by Flame.

Saints Row 3 and 4
--Boy this franchise went off the rails. I won't say I disliked GTA 4, but one of the reasons I think it failed to live up to the legacy of the PS2 games was because it took itself way too seriously. Saints Row 2 was the perfect blend of goofiness and realism. Saints Row 3 and especially 4 are goofy to the point of silliness taking me out of the game entirely.

Metal Gear Solid V
--I admit to thinking Kojima is a really overrated game developer. I think his best game is probably the original MGS followed by Zone of the Enders 2: Second Runner. I've never been a follower of the Metal Gear franchise, but I got this game free with a new video card. I played for several hours, and I couldn't say that the game contained any semblance of a story and "stealth" equates to crouch walking and throwing a box over my character, nevermind the fact that Kojima plasters his name over so many different areas of this game that it detracts from my enjoyment of the game, conflict with Konami or not.