If we are only listing the more famous ones then:

Arcanum (Boorring)
Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal
Dragon Age (Game bored me to death but people seem to love it)
Half-Life Blue Shift
Starcraft (Still have the saved games from 2000)
Starcraft 2 (never finished SC1 so wouldn't seem right to play this one)
Witcher 1-3.

All of the above have been started and played but were never finished.
Going to be deployed for most of the year next year so should have the time to play these among others. (Dosfreak hugs smartsteamemu)

I've never played Vampire Bloodlines.......or any other Vampire or Kain game.

I think the main reason why I have never completed Doom or Doom II is to do with how many WAD (or custom maps) exist. I guess I want to play with the custom maps instead of the vanilla ones. I will play though 32 maps made by someone else but I get bored after map six of a stock Doom/Doom II WAD.

dosquest wrote:

Do any of you have any deep, dark, games that you have never played til completion?

99.9% of those mentioned in this forum.
I love old hardware but a gamer I am not.

I mainly use my retro games to re-live my childhood and test various hardware bits and bobs. Sure, I come back to my favorites, but to play them through fully? Ehhhh, not always.

I usually finish PC games I play at least once; even turds like Depth Dwellers and The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki got played to the bitter end (and what a bitter end it was for both 😒 😵 ). Even then, I found a few that were not finished for one reason or another:

Zone 66 (too boring IMHO, I like the soundtrack much better)
Monster Bash (Johnny Dash doesn't do it for me)
Alien Carnage (aka Halloween Harry, too repetitive and hard at times)
Electroman (a snooze fest)
Pinball World (ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz)
Jazz Jackrabbit 2 (funny, I finished the first one several times, but this one evades me *_*)
Hexen: Beyond Heretic (somehow I can't get motivated enough to get past the first portal)
Radix: Beyond the Void (I've been trying for quite a while; maybe I'll finish someday)

In addition, I've tried a few games from the 80's (most recently Alley Cat), but haven't tried any newer than 2005 - and probably never will (there's no appeal for me in any of them).

Half-Life 🤣

Malik wrote:

Half-Life 🤣

I finished Half-Life, Half-Life 2 plus the episodes.

Confession: I finished X-Com back in the day on a moderate difficulty setting and felt pretty good about that accomplishment, but later found out the game has a bug where the alien AI is always at the lowest setting. After fixing the bug, I could hardly finish a single mission on moderate difficulty levels without becoming discouraged from being abjectly schooled by the AI.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

haven't tried any newer than 2005 - and probably never will (there's no appeal for me in any of them).

Seems a rather arbitrary line in the sand... I imagine you could find some worthy games made after 2005, even for someone with old skool tastes.

I never had the patience to complete Liberty City in the original GTA. >_<

Never actually finished many of the classic Lucas games...

Maniac Mansion (playing currently on my Tandy 1000)
The Dig
Outlaws
Full Throttle
Grim Fandango
DOTT

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Hexen: Beyond Heretic (somehow I can't get motivated enough to get past the first portal)

+1

I actually made it past the first portal, but got bored along the way and never finished it.

Nevertheless, it's occasionally happened to me that a game i didn't care much about when I first played it, would with time become a personal favorite. Guess people change, and so does one's taste. Perhaps I should give it another run.

I played UT99 first but I knew there had to have been a Unreal game before Tournament due to the presence of UnrealI.u and UnrealShare.u and seeing mods that used the Unreal 1 weapons and monsters.

Wasn't long before my father got me Unreal Gold for christmas. Even he was confused about the situation.

Baldur's Gate, I never managed to really get into it, despite the fact I generally do like RPG games like Fallout 1 and 2 for instance.

maybe I need to play it more, I dont know.

Obviously there are many games that I never played and never will, because they are simply not my cup of tea, even if they are good games in someone else's eyes / in their respective categories.

But there are indeed games that I, in principle, would like to finish, but never did. Let's see... Out of what was mentioned:

DosFreak wrote:

Starcraft (Still have the saved games from 2000)

Heh. I think I only started playing it sometime in 2008. I am still in the middle of the Brood War Terran campaign somewhere...

dosquest wrote:

I think the main reason why I have never completed Doom or Doom II is to do with how many WAD (or custom maps) exist. I guess I want to play with the custom maps instead of the vanilla ones. I will play though 32 maps made by someone else but I get bored after map six of a stock Doom/Doom II WAD.

Well, if the goal is to finish at least once all maps ever produced, then I think most players would find it physically impossible. It should not be the goal.

The original maps definitely pale in comparison to some of the newer content out there. What can you expect? They are 20+ years old, and like in any art, people's skills in DOOM mapmaking have been gradually evolving to the point of making amazing things that no one even dreamed were possible within the limitations of the engine, when it first came out.

I did force myself to play through all the original IWADs. I think at some point I stopped in the middle of Plutonia for like 12-13 years, but eventually I got back to it and finished it.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Electroman (a snooze fest)

That it is. Dreadfully slow pace, awkward controls, and every little thing kills you and drops you back to the last checkpoint. I still don't believe I actually finished the whole game once. Will never do it again.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Alien Carnage (aka Halloween Harry, too repetitive and hard at times)

Finished that one too. I recall it having some annoying bugs with graphics/sound that impaired the gameplay. Never touched it since. Duke Nukem II is so much more fun.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Jazz Jackrabbit 2 (funny, I finished the first one several times, but this one evades me *_*)

Same thing. I think I found it hard to identify with the characters, with them being so small, and the levels looking so huge in comparison.

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Hexen: Beyond Heretic (somehow I can't get motivated enough to get past the first portal)

Back when I was a kid with loads of free time, I actually did play this one through, but I couldn't be bothered, so I did it on the lowest skill level, and with a walkthrough, to avoid struggling for hours solving the puzzles. Despite the atmosphere, I didn't feel at the end it was worth it.

Now to add a couple of my own:

It also took me a long time to finish the original Bioshock, which is a very over-rated, repetitive game. Most of the time you spend "hacking" pipe puzzles and fighting the same stupid enemies with the same stupid one-liners.

But the game that takes the crown for me is the first Assassin's Creed. I loved the Prince of Persia trilogy of the early 21st century, and was told that it is in some ways similar. Well, graphics and engine-wise it may be, but the game itself... Ugh. Take the repetitiveness of Bioshock and multiply by clumsy controls and abysmally slow pace (even navigating the menus takes ages!). I really gave it what I felt was a fair shot, but in the end it became the first game in a long long time that I simply stopped playing in the middle and erased from my hard drive.

Lol Most of the games I have I have not completed! I think the only games I have actually beaten are:

POD
Command and Conquer Red Alert 2
Deus Ex and The Nameless Mod (which is fucking amazing, I kind of want to go play it right now 🤣)
Rise of The Triad
Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto : Vice City
Grand Theft Auto 3 (Also kinda boring but I hadn't experienced GTA VC yet so it was pretty cool at the time)
Grand Theft Auto 2 (Although it got pretty boring towards the end)

I think that might actually be everything, I'm not much of a gamer it turns out. 🤣

Lo Wang wrote:

+1 […]
Show full quote

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Hexen: Beyond Heretic (somehow I can't get motivated enough to get past the first portal)

+1

I actually made it past the first portal, but got bored along the way and never finished it.

Nevertheless, it's occasionally happened to me that a game i didn't care much about when I first played it, would with time become a personal favorite. Guess people change, and so does one's taste. Perhaps I should give it another run.

dr_st wrote:

Back when I was a kid with loads of free time, I actually did play this one through, but I couldn't be bothered, so I did it on the lowest skill level, and with a walkthrough, to avoid struggling for hours solving the puzzles. Despite the atmosphere, I didn't feel at the end it was worth it.

I've tried time and time again to finish Hexen but I just can't do it, even with a walkthrough. I don't know if it's the atmosphere, the puzzles, the entire hub system; all I know is that as soon as I get to the first portal is over for me, the motivation just isn't there (an I've played Heretic many times to the end with enthusiasm).

ripsaw8080 wrote:

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

haven't tried any newer than 2005 - and probably never will (there's no appeal for me in any of them).

Seems a rather arbitrary line in the sand... I imagine you could find some worthy games made after 2005, even for someone with old skool tastes.

Actually there are several reasons why I chose to do this:

-The rising popularity of Steam (and its copycats Uplay and Origin). I'm not a fan of this type of online distribution.

-The advent of very nasty DRM (StarForce and XCP are two examples). Online Verification and Virtual Content have largely taken their place now - and I dislike them just as much (I do realize that IP holders have a right to protect their product, and I also have the right to say no with my wallet).

-The increasing popularity of online multiplayer gaming (MMORPGs in particular). I don't care for multiplayer games (I'm a lone wolf at heart), so I avoid them.

-The appearance of Windows NT only games. I'm a DOS/Win9x guy, and NT makes no sense to me (it was originally a workstation/productivity OS); sure it has its advantages, but I'm still not convinced. I do have one WinNT game, Doom 3 - and that's it.

I'm a conservative, traditional gamer at heart; sell me a CD/DVD game with a key and the need to have said CD/DVD in the drive and I'm a happy camper. Force me to install unwanted DRM/software/online content and I'll avoid your product like the plague. Once I saw the direction PC gaming was taking in 2005 I knew it was over for someone like me - I had no choice but to draw the line. In fact, you could say I've boycotted the PC gaming industry so far.

As it stands, the only current game I have any interest in right now is the Megarace Reboot; so far though, Zoom Platform hasn't shown much in the way of progress. Once the game is finished and available, I hope it meets my 3 basic criteria - no DRM, no online connectivity needed, and no questioning of my honesty. Otherwise I won't buy it.

PS: I was going to write a much longer post but I realized badmouthing and even threatening a well known figure in PC gaming circles wasn't right, so I went with this shorter version instead. My apologies if anyone feels offended or insulted by what I wrote here - I'm just expressing my feelings for something that, to me, doesn't make sense anymore at all.

PPS: Sorry about the off-topic post dosquest. Once again, my apologies ^^.

Half Life and all other Steam games