So, you're a gamer, right? Your family and friends all know this for certain, and they will probably think a video game would be a good gift for you, be it for Christmas or a birthday or what have you. However, let it be known that you are the gamer, and they may not be. So, instead of ripping open that wrapping paper to see Breath of the Wild or DOOM Eternal, you may end up with a subpar Spongebob game instead, which you have to keep a stiff upper lip and smile and thank them for the gift, despite the fact that you'll probably only play it once ever to see what it's like, if at all. Since it's nearing Christmastime, I figure now is a perfect time to relive these not-so-great memories and recap which games ended up disappointing you the most, or even if these off-the-wall games ended up being childhood favorites of yours. Personally, I remember a few years ago on my birthday (Or Christmas, they're so close together for me that I can't really remember), I was presented with a copy of Tenkai Knights: Brave Battle by my parents. Now, Tenkai Knights was an anime where four kids became powerful warriors on a distant planet, with them, their enemies, and everyone looking like very marketable toy brick people. I did like that show, which is why they probably went out and got it, and while I was hoping it was something like the LBX 3DS game I heard about, which was supposedly a really good game, this was simply atrocious. You can only attack when you stand still, the enemy AI is laughably simplistic, the dialogue in the extremely pixelated cutscenes are so quiet you sometimes can't even tell there is audible dialogue, and if you die at any point during the game, you get booted to the main menu, meaning you have to slog through a whole bunch of lifeless combat once again. I tried it again just recently to see if my several year older brain could handle it better and...nope, still repulsive. A sad gift, indeed.
My mom always makes sure to ask me and my siblings exactly what game we want, the thing is, there's a lot of us kids, with each of us having our own game preferences, and my parents could only get one or two games a year, depending on how new/expensive they were, so some of us were always disappointed that our game wasn't the one that was chosen that year. I mean, yeah, all of us enjoyed Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey, but I still wanted to get Pokémon Shield or something else. There have definitely been a couple of times where me and my siblings have argued about who should get the game for this year, because we all felt like the others got games way more often than we did. I'm surprised that my parents didn't get sick of the fighting and just decided that there would be no ore game buying for Christmas.
This was maybe 9/10 years ago?? My mom got me a DS game called The Legendary Starfy and I remember ripping off the wrapping paper and staring at the box thinking "What is this? I've never heard of this game before." (Granted I knew next to nothing about video games at the time, but still.) I played it anyway and I loved it. I replayed it recently and I still love it now!
The one thing nobody in my family has ever tried to surprise me with is a new video game; the only time I unwrap one as a gift (for Christmas or my birthday) is when it's a game that I specifically asked for. But! There have been a couple of separate exceptions, all three of which happened to be my mom looking around in the bargain bin at the store when I was a pre-teen and bringing me something she must have thought I would like. So was how I ended up with Cooking Mama: Cook Off, Order Up!, and... a DS game called "My Healthy Cooking Coach" (all of them being themed around cooking probably being a coincidence). I admittedly haven't touched the last one in the near-decade it's been hanging out in my collection. Order Up! and Cooking Mama, on the other hand, were actually fun and charming little games in their own right. I eventually ended up trading both of them back to Gamestop after some time to put towards another game of my choosing, but I liked them while I had them.
I don't have a story of this personally but I remember a friend telling me one. He got a copy of forza (he didn't like racing games back then and still doesn't) And after 3 hours he threw his controller at the wall.