It's brutal many times and doesn't take it easy on the player. The more you know about the rule set and spells/items/potions/abilities, the better off you are. I found once I figured out how the mechanics of the game system worked, things went way smoother (but still not a cakewalk).

My pleasure. :)

TBH colonial marines wan't the disaster on pc people would like you to believe. I played it (POST- patch) and it was okay. Not terrible, not good, just mediocre. It's a very predictable, no risks shooter. I had fun the few hours I played it but if you have a better shooter: play that first. I think colonial marines is an okay game when you are between games and want to play a shooter.

Has a lot of rough edges though: It was certainly released too early (graphics, pacing, difficulty spikes,...)

I remember really looking forward to the original The Sims way back when. When I finally bought it, I quickly got bored with it. For some reason though, a couple of days later, I just got this sims-bug and started it up again. I ended up having a blast and played it for weeks :P

EDIT:

*lol* Wrong thread...

I had the same experience with Far cry. On my first contact with the game, it seemed to me like a horror shooting game. (maybe I was mislead from youtube videos), those monsters made me think "that's just not believable".
On my second contact with the game, it seemed to me more like a good game, with realistic enviroment and a good story.

ok thanks, have you played the dlc contents too, especially in coop?

Hint: Get Might and Magic V and combine them to the "World of Xeen". It will be more the double of the orignal size with much more to do.

I played the dlc, it was decent but like all dlc: i found it a bit lacking. it is very rare though that i think a dlc is worth it. The one that comes to mind that was actually worth it was the SP dlc for Duke Nukem Forever.

I never tried the coop since when i finally bought colonial marines the few people that were still playing it only played MP and not Coop...

Hm, that seems to happen to me quite often.

Divinity 2: Developer's Cut
Played it for a bit, then filed it as a huge MMO-style RPG with repetitive combat and left it alone for a while. Some day I was in the mood for a 3D action RPG again, and after checking out Two Worlds which I found more cringeworthy than fun and then playing Risen for a while without making significant progress, I gave Divinity 2 another chance. And fell in love with it. I discovered more and more similarities to Divine Divinity, the humor, the freedom in builiding your character, and I also found out it isn't as big and repetitive as I thought it would be, even though I was shocked later on to find I had played it for 60+ hours. It's not perfect and it does get a bit repetitive in the end, but it's certainly a lot better than I initially thought it would be. And I loved being able to turn into a dragon. :)

Avencast - Rise of the Mage
The intro was so boring to me the first time I played it that I didn't even get to the combat tutorial before quitting. I blame it on the average voiceovers that are a bit slow and sluggish and there's too much dialogue you need to click through before getting a first glimpse of the action - and the action is where the game shines, not the story* as I found out when I had a more patient day at another time. It's actually fun for most of the time. (* Although the story has its moments, too, if in a weird way.)

Saints Row The Third
I actually didn't like the long over-the-top tutorial mission, and I played through it three times, because I wasn't happy with the characters I created and before you're allowed to create a new one, you have to play through the tutorial mission again. Unfortunately. I didn't realize the game allows you to completely change the looks of your character later on ... So I played through this mission three times: it's got a strange sense of humor, silly characters that were unfamiliar to me und unlikeable, I was always told what to do, there was no challenge to it, it was virgin territory to me since I rarley played any kind of shooters before and didn't have much experience with more modern games, and worst of all, my character didn't have a look or identity of its own. It was only when I gave the game a second chance and played beyond the first mission that I would discover why it actually is one of the most awesome games I've played. The tutorial only showcases the humor and over-the-top action, but the real fun comes from combining that with the freedom of an open world and a highly customizable character, something that you don't learn until after the first 30-60 minutes or so.

Mass Effect 3
I guess I played it too soon after ME2, so I was a bit burnt out on Mass Effect, and the changes in storytelling and gameplay were all the more evident and annoying to me. I think it was also shortly before I had to travel for a while and when I got back home, I never felt the urge to pick it up again. And then I had trouble getting back into it, because I had already forgotten quite a bit. I recently started over, now with a little more distance to the ME2 playthrough and an open mind and it became fun again despite its shortcomings. Doesn't really feel all that different to ME2 now. It's probably a bad idea to play different titles of a series in a row, at least if they're long RPGs that are very similar to each other but also introduce quite a few changes (and not always for the better).

Enclave
I played the demo and thought it was weird with clumsy controls and a too high speed that made it hectic and nearly unplayable for me. I thought it was rubbish. Nevertheless, when there was a promo on GOG, I decided to give it another try. And either GOG did something to make it run more smoothly on modern rigs or I quickly got accustomed to how it plays, in any case I ended up loving it. Another theory is that IIRC you play a melee fighter in the demo and the melee actually still feels clumsy and hectic to me. But in the full game you can choose your characters yourself and outfit them however you want, and I tended to play Enclave as a shooter with ranged weapons and magic rather than going for melee, which worked much better for me. And maybe the demo didn't allow you to choose your difficulty, and I admit, I also came to love the game later on because I played it on Easy. ;)

Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons
Everyone was praising it and it looked cool, so I bought it despite the warning that a controller was required to play it, IIRC at full price even. Little did I know that "controller" actually means "XBox controller" nowadays, and the support for other controllers (like my PS2 controllers) is inexistent to abysmal. I tried to make it work with emulators for Xbox controllers and failed. I tried to play it with keyboard controls which are integrated but bugged. All in all I played the beginning so often and always found it to be subpar because of those issus that frustration and disappointment made me think I would never be able to enjoy the game. Then some day on a whim I finally bought an Xbox controller, although I had sworn I wouldn't. It was plug and play and there were no further problems. I don't know what to think about the ending, as the story-telling wasn't perfect IMO, but overall I liked it and it was definitely worth playing, and using a controller actually is a must for the full experience (although I'm still a little sour that the support for other controllers is so bad).

Bastion
Similar to above; I played it for a bit with mouse and keyboard controls and while the game seemed okay, the controls felt weird (what fun using WASD in an isometric game that always requires you to move diagonally). After I had bought the Xbox controller, I gave it another try and it felt much better with the controller. Great game.

Mirror's Edge
I played through the tutorial, and apparantly it felt so long and exhausting to me that I took a break after that and then forgot to get back to the game. I think I also hadn't really mastered wall jumps at that stage and feared the game would be full of frustration because of that. On the second try I did better and then got into it. There actually were a few annoying points in the game, but I'm glad I played through it.

Richard and Alice, Evoland, Neverwinter Nights OC - NOT!
These three games are counterexamples to the above, games that didn't deserve the second chance I gave them despite me already being bored by them. They only got worse the more I played them.

Interesting that Divinity keeps showing up here. I've tried the first game several times, and like others, never got out of the starting area. Now I have another reason not to write it off completely. Divinity 2 though, I'm pretty sure I just don't like, but who knows.

My personal biggest 180 change of opinion was Legend of Grimrock. I first played it soon after its launch, and was bothered by something about character creation. I think I felt there weren't enough available portraits? It's weird, because now it seems completely absurd, whatever it was, because I tried the game again recently and got completely hooked... until I realized I totally screwed up my character builds, and now I'm still waiting for a good chance to start over again. But it stuck in my mind as a great example of why games are worth keeping around, even if you don't think you really like them at first.

(In that sense, now that I think about it, it's kind of an advantage of digital distribution platforms that they don't really let you lose or get rid of your games. You never have to pay again to give a game another chance.)

Diablo 2:

It felt too repetitive and boring early on, especially as the second world didn't feel as sinister and gloomy as the first one. I was happy I persisted, later it got more interesting, mainly hunting down certain trinkets and jewels so that you could make some very useful items.

System Shock 2:

It felt too damn frustrating early on, how hard it was to survive, respawning enemies everywhere, weapons constantly breaking and constantly running out of ammo (playing on "Impossible" level). As soon as I got a laser rapier and were able to use it, it became manageable, and I started enjoying the game more.

Thief Gold:

I was ready to stop playing for good on the second and third levels ("Break From Cragscleft Prison", "Down In The Bonehoard"), as they were just so damn confusing and not fun to play, especially the Bonehoard. Fortunately after that the levels became better. I am now on the Mage Towers level (8th level out of 15 total, I think), I hope rest of the levels stay this good. I still get quite easily lost in the levels though, too much similar-looking corridors and places.

Baldur's Gate:

Overall I found the first BG quite boring and the clunky interface and lack of proper quest log off-putting, and it took me a whole decade before I finally finished it (counting from the day when I played it the first time). I was still happy that I finished it because playing Baldur's Gate 2 was more interesting when you recognized the characters and references to the first game. I liked the battles much better when I changed the autopause settings a bit from the defaults, e.g. pause if health is low on any party member, or as soon as enemy is detected, etc. (I don't recall which were the defaults). Check the autopause list, and check those items where you feel you'd normally want to pause the combat.

After that it started feeling a bit more like turn-based combat, where the boring parts flow automatically. In fact, I started liking the combat system after that.

When I first ran across Dungeon Siege, right around the time the whole world was falling in love with it, I thought it was a trifle of clickfest nonsense. I was probably coming off my futile efforts against the damn dwarf combat team in Tales of the Sword Coast about then, and the lack of D&D rules and superstructures made it seem like Dungeon Siege had no spine. The graphics were cool, yes, and the no-loading-screens technology was a nice trick, but I played it a little at a friend's house and dismissed it as Adventuring Lite.

I don't know why I decided to try it again, years later, on Steam, but it won me over quickly - whether it's Lite or not, it's just plain good fun. I haven't finished it - I almost never finish games, alas, and in this case I found it got a little dull as my party got larger - but I've completely enjoyed the time spent in there.

O, I did try many combinations of autopause (perhaps as many as 10) and none felt "turn-based".

I now remember two things that kind of "broke" me:
1) Some battle with some big brute (ogre?) where one of my characters (under my control) ran in circles for a few minutes, pursued by the brute, while my other characters stood motionless and (automatically) shot arrows/stones at the enemy until it died.
2) After investing time and effort in building and equipping my party members, their alignment clashed and they began an outright battle where half of my party attacked the other half.

I am still debating whether to give BG1 another try or begin BG2 or neither.

P.S. I lost ineterest in Thief 1 somewhere around level 6, I believe. Too easy to get lost.
I began System Shock 2 yesterday (for the first time...).