Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Marissa Moira]

Anything is definitely possible for Bethesda the one studio that keeps insisting on making their games more and more accessible despite making the most popular Non-F2P/MMO RPGs of all time.

If there's any good that's done with the merger I just hope Todd & crew are more willing to let the other Microsoft studios play with their toys. I'd love it if Obsidian or InXile gets to make an old school Fallout. Wasteland 3 is shockingly good and I'm optimistic InXile can make some true Must Play games in the future. They should have a creative studio make a TES Spinoff that feels like surreal acid dream like Morrowind is.

I want another Redguard game.

Or find someone dedicated and crazy enough to port the flip phone ES game and the one from N-Gage and put out an official release on modern hardware.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

Speaking of Bethesda. I've been playing Oblivion again lately.

I'm not convinced that the NPC's looking the way they do wasn't a design choice. And I don't hate how they look.

Everyone complains about how ugly they are, but like...they just look like normal people to me. I mean, normal people are by and large ugly and have weird shapes to their heads if you pay attention.

If that wasn't unpopular enough, I kind of hate every character makeover I've ever seen for Oblivion and Skyrim. It makes everyone look like models or barbie dolls. Really takes away from the setting IMO.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I think people are generally ignorant that both Gravity Rush games were already very western inspired right down to the art direction referencing Moebius more than Panzer Dragoon did. They'll focus more on the faux french language, but a lot of shit is right out of The Incal.

The second game tried to do it's own close combat like Batman but that turned out to be next to useless. And if you're going for 100% completion on either game shit gets to be a pain in the ass in either one. GR1 has a few very unforgiving time trials, GR2 has the Raven DLC which wasn't very good and had pretty bad stealth sections.

 

[Red Hood]

Not all games need fucking RPG elements grafted on.

 

[X Pac Heat]

Not all games need fucking RPG elements grafted on.

I'm going to say it again. Cyberpunk 2077 would be a hell of a lot more fun without RPG mechanics. Instead of leveling up abilities they should have just made it that you had to buy enhancements, and made it so that you could only use certain ones at a time.

This is KIND of in the game already but usually just for stupid shit like "gorilla arms or blade arms"

 

[Mary the Goldsmith]

If that wasn't unpopular enough, I kind of hate every character makeover I've ever seen for Oblivion and Skyrim. It makes everyone look like models or barbie dolls. Really takes away from the setting IMO.

Completely agree, especially most hair mods, like KS hairdoes or Apachii skyhair that just give the characters modern haircuts, I only like 4 at most of the female haircuts since they sort of fit, mostly the ones that are just braids or ponytails (I say mostly because I think Chun-Li's hairstyle is in there) and none of the male hairs since they just look like hipster modern haircuts

 

[ZMOT]

Now that I look back at the gameplay yeah it is technically closer to Iron Man. But it reminds me more of Mechs just because it's multiplayer focused. Iron Man is Iron Man because it's Tony Stark in one of the most charming male power fantasies possible. There's no power fantasy in Anthem or Destiny, you're just another little character.

time to play a colossus then wreck shit left and right.

But how many times can big studios invest huge money in Western mechs and just wind up with disappointments? Hoi Polloi have voted with their dollar, it simply has niche appeal. Titanfall 2 is rightfully considered one of the best FPS in years, it didn't make big money. As soon as Respawn Entertainment slapped together a Battle Royale without the mechs they had a breakout hit on their hands.

Anthem was doomed because the combat (the shit players care the most about) was all Mech. It was sincerly really cool looking, that Frostbite Engine is an apparent bitch to work with but you can't deny the visual fidelity. But again Mechs they don't get audiences excited.

combat was the best part, it just sucked in the "beta" and the story was your average bioware writing, except now they tried to be capeshit and you couldn't even bang any aliens. technically it had loads of potential, but you can only make a first impression once. there was a chance when they announced "2.0", but like always they took the completely wrong lessons from it and tried to re-invent already great combat. literally all it needed was a better progression track and more content in general, not shit like talent trees.

as for titanfall tf2 sucked donkey dick, it was just most people's first entry after 1 being an xbox/origin exclusive. didn't help that respawn had learned nothing from tf1, ffs you didn't even have frontier defense for the first 9 months, and then they fucked it up. imagine being so shit you manage to fumble a fucking horde mode. so all that's left was getting stomped by more experienced players in a game that has a somewhat steep learning curve.

Unfortunately most people have 0 reading comprehension, Anthem had 7 YEARS of pre production, and the studio leaders can't make any good decisions during those times. The developers said the frostbite engine is not good for flight combat, and the studio head is too cowardly to stand up and tell this to the execs, then worse, they showed a last min fake demo with flight combat and the execs were impressed and happy with it.

The exec is at fault for not monitoring the progress close enough, but i bet anyone in that position expect something must have been done in 7 years. They blame the requirement to use the engine, they never tell the exec soon enough, they impress the exec with fake demo and went on to produce the game that they themselves claim it's impossible to do with that engine. If anything, the studio head should be fired from the spot, and that studio should never been given any freedom to do what they want anymore.

I know actual details might differ, but if what I'm reading is accurate in it's portrayal, then most of the fault really lies on the studio. They are given the free reign to do whatever they want with some specific requirements, and they squandered it spectacularly.

they were just incompetent as fuck. when the swecucks responsible for shitting out a turd like battlefield v can do it, bioware has zero excuse not being able to handle frostbite. I've sperged about that enough in other threads, but no other studio has a problem with it (or at least know how to deal with them), even fucking fifa runs with it and that's a sportsball game.
that incompetence also extended to the whole design process, the reason they had nothing to show for was that they had no clear design goal, they wanted to make a destiny clone but weren't even allowed to talk about destiny, that's how retarded bioware was.

 

[Canoodler]

I think people are generally ignorant that both Gravity Rush games were already very western inspired right down to the art direction referencing Moebius more than Panzer Dragoon did. They'll focus more on the faux french language, but a lot of shit is right out of The Incal.

The second game tried to do it's own close combat like Batman but that turned out to be next to useless. And if you're going for 100% completion on either game shit gets to be a pain in the ass in either one. GR1 has a few very unforgiving time trials, GR2 has the Raven DLC which wasn't very good and had pretty bad stealth sections.

I like both Gravity Rush games, but I can't disagree with what you said.

 

[Calandrino]

If you encounter a problem and didn't tell your boss, and instead make fake demo to impress your boss and turns out that it cannot be done realistically, then you have to shoulder the blame.

I am reminded of the old tale of the cool cam. The tl;dr is that ignoring crippling bugs and gameplay deficiencies while throwing together dog-and-pony shows to impress execs is actually a perfectly valid development strategy.

The Cool Cam

Brand G. got his start in the game industry working at MicroProse, famous for classics such as Civilization, the X-COM series, Masters of Orion, Pirates, and Dark Earth (one of my personal favorites). MicroProse was also known for its military simulation games, such as Gunship, Pacific Air War...

thedailywtf.com

Brand G. got his start in the game industry working at MicroProse, famous for classics such as Civilization, the X-COM series, Masters of Orion, Pirates, and Dark Earth (one of my personal favorites). MicroProse was also known for its military simulation games, such as Gunship, Pacific Air War, M-1 Tank Platoon, and Falcon 4.0. Brand was brought on to work on such a simulation, European Air War.

European Air War was doomed. It was four years in development and not even close to being ready to ship. In Brand's first month at MicroProse, the whole programming team on European Air War quit, sensing that their project was on the verge of cancellation. Not only that, but everyone had grown tired enduring the stress of the weekly "why-shouldn't-we-cancel-this-project" meetings with the executives. In these meetings, they'd have to choose their words carefully when answering the executives' tough questions about the budget as well as major bugs in the system such as...

• Why are the planes flying backwards sometimes?
  Well, uhh, a little known thing about Nazi technology developed in World War I...
• Why do the wings come off the plane whenever you fire the guns?
  Uhh, err...
• Why does the plane bounce up and out of the earth's atmosphere when you crash into the ground?
  Umm, in high-speed collisions like that it's not totally unreasonable that a plane's velocity torque rotary girder viscosity...

These meetings were tough. It almost seemed as though the execs were only keeping the project alive for the sadistic pleasure they took in watching the developers squirm. And among the bugs mentioned above, there were mountains more. For instance, planes couldn't take off or land. At all. Well, you could try to land, but that would cause the bug where the plane would bounce off the ground and into outer space. So to address the issue, all missions started out mid-flight and wouldn't require (or even allow) you to land.

Another fun bug caused the enemy AI to do your work for you. A rogue enemy plane would suddenly reject his mother country and start shooting down his own teammates. That is, until his wings fell off the plane since he was firing his guns. Then he'd kamikaze his plane into the ground, which would launch the plane into outer space that the MicroProse executives probably didn't find nearly as funny as I do.

Brand would stress out about defending the game at the weekly meetings, but that didn't mean that he thought concerns about European Air War's progress were unfounded. Facing a mountain of bugs and a project ready for the chopping block, he was relieved when another developer was added to the team, effectively halving the abuse Brand would have to deal with on a weekly basis. We'll call the new developer "Tim."

Tim knew what he was getting into when he came aboard the project. He knew about the bugs, about the budget, and about the impending cancellation of the whole thing. And with the major issues, you'd figure he'd start with any one of them. Maybe the one with the wings falling off whenever guns were fired. Especially considering the game is called "European Air War." If the wings ("air") and guns ("war") come off the plane, the game title should just be reduced to "European," or perhaps "European Wingless Plane Amidst Nazi Battle Simulator." You could start up a game and watch Nazis shoot eachothers' planes down until yours crashed.

With all of the bugs he could get started on, he decided it was necessary to add a new feature instead. He developed a camera system that would focus on anything "cool" happening near the player. For instance, one plane shakes another with a delicate evasive maneuver. Or it'd mount to a bomb right as a B-17's bay was opening, following its descent onto the earth. Or it'd follow a plane being shot down, ablaze and spiraling toward the ground, engines sputtering.

The "Cool Cam" was cool. But it didn't change the fact that the game was almost completely broken. Brand wanted to confront Tim about bug priority and all of the code he was toiling away to debug, but held his tongue. No one could save the project at this point anyway.

At the next week's meeting with management, the air felt heavy. With each passing week the execs were seeing money hemorrhaged into a dying project that they'd had a full team on for four years. Tim started up the game and played carefully to avoid the obvious bugs. Getting a double whammy of tough questions ("How overbudget is this project?" and "Why shouldn't we cancel this right now?"), Tim made sure his plane was level and flying evenly and let go of the joystick and hit the cool cam button.

Brand sat there silently, watching the monitor. Tim turned toward the execs, about to stumble through an answer they probably wouldn't accept. The room was silent, save for the steady hum of the plane's engines coming out of the computer speakers. Suddenly, the camera zoomed in on an explosion, following a flaming plane barreling toward the earth, then the focus moved slightly to another plane quickly evading the flaming shell. Tim took the controls again when the execs lobbed another tough question about bugs they'd made no progress in fixing. Again, Tim leveled the plane and hit the cool cam button. And again, he didn't have to answer because everyone was fixated on the screen.

Tim's "cool cam" saved European Air War. It went from a money-leaking embarrassment to a top-tier release for MicroProse. The weekly meetings got easier, more developers were brought on, and the team managed to put together one hell of a game. It reviewed well after its 1998 release and is still a popular game for history buffs. And it probably wouldn't have been released if not for a programmer that knew what the project needed most; the cool cam.

 

[Weeby Catto]

I am reminded of the old tale of the cool cam. The tl;dr is that ignoring crippling bugs and gameplay deficiencies while throwing together dog-and-pony shows to impress execs is actually a perfectly valid development strategy.

The Cool Cam

Brand G. got his start in the game industry working at MicroProse, famous for classics such as Civilization, the X-COM series, Masters of Orion, Pirates, and Dark Earth (one of my personal favorites). MicroProse was also known for its military simulation games, such as Gunship, Pacific Air War...

thedailywtf.com

In some anomaly situations like this where there's probably certain details that are missed, where the devs actually work out a solution, it sounds like it will work, but in reality it doesn't.

When you just fake impress your boss and it backfires on sales, it will always backfire. But the American culture has always utilizes this 'cool cam' as fake good news, where you claim something is good or successful like "16x the details! And No Man Sky! Warcraft 3 Reforged!" before it even happens or exist.

In reality, we got something like Afghanistan, where for 20 years, the execs keep on lying to the customers of how successful it was, and it went crumbling instantly when they can no longer keep up the charade.

 

[The Last Stand]

That logo used to mean something. Quality entertainment. Their online servers (when they were active) were the best at the seventh generation. Excluding their online pass, I'm glad they got rid of that.

EA Play is great value, especially with it being included with Game Pass Ultimate.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

I don't like it when RPG's use skills/perks to influence how objects work, instead of how you use the object.

For example, in Fallout 4 weapon damage is dependent on what perks you have. This is stupid in a game where if an enemy gets damaged is entirely dependent on my skill in aiming and using the weapon. A gun doesn't get stronger the more I use it, I get better at using it the more I use it. At most, skill stats or perks should effect things I cannot control as a player such as reload times, time it takes to clear a jam, and depending on design of a game recoil. (although I'm stretching it for that as recoil is something that could be controlled by player mouse/controller skill)

Maybe this is more of a Bethesda thing that I'm just noticing because I'm playing Bethesda games right now, but yeah I think it's dumb and just a way to be lazy with combat design and/or just pad gameplay.

 

[Pissmaster]

I have never, ever truly enjoyed a Neo Geo game. That whole platform is excruciatingly mediocre and unbelievably overhyped. The most fun I ever had with any of them was Metal Slug, but that’s just a worse version of Contra.

Even the puzzle games are unremarkable. They’re not awful, but there’s not a single one I’ve seen where I wouldn’t rather just play Tetris or Puzzle League or Lumines or just about anything else. The top down shooters? Also not awful but unremarkable, and I’d rather just play Star Soldier or Ikaruga.

The arcade cabinets look kind of nice though if I ended up with one, it’d just become a MAME cabinet so I could play Qix. I would gut a Neo Geo just for Qix, and then I would piss on all the Neo geo boards and laugh and then piss some more

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

I have never, ever truly enjoyed a Neo Geo game. That whole platform is excruciatingly mediocre and unbelievably overhyped. The most fun I ever had with any of them was Metal Slug, but that’s just a worse version of Contra.

Even the puzzle games are unremarkable. They’re not awful, but there’s not a single one I’ve seen where I wouldn’t rather just play Tetris or Puzzle League or Lumines or just about anything else. The top down shooters? Also not awful but unremarkable, and I’d rather just play Star Soldier or Ikaruga.

The arcade cabinets look kind of nice though if I ended up with one, it’d just become a MAME cabinet so I could play Qix. I would gut a Neo Geo just for Qix, and then I would piss on all the Neo geo boards and laugh and then piss some more

Agree except for metal slug sorry but your a nigger metal slug is best

 

[Pissmaster]

Agree except for metal slug sorry but your a nigger metal slug is best

It is the best on there, that's true. Metal Slug is to Neo Geo what Wario Land is to the Virtual Boy, the one game anyone ever seems to bring up when claiming those platforms have merit.

Also,

 

[Marissa Moira]

If we're talking about Neo Geo having merit, there's more than just Metal Slug. King of the Monster 1 and 2 still hold up, Wind Jammers is good, Last Blade 2, Samurai Showdown 6, and Neo Turf Masters.


The early KOF games are kinda rough to playthrough and you can see why Capcom's SF2 and Alpha 3 caught on more than SNK.

I never really cared for Art of Fighting and the side scrolling and topdown shooters on Neo Geo paled in comparison to their contemporaries. I think Prehistoric Isle was maybe their strongest.

 

[Calandrino]

I have never, ever truly enjoyed a Neo Geo game. That whole platform is excruciatingly mediocre and unbelievably overhyped. The most fun I ever had with any of them was Metal Slug, but that’s just a worse version of Contra.

Even the puzzle games are unremarkable. They’re not awful, but there’s not a single one I’ve seen where I wouldn’t rather just play Tetris or Puzzle League or Lumines or just about anything else. The top down shooters? Also not awful but unremarkable, and I’d rather just play Star Soldier or Ikaruga.

The arcade cabinets look kind of nice though if I ended up with one, it’d just become a MAME cabinet so I could play Qix. I would gut a Neo Geo just for Qix, and then I would piss on all the Neo geo boards and laugh and then piss some more

It's a fighting game box, mostly. When people really like it, that's usually why. Oddly it doesn't have any really notable sidescrollers other than Metal Slug and no particularly good beat-em-ups. It was ahead of the curve on Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move at least. There are some other cool miscellaneous games but mostly nothing better than what other arcade devs were doing.

If we're talking about Neo Geo having merit, there's more than just Metal Slug. King of the Monster 1 and 2 still hold up, Wind Jammers is good, Last Blade 2, Samurai Showdown 6, and Neo Turf Masters.
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The early KOF games are kinda rough to playthrough and you can see why Capcom's SF2 and Alpha 3 caught on more than SNK.

I never really cared for Art of Fighting and the side scrolling and topdown shooters on Neo Geo paled in comparison to their contemporaries. I think Prehistoric Isle was maybe their strongest.

King of the Monsters kinda sucks imo, both of them. I like Prehistoric Isle better than any Neo Geo shmup, but it's not a Neo Geo game (unless you meant 2).

 

[Captain Syrup]

It's a fighting game box, mostly

I have the KoF Collection (Orochi Saga). I couldn't even get past Chang and Choi.

The way Rugal was presented is such a lovable mess. He’s in a furnished aircraft carrier sipping wine. He pranked the player by sinking the ship. He survived the explosion (with not a single hair out of place) and fights you later in the same boss stage:

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Even the puzzle games are unremarkable. They’re not awful, but there’s not a single one I’ve seen where I wouldn’t rather just play Tetris or Puzzle League or Lumines or just about anything else.

Puzzle Money Exchanger is often overlooked and it is really good with a great twist on the typical puzzle structure.

 

[The Last Stand]

Fable is a good RPG for beginners.