i keep buying games and they're not what i expected.
for a while now, i've been in search of something new to play, and haven't been having any luck.
i've gotten a number of games only to discover they weren't what i expected.
in no particular order:
fallout 3 - not nearly as playable as a straight rpg as elder scrolls. rather short main quest line too. i'm looking for something more than a 10-20 hour storyline based shooter. IE its not exactly a game world one could spend hundreds of hours in. is it?
farcry 1 - not an open world, just a mission based shooter with big level maps. apparently the open world stuff didn't really hit til farcry 3?
mount & blade warband - only combat and building interiors are fps? the rest is like the strategic map in total war (but realtime)?
railroad tycoon 2, 3 & sid meiers' railroads! - trains are cool, but it doesn't seem that realistic - construction takes zero time, trains take games days weeks or months to run their route. whats up with that?
simcity 4 - ok, i hadn't played since v1.0. i'd heard it hadn't aged well, but... yeah , it didn't age well.
morrowwind - i hoped for better dungeon crawling - instead its seems to have more text - never even found a dungeon - but then i'm not really looking to explore, i'm just looking for action.
and just today - knights of the old republic. in my desperation for a scifi rpg, i decided to try a 3pv only game. so the game pauses when combat starts. you do a menu pick, then watch an animation? THATS COMBAT?
decent freespace - i've played a LOT of flight sims - these ships seem to be flying at about 40 MPH !?!?!? closing speeds in Jet by SubLogic (1985) were easily an order of magnitude faster - and those were just F16's and Migs.
C&C red alert yuri's revenge was a freebie - so it doesn't really count - but sometimes i can't believe what passes for a game. maybe it was more impressive in its day. wasn't quite warcraft or AOE, or even Alien Nations (Westwood Studios) for that matter.
is this really what these games are like? or do i need to give them more of a chance?
fallout new vegas was the other option besides KOTOR. i've read things both good (sandbox) and bad (not truly open world) about it. having played fallout 3, i sort of know what to expect, and also to not get my hopes up too much (it is a bethesda IP after all, even if Obsidian did the title). time to pay to find out if its all that or not.
only two recent purchases were what i expected: silent hunter 5 (i had silent hunter 4 already), and shogun 2 total war (i had rome 1, medieval 1, and rome 2 already).
any way i can improve my vetting process so i don't keep buying these "not exactly what i expected" games?