No Man's Sky.
I adore space sims, atmospheric exploration games and anything that has even a semblance of story woven into those elements. Yet despite installing mods and making the attempt twice, that game has thoroughly turned me off
First and foremost, the feeling of scale is non-existent. You can see as far as most FPS games and it never feels larger than a single map. The transition from ground to space is both much too quick and the lack of details coming in from space make the transition both jarring and the switch of systems transparent. The view distance is puny and the planet generation also fails to feel compelling. It clearly is random noise applied to a height map and the pattern is quickly obvious. They never manage to hide it, to decorate or intertwine it with more generation systems. It's naked and bare to the eye.
Second, the lighting and post-processing. To say that the game's lighting feels unnatural and fake would be an understatement. It's horrendous, not dynamic in the least and even the day-night cycle manages to feel unnatural. And I don't mean in an exotic, alien way. It just feels unnatural to the way light works. When the sun is out, an artificial filter is plastered on the screen like a permanent glare that only goes away once you climb in your ship. The color grading is also rather offensive. In short, it's a game whose atmosphere is inexistent.
Thirdly, the gameplay. Repetitive and awkward doesn't even begin to describe it. Constant suit system call-outs, incredibly awkward and unintuitive inventory system where abilities are slotted and repaired in the strangest ways. And most of all, some of the options you want or need are hidden away not in keybindings or options in the menu but in the quick action menu that you never learn about. Want to switch from 3rd to 1st? You have to go through a couple levels of those to find it.
Fourth, the narrative. Or rather, lack thereof. You find out words about a language, and at no point do have any semblance of a story thread over than "Oh, maybe it's a loop of some kind". It's non-existent as far as I can tell and the original ending, which I hope has been improved, doesn't show much promise that this game is intended to be a narrative journey.
I really wanted to like that game but the world feels fake, every moment spent looking at a planet's surface is irritating at some level and every motion you take triggers about half a dozen alarms about your impending doom to the sight of progress bars slowly depleting.
That game is not for me. It fails at depicting a beautiful world or even providing a sense of place at all. It's hollow and its sky is empty.
