Okay let me start with two heavy hitters right from the get go and don't forget these are only personal oppinions and I absolute understand if you like those games. Good for you!
Zelda: Breath of the Wild -
Not a bad game per se, but I don't get the hype behind it. Sure the dungeons are fun but the world is so lifeless, the story non existent, the combat pretty shallow, the tower climbing is very much like FarCry but for some reasons it's okay here while Ubisoft gets the blame...like I said I dont get why the game is so beloved. Never finished it after the 20 hour mark and probably never will.
Red Dead Redemption 2 -
Just like Zelda not a bad game, but imho highly overrated. Graphics and and atmosphere are amazing but the controls are clunky and overloaded, nearly everybody is an unlikable douchebag who I would love to shoot myself at the first opportunity (maybe except Jack and Abigail) but I have to root and care for them. The game is just so long and feels very stretched, you already know that you won't get Dutch because it's a prequel and for an open world game you often get handholded in your weapon selection or things you can do because you have to wait for them to be unlocked by the game. I'm now nearly done with the game, playing the epilogue at the moment and I would say the last chapters are more entertaining than the rest of the game, but I still can't understand why this game was on so many game of the year lists and I really wanted to put the controller down a dozen times.
So there they are, two highly controversial oppinions by me and now I'm really curios what your takes are and how highly I get downvoted into oblivion ๐
Outer Wilds: too boring for me.
RDR2, Horizon series, probably many more others I don't even remember: a lot of busywork in an empty uninteresting giant open world.
Souls-like: I understand why people like them but it's not the kind of challenge I like.
Star Wars anything, Shadow of Mordor, Hogwarts Legacy: couldn't care less about the setting.
I think these are about it for "generally liked" kind of games. There's some more about less popular stuff but in general this is it.
How would you know unless you've played them? I highly doubt you've played every Star Wars game.
Well if you are fundamentally uninterested in the setting, it may not be worth it to give the star wars games a try.
I was fundamentally uninterested in the setting of the Thor: Ragnarok, but I still enjoyed it.
I was also fundamentally uninterested in Barbie, but still found the Barbie movie fun.
Why would I play them if I'm not interested in the whole Star Wars world? I've watched a couple of movies, didn't like them too much and didn't watch the rest, so the games are automatically also not interesting.
You don't know that.
For example, that's like saying you don't think you'll like the Dark Knight, because you don't like comic books and without ever having watched it. I'm not saying the Dark Knight is a particularly good movie, but it being part of a certain extended universe, having a particular setting, isn't necessarily relevant to whether you'll like it.
In a lot of genre stuff(westerns, scifi, fantasy, etc.), you'll have stories which aren't actually about a fictional future, but about the present or past. Often they'll rework them into science fiction stories, just like how a similar story would have been reworked into a western when those were popular.
For example, Red Dead Redemption could have been turned into a Star Wars game quite easily.
Hell, in the past acclaimed directors like Tarkovski made science fiction movies, so they could fly under the radar with subversive stories, exactly because critics underestimated the story they were telling because it was 'just science fiction'.
TLDR: don't judge a book by its cover.
This being said, I get why you wouldn't bother trying if you disliked much of the Star Wars you have seen.
As a big Outer Wilds fan, is there any other game in the genre you like better?
I believe Outer Wilds is one of the best games ever made, because it's the best execution of it's genre (exploration / mystery games). I accept the genre might not be for everyone, but I'm not aware any better games in the genre.
I tend to agree about the souls like games, especially from soft ones. There have been some I've enjoyed (I devoured remnant and remnant 2), but most often they just feel clunky and slow to me. Not "hard" just annoying.
I hated Shadow of Mordor when I got it. It was Linux native so I had to try it. Played past the return time so it sat in my library for a while. Got bored and tried it again. Didn't really care for the story but the gameplay was awesome. I have SoW to try, but no real motivation currently
Well tbh I've heard a lot about the gameplay in Shadow of Mordor being great, so I played it when it was temporarily free on Steam. The gameplay didn't feel like anything special so combined with the world I disliked, I didn't last long in it.
May I ask why you dislike the world? Is it LotR in general, or just what they did to the lore in those games?
Because I do enjoy those games, and I'm a fan of Tolkien as well, so I can definitely understand why someone wouldn't care for the Shadow games due to what the devs/writers did with Shelob and Sauron
Honestly, for some reason, I just strongly dislike everything set in the medieval fantasy setting. I tried watching Game of Thrones and dropped it because of that, I didn't watch too much of Harry Porter or LotR, never played Skyrim for the same reason. I know I'm missing out on a giant chunk of cool media that's great and interesting but I just can't bear this time period + magic. Unfortunately.
I might try something that's incredibly good and super popular but I probably won't like it in the end, even if I'm coming in with no prejudices against the world.
So you dislike fiction/fantasy in general?
No, just medieval ones. Modern or future fantasy is generally really cool, with or without magic.