Most overrated games.

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Grand Theft Auto 3 and beyond.

I may be showing my age by remembering how the first three (London 1969 was the third) were top down and more arcadey than how they are now, but I enjoyed that for what it was at the time. It may be my autism and shit talking, but there's just something about them, once they went story driven 3D that made them not fun. The most I remember about GTA4 is mostly sleeping through it because I couldn't find myself caring about any of the characters, except Brucey, and probably because while he was a stereotype cranked up to 11, I knew a couple guys like him in real life. Roman, the Irish guy, the Irish guy's sister as a possible love interest, the Jamaican gun dealer, and whoever else; didn't really care what they were about, and if I wasn't killing everyone I came across, I'd feel bad for Nico for having so many assholes as friends.


All pre-2018 God of War games.

God of War just happened to come out at that time when normies and everyone else was getting into videogames. So having this muscle bound lunatic killing everything was new and exciting and something for jocks and retards to masturbate over about how cool the game and Kratos is; nevermind if you tried hanging out with Kratos in real life you'd probably end up with a crushed skull, because he's such a cool fucking guy. The first one did a well told intact story and it should've been left to sleep. Instead they needed a sequel, which I don't know who talked to who, but GoW2 came out around the same time the movie 300 did; so there was definite "Let's help each other out" shit going on... and Kratos just became a huge unlikable dick as every new game came out. Its combat was also lackluster when compared to Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry, all it had going for it were its gory fucking kills.
 
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Grand Theft Auto 3 and beyond. I may be showing my age by remembering how the first three (London 1969 was the third) were top down and more arcadey than how they are now, but I enjoyed that for what it was at the time.
They're a product of their time, not just graphically, but the over-the-top profanity and violence. Still, I do enjoy them.


There hasn't been a spiritual successor... yet. Retro City Rampage and Geneshift started out as GTA clones. But they wound up doing their own thing.
 
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It'd be too easy to point at really old games (like pre-Dreamcast), even most of the best have aged quite a bit. So, newer games it is.

Mario Kart 8 is the worst 3D Mario Kart, I don't know why it's so loved. The camera is right up on your ass at all times and the angle doesn't let you see ahead very well. Plus, fuck coins. DS had better dashing/drifting ("snaking"), and Double Dash's two-characters per kart was cooler than the shitty gravity gimmick MK8 has.

DMC3. Dante was way too goofy, story was janky like the camera and gameplay. The first two were far better (DMC2 is actually underrated).

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, why was half of it a bad 2D platformer inside Bowser, and why was the other half so heavily Bowser related? Just call it Mario & Luigi & Bowser, then. No thanks. Fuck all the Paper Mario games after TTYD too.

Okay, one pretty old one, Super Metroid. Yeah, I know. But it's clunky; the jump is shit, the wall jump is more shit, exploration is cryptic, combat is unsatisfying. It's not bad, it has some atmosphere and all, but it's overrated.

Obviously TLoU series, even without factoring in the woke shit, probably the two most overrated games ever.

BotW, it's like a really polished beta due to the lack of content (how does GTA3, virtually the first open world action game, have more content and a more "living" world?).

Final Fantasy 7. I love it but it's not the best JRPG, not even the best in its own series...in fact, it is the worst FF on PS1 aside from ports.
 
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Apologies if I'm beating a dead horse, but freakin' Skyrim.

The combat is just a mindless slapping contest
, hardly any strategy involved.
Just guzzle potions and squeeze the triggers (or click the mouse buttons.) Or, you can get your bow out, duck and take advantage of the game's inept AI:
A common event during stealth combat, is an enemy can witness their ally being shot in the face right in front of him, and seconds later shrug it off, saying it "must have been the wind," or they were "just hearing things."

Main story as far as plot and writing go is fine I guess, but incredibly unlikable characters such as Delphine hinder it greatly.
The Thieves' Guild is a disaster of a quest-line. The plot is convoluted and uninteresting. Almost no actual thieving involved.
Dark Brotherhood is clearly trying to bring back the charm of Oblivion's, but in my opinion tries too hard and falls flat. I personally find Cicero obnoxious.
The progression of the quest lines typically feel unnatural and rushed. You start out as a whelp in the Companions, but before you know it you're already top-dog.
In the College of Winterhold quest line, you're hardly required to do any magic, let alone learn about it before you've become arch-mage.

The game introduces a system called "Radiant" quests, meaning that there are some quests with certain variables randomized, and as a result are cookie-cutter and lack any depth. Many of the hand-crafted quests can be described this way, too.

Role-playing elements are lacking immensely.
There are hardly any choices for player dialog to fit different kinds of character personalities, or even simple morals. No statistics such as character strength, luck or intelligence, just skills. Very few skill checks, meaning your character's skills give them next to no additional relevant insight in dialog...or even just simple Speech skill checks.
I will give the game props for making your character a blank slate, without any predefined morals, and next to no backstory.
Looking at you, Fallout 4...

All the scripted sequences feel incredibly awkward and stiff. It doesn't even seem to try and feel dynamic or lifelike. For instance, during the introduction when people are shouting whist the executions, they don't ever shout over each other like a real crowd, it's always one after another, like an assembly line.
The game engine in general feels very archaic and clunky. NPC's feel cheap and robotic. Dragons rigidly interpolate from one place to another as they fly around. Player movement is stop-and-go. Even the more recent "Special Edition" is locked and loaded with more bugs than you can shake a stick at.

Take away the pretty graphics and the Jeremy Soule soundtrack and you're left with...not much, other than an overall shallow experience with mediocre quest lines.
 
Pokemon Red/Blue and all Kanto remakes.

I'm so sick of Kanto. Most of the Alolan/Galar variations were of Kanto Pokemon, X/Y threw in a bunch of unnecessary references, Charizard should have been part of dex-it. The games themselves are incredibly dated and not any harder than the rest of the series - it just seemed that way because you were a little kid. Quality of life improvements aren't necessarily handholding. Take off the nostalgia glasses. The DS games were the peak of the series - it did go a bit downhill from there - but arguing how Pokemon got too easy and it's for little kids now is ridiculous because it's always been for little kids.
 
I think this about Half-Life 1:
  • It's just Goldeneye 007 with a physics engine tech demo
  • Gordon Freeman is a Gary Stu (silent protagonist that everyone knows, has a Ph. D in physics at 27, goes from a nerd scientist to a one-man army in a matter of minutes, the only one who can save us from the Combine)
  • fanboys praise it's supposedly great story, but when asked "what story?", they immediately fall back on punting to I.O.U. One Plot "indirect" or "environmental" storytelling.
A lot of this makes sense, but I disagree about the Gary Stu part mostly because Gordon Freeman has to BE a character in the first place in order to be a Gary Stu. The whole silent protagonist thing in HL1 gives him no characterization at all. All we get is that he's 27 and has a PhD (this is more than possible -- go to grad school right after undergrad, most get B.S. at 22, so 5 years for a PhD is do-able). He could've been a 2A fan/gun enthusiast as well (the Southwest USA is very pro-2A and he could've easily been his hobby in his off time). Other than that, he has the HEV suit, which is the only reason he didn't become a headcrab zombie 5 minutes after the resonance cascade. The suit is what made him the one-man army. If anything, the HEV suit is the Gary Stu, but THAT's not a character either.

Because of this, Ross Scott's "Freeman's Mind" series (an all-time favorite of mine) makes Gordon out to be a paranoid almost-prepper asshole, which is just perfect given what he is able to do in the game. Maybe this non-cannon version of Freeman is a Gary Stu, but again, he actually is a character (unlike the game).

HL2, on the other hand, really ups his Messiah-like image and I would say he's definitely a Gary Stu there (that's the game where he fights the Combine). HL1, he's just in the wrong place at the wrong time and thrown into shit for the sake of the game.

You can probably tell, I'm biased towards this game, but I agree the story is vague -- it's not great and tells you almost nothing, which is part of the charm. HL1 is a thrill ride (think a ride at Disneyland/Universal or whatever -- not Citizen Kane) and any "fan" who says otherwise is just dumb IMO.

Lastly, the Goldeneye 007 comment is odd, mostly because the control scheme in HL1 is WAY better -- you can play HL1 and it feels like an FPS, while Goldeneye feels like an old game. I think the control scheme and how well it was setup (hence why it aged well) makes it more than just Goldeneye 007 with a physics engine. I'll admit this is a more contentious point.

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An overrated game for me is a little tricky for me. If I had to pick, I would say Fatal Frame mostly because it's really not that scary (especially since the Silent Hill series was out at around the same time). Gameplay was also fairly repetitive once you learned the mechanics.

For me, I love how Half Life 1 captures that feeling of being caught up in a disaster as well as the government’s (failed) attempt to cover it all up. All the while, you’re just trying to survive.
 
Probably all Obsidian games.
I haven't tried New Vegas, but played Outer Worlds and Pillars of Eternity 2 to the end, both are crap.

As a huge lover of isometric games, PoE2 is bad in almost every areas, including story. Horrendous self indulgent writing and a totally uninteresting game and combat mechanics. I bought it on sale and I regret it.

Outer Worlds is not the Fallout saviour, not even close, the story is an exaggerated caricature of capitalism, the tone all over the place. The world is bland, and the loot is so terrible, it's either ammo of another common gun with higher stats. Playing the 1st area meams you have played the entire game, because everything plays out the same without any interesting mix up at all.

Everytime people say Obsidian is a master at storytelling, I remember these 2 terrible games.
 
Final Fantasy 7. I love it but it's not the best JRPG, not even the best in its own series.
Equipping Materia on your equipment is cool.

There's no point to "Mastering" materia, though. They make the party OP, and you'd never gather enough AP in a normal playthrough. Plus, it limits you to training up materia you wouldn't normally use. I guess Square was afraid that players would expect something after mastering all the materia, so they threw us a bone.

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This has the unfortunate effect of reducing the "huge materia" to pointless macguffins. They don't do anything, ultimately. (Though I guess the same can be said of the crystals in 4.)
 
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Minecraft.
Call me a jackass but I feel like because of some e-celeb started playing it again people have started to act like this was the greatest game in all of history. Which has started a whole new slew minecraft youtubers and their rabid fanbase. Don't get me wrong it's a good game to play if you feel like you need to relax but the game is pretty damn repetitive unless you mod it. Then came along the updates which range from quality of life improvements to maybe slow it down. I get mojang wants to give this game more purpose to play and I appreciate some of the new mobs but after 1.7 they started pushing into the wrong dircections by focusing alot on PVP game modes which can be mentally draining if you just want to play single player and deal with new bullshit melee mechanics.
 
Probably all Obsidian games.
I haven't tried New Vegas, but played Outer Worlds and Pillars of Eternity 2 to the end, both are crap.

As a huge lover of isometric games, PoE2 is bad in almost every areas, including story. Horrendous self indulgent writing and a totally uninteresting game and combat mechanics. I bought it on sale and I regret it.

Outer Worlds is not the Fallout saviour, not even close, the story is an exaggerated caricature of capitalism, the tone all over the place. The world is bland, and the loot is so terrible, it's either ammo of another common gun with higher stats. Playing the 1st area meams you have played the entire game, because everything plays out the same without any interesting mix up at all.

Everytime people say Obsidian is a master at storytelling, I remember these 2 terrible games.
New Vegas is pretty great tbh. I remember Outer Worlds was advertised as this spiritual successor to it, but we know how that turned out.

NV is very janky in a lot of areas. (I myself use a ton of mods for it) But it absolutely excels in storytelling and having a fully realized world with interesting and nuanced characters and factions. Even the Legion, who are probably the least nuanced out of the factions still have interesting characters and viewpoints on the rest of the Mojave.

The DLC is a bit of a mixed bag and kinda shows what happens when Avellone has a bit too much freedom, but overall, I definitely recommend giving the game a try.
 
The Crash Bandicoot Series will be mentioned by any PSfag as one of the best series on PS. I don't know why. I gave them a chance and it's awful. The gameplay is shit on-rails and clunky. At least, Bubsy 3D went for the whole 3D thing and tried to be a proper 3D game. Crash isn't even trying. There's absolutely nothing special about them. Even from a game design stand point, they're awful. The whole series screams 'Hey! We're trying too hard to do console mascots!'.

EDIT: Also Kojima's stuff. Death stranding looks like a chore to play.
 
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Also Kojima's stuff. Death stranding looks like a chore to play.
A premise which ideally ought to be shown, and not told. But Kojima can't help but wring every ounce of dialog out of his characters and spell everything out. All he's done is dumb down his audience so he can appear smart.

It's a kind of recieved wisdom: the press keep calling him a genius, therefore he is.
 
Apologies if I'm beating a dead horse, but freakin' Skyrim.

The combat is just a mindless slapping contest
, hardly any strategy involved.
Just guzzle potions and squeeze the triggers (or click the mouse buttons.) Or, you can get your bow out, duck and take advantage of the game's inept AI:
A common event during stealth combat, is an enemy can witness their ally being shot in the face right in front of him, and seconds later shrug it off, saying it "must have been the wind," or they were "just hearing things."

Main story as far as plot and writing go is fine I guess, but incredibly unlikable characters such as Delphine hinder it greatly.
The Thieves' Guild is a disaster of a quest-line. The plot is convoluted and uninteresting. Almost no actual thieving involved.
Dark Brotherhood is clearly trying to bring back the charm of Oblivion's, but in my opinion tries too hard and falls flat. I personally find Cicero obnoxious.
The progression of the quest lines typically feel unnatural and rushed. You start out as a whelp in the Companions, but before you know it you're already top-dog.
In the College of Winterhold quest line, you're hardly required to do any magic, let alone learn about it before you've become arch-mage.

The game introduces a system called "Radiant" quests, meaning that there are some quests with certain variables randomized, and as a result are cookie-cutter and lack any depth. Many of the hand-crafted quests can be described this way, too.

Role-playing elements are lacking immensely.
There are hardly any choices for player dialog to fit different kinds of character personalities, or even simple morals. No statistics such as character strength, luck or intelligence, just skills. Very few skill checks, meaning your character's skills give them next to no additional relevant insight in dialog...or even just simple Speech skill checks.
I will give the game props for making your character a blank slate, without any predefined morals, and next to no backstory.
Looking at you, Fallout 4...

All the scripted sequences feel incredibly awkward and stiff. It doesn't even seem to try and feel dynamic or lifelike. For instance, during the introduction when people are shouting whist the executions, they don't ever shout over each other like a real crowd, it's always one after another, like an assembly line.
The game engine in general feels very archaic and clunky. NPC's feel cheap and robotic. Dragons rigidly interpolate from one place to another as they fly around. Player movement is stop-and-go. Even the more recent "Special Edition" is locked and loaded with more bugs than you can shake a stick at.

Take away the pretty graphics and the Jeremy Soule soundtrack and you're left with...not much, other than an overall shallow experience with mediocre quest lines.
Been saying many of the same things for the better part of a decade now. Most of my friends who I talk to about this stuff seem totally flabbergasted that I don't like the mindless, gray and overall dull experience that is Skyrim. After talking to them about it a bit more I found out that absolutely none of them had ever played the game without mods. If it was only some graphical mods or whatever I'd understand, but they all play with tons of mods, including overhauls that completely change many of the worst parts of the base game.
I also realized that one of my friends is a pathological cheater in video games. If he has a console to spawn items with or access to cheat engine, the second anything gets remotely annoying, he will make excessive use of these tools. I think a lot of people are like this.
So I'm not sure how people can defend Skyrim. If a game needs tons of mods that change or fix major issues with the game in order to be fun, then the base game isn't good.
 
Golf Story is a bad game, It has a weirdly depressing tone, and almost everyone in the game is an asshole for no discernible reason. Everything good it does is just a direct ripoff of Mario Golf GBC.

I have no idea why it was so well received, unless that was just another case of Nintendo fanboys being obnoxious and liking it just because it’s a Switch exclusive.
 
Probably all Obsidian games.
I haven't tried New Vegas, but played Outer Worlds and Pillars of Eternity 2 to the end, both are crap.

As a huge lover of isometric games, PoE2 is bad in almost every areas, including story. Horrendous self indulgent writing and a totally uninteresting game and combat mechanics. I bought it on sale and I regret it.

Outer Worlds is not the Fallout saviour, not even close, the story is an exaggerated caricature of capitalism, the tone all over the place. The world is bland, and the loot is so terrible, it's either ammo of another common gun with higher stats. Playing the 1st area meams you have played the entire game, because everything plays out the same without any interesting mix up at all.

Everytime people say Obsidian is a master at storytelling, I remember these 2 terrible games.
when people parsing Obsidian, its mostly due to star wars kotor 2 and fallout new vegas and while the games are good, they were (and most cases still are) broken ass games that need patches and mods just to run properly. i did enjoy POE2 from a gameplay stand point but the overall plot and characters were, not good. not played outer worlds but heard enough to know i would not like it.
 
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Yeah New Vegas has better writing than Bethesda Fallout, and some better ideas, but I think people give it too much credit when it was just a hair better than Cyberpunk on the list of broken pieces of shit at launch.

I can always tell when someone is fairly new to New Vegas when they start talking about how Bethesda screwed them by not giving them the bonus or whatever cause they got an 84 metacritic instead of an 85. I just want to be like 84 was too much for that game at launch.
 
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