Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Megaton Punch]

I disagree. After all, no other genre has this problem, why should games?

I think they do. Compare garbage like Keeping Up With the Kardashians to...just about anything else. It exists solely to bore a hole directly into your frontal lobe. It's one step removed from watching static on an old TV. You're not actually watching anything. You're just existing while colors move around in front of your face.

Even if you're watching something stupid like a sitcom, there's usually information to be absorbed. Storylines, life lessons, that sort of thing. You have to think at least somewhat.

It's much less common for TV to be "literally worthless" levels of abhorrently shitty, but it does exist.

Sometimes you want to be challenged, sometimes you want to engage your brain in a mellow way, sometimes you just want to blow twenty minutes until your movie starts.

Everyone needs to turn their brain off every now and again. The problem is when people spend eight straight hours randomly driving around and then they look up and wonder where the sun went. I'm not going to be one of those "all your time must be productive or you're not a good citizen", but when you're literally just blowing entire days on nothing, that's a problem.

 

[Polarity]

Chris Avallone is a fucking moron, and deserves to rot in obscurity where he belongs. The dude is a shit writer, who, in his own words, hates morally complex situations, something that can be seen if you really take a moment to look at New Vegas, and it's color coded, black and white morality bullshit.

I really liked Planescape Torment's writing, as did most everyone else. I don't know how much of that was just due to lightning in a bottle and a great writing staff or him directly, but it really was fresh and unique at the time, and is still one of the better video game stories out there.

Everything else I've played that had him tag-lined has been incredibly mediocre.

 

[Local Degenerate]

There's a level of ambiguity where it comes back around to choices feeling as meaningless as no choice at all.

I played a game a while back (really wish I could remember what it was - apparently it didn't leave a strong impression) that was so up its own ass with moral ambiguity that I disengaged completely because every outcome tried to be equally mediocre because oh-so-morally-complex.

If every result is designed to be equally capricious and unsatisfying regardless of what I do, I have very little incentive to care or feel invested.

I'm specifically referring to his 'My word should be Fallout Law' website (He no shit named it Apocrypha, which roughly means 'what should've been in the bible, but wasn't'), where he says his problem with Intelligent Deathclaws was that, quote: (It causes the) player to feel like complete shit for having killed hundreds of creatures that you might have had the potential to save and evolve.

Which is such a shit take on so many levels, not the least of which being Feral Ghouls exist, and seem to be totally kosher to this moron.

I do agree there is a level where you need to shut the fuck up and let the player have fun and stop trying to make every single question posed be a great though, but for fucks sake.

 

[mensch]

Achievements are one of those things where I instantly know someone is gay if they bring them up as a serious critique of a game.

Only time I hate achievements is when their notifications pop up in otherwise atmospheric games. After I played The Medium I made a habit to disable the notifications in any game where I feel it may interrupt things. This review had an example of it:

This is the studio supposedly making a Silent Hill 2 remake so I hope they calm down with the notifications in that. Imagine watching the tear jerker SH2 ending and then getting a "You Made Her Happy - 50G" achievement, complete with all the dazzling sound effects.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

I don't hate achievements themselves, I hate the people who place importance on them.

I've met people who have said a perfectly fine game sucks because the achievements are too hard, as well as people who say a shitty game is worth buying because it provides easy achievement points.

I mean, I get that everyone realizes by now that I absolutely loathe the people who make games their whole damn life, but it gets especially annoying with achievement whores.

 

[FILTH Tourist]

Even WoW has had characters turn their head to look at their target for several expacs now and many, many games have joke quotes when you bother an NPC.
Is this all it takes to impress gamers now? It's amazing to watch a hobby evolve then degenerate in real time

Well having a whole separate animation play depending on what angle you start the converstation at is neat and is a pretty big step up from just having them turn their heads to look at you while sitting forward that most games do.

 

[Matt Damon]

Well having a whole separate animation play depending on what angle you start the converstation at is neat and is a pretty big step up from just having them turn their heads to look at you while sitting forward that most games do.

Yeah, creating separate full-body animations that look natural regardless of the player's position relative to an NPC is a far, far more complex problem than merely playing a different audio clip (I'd assume that's what he means by joke quote) in certain circumstances.

I don't think this guy or the dismaying number of people who agreed have any understanding of the technical aspects of what he's criticizing.

 

[moocow]

I like Ubisoft games and don't like Souls games at all. There's a spicy unpopular opinion for this thread

Seriously, for an AAA publisher, Ubisoft's generally pretty good. They're fun and well balanced, and generally have beautiful environments. Souls games are bland and tedious. I'm not gonna git gud at a game that starts off looking and feeling like shit. Also:

View attachment 3326766

That chunky UI for items looks like it belongs in a mobile game. That is ugly as sin, and I've never seen anyone criticize it.

I have always hated their choice of fonts for the UI of these god damn games from the very start. Using a serif font is pretentious enough in the first place for a game built for platforms meant to run on televisions (sans-serif fonts are easier to read regardless of display resolution), but they don't have the slightest clue about how to identify a decent font and implement some decent typography in the interface. There's no pair kerning, the glyph hinting is terrible and it's just a kinda-sorta legible pixel soup.

There are so many better-looking choices for serif fonts that would still look good on a television screen, but it's like they just picked whatever cheap or free piece of shit font from some "free fonts!" website and said "meh, good enough."

And they've stuck to that same fucking font for every god damned game.

(to be fair though, it looks like some people have woken up to Vaas being overrated since the DLC for Far Cry 6 came out)

Thank fucking Christ. Vaas sucked. "I repeat a dumb clichéd catch phrase in a shitty accent every time I see you, do cruel things to everybody to remind you I'm a villain, talk mad shit about how much you suck despite your surviving every single attempt I make to kill you and have the shittiest boss non-battle mid-game villain ending in modern gaming."

Golly, what a deep and interesting character.

 

[Raging Capybara]

Randomizers should be a built-in feature in all games.

 

[Meat Target]

Chris Avallone is a fucking moron, and deserves to rot in obscurity where he belongs. The dude is a shit writer, who, in his own words, hates morally complex situations, something that can be seen if you really take a moment to look at New Vegas, and it's color coded, black and white morality bullshit.

Did he write Lonesome Road, or was that Josh Sawyer? Because I heard somewhere that Ulysses was just a self-insert.

And after dozens of playthroughs of NV, I still don't understand what the hell Ulysses was rambling about. "Imma blow sheeit up cuz I mad about stuff".

 

[Matt Damon]

Thank fucking Christ. Vaas sucked. "I repeat a dumb clichéd catch phrase in a shitty accent every time I see you, do cruel things to everybody to remind you I'm a villain, talk mad shit about how much you suck despite your surviving every single attempt I make to kill you and have the shittiest boss non-battle mid-game villain ending in modern gaming."

Golly, what a deep and interesting character.

The character design and motion capture and voice performance were well done. I think people saw that and somehow concluded that he was a good character.

But Vaas was the same as all the other writing in Far Cry 3: not just bad, but, like, confusingly bad. So bad in very specific and uncommon ways that you wonder what the hell happened.

 

[byuu]

Did he write Lonesome Road, or was that Josh Sawyer? Because I heard somewhere that Ulysses was just a self-insert.

And after dozens of playthroughs of NV, I still don't understand what the hell Ulysses was rambling about. "Imma blow sheeit up cuz I mad about stuff".

The Courier blew up his home.

 

[Vault Boy]

Did he write Lonesome Road, or was that Josh Sawyer? Because I heard somewhere that Ulysses was just a self-insert.

And after dozens of playthroughs of NV, I still don't understand what the hell Ulysses was rambling about. "Imma blow sheeit up cuz I mad about stuff".

Chris Avellone, with Ulysses being his mouthpiece for his views on the Fallout series like Kreia was for Star Wars.

While Kreia was at least coherent (if intentionally vague and manipulative), Ulysses was both incoherent and tedious to listen to.

 

[Korpon]

Did he write Lonesome Road, or was that Josh Sawyer? Because I heard somewhere that Ulysses was just a self-insert.

And after dozens of playthroughs of NV, I still don't understand what the hell Ulysses was rambling about. "Imma blow sheeit up cuz I mad about stuff".

The Courier blew up his home.

It was Chris Avellone, and the big TL;DR is:
Ulysses was in the Legion cause his tribe got fucked by them, he later abandoned the Legion
He came across a community that was growing in the remains of the old military base (Hopeville or whatever the place was called)
He joined them and helped out, the Courier meanwhile was doing deliveries mainly for the NCR
The Courier was the only one with the balls to make the dangerous trek through the area to deliver stuff to the community
NCR had found a sus object at an Enclave base with markings referencing Hopeville, so they hired the Courier to deliver it
Courier drops it off and leaves, they tinker with it only to find out it's a device that activates many of the nukes that were underground at the base
Whole place goes kablooey and Ulysses blames the Courier for ruining "their" home (because delivering shit to somewhere makes it your home too???)

 

[Ruin]

Shooting Ulysses in his stupid face was one of the most satisfying things I've ever done in a video game. I look forward to it every playthrough.

The only character I enjoy killing more is The Frontier's General Blackthorn.

 

[Vault Boy]

It was Chris Avellone, and the big TL;DR is:
Ulysses was in the Legion cause his tribe got fucked by them, he later abandoned the Legion
He came across a community that was growing in the remains of the old military base (Hopeville or whatever the place was called)
He joined them and helped out, the Courier meanwhile was doing deliveries mainly for the NCR
The Courier was the only one with the balls to make the dangerous trek through the area to deliver stuff to the community
NCR had found a sus object at an Enclave base with markings referencing Hopeville, so they hired the Courier to deliver it
Courier drops it off and leaves, they tinker with it only to find out it's a device that activates many of the nukes that were underground at the base
Whole place goes kablooey and Ulysses blames the Courier for ruining "their" home (because delivering shit to somewhere makes it your home too???)

It also insinuates that a character that was supposed to be as much of a blank slate as possible actually has a concrete backstory. Some people try to dismiss this as Ulysses being crazy or going after the wrong man, but that would mean that the character Obsidian had been hyping up over the course of four DLCs is a fucking moron, so pick your poison.

 

[byuu]

, with Ulysses being his mouthpiece for his views on the Fallout series like Kreia was for Star Wars.

Nah. Ulysses was originally the Legion mouthpiece. He was supposed to be the big pro-Legion companion in the main game who would give you a lot of their back story before he ended up being cut.

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

Some people try to dismiss this as Ulysses being crazy or going after the wrong man, but that would mean that the character Obsidian had been hyping up over the course of four DLCs is a fucking moron, so pick your poison.

I've always assumed that it was just shitty writing on the fly because they abandoned their plans for Ulysses during development, then decided to just throw him in as they made their DLC's. I get he was always going to wax poetic about symbols and all that bullshit, but I doubt he would have had such a complicated and retarded backstory when he was supposed to be a companion.

If they had just stuck with the original idea of Ulysses viewing the Courier as a potential mythological symbol to rival Lanius, and instead of everything being some vendetta make it so that it was simply Ulysses wanting to see if the man could live up to being a legend it would have been a lot better. But these hack writers probably thought such a "simple" concept wasn't worth doing so now it's some dumbass blood feud that you have no fucking idea about.

For how much Fallout fans rag on Fallout 4 for railroading you into a background/history, I think it's way worse in New Vegas since you go through most of the game only to have this random history dumped on you.

 

[Local Degenerate]

For how much Fallout fans rag on Fallout 4 for railroading you into a background/history, I think it's way worse in New Vegas since you go through most of the game only to have this random history dumped on you.

That's just Fallout fans in a nutshell. Someone told them that 'Bethesda bad' so now, everything they do is a fucking trash fire, even when it was done in their beloved, and incredibly shit, Fallout 1 or 2, or their admittedly great (edit: but far, FAR from perfect) Fallout NV.

Despite the fact that FO4 arguably has the most morally complex writing in the series.

 

[Mega Black]

I like getting achievements if I really liked the game and want to play it a bit more

The only game I ever went out of my way to get all the achievements for was Dead Rising, and most of the hard achievements came witha really valuable in game reward or fun cosmetic that made them worth doing. Why anyone would ever see them as meaningful or something to care about otherwise I have no clue.

Shooting Ulysses in his stupid face was one of the most satisfying things I've ever done in a video game. I look forward to it every playthrough.

There's something so satisfying about murdering blatant author self inserts in RPGs. Ulysses is the most pretentious faggot and I really hate Lonesome Road's writing, at least the kino atmosphere makes up for it.

It also insinuates that a character that was supposed to be as much of a blank slate as possible actually has a concrete backstory. Some people try to dismiss this as Ulysses being crazy or going after the wrong man, but that would mean that the character Obsidian had been hyping up over the course of four DLCs is a fucking moron, so pick your poison.

He certainly comes across as a fucking moron with all the bear and bull speeches so maybe it's not that far fetched. Lonesome Road's forced backstory is less egregious than, say, Fallout 4's, but it is retarded. It seemed like they just had no intelligent way of making Ulysses want to target you so they had to pull something out of their asses.

Ulysses should have just had a more active role in the other DLCs and they should have served as the lead up to your confrontation, rather than some nebulous encounter you may or may not have had before the game ever started.

For how much Fallout fans rag on Fallout 4 for railroading you into a background/history, I think it's way worse in New Vegas since you go through most of the game only to have this random history dumped on you.

I'd disagree. 'You were always a courier.' Is much less egregious than being a soldier or lawyer in a loving relationship in the suburbs with a spouse and a son and a robot butler and a dog you lost but still evidently cared for. It informs was more about the kind of character you could be than Lonesome Road.

New Vegas' forced backstory is a speedbump in an otherwise smooth narrative, Fallout 4's is a fucking mountain that's always getting in the way of acting out of line.

Despite the fact that FO4 arguably has the most morally complex writing in the series.

Now that's the most contrarian of opinions I've ever seen.