Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[The Ugly One]

You can largely solve skill trees with easy respecs, which both Grim Dawn and City of Heroes did quite handily. Even if you can't perfectly balance all builds, letting people play around with the tools you give them as opposed to being forced to have a strategy guide in their laps at all times feels like the most user friendly solution

"I'm good at this game because I knew that MegaZap's sublinear scaling makes it useless past 12th level, and that you should have taken WeakZap because there's a power you can take at 7th level that synergizes and causes it to start quadratically scaling!"

Anyone who thinks this is good game design should be thrown down a well.

 

[anustart76]

Star Wars Fallen Order is a shitty Souls clone with a Star Wars skin and a cuck of a main character.
Star Wars Force Unleashed 1&2 are the best non-RPG Star Wars games with a Chad protagonist (I haven't played KoTOR or anything so I won't judge games like that here)

 

[Matt Damon]

I haven't played KoTOR or anything

Unpopular opinion: you didn't miss a whole lot.

 

[WhiskeyJack]

Battlefield One is kind of crap. Better than what came after it, but it had/has a lot of issues that Dice never addressed, particularly team balancing and no real anti-cheat moderation. Having every map balanced around the Operations gamemode instead of Conquest is a big issue. Having a supposed WWI game built around submachineguns and assault rifles is another. Seriously, it's just another WWII game, but with a WWI skin mod and bulletproof horses, and lot of marketing in November.

Darn pretty to look at, though.

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

Bioware was better pre-Mass Effect.

 

[Mega Black]

The fact that he took a light-hearted novelty concept like "Final Fantasy meets Disney" and turned it into the most needlessly complex, incoherent, self-important nonsense in the history of entertainment AND largely ignored both Disney and Final Fantasy IP to focus on his donut steel animu characters is a testament to Nomura and Square's nearly supernatural capacity for incompetence

It astonishes me that what began as a simple but autistic story about shonen protagonist teaming up with Disney characters became an edgy weeaboo time travel sad piano cringe wallpaper simulator with the most convoluted lore ever conceived over the course of about a dozen games.

I also think it is hilarious how everyone seems to gloss over Nomura's involvement in FF15 and how his general directorial incompetence resulted in him getting booted off the project. Everyone acts like Vs 13 was some beautiful magnum opus that was smothered in the cradle by big mean Square Enix but those same people seem unwilling to acknowledge that it would have probably still been a disappointing fart one way or another.

Anyone who thinks this is good game design should be thrown down a well.

This shit always bothered me too. It isn't so bad if a game is single player or still beatable even with a sub optimal build, but asking me to have a wiki open in the other tab to maximize damage output is the worst thing you can ask me to do. Worse in multiplayer titles where a non-meta build will get you stomped or kicked from every party that you join.

 

[Matt Damon]

most convoluted lore ever conceived over the course of about a dozen games.

They released that compilation of the games on PC a while back and I was even baffled by the names.

KINGDOM HEARTS HD I.5+II.5 ReMIX
KINGDOM HEARTS HD II.8 Final Chapter Prologue

Wait a minute, you're mixing Roman numerals and decimals? What makes them I.5 and II.5 - are these still the first two games? What the fuck is ReMIX and was there a I.5 or II.5 non-ReMIX? Did you have a scene group pre-crack the game for you? Is Kingdom Hearts 2 Kingdom Hearts II.5 or II.8? Is it BOTH? Final Chapter Prologue? So does it come BEFORE Kingdom Hearts 2 or AFTER it? Why would you make that - of all things - ambiguous to players? Why are Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 bundled together, but some (supposedly) prologue/epilogue thing is its own separate product?

How do you screw up so bad that I need to consult a cheat sheet to understand your series' naming scheme? Fuck Nomura, fuck Squaresoft, and fuck Japan.

 

[Matt Damon]

Well, I'm going to be a double posting faggot:

I saw Rocksmith 2014 Remastered uploaded to a piracy site recently and all the Rocksmith games got very high review scores, so I thought I'd try it for shits and giggles. I've played guitar for 20 years and if I'd started with Rocksmith, I'd have never gotten past the first week.

Its gameplay is totally antithetical to how music is actually learned. Learning to play a difficult piece of music is very slow, very tedious, and unbelievably repetitive. You study the music and play the same difficult passages over and over and over again until you get it into muscle memory, which often takes multiple days. No matter how proficient you are, learning a new song (unless it's very simple) is going to involve sitting down and practicing with no tempo, just to get a new unfamiliar note patterns under your fingers. You don't start out playing along with the entire song at tempo, failing over and over until you magically git gud.

I watched some videos of this Youtube guy who seems to make exclusively Rocksmith videos and it's exactly what you'd expect - basically hitting the right notes in the most technical sense, but with the most godawful intonation and terrible articulation and phrasing and vibrato you could imagine. It's completely tasteless and artless. He's scoring points in a video game, not making music.

There's also serious issues with the arrangements and making lots of overdubbed studio guitar tracks into weird hodge-podge single tracks in the game that make for really awkward and unrealistic playing, but that and my many other criticisms get a little technical. The upshot is that I legitimately feel bad for any kid who takes up guitar and this becomes his first impression of how you do music.

 

[Gorazul1978]

Prey (2017) is the true spiritual successor of System Shock and not Bioshock.Plus its a better game all the way through.

 

[Local Degenerate]

Bioware was better pre-Mass Effect.

This is controversial? Pre-Mass Effect, they were a fucking bunch of maniacs, and I mean that in the best way. You couldn't predict anything from them, other than it was probably going to be quality.

Jade Empire is still one of my favorite games, and the twist there is so masterfully done, I'm actually offended it's not taught in classes.

Meanwhile, post Mass Effect, all you get is Mass Effect, a game with very fun and interesting species that forces you to play as shitty humans, and Dragon Age, a game with boring races you can play as, the quality is as steady as a fucking polygraph.

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

Jade Empire is still one of my favorite games, and the twist there is so masterfully done, I'm actually offended it's not taught in classes.

Plot twist is just a nice use of the wuxia genre about your master being the traitor.
The only think i like more than the gameplay was the romance subpath; if you ignore enough both attempts of the princess and your childhood friend near the end unlocks the threesome (obviously off-screen) one. More based than the failed attempt in ME with Liara & Ashley, which is utterly gay: why don't retry again the same attempt?

 

[Pissmaster]

Well, I'm going to be a double posting faggot:

I saw Rocksmith 2014 Remastered uploaded to a piracy site recently and all the Rocksmith games got very high review scores, so I thought I'd try it for shits and giggles. I've played guitar for 20 years and if I'd started with Rocksmith, I'd have never gotten past the first week.

Its gameplay is totally antithetical to how music is actually learned. Learning to play a difficult piece of music is very slow, very tedious, and unbelievably repetitive. You study the music and play the same difficult passages over and over and over again until you get it into muscle memory, which often takes multiple days. No matter how proficient you are, learning a new song (unless it's very simple) is going to involve sitting down and practicing with no tempo, just to get a new unfamiliar note patterns under your fingers. You don't start out playing along with the entire song at tempo, failing over and over until you magically git gud.

I watched some videos of this Youtube guy who seems to make exclusively Rocksmith videos and it's exactly what you'd expect - basically hitting the right notes in the most technical sense, but with the most godawful intonation and terrible articulation and phrasing and vibrato you could imagine. It's completely tasteless and artless. He's scoring points in a video game, not making music.

There's also serious issues with the arrangements and making lots of overdubbed studio guitar tracks into weird hodge-podge single tracks in the game that make for really awkward and unrealistic playing, but that and my many other criticisms get a little technical. The upshot is that I legitimately feel bad for any kid who takes up guitar and this becomes his first impression of how you do music.

Rocksmith is a perfect game for people like me who played Guitar Hero, then bought a guitar and gave it a try, only to find we don't enjoy playing guitar at all, and just like rhythm games.

I got pretty good at Rocksmith, too, and I don't know how well that translated into actually playing, but also kinda don't care lol

 

[Acrid Alchemist]

They released that compilation of the games on PC a while back and I was even baffled by the names.

KINGDOM HEARTS HD I.5+II.5 ReMIX
KINGDOM HEARTS HD II.8 Final Chapter Prologue

Wait a minute, you're mixing Roman numerals and decimals? What makes them I.5 and II.5 - are these still the first two games? What the fuck is ReMIX and was there a I.5 or II.5 non-ReMIX? Did you have a scene group pre-crack the game for you? Is Kingdom Hearts 2 Kingdom Hearts II.5 or II.8? Is it BOTH? Final Chapter Prologue? So does it come BEFORE Kingdom Hearts 2 or AFTER it? Why would you make that - of all things - ambiguous to players? Why are Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 bundled together, but some (supposedly) prologue/epilogue thing is its own separate product?

How do you screw up so bad that I need to consult a cheat sheet to understand your series' naming scheme? Fuck Nomura, fuck Squaresoft, and fuck Japan.

To be fair both things you listed as stupid names aren't individual games but 2, or I guess 3, collections of games. If you are going to complain about retard KH names the tried and true one is 358/2 Days which is an insane name but actually makes sense in context. And hell when the original Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix disc came out for PS3 it actually made sense since it was Kingdom Hearts 1 Final Mix, Rehain of Memories (the PS2 version not the GBA version) and the cutscenes from 358/2 Days making it 1 and then the two games that timeline wise come between 1 and 2 hence 1.5 and Remix coming from mash up Final Mix and the Re: from CoM. 2.5 is a mess though since it comes with 2 Final Mix, a prequel game, Birth by Sleep Final Mix, and the cutscenes from a mobile game that doesn't actually matter, Reoded. At least the mobile game still has the Re: prefix and the other two are Final Mixes so the Remix part makes sense. 2.8 has a horrible dumb name though. It contains a game that takes place between 2 and 3, Dream Drop Distance which is another fucking awful name, a tech demo for 3 that's also a prequel/sidequel for 1, 0.2 Birth by Sleep -A fragmentary passage- which is yet again is a fucking awful name and yes the lower case and dashes are part of the official name, and a movie that is a sort of but not really retelling of a mobile game set in the far past, Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover which is a full on Nomura jerking himself off name. The collections make more sense when you remember that they were originally sold as separate collections in the past and were only mashed together on PS4 and PC. At least the collections are designed so you can just play/watch down the line of games and only be normal level confused at the writing compared to say starting with 2 or 3 and being full blown insane asylum level confused like the poor fools who bought 3 on Xbone and didn't have access to the rest of the series.

But then again Kingdom Hearts being an over convoluted pile of shit and calling Nomura a fucking retard high on his own farts and a pile of belts is not an unpopular opinion. Even the most rabid KH fans would agree with you on that. The more unpopular KH opinion is the one I have, only 1 and 2 are any good and all the rest are varying degrees of shit. Chain of Memories at least had good ideas, if implemented like hot garbage. I've had more than one fan get screaming mad at me for expressing this opinion and had a coworker give me the cold shoulder for a month when I told him I hated 3 and only finished it so I could more fully explain why it was bad and so I wouldn't miss it when I sold it. Man I really wish the team that made 2 had gotten the opportunity to make a similar game but without the KH name because under the ridiculous plot and Disney drivel is an extremely good action rpg with very tight controls that still holds up by today's standards, its just hard to see because the game is just so easy on anything but Critical that you can just mash to victory.

 

[Matt Damon]

only to find we don't enjoy playing guitar at all, and just like music games.

I think the problem is that music is a fundamentally different process that directly conflicts with the idea of playing a video game. You might, for example, practice parrying in Dark Souls so you can git gud and beat the game, but nobody loads up Dark Souls and parries enemies over and over again just so they can appreciate the perfect timing and enjoy the beauty of the parry animation for its own sake.

But enjoying that process for its own sake is what music is all about. Trying to turn it into a game that you "beat" or "100%" misses the essential spirit of the whole thing.

I've had more than one fan get screaming mad at me for expressing this opinion and had a coworker give me the cold shoulder for a month when I told him I hated 3

lmao fucking weebs

 

[Wesker]

Capcom hasn't had any talent in their midst in nearly 20 years.

 

[Quijibo69]

Sonic Frontiers is way over-rated! I've only played it for little under 4 hours and I'm already over half way done on normal mode. You can just play the fishing game to get the the final boss to finish the game.

 

[Pissmaster]

I think the problem is that music is a fundamentally different process that directly conflicts with the idea of playing a video game. You might, for example, practice parrying in Dark Souls so you can git gud and beat the game, but nobody loads up Dark Souls and parries enemies over and over again just so they can appreciate the perfect timing and enjoy the beauty of the parry animation for its own sake.

But enjoying that process for its own sake is what music is all about. Trying to turn it into a game that you "beat" or "100%" misses the essential spirit of the whole thing.

Well, funny enough, finding a great song with a terrific chart is a great reason to keep playing a rhythm game again and again - there are always gonna be scorefags who obsess with perfecting a chart, but the joy of the flow of the chart, and how it goes with the song is the real draw. You may not replay Dark Souls for the joy of parrying different enemies, but you'll get that itch to play that one song in your favorite rhythm game years and years down the line. And the quality of charts run the gamut; there are plenty ranging from forgettable to downright awful, but the best ones will keep you coming back forever.

I haven't really had anyone in my life that would care to listen to me playing guitar and tell me if I'm actually improving, and by the time I did, I had completely quit caring. Trying to play for the sake of playing just felt fruitless.

I went through the same thing with playing keyboard, and eventually picking up Synthesia, too. Same kinda deal as Rocksmith, except it's more DIY with how it runs off of MIDI files. It's a lot of fun.

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

the most convoluted lore ever conceived over the course of about a dozen games.

Looks like jevil boy doesnt know about marathon ( the only game series where they did time travel right which alone should be a warning for the insanity that ensues )

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

I'd be kind of interested to see how many actually necessary items really are hidden in random bushes and walls . Maybe my memory fails me but the only things that come to mind are some of the later dungeon entrances, and even those have in-game clues. If you literally burn every bush I think you're mostly going to find money and stuff. When in doubt, rtfm.

View attachment 4008414

(I refer to the 1st quest, all bets are off for the 2nd)

I think it would have worked in its favor anyway, and a lot of rumors were spread by mouth or through magazines back then.

People believed pretty much everything back then (even that the developers built in nude mods)

This is controversial? Pre-Mass Effect, they were a fucking bunch of maniacs, and I mean that in the best way. You couldn't predict anything from them, other than it was probably going to be quality.

Jade Empire is still one of my favorite games, and the twist there is so masterfully done, I'm actually offended it's not taught in classes.

Meanwhile, post Mass Effect, all you get is Mass Effect, a game with very fun and interesting species that forces you to play as shitty humans, and Dragon Age, a game with boring races you can play as, the quality is as steady as a fucking polygraph.

To me, Mass Effect is the most generic space shooter. Maybe I got exposed too late, but the story is long and boring, and the gameplay is just dull.

I don't care that you have 3 classes with 5 skills. They're all stat boosts or generic abilities I've seen in 100 games before. The shooting is just cover shooter and it's generic as fuck. It's not even hard; your squasmates do all the work.

The story is super slow too. Before you fight the big baddies alien creatures you just shoot generic space guys. You interact mostly with beurocrat dudes and nobody is interesting. Oh and females are not attractive. How do you make skin suits not sexy?

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

To my knowledge, I’m actually surprised that we have never had a Minions based video game come out to new consoles yet.