I’ve written plenty about the games I’ve played and what I thought of them, but I’ve never written about the ones I quit. It’s a strange angle, and honestly more interesting than it sounds. So here are the games I walked away from—not titles I finished and slowly drifted away from, but games I deliberately stopped midway.
Rainbow Six Siege
Playtime: 123.2H
This one is a lifelong pain. I really loved it, but I quit because of pressure. At one point I even wrote a long post about it elsewhere. Siege has a brutal entry barrier and leans hard on familiarity; you’re still a newbie until around level 100. No matter how much I practiced terrorist hunt, learned the maps, and read guides in my spare time, I was still far behind what random teammates expected.
One time a teammate shot me in the head and got on voice chat to pressure me. I completely broke, deleted the game, and never went back.
I even have a Black Ice skin.
Dota 1 / Dota 2
Dota 1 playtime: around 1000+H
Dota 2 playtime: 29.3H
I quit Dota 2 because I got left behind.
Dota 1 carried me through middle school and high school. It was my only entertainment during that whole stretch of school. Then Dota 2 arrived, and most Dota 1 players moved over. I had a very real problem: the family computer couldn’t run Dota 2.
So I stayed on Dota 1, but the player environment got more and more foul. I even got into shouting matches with people. If you were playing on the 11 platform during that period, you probably know exactly what I mean.
Eventually I was pushed into League of Legends. No other reason: my computer could run it, and at the time the player atmosphere was decent.
On the Leiser server, using a friend’s account, I played my first ranked games. All five placement matches were full of teammates encouraging me and telling me I was doing well. I was touched. Thanks to my Dota 1 MOBA basics, I was only a slightly strong newbie at that point.
Because I liked Shadow Fiend a lot back then, here is a screenshot of my old, very non-mainstream QQ contact group names. Don’t laugh.
CS:GO
Playtime: 204.5H
I started when a no-pattern Butterfly Knife was still a little over 2,000.
I quit because the overall atmosphere was too high-pressure. As a strongly competitive game, CS:GO only gives positive feedback when you kill opponents and win, and that slowly pulled away from how I want to play games. The community also felt odd. Early on, when I posted kill montages on Bilibili, the comments were full of people being sour about my skins and mocking my skill.
My mom once gave me a Factory New Bayonet | Doppler for my birthday.
It got more and more tiring, with less and less positive feedback, so I sold all my skins and quit.
As an aside: when I quit, I only cleared out the more expensive skins. Then, as CS2 was getting ready to launch, skin prices rose across the board. I listed all my junk skins on the market and somehow scraped together enough for an Apex heirloom.
Warframe
Playtime: 93.1H
A game I really like but have no idea how to play.
I love loot games. I used to spend every day buried in Diablo III. But with Warframe, when I play alone, I just can’t find the fun. When I play with other people, they basically carry me through the grind while I do nothing.
It’s a game I played for a long time, went back to several times, and still couldn’t figure out. I don’t know how to play it, and I don’t know what makes it fun. I even thought about dragging Fang back in to try again, but Fang would definitely end up dizzy.
God of War 4 / God of War 5
Fang used to love these games, but because she gets 3D motion sickness, I ended up playing while she watched.
God of War 4 tortured me with puzzles, climbing, and story until I completely stopped. The action design, effects, presentation, and environments are truly top-tier. The experience, though, was miserable. I finally climbed to the top of the mountain and realized I had climbed the wrong mountain. I could not keep it together.
God of War 5 finally had a story that was okay, but the action design was less crisp and satisfying than 4.
My favorite move in God of War 4 was the charged heavy attack. Kratos charges the axe and brings it down hard, splitting an enemy’s head straight in two. It was cool, full of tension, and felt great with the controller vibration. And it was removed in God of War 5.
The kind of game that is neither tasty nor worth spitting out.
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age
Too old. The graphics are too low, and the gameplay feels ancient.
The game is huge, around 40-60H. For low-resolution games that don’t really wow me, I only have about 20H of patience.
What made it worse: in a story-focused game, the subtitles had a huge black bar taking up nearly a third of the screen height. I cannot imagine what kind of design decision that was. Online reviews also say the story is fairly average, so I didn’t want to keep going.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Our great TGA Game of the Year! A godlike existence (not).
I went in expecting a Game of the Year, and it was pure shit. Does something like this deserve Game of the Year? TGA really has nothing left.
The art, effects, and environments are still stunning. But the music felt weirdly discordant and stuffed in. The parry and dodge feel strange. The story is extremely dumb.
A friend told me the later story is even more absurd than Stellar Blade. I played one night and couldn’t continue.
No Man’s Sky
Playtime: 10.1H
Undoubtedly a good game.
But the strange planets, animals, and plants make me inexplicably afraid. Playing alone is just too lonely. I might drag Fang in later.
Monster Hunter: World
Playtime: 9.6H
Fang and I both really liked this game, but we eventually dropped it because of multiplayer problems and because we were playing other things at the time.
Whether it was story or hunts, I wanted to play with Fang. But neither of us could figure out the multiplayer system. We each played for hours in our own worlds. During that time we hunted together maybe once, and then we never connected again.
I will definitely return to it later. Fang wants to restore the glory of the insect glaive.
Phasmophobia
Playtime: 6.4H
I really like this game.
There is only one reason I stopped: I’m too scared to play. Fang was next to me watching me play with friends and nearly died laughing because I was so scared I froze and couldn’t move. But I was genuinely terrified.
Every day I was torn between ‘I want to play, maybe I should invite friends’ and ‘I’m too scared, maybe I shouldn’t.’ Gradually I just stopped. But I still really like this game.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
A game I’ve tried three or four times and still haven’t gotten through.
I’ll keep trying, because in every way it looks like exactly the kind of game I love. The only reason I haven’t gotten through it is my own restlessness.
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Like The Witcher 3, this is a game I keep coming back to and trying every so often.
The biggest problem is that I don’t get it. It’s so free that I don’t know what to do. At first I avoided guides because I didn’t want to hurt the experience. Later I realized that without a guide I truly had no idea how to play. Then I read guides and still didn’t fully get it.
I’ll keep trying with Fang later.