Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Yamamura]

I disagree completely. I played through San Andreas again this summer and I was struck by just how much fun it still is and how shockingly well it holds up.

Totally fair, to each his own experience. I knew my take would be understandably controversial (hence why I posted it here). I'm just saying for me personally perhaps I might have a different experience of SA if it was the first GTA-like free roam sandbox game I've played. To be clear it's not the fault of the game, I probably would have loved it had I played it much earlier. When I played it there was no feature that stood out to me for being particularly unique. For instance if I stole a vehicle from the military base and go on a rampage, the original thrill isn't there because I'm only reminded of hundreds of times I've done that in other games, only with controls that feel less janky. There's nothing bad about it, it just feels like it can't give me an experience I didn't already have somewhere else.

I can totally see that, the game has some bullshit in it. It improved on many things from the previous games but these improvements might feel archaic now, same with the new additions that were really cool back then. Plus, the 3D GTA's lock-on shooting wasn't fun even then.

This is pretty much how I feel. The only parallel I can sort of compare it to is like driving a car that was considered very advanced for its time in the 1960s, but is considered pretty standard today. No matter how many innovations it has that have been implemented for it's time. I can only notice how many things are missing rather than how many things have been improved, since I have no reference to go off of and have to put myself into the shoes of someone playing it in 2004.

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I played GTA:SA when it was new, so the immense size of the game world was staggering, but that just reminds me of this image I saw a long time ago, comparing the sizes of game worlds:
View attachment 3741281

So it was small even by 2010, but, the liveliness of the world and the density of content still rivals sandbox games today. Still though, the graphics were middling even back in '04, and there wasn't really random weird stuff that you could just stumble across. It's a fun game, but I can understand why it'd come off dated to you. It's pretty fuckin' old now, but that's what you get when you ask for the most amazing game of nearly 20 years ago. Time travel 30 years into the past, and you'll hear people discussing how incredible Wolfenstein 3D looks, and how it's surely a timeless masterpiece.

Time travel 10 years into the past, and you'll get.... well, Grand Theft Auto 5. Video game improvements have really trickled to a crawl over the past decade.

I think that's one of the key features the GTA series has always prided itself on is the "wow" factor with each new installment. The jump from SA to IV and the HD world was massive. Not only were the graphics and models more detailed and crisp, but the pedestrian AI started to make it feel like it was a living breathing city. When contrasting it to SA, it's just well... less. Not that I blame it as there's only so much the developers could do with the resources available at the time. But every time I feel how clunky the controls and UI are it never stops to remind me of its age.

I know that one day this will probably be me as an old man looking back at IV and V but I understand that's just the natural effect of progression and that every generation will have their expectations set at the current benchmark of their time and might not hold the same reverence toward the classics as someone who got to experience the initial jump.

 

[Matt Damon]

I know that one day this will probably be me as an old man looking back at IV and V but I understand that's just the natural effect of progression and that every generation will have their expectations set at the current benchmark of their time and might not hold the same reverence toward the classics as someone who got to experience the initial jump.

You know, I'm not so sure at this point. It seems that much of gaming has settled on standards and plateaued - even the difference between GTA III and San Andreas was pretty striking in terms of scale, complexity, and dramatically refined controls and mechanics. That was three years separation and on the same hardware.

Compare that to now and GTA5 is almost a decade old and still at the top of the genre. Nothing feels outdated or makes me think "oh, thank God games don't do it THIS way anymore".

Maybe something will come along that blow the doors off and leads to a revolution in how games are played, but for now it all seems to be stagnant. Playstation 5 games are roughly equivalent to Playstation 3 games with nicer visuals (sometimes LITERALLY) and very little else that would lead me to notice that fifteen years have passed.

 

[Becky McDonald]

You know, I'm not so sure at this point. It seems that much of gaming has settled on standards and plateaued - even the difference between GTA III and San Andreas was pretty striking in terms of scale, complexity, and dramatically refined controls and mechanics. That was three years separation and on the same hardware.

Compare that to now and GTA5 is almost a decade old and still at the top of the genre. Nothing feels outdated or makes me think "oh, thank God games don't do it THIS way anymore".

Lol no dude. I don't have to fire up a crowbcat video essay to show that GTA V, even now, is still clearly a 2012 game that has been ran through the wringer to squeeze every last drop of blood out of its respective stone. In ways, it's actually worse than IV was.

• Water physics were a downgrade from IV, switching to a static model instead of full-on soft-body physics.
• Car physics were also a downgrade, artificially restricting them to 120 MPH originally to help consoles load the map, and stayed because it would fuck the game's pacing up if they were suddenly removed. Damage was toned down from IV as well. Add to that the downgrade in physics, particularly suspension-wise that many critics bring up.
• Fight physics were another major downgrade; you could have proper melee fights in IV that felt reminiscent of what Bully and VCS brought to the table, and that was reduced to simpler "fights" that knock whoever you're fighting out in 3 hits or less.
• Police physics are incredibly out of date and not too dissimilar to GTA 1's in the sense they spawn wherever you go, and still have scripted PIT manoeuvres that make you spin against your will.
• The car modification system hasn't evolved much from the company's own Midnight Club LA, which came out in ooh, 2008.
• The sound design for stuff like the car engine has also barely evolved from the 3D era games.
• Aside from snow (which RDR2 went on to perfect), the game's dust/particle system isn't that different from what some studios were doing in the sixth-gen, particularly rallying games. Pre-baked dirt textures that gradually made a car "dirtier" as opposed to more dynamic mud like in SpinTires.
• There are little to no dynamic events in the game, everything is scripted to a degree.

You can tell RDR2 is a much newer, up-to-date game even if it doesn't have cars in it. The current version of V still feels like an eighth-gen launch title, and not in a good way.

Dude wrote a wall of console wars text in goddamn 2022. And he even simped for Sega holy shit.

Not my fault if zoomies are predispositioned to being unable to read more than 280 characters at a time.

 

[Matt Damon]

• Water physics were a downgrade from IV, switching to a static model instead of full-on soft-body physics.
• Car physics were also a downgrade, artificially restricting them to 120 MPH originally to help consoles load the map, and stayed because it would fuck the game's pacing up if they were suddenly removed. Damage was toned down from IV as well. Add to that the downgrade in physics, particularly suspension-wise that many critics bring up.
• Fight physics were another major downgrade; you could have proper melee fights in IV that felt reminiscent of what Bully and VCS brought to the table, and that was reduced to simpler "fights" that knock whoever you're fighting out in 3 hits or less.
• Police physics are incredibly out of date and not too dissimilar to GTA 1's in the sense they spawn wherever you go, and still have scripted PIT manoeuvres that make you spin against your will.
• The car modification system hasn't evolved much from the company's own Midnight Club LA, which came out in ooh, 2008.
• The sound design for stuff like the car engine has also barely evolved from the 3D era games.
• Aside from snow (which RDR2 went on to perfect), the game's dust/particle system isn't that different from what some studios were doing in the sixth-gen, particularly rallying games. Pre-baked dirt textures that gradually made a car "dirtier" as opposed to more dynamic mud like in SpinTires.
• There are little to no dynamic events in the game, everything is scripted to a degree.

None of these even approach the kind of gameplay changes you saw between Grand Theft Auto 3 and San Andreas. And the fact that GTAV has some regressions from GTAIV only further supports my thesis.

If you could attempt to keep your raging autism in check, I think everyone would really appreciate it.

 

[The Ugly One]

None of these even approach the kind of gameplay changes you saw between Grand Theft Auto 3 and San Andreas. And the fact that GTAV has some regressions from GTAIV only further supports my thesis.

If you could attempt to keep your raging autism in check, I think everyone would really appreciate it.

In ten years, all people have to sperg out about are dust textures and suspension physics. Ten years before GTA IV came out, you know what the hottest console game was? Ocarina of Time.

 

[God of Nothing]

In ten years, all people have to sperg out about are dust textures and suspension physics. Ten years before GTA IV came out, you know what the hottest console game was? Ocarina of Time.

that was great

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

Mario Sunshine is the worst 3d mario and Windwaker is the worst 3d zelda.

 

[Pissmaster]

Unpopular opinion: I've been told for years that the Chronicles of Riddick: Butcher Bay was a great game, sleeper hit, some called it the best movie-license game ever made.

It's uh... it's really not. The story is incoherent, the voice acting vacillates between okay and terrible (Vin Diesel completely phoned it in), NPC behavior is a bizarre mess that I still can't understand, movement is even more floaty and vague than most first-person games, melee combat is awful, gun combat is uninspired, and it's generally just an unremarkable 4 or 5/10 movie tie-in.

I guess it's a pretty good-looking game for the time, but that's about it.

When that game was new, Vin Diesel had the exact same kind of "heckin wholesome chungus" thing Keanu Reeves has going on today, with tons of people worshipping the ground he walked on, for whatever reason. Apparently he's into D&D in real life, and provided input on that game, so I figure a lot of the admiration came from people wrapped up in that who didn't actually play the game.

Kinda funny how that game got astronomical praise for a while, but you never hear about it today, and it never got a rerelease on anything. Nor have I seen anyone banging on about how they want a remake. But, if one happened, I'm sure all the simps would crawl out of the woodwork to claim they've been begging for one for years... somewhere.

Mario Sunshine is the worst 3d mario and Windwaker is the worst 3d zelda.

Nobody but the biggest Nintendo simps liked those games when they were new, and then 15 years later the zoomers grew up and said "Ackshually, they're incredible, I loved playing them when I was little" and we all must remember that the Gamecube sucked shit unless you were a child at the time

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

In ten years, all people have to sperg out about are dust textures and suspension physics. Ten years before GTA IV came out, you know what the hottest console

Gaming already has more tech than it really needs. honestly is not even worth it anymore. People were already making the point that graphics are not as important as game design and art direction in the 90s but i guess tech people suffer from tunnel vision so each gen its the same bullshit with dimisnishing returns.

obody but the biggest Nintendo simps liked those games when they were new, and then 15 years later the zoomers grew up and said "Ackshually, they're incredible, I loved playing them when I was little" and we all must remember that the Gamecube sucked shit unless you were a child at the time

yeah, thats the youtuber effect. One popular zoomertuber makes a revisinism video and then everyone follows along and acts like that always was the general consensus.

 

[Local Degenerate]

Mario Sunshine is the worst 3d mario and Windwaker is the worst 3d zelda.

Sunshine, absolutely, but fuck out of here with Windwaker. It's bad on every single front, but at least the sailing is chill, and you can zone out while you do it. As well as having one (1) likable character.

Skyward Sword, on the other hand, fails in every single category, has no one likable (possible exceptions to the creepy fucking ghost hand and Ghirihim, depending on your tolerance for faggotry), has the ugliest fucking art I've ever seen, to the point of being literal horror stock, controls like shit on both releases, and exists to waste your time to pad out hours to a shitty game with no overworld.

I'm aware we're arguing over which is worse, hot shit or cold shit, but still.

To get away from the debate autism slapfest, I've seen it called the Zelda cycle:
New Zelda game comes out > New Zelda game is derided at absolute shit, Nintendo a bunch of hacks. > Zelda game before it suddenly deemed perfect masterpiece > Zelda game before THAT forgotten entirely > Zelda game before THAT ONE perfect in hindsight as well.

To put names to it, Tears will be derided as awful, BOTW will actually be a stunning masterpiece people hate for no reason, Skyward Sword will return to (deserved) obscurity, Twilight Princess will be (rightfully) seen as the GOAT.

Mark my words.

 

[Matt Damon]

Nobody but the biggest Nintendo simps liked those games when they were new, and then 15 years later the zoomers grew up and said "Ackshually, they're incredible, I loved playing them when I was little" and we all must remember that the Gamecube sucked shit unless you were a child at the time

I have to admit I liked Sunshine in 2002 and I still like it pretty well today. The controls and Mario's moveset are solid, the good levels are quite good (admittedly, the bad levels are VERY bad), and the tropical paradise setting is just... nice.

Fuck Wind Waker though. I'll go to my grave believing Nintendo set out to make the most needlessly slow, plodding game ever created with that one.

but i guess tech people suffer from tunnel vision so each gen its the same bullshit with dimisnishing returns.

It's hard for me to blame them too much because what's the logical way forward?

With 2D, there was always the prospect of more simultaneous colors, more sprites, more frames of animation, etc. More pixels on-screen meant exponentially more and more complex game concepts were possible. Then it was similar with 3D - more capable hardware meant longer render distances, more simultaneously rendered objects, and a larger bubble where AI and physics and such were actively being calculated around the player to give a better illusion of a persistent world.

But we're kind of past all the obvious stuff now. Increases in hardware power don't make a difference in the player's experience as much as require less clever programming tricks by developers to get essentially the same effects they've been capable of for years. So there's less "cheating" which is neat from a technical perspective, but it rarely matters while I'm playing.

VR isn't there yet technically and has its own set of serious hurdles. There's no clear way to improve the dual analog-style controllers we've all been using for 20+ years now and every attempt is met with a "meh". Sound quality is fundamentally limited by the player's physical space and speaker set-up. I just don't see any radical changes that make sense - all the really interesting revolutionary ideas would require computing power orders of magnitude greater than what we have now.

 

[Neet Tokusatsu]

Mario Sunshine is the worst 3d mario and Windwaker is the worst 3d zelda.

Nobody but the biggest Nintendo simps liked those games when they were new, and then 15 years later the zoomers grew up and said "Ackshually, they're incredible, I loved playing them when I was little".

It is really weird how the Game Cube somehow managed to get the best Metroid (Prime 1), the best F-zero, and the Best Starfox (Assault), but at the same time got the worst 3D Mario and the weakest 3D Zeldas, its like only lesser IPs or new ones such as Animal Crossing and Pikmin got the good entries while Nintendo's most popular franchises got their worst games in that generation.

and we all must remember that the Gamecube sucked shit unless you were a child at the time

That wasn't the case for me, i got a GC around 2003 and it was a mistake, it is no secret to anyone that most games worth a damn during the 6th gen were not available on the Game Cube. Devil May Cry, Metal Gear, Ninja Gaiden, Psychonauts, Voodoo Vince, Sly Cooper, Burnout, Doom, Halo. To me the 6th gen was the "look at all the cool shit you can't play" generation.

 

[Pissmaster]

I have to admit I liked Sunshine in 2002 and I still like it pretty well today. The controls and Mario's moveset are solid, the good levels are quite good (admittedly, the bad levels are VERY bad), and the tropical paradise setting is just... nice.

Yeah, the lovely theme and solid feel of the game just added to how frustrating the bad levels were. It’s a perfect go-to game to point out how great a game could look as far back as 2002, but the bad levels were bad enough to kill the game for me.

Fuck Wind Waker though. I'll go to my grave believing Nintendo set out to make the most needlessly slow, plodding game ever created with that one.

I never got very far. I don’t see what others see in that game at all. If you took everything Zelda out from that game and replaced it with some movie tie-in assets, I guarantee you it would have been forgotten the day after it launched.

 

[Merrys Pipeweed]

Visage is PT* made by 9gag, all my friends think it's a certified pant filler. Bunch of interesting technical effects avec unnecessary overdrawn puzzle gameplay with QWOP controls. Also if I wanted an ending where I'm an alcoholic with mental problems I'd turn my monitor off and look at the reflection. Bloody normies.

*Not here to defend PT only to remind ourselves it accelerated the existence of a whole genre of horror, many now with PS1 graphics, yay my favourite.io

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Kinda funny how that game got astronomical praise for a while, but you never hear about it today, and it never got a rerelease on anything. Nor have I seen anyone banging on about how they want a remake. But, if one happened, I'm sure all the simps would crawl out of the woodwork to claim they've been begging for one for years... somewhere.

It got an enhanced port on PS3/360/PC and it was included with the sequel, Dark Athena.
Part of the old adoration, in my mind, was that it was a technical marvel on the original Xbox. The Xbox didn't have that many big games on it that wasn't multiplat. The people talking up Riddick would have been people with 'boxes, I never heard much from the PC crowd.

 

[The Ugly One]

I liked Wind Waker a lot, better than Twilight Princess, possibly better than Ocarina of Time. I didn't know it was a source of people being MATI until well afterward.

With 2D, there was always the prospect of more simultaneous colors, more sprites, more frames of animation, etc. More pixels on-screen meant exponentially more and more complex game concepts were possible. Then it was similar with 3D - more capable hardware meant longer render distances, more simultaneously rendered objects, and a larger bubble where AI and physics and such were actively being calculated around the player to give a better illusion of a persistent world.

It gets to a point where increased data throughput and compute power means increases in detail that aren't easily visible to the naked eye. The NES could draw 25 colors from a 54-color palette; the SNES could draw 256 colors from a palette of 32,768. The difference is obvious and easy to see. The difference between 18-bit color (256K colors) and 24-bit color (16 million colors) is less obvious. A bit more banding and dithering with the former. Anyone can tell the difference between a 320x240 and a 640x480 resolution. 4K vs 1080p is quite so obvious, especially if you haven't got sharp eyes.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

I have to admit I liked Sunshine in 2002 and I still like it pretty well today. The controls and Mario's moveset are solid, the good levels are quite good (admittedly, the bad levels are VERY bad), and the tropical paradise setting is just... nice.

Fuck Wind Waker though. I'll go to my grave believing Nintendo set out to make the most needlessly slow, plodding game ever created with that one.


It's hard for me to blame them too much because what's the logical way forward?

With 2D, there was always the prospect of more simultaneous colors, more sprites, more frames of animation, etc. More pixels on-screen meant exponentially more and more complex game concepts were possible. Then it was similar with 3D - more capable hardware meant longer render distances, more simultaneously rendered objects, and a larger bubble where AI and physics and such were actively being calculated around the player to give a better illusion of a persistent world.

But we're kind of past all the obvious stuff now. Increases in hardware power don't make a difference in the player's experience as much as require less clever programming tricks by developers to get essentially the same effects they've been capable of for years. So there's less "cheating" which is neat from a technical perspective, but it rarely matters while I'm playing.

VR isn't there yet technically and has its own set of serious hurdles. There's no clear way to improve the dual analog-style controllers we've all been using for 20+ years now and every attempt is met with a "meh". Sound quality is fundamentally limited by the player's physical space and speaker set-up. I just don't see any radical changes that make sense - all the really interesting revolutionary ideas would require computing power orders of magnitude greater than what we have now.

I am not asking anything revolutionary just more interesting games. Its fine if tech doesn't improve anymore, games that are weird and fun can be made with tech we already have. That much focus on tech and computing is detrimental and hurting the artistic aspect of games.

AAAs are a massive waste of talent and resources.

 

[Mr. Duck]

Temporal anti-aliasing looks blurry and shitty 90% of the time and i hate that modern developers depend on it so much.

 

[Hazel Motes]

LA Noire is all style no substance. The Sherlock Holmes games and The Sinking City are no style all substance. Detective games need player choice (and they should be right or wrong, not open ended) to have any meaning. LA Noire has great writing, but it offers no challenge or intrigue to the individual cases. You will catch the right guy in the end no matter how shite you are at it. There is no satisfaction because it lays itself out like a game of dominos. SH and SC at least offer a chance for you to think who the criminal is most likely, and you can see how it goes.

 

[The Last Stand]

LA Noire is all style no substance. The Sherlock Holmes games and The Sinking City are no style all substance. Detective games need player choice (and they should be right or wrong, not open ended) to have any meaning. LA Noire has great writing, but it offers no challenge or intrigue to the individual cases. You will catch the right guy in the end no matter how shite you are at it. There is no satisfaction because it lays itself out like a game of dominos. SH and SC at least offer a chance for you to think who the criminal is most likely, and you can see how it goes.

Team Bondi spent the majority of LA Noire's budget on its motion capture. It has aged poorly with the mediocre character textures. I wish more games explored 20th century America. There's loads of potential with the setting and detective style gameplay.

However, I will say that the open world approach, while artistically impressive, is quite limiting. If it had similar gameplay to True Crime: Streets of LA with side objectives, we'd have a contender.