Do you ever take a look at your video game library and think, “meh”?

Like a lot of gamers, I put stuff on my wishlist and then pick up some of it when it goes on extreme sale (I just picked up a few for $8 a pop). I have this growing library of games that are rated “mostly positive” or better on Steam, and that I have absolutely no desire to play.

Not at the moment, at least…

My latest attempt at trying a new game was Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which I’ve had sitting around forever. I keep trying to get into it and I just can’t. The game won awards (best narrative) and has a 4.5/5 star rating overall.

It also sucks.

There comes a point in a game where I want to stop paying attention to the controller and start just moving through the world. The mechanics become muscle memory and I don’t have to stop to think constantly about which buttons to press in what order. My brain knows, and it tells my fingers.

Then there are games like Guardians of the Galaxy.

In one particular combat situation, you have to hold down a button, then release and re-tap it when the cooldown meter is in a particular spot. In another place, you have to align pointers for your left and right joysticks to the center of a target, and then tap the fire button.

So, there’s this game that supposedly has a great story, great character development, and that I absolutely can’t enjoy because I never get to focus on those things. I’m constantly battling the controller to figure out these specialized, one-off mechanics. Having to repeat these basic intro quest parts several times because someone thought it would be clever to have you dislocate both your thumbs in order to do combat.e

After six hours of play (three different attempts to get through the initial training missions without growing bored to tears), I finally wrote off Guardians as a game I will never, ever want to play. The writing may be good, but the game itself is gimmicky ish that exists solely to bilk more money from Marvel movie franchise fans.

If I had to sum up Guardians of the Galaxy in a sentence, I’d say the entire game feels like it was designed by developers who really wanted to be working on the FIFA game under development next door.

I’m starting to think superhero games are the Christian Rock of the video gaming industry. Even the superhero games that rock kind of suck. Marvel’s Spider-Man is a good example. A lot less of the specialized one-off mechanic BS (though still some of it), and way too much stealth marred (for me) what was an otherwise very enjoyable game.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns could have been a great deck building/RPG game if it hadn’t been primarily designed by psychologists looking for gimmicky ways to hook players into wanting to spend more time in the game: endless collections, photo modes, outfits….

Gotta catch ’em all!

There are two ways, apparently, to design a successful (marketing-wise) video game: developing compelling characters and a story players want to experience, OR filling your game full of little gold stars and gimmicks and inviting psychologists to help develop a more “inviting” user experience.

It turns out, I don’t particularly like the second type at all.

I also don’t care for the weird contortions necessary to pull off a lot of the more involved controller mechanics. First and foremost, because I suck at it. I’m the guy who will swear that every controller in my hands mysteriously breaks every time I try to play Street Fighter or Inustice.

These thumbs don’t roll. I don’t know why.

I really do hate having to stop and think about the controller or the keyboard when I’m playing a game, though. Sure, make the game challenging to play. Make a tough boss. Make a puzzle that is more involved than matching symbols or finding shiny objects. Design complex characters with involved backstories based on the character, not based on what’s a trending social issue on TikTok.

Make it about beating the game, not mastering pressing 5 buttons at the same time. And certainly not gimmicks designed to “trick” people into liking a game, when developers could just fire the psychologists and deal with gamers directly. We know what we like. And hey… developers love video games, too. They already know how to deliver it.

All the collections in Marvel’s Midnight Suns or Hogwart’s Legacy? I couldn’t care less. I’m just not going to spend my time peeking under every rock on a game map to find a hat.

On the other hand, there isn’t a model ship in Mass Effect 1, 2, 3, OR Andromeda that I haven’t tracked down to add to my display cabinet. I only care about the collections because I love the games so much.

One of the reasons I love the Mass Effect games so much is that I’m not constantly having to refer to a cheat sheet to remember arcane key combinations. All the mechanics are easy to master. It’s using them to your best advantage that’s the challenge… as it should be. So I get to concentrate on the story. On steering Shepard or Ryder to making the choices that lead to the best outcome. I get to play the GAME, not the user interface.

When I end a Mass Effect session with tired fingers, it’s because the battle got intense. I got tired fingers playing Guardians of the Galaxy just walking across the freakin’ map. Great narrative? Neat. Put it into the next movie. I’m tired.