Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Judge Dredd]

This has been mentioned before in the thread, but with its PC release the culture war around it is heating up again...
Stellar Blade is a 5, maybe 6/10 game that is profoundly forgettable and mediocre, but gets propped up unduly because it upsets the right people. I can't believe how many people I thought prestigious in my circles are propping up that game. I suppose horseshoe theory strikes again.

Not helped by the fact 6/10 mediocrity makes something a classic in todays AAA landscape of Concords and Veilguards.

 

[Calandrino]

This has been mentioned before in the thread, but with its PC release the culture war around it is heating up again...
Stellar Blade is a 5, maybe 6/10 game that is profoundly forgettable and mediocre, but gets propped up unduly because it upsets the right people. I can't believe how many people I thought prestigious in my circles are propping up that game. I suppose horseshoe theory strikes again.

Sounds like a blatant ripoff of Starblade from the name. No point bothering with a knockoff when I can just play the original.

 

[umseriously]

It's okay to use the fan base as an indicator of the game's quality.

 

[Dan of Steel]

It's okay to use the fan base as an indicator of the game's quality.

I don’t agree but I get where you’re coming from. A radioactive fanbase can definitely be a deterrent for some players on the fence, but I play as many different games as I can so a weird/autistic fanbase has never bothered me.

 

[The Last Stand]

Driver commits two of the worst sins in video game tutorials. Forcing it onto the player to progress and not explaining TO the player of what to do.

This came out in 1999. You're expected to just figure out what a "shalom" is because it tells you to do it. I'm surprised it sold well enough to have three sequels.

 

[Plumber's Crack]

Let's start off with some PS2 classics i replayed recently.
I played through the Jak trilogy again a month ago and can now say without being blinded by nostalgiafag filters that II is the only one that's actually aged gracefully. TPL is an average bing bing wahoo collectathon that's too piss easy for it's own good and takes a nosedive in quality once you reach Volcanic Crater, and 3 is just a boring slog where you spend more time doing anything but actual platforming and shooting. II does have it's fair share of gimmicks like the jetboard and a turret section here and there, but they feel more tastefully put into the game without detracting from the core gameplay. In 3, you spend the first act doing nothing but basically driving around a boring desert doing chores for your totally not-dad. Once you get back to Haven City (I M T H R O U G H S A V I N G T H E W O R L D) the driving kind of just abruptly fucks off save for a mission or two where ND remembered what the main draw of the game was supposed to be. The balance of action platforming to gimmick just isn't done as well here as it was in II.

If you couldn't tell, i really don't like Jak 3. I'll refrain from going into why i really don't like it for now and just say that II pretty much mogs it in every way barring maybe difficulty if you're one of those shitters that can't make it out of the slums or get dabbed on by Errol in the race through the city against him. II has best humor, story, gameplay, soundtrack (though the soundtracks for the entire trilogy is pretty forgettable IMO so we can throw that in the list of unpopular opinions i have), and atmosphere. I can still see why people might prefer TPL, but i can't see how anyone can prefer 3 unless they got hard filtered by II's difficulty.

Now let's talk about Jak & Daxter's rival, Ratchet & Clank. Out of the mainline games, Going Commando is easily my least favorite one. It's an Insomniac produced game when they were in their prime so it's still very solid of course, but i think it's aged the least gracefully out of the quadrilogy (Deadlocked is basically a mainline game, cry harder). The biggest issue with GC is the completely busted weapon scaling. To put it in simple terms, early game weapons like the Lancer basically become useless after a certain point even when fully upgraded, meaning you're stuck with using a handful of late game weapons if you want to do any meaningful damage to goons. Near the end game, i was basically only using Heavy Bouncer, Shield Charger, Megarocket Cannon, and Plasma Coil to deal with the shit the game was throwing at me. Even worse is that IIRC, the amount of weapon XP you get isn't scaled either, so unlike in UYA or Deadlocked where killing late game enemies with low level weapons ranks them up faster, it's still the same rate regardless of enemy which means leveling weapons basically becomes a complete slog. In spite of that and the game's many other flaws, it's still a pretty good title but you can tell it was the first of it's kind in regards to the new direction it took the series in.

Driver commits two of the worst sins in video game tutorials. Forcing it onto the player to progress and not explaining TO the player of what to do.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8iCPzDEkkII
This came out in 1999. You're expected to just figure out what a "shalom" is because it tells you to do it. I'm surprised it sold well enough to have three sequels.

Doesn't this game have a tutorial in the menu where it takes you to this stage with no time limit and actually explains how to do the stunts? I would say it's kind of a clever way to filter people who can't be assed to spend a few minutes just doing the tutorial normally before doing the main game but also stupid they didn't just have the seperate tutorial be the main one.

 

[The Last Stand]

TPL is an average bing bing wahoo collectathon that's too piss easy for it's own good and takes a nosedive in quality once you reach Volcanic Crater, and 3 is just a boring slog where you spend more time doing anything but actual platforming and shooting. II does have it's fair share of gimmicks like the jetboard and a turret section here and there, but they feel more tastefully put into the game without detracting from the core gameplay.

Jak II has better pacing than Jak 1. Collectahons run into a massive level design flaw of backtracking and "discovery" by having the player search every nook and cranny of your massive level to find arbitrary items to progress. Even with Jak II's higher difficulty, I've never felt lost in how to progress.

 

[Plumber's Crack]

Jak II has better pacing than Jak 1. Collectahons run into a massive level design flaw of backtracking and "discovery" by having the player search every nook and cranny of your massive level to find arbitrary items to progress. Even with Jak II's higher difficulty, I've never felt lost in how to progress.

Having a minimap on your screen pointing where to go and far more linear levels tends to make it pretty easy to get around. With that being said, i always thought it was weird they never bought back the fast travel system from the first game. Yeah you do have vehicles to get around but driving back and forth between mission objectives tends to get pretty annoying like in majority of other open world games.

 

[Nick Obre]

View attachment 7502076
New gamers will never understand the feeling of opening up your newly bought game and reading the manual on the way home. Learning and immersing yourself in the world is lost as not only do most gamers not read companies no longer make detailed manuals anymore.

I remember getting Age of Empires 1 and reading the manual and the reference sheet and getting a better ancient history education from it than I got at school.

https://archive.org/details/manual_Age_of_Empires/page/n63/mode/2up

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

In the case of Tomb Raider, how the levels aredesigned and the digital controls are inseparable. It's outdated now, sure, and really was showing its age by the third game, but you can't change one without completely changing the other.

Have you played the remaster? Maybe it's still good or even better.

There's nothing wrong with dying being a teaching experience.

Sure, but it shouldn't be all but an inevitability. It's one thing for dying to teach something, but a good game should be designed well enough that it can be reasonably completed without dying once you learn the rules and adapt to the controls. If you die after that it should be due to a skill issue, not a design issue.

This is totally flawed thinking. They're different games with different goals, not every game has to be the same. This thinking is why every game today is an homogenous blob. Tomb Raider simply isn't Mario.

Being different just for difference's sake isn't much better than everything being a homogeneous blob (not that that was the case back then).

I kinda love BotW

I'm not a classic Zelda fan

Like peanut butter & jelly.

Plus, the series consistently provides absolute bangers in the sound track.

The one you posted isn't anything special, I hope the series has better.

There's no good reason for a grown man to find idiotic stories about magical little girls interesting.

It may not be interesting but the story in Magical Pop'n is serviceable, and it's a decent game. Zelda is a story about a magical little boy and nobody says that about it, which they'd need to in order to be consistent.

I miss games with minimalist UIs. Around the PS3/360 era, developers started making UI elements smaller or have them disappear outright unless needed. Obviously, to show off the graphics, but it was nice to not have your screen cluttered.

That's the generation where text became sized for ants, and I've always hated it. So much room on screen and the words look like they were made with the Game Boy in mind.

So far, each entry of Mario Kart has been innovative in some way.

SC & 8 made no real innovations (and are among the worst in the franchise, maybe there's a correlation).

This has been mentioned before in the thread, but with its PC release the culture war around it is heating up again...
Stellar Blade is a 5, maybe 6/10 game that is profoundly forgettable and mediocre, but gets propped up unduly because it upsets the right people. I can't believe how many people I thought prestigious in my circles are propping up that game. I suppose horseshoe theory strikes again.

Bit low, 6.5/7.5 is a fair range. It's up against trash like Assassin's Creed and Dragon Age so it just seem like a 10/10 by comparison to people.

 

[Scarthew]

but a good game should be designed well enough that it can be reasonably completed without dying once

Sorry no, this is one true game theory nonsense. The idea that there's a single correct way to make games is just wrong. What works for one game doesn't necessarily work for others.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Sorry no, this is one true game theory nonsense. The idea that there's a single correct way to make games is just wrong. What works for one game doesn't necessarily work for others.

Maybe there's exceptions but generally speaking it's true. Mario wouldn't have become as popular as it was if it was designed to kill you at every turn.

 

[Scarthew]

Maybe there's exceptions but generally speaking it's true. Mario wouldn't have become as popular as it was if it was designed to kill you at every turn.

Popularity=/=quality

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Popularity=/=quality

Sure, but what's quality about a game designed to kill you? A game by its nature is supposed to be played to win, if it's rigged against you that seems to go against the point of it. A challenge is one thing, but unless the game is trying to be funny or just have fun watching the character die then it sure seems bad to effectively force you to die.

 

[Problematic User Forever]

Driver commits two of the worst sins in video game tutorials. Forcing it onto the player to progress and not explaining TO the player of what to do.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8iCPzDEkkII
This came out in 1999. You're expected to just figure out what a "shalom" is because it tells you to do it. I'm surprised it sold well enough to have three sequels.

Outside of knowing what Slalom driving is, I really don't see what is so hard about Drivers tutorial.

Honestly, the people who complain about Drivers tutorial just make me think of the fools who to this day think the RC missions in the 3D GTAs are the most difficult things in the world. They're honestly not hard when you're not an amped up 12 year old.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Outside of knowing what Slalom driving is, I really don't see what is so hard about Drivers tutorial.

Honestly, the people who complain about Drivers tutorial just make me think of the fools who to this day think the RC missions in the 3D GTAs are the most difficult things in the world. They're honestly not hard when you're not an amped up 12 year old.

Why should I have to master the controls to play a damn basic driving game? It was very finicky about what counted as completion of the tutorial stuff too.

 

[The Last Stand]

Outside of knowing what Slalom driving is, I really don't see what is so hard about Drivers tutorial.

Honestly, the people who complain about Drivers tutorial just make me think of the fools who to this day think the RC missions in the 3D GTAs are the most difficult things in the world. They're honestly not hard when you're not an amped up 12 year old.

Well, now that I would KNOW what to do from prior knowledge, I would not be able to share those same sentiments from people that played it back in the day. Maybe if the controls hampered the experience, I would say otherwise. Even the developers themselves admitted that such game design would not fly now for obvious reasons.

They even admitted that they could've made it SHORTER because THEY were able to do the tutorial at that time limit. This brings another point: if you're a developer, just because YOU may be able to beat a segment or level efficiently, that wouldn't mean everybody else would be able to. They made the game, they would have more knowledge by default compared to other people.

 

[Scarthew]

A game by its nature is supposed to be played to win

That's incredibly reductive. Games are about play and conflict is a fundamental of play. The "nature" of the game is whatever its designed to be. If a game is designed to result in multiple deaths for its experience then that is the game's nature.

Again this is coming from the belief that every game is designed for a singular purpose by a singular ruleset.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

If a game is designed to result in multiple deaths for its experience then that is the game's nature.

Maybe there's exceptions but generally speaking it's true.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

Honestly, the people who complain about Drivers tutorial just make me think of the fools who to this day think the RC missions in the 3D GTAs are the most difficult things in the world.

The RC missions in the original version of San Andreas are brutally difficult because they're actually broken and don't function as intended. They fixed a bug for (as far as I know) every subsequent port.