This is a followup to @SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 's recent thread for completeness' sake.
I'll state an old classic that is seen as a genre defining game because it is: Myst. Yes, it redefined the genre... in ways I fucking hated and that the adventure game genre took decades to fully recover from. It was a pompous mess in its presentation and was the worst kind of "doing action does vague thing or nothing at all, where is your hint book" puzzle gameplay wrapped in graphical hype which ages pretty poorly as far as appeal qualities go.
So many adventure games tried to be Myst afterward that the sheer budgetary costs and redundancy of the also-rans crashed the adventure game genre for years.
Horizon Zero Dawn. Might be a good game series but It didnt catch me. Im also sure I enjoyed the Last of Us more as a show then as a game. Then again I have to admit these arent the kinds of games I really enjoy anyways.
I got reasonably far in Horizon and then couldn't do it when I realized it was just Far Cry with robot dinosaurs.
Interestingly, The Last Of Us was one that never hooked me. Tried it on two occasions and it just felt weird to me. Ended up watching someone else play it on Twitch/YouTube. I can get why the story is so good, but the gameplay just didn’t suit me.
TLOU is most fun when you play combat psychotically hyper-aggressive, but that does clash a bit with the narrative. Joel going out of his way to set six people on fire affects the mood a bit.
Good story, but it's a story that was meant to be a tv-show. It doesn't at all make use of being a game
What killed HZD for me was the god-awful writing. Every character is a cardboard cut-out and the plot was painfully predictable. Add the shallow gameplay on top of that and I regret every one of those ten dollars I spent on it.
I absolutely love that game and the sound effects coming off the controller tickle me pink. But honestly, it's just not a good enough game to justify the time commitment with what little time I actually have.
I loved the first last of us, haven't played the second yet. But I agree with you on horizon zero dawn. Couldn't get into it no matter how much I tried.