Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Matt Damon]

Then you get to video games and it's kind of like the distinction between stubble and a beard: at what point does one end and another begin? If you get the right combination of character customisation, progression systems, and story, some people will call it "an RPG" and others still will call it "not an RPG."

I've always found it odd that people have bitched endlessly for decades about this or that western RPG not being sufficiently RPG-ish, but the majority of JRPGs don't even have a token amount of role-playing (often the player doesn't have an in-game avatar at all) and people just sorta accept that.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

I'm aware this will only be unpopular on Boomerfarms, but for all the talk about modern "RPGs" stripping the RPG mechanics or whatever, pretty much every game that did this was far more fun than their previous entries. (sorry 80's fags, the numbers don't lie even if they're not used to determine if the sword connect to an enemy actually connects)

If you're going to complain about the bad parts of those games, complain about the lazy quest/mission writing/design that is prevalent in all of gaming.

When people talk about "role-playing" in Skyrim, they are talking about digital larping where you self impose arbitrary limitations to be heckin authentic in your larp role.

It sounds like you enjoy movie games where you don't have to think. That's great. They're very popular/good as well.

 

[7th Dweller of Da'at]

Yeah, and some people act like a game is worthless unless you install an enormous number of mods. I'm not talking about broken ones that really need them like VTMB, I mean like, Morrowind. It gives me the same sort of feeling like if I saw someone dumping half a bottle of ketchup on their dinner. Like, if you really can't enjoy your meal without that much ketchup covering it, maybe you don't actually like that dish, and should order something else.

as someone who's played and loved Morrowind for many years, I can personally attest to the fact that mods really aren't necessary besides the Code Patch or Expansion Delay to fix the Dark Brotherhood coming after you at Level 1, and some other QoL changes. The game is almost perfect, it just needs an extra push to smooth out some of the jank, unlike say Oblivion or Skyrim, which need complete overhauling to make playable

For those disagreeing with this post, please explain which mods besides patches are required to play the game

 

[Matt Damon]

It sounds like you enjoy movie games where you don't have to think.

Role-playing in Skyrim requires "thinking" in the same way that obsessively memorizing freight train schedules requires "thinking".

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

Role-playing in Skyrim requires "thinking" in the same way that obsessively memorizing freight train schedules requires "thinking".

I think you overthought that analogy, Matt.

 

[Safir]

Allow me to educate you, ya stupid shit

THEY'RE WEARING SPORTS BRAS

Yeah like no shit I know, I wear sports bras every day. But (1) athletic women still have small boobs, and (2) a woman who can wear a sports bra (daily or for competitions) doesn't need boob armor.

Hypothetically, if all these women secretly have massive khazar milkers which get squozed into nothingness and show their best results, they can wear a "men's" breastplate to battle, too.

 

[Mask_de_SMITH]

Man, niggas on this thread getting mad about unpopular opinions lol

 

[WULULULULU]

Maybe it's my age, but Halo 2 is overrated. It's unbalanced as all hell.

Halo 2 deserves to be shat on for how unfulfilling it is to play, because it is artificial difficulty cranked up to 11, especially on Legendary.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

Man, niggas on this thread getting mad about unpopular opinions lol

It makes all the accusations of autism pretty fun, not gonna lie

 

[Calandrino]

I just wish people had lightened up a bit, now we really do know what it's like to have gaming go to shit.

"At least things can't get any worse"

I've always found it odd that people have bitched endlessly for decades about this or that western RPG not being sufficiently RPG-ish, but the majority of JRPGs don't even have a token amount of role-playing (often the player doesn't have an in-game avatar at all) and people just sorta accept that.

Have you not been living under a rock? The NMA/RpgCodex-o-sphere of the internet has always hated jrpgs for that reason.

"Role-playing game" is mere nomenclature. Consider: light gun video games like House of the Dead concern shooting things from a first-person perspective, but they are not "first person shooters", are they? A proper (traditional) role-playing game is a particular kind of pen-and-paper game popularized by D&D, not any game that involves role-playing. An RPG dungeon crawl might barely involve role-playing at all. The video game genre "RPG" signifies an electronic adaption of a PnP RPG. I wouldn't consider any video game that is playable without graph paper to be a true RPG. Stuff like Skyrim just uses it as a marketing buzzword to leech off of Wizardry's popularity.

 

[Pissmaster]

I've always found it odd that people have bitched endlessly for decades about this or that western RPG not being sufficiently RPG-ish, but the majority of JRPGs don't even have a token amount of role-playing (often the player doesn't have an in-game avatar at all) and people just sorta accept that.

There's never been another term for games like Final Fantasy IV where it's built with the framework of an RPG, but you play as characters with their own names and stories, exploring linear prebuilt caves and towns, with no meaningful input on what equipment or skills you get throughout the game. They're almost distant cousins of point-and-click adventures, just without the puzzle solving.

Speaking of which, wouldn't roguelikes, even Japanese ones, be closer to the traditional RPG than most things that call themselves RPGs nowadays?

The term "role-playing game" has no utility anymore. It started out as an extremely vague catch-all description of pen-and-paper games and has only gotten worse over time.

At this point, it seems to be something like "game where player is explicitly presented with some numbers of some kind, which usually increase over time" and nothing more.

I swear, at some point, RPG just started meaning "it has a leveling system", since anything where you could gain levels by defeating enemies or doing tasks were advertised as having RPG mechanics. Like even mobile games where leveling up is just a way of checking how far along you are for unlocks.

 

[The Ugly One]

If I could stomach dealing with other people in my free time, I'd do something less gay than play Pretend-With-Math.

The joke is that what is and isn't a true RPG goes all the way back to the early days of computer games, with PnP grognards shitting on "CRPGs" for having closed storylines, inflexible maps, and requiring zero imagination from the player. It is a fairly gay and retarded nerd slapfight, but I do find it funny that people who only play video game RPGs are having the same slap fight, except now it's insisting that "roll to hit" is what make makes something truly an RPG (it's not).

 

[ScurvyRat]

Hot take:
I find the "metroid/Castlevania" genre to be unplayable garbage. There is nothing enjoyable about wandering a map for upgrades, constantly backtracking, and forced platforming. I don't want to trek across an entire fucking map to go and check every little nook and cranny for the next way through the game. I'm a retard. Show me where the fuck to go. I don't want to have to guess and hunt for the next scrap of progression.

Hollow knight is the worst offender of this. Not only is the combat unsatisfying and jank to the extreme, but the sheer amount of back tracking and getting lost made the game fucking infuriating to play.

 

[Matt Damon]

Hollow knight is the worst offender of this. Not only is the combat unsatisfying and jank to the extreme, but the sheer amount of back tracking and getting lost made the game fucking infuriating to play.

While there are a number of Metroidvania games I really enjoy, I'll agree that it's a very delicate balance. Obtuse level design, bad combat, and too much backtracking or aimless wandering can all ruin the experience.

I still don't think any game has done it any better than Symphony of the Night and that's a quarter of a century old now.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Silent Hill is better off dead. There really isn't anything else they can do with it anymore, and by the time Book of Memories was out, the series was unrecognizable from what people fell in love with.

Started getting stuff the series never needed like recurring characters, and trying to explain why the town worked the way it did, and attributing bigger, outrageous powers to the town itself, i understand that the town itself is kind of a character in it's own right, but it's one of those cases where things are better left unexplained.

And even if SH didn't go the way it did, what else could they do, really? The Cult storyline concluded in SH3, and SH2 created *and* peaked the psychological horror theme, this game is the reason every single horror indie has "Inspired by Silent Hill" in the cover. There's only so many times you can do "The protagonist was in denial about x's death all along"

If you ask me what i would've done, i had a couple ideas:

- Continue the SH4 route: Mini unpopular opinion but 4 is my favorite SH after 2. Would've loved to see the series taken out of the titular town, but close enough so as to receive some of it's "effects". Take a normal civilian, and put them in a terrifying, unnatural situation that only gets worse as they try to climb out of it, while the world around them seemingly runs like it always does,

- Get bold with the SH2 formula: Could always keep the structure the series is known for, sure, but i say get fucking outrageous with it, SH protagonists usually have some shades of grey in them, but it's easy to humanize murderers if put in the right light. Seek out to polarize people and make one of your protagonist a rapist, for example, force the player to *really* consider whether the character has learned, overcome, or even faced their demons, wouldn't even mind if this was the first SH with no "good" ending, maybe some people don't deserve redemption in the end.

Now i'm sure these ideas aren't exactly new or original, hell, maybe they wouldn't sustain the series in the long run either. But between what the series was left off on, and it staying dead? I'll gladly host the second funeral.

I'm of the same mind pretty much, now that it's been over 20 years since 1 and 2 and almost 20 years since 3 and 4 I've pretty much made peace with the series being over and it's no longer as raw as it was after all this time.

Not that I still don't sometimes dream about a new game, but I only want a new Silent Hill if they bring back some of the original Team Silent staff, I don't want it in the hands of western developers or developers who simply have no ties to the original 3 games.

If you really look at it you realize how much Silent Hill 3 did wrap up the cult plotline, the only thing left to do was another side story in the vein of 2 which the other developers tried and failed at, again, I only want to see that done by the people that gave us Silent Hill 2 in the first place.

There's about 3 key names, Hiroyuki Owaku, Masahiro Ito and Akira Yamaoka, I only want a new game if it involves them.

As for any hanging plot threads though, there is the whole thing with the "Little Baroness" mentioned in Silent Hill 2 (and wasted on an arcade game, but that doesn't count) and the island in the middle of Toluca lake with a mysterious church on it only glimpsed during one of Silent Hill 2's endings, what's up with that place?

 

[The Ugly One]

I'm of the same mind pretty much, now that it's been over 20 years since 1 and 2 and almost 20 years since 3 and 4 I've pretty much made peace with the series being over and it's no longer as raw as it was after all this time.

Not that I still don't sometimes dream about a new game, but I only want a new Silent Hill if they bring back some of the original Team Silent staff, I don't want it in the hands of western developers or developers who simply have no ties to the original 3 games.

If you really look at it you realize how much Silent Hill 3 did wrap up the cult plotline, the only thing left to do was another side story in the vein of 2 which the other developers tried and failed at, again, I only want to see that done by the people that gave us Silent Hill 2 in the first place.

There's about 3 key names, Hiroyuki Owaku, Masahiro Ito and Akira Yamaoka, I only want a new game if it involves them.

As for any hanging plot threads though, there is the whole thing with the "Little Baroness" mentioned in Silent Hill 2 (and wasted on an arcade game, but that doesn't count) and the island in the middle of Toluca lake with a mysterious church on it only glimpsed during one of Silent Hill 2's endings, what's up with that place?

Some games really just should get remade or maybe a simple HD upgrade. Silent Hill 3 came out almost 20 years ago. Maybe today's 17-year-olds would like a crack at it.

 

[I'd abeeb bear]

While there are a number of Metroidvania games I really enjoy, I'll agree that it's a very delicate balance. Obtuse level design, bad combat, and too much backtracking or aimless wandering can all ruin the experience.

I still don't think any game has done it any better than Symphony of the Night and that's a quarter of a century old now.

Yep, SotN is still king. Even the controls feel more smooth and responsive than basically any Metroidvania attempting to copy it. There's some decent ones out there that I don't hate, but I've basically had to quit trying them because they don't even come close to SotN and whenever someone claims they do, they're just flat out wrong. It's a perfect game.

Hot take:
I find the "metroid/Castlevania" genre to be unplayable garbage. There is nothing enjoyable about wandering a map for upgrades, constantly backtracking, and forced platforming. I don't want to trek across an entire fucking map to go and check every little nook and cranny for the next way through the game. I'm a retard. Show me where the fuck to go. I don't want to have to guess and hunt for the next scrap of progression.

Hollow knight is the worst offender of this. Not only is the combat unsatisfying and jank to the extreme, but the sheer amount of back tracking and getting lost made the game fucking infuriating to play.

A good Metroidvania makes the exploration rewarding and even effortless. Most of them are terrible, trying to mimic something they don't understand. A well designed Metroidvania almost feels linear because it guides you well enough without you even realizing it, yet you feel like you're exploring on your own. Visual clues and looping you back around to somewhere you've already visited without you having to make that trek. The best of the best will reward your memory with side content or weapons that you'd have missed if you didn't go exploring again, but it's not necessary to completing it.

 

[The Last Stand]

eSports is ruining competitive gaming. Gaming in general. The current philosophy for fighting games or shooters is to cater to that demographic while ignoring those who don't care about rank.

Halo 3 perfected that system 14 years ago with Trueskill. Now it's an arbitrary system often abused by tryhards and DDOSERS.

 

[The Ugly One]

This is an unpopular opinion with people who have played all the Elder Scrolls games. I first played Daggerfall in a PC Gamer demo disc in the 1990s.

Arena was shit.
Daggerfall was shit.
Morrowind was shit.
Oblivion was shit.
Skyrim was surprisingly good.

 

[Matt Damon]

This is an unpopular opinion with people who have played all the Elder Scrolls games. I first played Daggerfall in a PC Gamer demo disc in the 1990s.

Arena was shit.
Daggerfall was shit.
Morrowind was shit.
Oblivion was shit.
Skyrim was surprisingly good.

Personally, I just couldn't get into Skyrim and it has nothing to do with "durr it's not real role-playing" or that shit.

My problem is the quests. They're all so mechanical, so predictable, so perfunctory and utterly bereft of fun or surprise that I just lost interest. Do literally one guild or any other long set of quests in Skyrim and you've effectively seen the entire game: go to a specified place, kill a bunch of dudes in a cave, kill a cookie-cutter big bad or retrieve an item, return for reward.

Oblivion, for its many faults, was continuously mixing things up. Quests very, very often had some small but unique twist: a quest giver who lied to the player, an interested third party who gives a counter-offer, an ambush, an NPC warning the player of the ambush or a million other little things that breathed some modicum of life into the world.

It was fun to see what unexpected thing might happen during a quest, as opposed to Skyrim where you could set your watch to the quest playing out precisely as your journal described.