Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Overcast]

- "PC Master Race" is the single most grating term people hold in the video gaming community as a mark of merit; you tossed a ton of money down on a rig that can render shit in a video game faster, totally amazing job bro. Not to mention how deceptive the claims can be when it comes to actually assembling a proper gaming PC when the planets aren't aligned insofar as hunting for parts, prove to me that you can build a system better than my consoles and hand held for anything less than about $800. A good friend proposed to me that the reason these people sperg out almost on cue about how super awesome it is to game on the computer is because people were touting in the recent past how PC Gaming as a medium wasn't going to last before it really took off. Even if this equates to any true believers making sure to rub it in the face of every 'peasant' as a form of compulsory and ideological vengeance, well founded or not, it doesn't do anything to justify the annoying shit people spew over the mere notion that somebody prefers a cleanly assembled machine they can plug in and play within the hour of purchase with assurance that it won't completely fail due to some extremely faulty little gizmo that you have to gut the entire product just to fix. At the end of the day, I want to play video games just like anyone else wants to, some folks should shut up and let folks play what they want to without creating some narcissistic status quo over it.

- The Souls series is largely sabotaged by its own reputation as a quote unquote "difficult game" pitted thoroughly against the notion that you can learn to blast through it with extreme ease simply by understanding what to do and how to do it. There is no incredible amount of individuality in all three titles as an advertised exercise in masochism that you couldn't find immediately in picking up any archaic title from the arcade and NES age, and there's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that method of application, except when the difficulty derives almost primarily from a mechanical standpoint. People are immediately conditioned to believe that this game is supposed to be stressful and frustrating, and they go in determined to live up to that experience; damned be the poor soul that dares to suggest the very possibility that this boss fight is poorly designed or that this area of the game is a bit too ridiculously tedious, or that a certain mechanic is doing nothing to add actual depth to the gameplay and is instead largely there to make it harder for you to use the elements of the game to your advantage. It wasn't so much a big issue between the first and second iterations, which kept themselves largely as a single player experience that was designed to be beatable by anyone who invested enough patience and daring-do to tackle the challenges ahead. 2 completely shit all over itself when the focus built itself almost entirely around its own advertisement as a 'hard game that you play with other people' and was determined to sacrifice any sense of charm in the struggle just to keep the game as stressful as possible; no matter how much deliberate shit they had to pull in hitboxes, enemy placement, and weapon/spell/etc balancing. Nothing of course to say of all the mishandling by the development team post-release that still hasn't fixed a broken Region Lock system or most of the original problems the game came out with; or the fact that this series has one of the absolute worst communities I have EVER seen in any video game ever; manifested by the climax of its IP life cycle as an insufferable crowd of raging autists and exploiters determined to turn the experience into an E-Sport. I don't have particularly high hopes for Bloodborne, for that matter.

- I don't actually hate Peter Molyneux, and had little problem with the Fable series. I guess maybe because I came into each of them fairly late, with the exception of 3; of which I spent some time frame following up through its pre-release information cycles, but I've known a handful of circles that tout the man as the second manifestation of John Romero for being patently incapable of keeping his mouth shut about the stuff in his games. While I will never deny the man had a problem with making promises he couldn't keep, I always felt his only real fault was in thinking a little too ambitiously and dooming himself to failure in the push towards it. Unless I missed him being deliberately deceptive, I saw him kind of wind down towards 3's release and didn't find it anything short of an average, if charming action RPG.

- Tim Schafer's spaghetti drop depresses me far more than it does anger me.

What do you mean by Tim Schafer's spaghetti drop? I'm curious.

Spoiler

I actually liked Skyward Sword. I understand why people don't like it for the relatively empty overworld and backtracking (though c'mon, OoT had just as many problems with a barren overworld and backtracking through zones and nobody ever complains about that). But I don't understand the sheer amount of hate it gets.

Spoiler

I don't think it's a bad game either. In fact I kinda like some of the ideas they brought to the table, shields that can break, a combat system that required some precision, ect.

I think the problem is though that the backtracking is more obvious than it was in previous games. There are only three major areas besides Skyloft, each split into two halves. The first two times you visit them I'm fine with as you go to a different part of the area and do a new temple each time.

The third go around where you needed the parts of that dragon song however, definitely felt like padding however. Between a swimming mini game and a forced stealth section, they all just felt unnecessary to me.

Oh, and there was also the parts where you had to stop Demise from reaching the temple three times as well. First two times was fine, but again, doing it a third time felt like padding the game out.

So yeah, while I do like some aspects of the game, it's not without it's flaws.

 

[Watcher]

What do you mean by Tim Schafer's spaghetti drop? I'm curious.

He's referring to Tim Schafer's mis-management of Broken Age's finances, his sudden SJW push and this

 

[Jaimas]

He's referring to Tim Schafer's mis-management of Broken Age's finances, his sudden SJW push and this
https://youtube.com/watch?v=WjoZK4048aM

From AlphaOmegaSin:

According to reports, essentially, the Twitch Chat exploded when this happened.

Whether you're Pro or Anti-GG doesn't matter on this one - both sides and neutrals alike were just as pissed. Schafer had taken an award ceremony - widely considered neutral ground - and had used it as one more fucking platform to scream about how victimized his best friends at Silverstring Media are in a time when you quite literally cannot spit without running across fucking Anita Sarkeesian. In a barrage of incidents wherein what was obstenibly already the most insufferably political GDC in the history of the event, Schafer was the straw that broke the camel's back, despised more than all others because it was a developer most had respected drinking from the same vat of stupid and showing everyone just how deep this shit had gone.

Pro-GGers were pissed because of reasons obvious - Anti-GGers were pissed because Schafer made the best of them look like fucking morons. Neutrals were pissed because this represented the culmination of literal fucking days of countless politicking about fucking gender identity issues and shit nobody fucking cares about intruding where no one fucking asked for them. Throw in the racism (he's gone on record that no women/minorities/gays/etc are in gamergate or against Anita Sarkeesian), and you have a shitstorm.

Bear in mind, all of this is right the fuck after Schafer's earlier bullshit as part of 25 invisible benefits of gaming whilst male, where we learned that apparently, being called a mean name on the internet apparently only matters if you're a woman:

It was a ridiculous incident on every level.

 

[waffle]

3.0/3.5 fag here. You are entirely within your rights to dislike Pathfinder, and even fans of Pathfinder can see its flaws. I personally see its ongoing existence as less of a love-letter towards 3.X (3rd is a damned good system in spite of its glaring weaknesses), so much as it is an indictment on how shitty and not-D&D 4E was.

My personal favorite system is d20 Modern. Aside from economic issues and some wobbliness from its d20 parentage, it's a solid system that I've found works well.

D20 modern can give an amazingly realistic system for gun fights if you adhear to cover rules religiously and have body armor provide DR, along with implementing some kind of head shot rule.

 

[XH 502]

I hate the 8-bit era of video games and I can't play them for the life of me.

It's not that they're hard or that the games are bad, but it was this awkward puberty phase of gaming history. I enjoy the gems of any other era, from Atari to PS1 to WiiU, but not 8-bit. I've tried to play so many NES games, yet every time I come away hating the experience. Games were making the transition from repetitive arcade design to "there's a story here, a world to explore, and we need to give the player a save feature". My common complaints are the controls feel clunky and awkward, the games actively work against you to add playtime, and the visuals are often too basic and dull.

On that last point: I'm not the type of person who thinks graphics are everything. Sure, I love seeing a game for the first time and being left in awe (Bayonetta 2 is the most recent example), but I can't imagine games like Galaga as anything other than those classic sprites.

 

[Watcher]

It's not that they're hard or that the games are bad, but it was this awkward puberty phase of gaming history. I enjoy the gems of any other era, from Atari to PS1 to WiiU, but not 8-bit. I've tried to play so many NES games, yet every time I come away hating the experience. Games were making the transition from repetitive arcade design to "there's a story here, a world to explore, and we need to give the player a save feature". My common complaints are the controls feel clunky and awkward, the games actively work against you to add playtime, and the visuals are often too basic and dull.
.

I'm not the biggest fan of 8bit games myself. However there is one game that has always been an exception to that.

Mike Tyson's Punch out in my opinion is the game that has aged the best out of the NES's library. It took full advantage of it's limitations to deliver a really well designed arcady boxing game that captured the appeal of the sport perfectly. Each fight was akin to a puzzle and it was full of colorful and memorable characters that I all still remember today. And it was challenging as hell and it's titular boss was an utter nightmare to beat.

It aged so well that when the game was remade for the Wii they did very few changes to the control scheme and it still played very well.

 

[I-chi]

The thing with 'Souls is the games were basically designed so that anyone could complete them. (if you look at their rpg elements in particular). Specifically how every boss in the game has attacks that are dodgeable or blockable in some way. (and this is proven by how there have been numerous no damage runs of Dark Souls and level 1 runs). But also how much your character is influenced by equipment compared to their stats. (Infact your stats pretty much just influence equipment and not the other way around). But not just that. The player can always grind if there's a particularly challenging boss and you can summon another player/an NPC if you're still having trouble.

It's interesting when people compare Dark Souls to much older titles because Dark Souls is significantly more forgiving than they ever were. This is infact to the game's credit in my opinion because it just chose to not hold the player's hand. Dark Souls becoming popular for it's difficulty was moreso symbolic of how used to linear and easy games we have become.

The devs on Dark Souls outright stated that they didn't set out to make a really hard game. Rather they wanted difficulty to add weight to particular moments, such as the boss fight between Ornstein and Smough. Or

Spoiler

how easy Gwyn is by comparison to the other bosses. And how he's the only boss who you can parry which makes the fight even easier

I don't think difficulty is what people want. I think what Dark Souls showed to people is that they don't want their hands held. Which is what Dark Souls did best compared to a lot of other games released at the time. Difficulty was just what people associated it with. People want games that are less linear and scripted, and are sold primarily on their replayability (And one thing Dark Souls has in spades above all else even compared to it's difficulty is replayability.)

Anyway I foresee From is unfortunately going to become a victim of their own success. I don't have any particular hopes for Bloodborne but only because I think they're going to be pressured to streamline the game to appeal to more people.

Actually that's what I meant; functionally speaking, they succeeded in their original vision insofar as Demon's and the first Dark went, I'm more just venting out how when the sequel decided to roll around, they kind of threw that purpose by the wayside and divulged almost entirely into one incompetent patching cycle after another. Where this whole 'difficulty appeal' started to become a problem was when it bred, literally, a fanbase that would leap at the chance to call out any even moderately well reasoned complaint about some of the game's less than stellar application of its mechanics and context as being nothing more than bitching from folks who needed to 'git gud'. This ESPECIALLY so in the integrated multiplayer which was quickly hijacked by an almost cyclical routine of 'who can find the most broken shit'; which absolutely wouldn't be all that bad of a problem except when they rendered the game in such a way that you could literally be destroyed by someone upwards to 100 or 200 levels above you due to a mechanic that was, contextually speaking, put in the game in order to regulate the ability to call for backup or play with familiar people. What this spiel amounts to is that either there was some major disconnect going on between the devs and the fanbase, or they were comfortable riding around a top of the fact that their game had come to be seen as "that digital masochism" that they felt absolutely no need to do anything to actually properly polish the game beyond nerfing whatever the Japanese fans were bitching about subsequently. It's a tragedy in my eyes that really could have been avoided if they had taken more time to recollect what made the easier installments so memorable, even if they too had their share of shitty problems due in no particular shortage of parts with the playerbase.

 

[Jaimas]

I hate the 8-bit era of video games and I can't play them for the life of me.

It's not that they're hard or that the games are bad, but it was this awkward puberty phase of gaming history. I enjoy the gems of any other era, from Atari to PS1 to WiiU, but not 8-bit. I've tried to play so many NES games, yet every time I come away hating the experience. Games were making the transition from repetitive arcade design to "there's a story here, a world to explore, and we need to give the player a save feature". My common complaints are the controls feel clunky and awkward, the games actively work against you to add playtime, and the visuals are often too basic and dull.

On that last point: I'm not the type of person who thinks graphics are everything. Sure, I love seeing a game for the first time and being left in awe (Bayonetta 2 is the most recent example), but I can't imagine games like Galaga as anything other than those classic sprites.

It's definitely generational. I'm a fan of oldschool games, and have studied them extensively as a historian of sorts, but your opine does have a lot of merit, even if I disagree.

If you were growing up in the 80s and you suddenly had arcade-perfect ports of games, that kind of contextualizes things like NES games like Galaga, Donkey Kong, Joust, and Duck Hunt. Gaming may have been clunkier, less graphically-intensive, and more primitive, but there's some games that are just timeless. Some games, like Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, River City Ransom, and the original Legend of Zelda, transcend their console's limitation, and show that they're better than their hardware. There's a reason their virtual console versions have collectively sold shitloads, and it isn't nostalgia.

Others? Not so much. Original NES Castlevania, I'm looking at you.

I'm an oldfag enough to be willing to play through the likes if Bionic Commando or The Guardian Legend, but you're being entirely too kind in saying that they're absolutely clunky as hell. Enjoyable in their own rights, but loaded with so much crap that it'd completely lock down anyone trying to get through the game because you didn't know to use weapon X at door Y or the entire 23-step process needed to open the door to sector 6.

The thing is, this isn't limited to the 8-bit era. This happened all the goddamned time in the 16-bit era and on other consoles of the age. It happened less, mind, and with less fanfare, but it was goddamned everywhere. It was less a sign of the times and of the level of maturity gaming had, and more the fact that there was ten fucktons of new companies forming to try to take advantage of a new medium, none of which had a fucking clue what they were doing. Namco stuck to what they knew (arcade games), Nintendo did a mix of Arcade titles and otherwise, and newcomers Capcom and Konami alternated between shit and competence.

Speaking of, my turn again.

I don't like Megaman 2. The fact that this game's considered the apex of the game series' gameplay is fucking bullshit. Seriously. I've never, for the life of me, understood why this game is widely-considered the best of the series. I can objectively list at least 3 ways where it shows phenomenally horrible design and in ways that both Megaman 3 and especially Megaman 4 are infinitely superior games:

1. Limited Options For Movement and Combat
Megaman 3 introduces sliding, which is an amazing improvement as far as gameplay goes, and Megaman 4 introduces the Mega Buster's charged function. Megaman 2 has only the numbered items, whilst Megaman 3 and 4 have Rush. A simple fact is that you have better mobility options and better combat options in the latter two games. The Metal Blade literally is the only weapon you will need for 90% of the game in Megaman 2, whereas one can find themselves using pretty much every damned weapon in Megaman 3 and 4.

2. Megaman 2's Level Design Is Bad And Its Boss Fights are Worse
In a word: Boobeams.
This boss is unforgivably bad design, mandating the use of either a necessary death or literally perfect aim to beat, and that's not an option on Difficult. This, plus the bullshit damage output on the Wily Alien, are proof positive of some truly atrocious game design mechanics. Heatman's stage is infamous for essentially mandating you beat fucking Airman first. Areas like LITERALLY EVERY STAGE AFTER THE FIRST WILY CASTLE STAGE are just really lacking and not very fun.

3. The Later Games Have Better Music
Search your feelings, you know it be true.

 

[XH 502]

If you were growing up in the 80s and you suddenly had arcade-perfect ports of games, that kind of contextualizes things like NES games like Galaga, Donkey Kong, Joust, and Duck Hunt. Gaming may have been clunkier, less graphically-intensive, and more primitive, but there's some games that are just timeless. Some games, like Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, River City Ransom, and the original Legend of Zelda, transcend their console's limitation, and show that they're better than their hardware. There's a reason their virtual console versions have collectively sold shitloads, and it isn't nostalgia.

Part of my issue with 8-bit is that I wasn't born in the 80s and got my first system in '98. So, yes, if I grew up with NES then I know my opinion would be much different.

The thing is, it's not as if I don't like the games you listed. Metroid Zero Mission is one of my top three games insofar as replay value goes. I've beaten it so many times I've lost count. Yet whenever I make an attempt at the original game it ends with me almost throwing my Advance/GameCube controller/3DS against the wall (I've collected so many Metroid ports over the years it's kind of ridiculous). I've gotten to Ridley, but that's the farthest I can go before my frustration becomes too much.

I feel bad that I can't enjoy these games like most of the fandom can, but I just have this innate aversion to the NES era.

Side note: apparently my love of Skyward Sword is not as common in the Zelda fandom as I thought.

 

[Whatisgoingon]

I'm not sure if it is generational Jaimas, but...

Part of my issue with 8-bit is that I wasn't born in the 80s and got my first system in '98. So, yes, if I grew up with NES then I know my opinion would be much different.

I think that this is the case. I was born in '96 and the first ever game I played was Mario Bros. on the NES, so that's probably why I like NES games. I really like pretty much every generation of games from the NES generation onwards, but aside from some arcade games I can't really enjoy anything before then. My parents have an Atari 2600 and the games get boring for me within a couple of minutes.

 

[CIA]

videogames aren't even that fun after a while,
and any multiplayer games that require cooperation with random people suck in general

 

[Quijibo69]

I'd be more likely to agree with this wholeheartedly if I hadn't gone through about ten fucking Xboxes before I got one that didn't suffer critical existence failure.

I just had a back-up xbox 360 die on me that I got 2 years at a thrift store. I just bought another one for 20 bucks with no cords,controllers or hard drive. Shockingly, I bought one new back in 2009 and it still works fine.

 

[sm0t]

I'd be more likely to agree with this wholeheartedly if I hadn't gone through about ten fucking Xboxes before I got one that didn't suffer critical existence failure.

It's weird, I must be extremely fortunate with my Xboxes. I've had two 360s in my life, and the first one Red-Ringed mostly because it was a hand-me-down from my dad who owned it for a year or two prior back when he was really into Halo. After that I've had the same console for about seven years now, and the only issue I've had with it was that it occasionally needs to have the system cache cleared in order to reconnect to Xbox Live. /knockswood

I've also had three Xbox Originals in my life. First one died during a city-wide power surge. Second one is still kicking around here in the apartment and I plan to soft-mod in the future. Third one is a salvaged debug kit that's never been turned on since it came into my posession and it's been sitting in my old bedroom at my parents' place for years, so I have no idea what's saved in the hard drive, if anything. /sperg

 

[The Lone Wanderer]

A lot of video games today lack challenge. I like a challenge. Most games these days I can beat within in a week if I concentrate long enough.

 

[Jaimas]

It's weird, I must be extremely fortunate with my Xboxes. I've had two 360s in my life, and the first one Red-Ringed mostly because it was a hand-me-down from my dad who owned it for a year or two prior back when he was really into Halo. After that I've had the same console for about seven years now, and the only issue I've had with it was that it occasionally needs to have the system cache cleared in order to reconnect to Xbox Live. /knockswood

I've also had three Xbox Originals in my life. First one died during a city-wide power surge. Second one is still kicking around here in the apartment and I plan to soft-mod in the future. Third one is a salvaged debug kit that's never been turned on since it came into my posession and it's been sitting in my old bedroom at my parents' place for years, so I have no idea what's saved in the hard drive, if anything. /sperg

It's all part of what I call the worst bullshit ever conducted as far as customer service is concerned.

If you got a gen-1 Xbox 360 (that's the older one, with shittier cooling and crappier third-party parts), you're entered into a rotating pool of nonsense. Your 'box dies, you're told to fill out a fucking ticket and send it to Microsoft. And pay $100, if you're not warranty'd. Invariably, you receive a new Xbox 360 of the exact model you sent out, often refurbished, with the same fucking problem and the cycle begins anew. If you have no warranty, it's another $100, and they will not ever upgrade you to the newer version which doesn't have these fucking problems with the drive unit or thermal distribution. It got to the point where I started going through Gamestop for it right than Microsoft because at least I'd have a new Xbox within the day and wouldn't be sans one for three fucking weeks whilst they farted around.

Eventually, I paid extra and paid off a friend at Gamestop to (quietly) upgrade my old-gen Xbox to one of the newer models. I've had it ever since with no problems.

 

[The Fair Lady]

I think the first DBZ Budokai still holds up pretty well, and it remains my favorite out of all the Dragon Ball games. The cutscenes are actually my favorite part. (Love the voice acting, even if it was hammy at times.) It's just a shame it didn't cover the Buu saga.

 

[LordDarkrai]

I know Final Fantasy X-2 gets a lot of shit for being too "girly", silly and whatnot, but I like it. (That might be because I'm a girl myself, though.) I love the tragic backstory of Lenne and Shuyin. The sidequests may be a pain in the ass, but doing them is worth it to get the Good ending.

I liked the combat system. One of the few job style systems I got into. Another thing I liked is that it focused on how Spira changed after the events of FFX. That made the game surprising interesting to play.

 

[Overcast]

I'll admit I wasn't the biggest fan of X, so trying to get into X-2 wasn't one of my better ideas.

I just didn't like how much the tone and characters changed. I'm fine with Yuna being more out going, but I didn't really care for the style of clothing she wore.

And I hated Rikku in the first game, and ended up hating her even more in the second. She's one of the most annoying characters I've ever had to deal with.

And while I did kinda like the idea of the whole dresssphere system, I kinda prefer IX's approach to battles in that everyone was restricted to their respective class. It makes them all unique and have some form of use.

Perhaps it was in this game's benefit that there were only three characters to work with. As no character can go unused.

I didn't really go that far into X-2, so perhaps the game got better as it went on. However, from what I saw in other people's videos of it, that didn't seem to be the case.

So sorry to those who enjoyed it, but I didn't like X-2 at all.

 

[The Fair Lady]

I didn't really go that far into X-2, so perhaps the game got better as it went on. However, from what I saw in other people's videos of it, that didn't seem to be the case.

Well, there you go. Play it all the way through and you'll see that the plot gets more interesting. It's really not just a silly dress-up game. I'll be honest, I thought the peppy mood to it was awkward too, at first, but it doesn't stay that way the entire time. It's actually pretty sad.

Besides, like I mentioned, it's not really a guy's game. That's not to say guys can't enjoy it, but a large handful of the people who hate it are male.

To put it simply: If you don't care about Tidus and Yuna's relationship, don't play X-2.

 

[Overcast]

Well, there you go. Play it all the way through and you'll see that the plot gets more interesting. It's really not just a silly dress-up game. I'll be honest, I thought the peppy mood to it was awkward too, at first, but it doesn't stay that way the entire time. It's actually pretty sad.

Besides, like I mentioned, it's not really a guy's game. That's not to say guys can't enjoy it, but a large handful of the people who hate it are male.

To put it simply: If you don't care about Tidus and Yuna's relationship, don't play X-2.

Thing is, the not really a guy's game argument would make sense if the game wasn't a direct sequel. Too me, it doesn't make sense to make a direct sequel and then alienate part of your fan base.

If the game was an indirect sequel with completely different characters, or even it's own game, then I would agree with you. But the game follows up right after the first game with the story centering around Tidus and Yuna. I don't mind if the tone was slightly more upbeat or girly, but I felt X-2 went a bit overboard in that regard and led to something that didn't really feel like X. It had the same characters and setting, but it just didn't give me the same feeling X did.

It would be like taking one of the Sonic characters, putting him in a dark and gritty game and giving him a gun.

That's just how I feel.