Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[X Prime]

Mystic Quest (Final Fantasy USA) isn't a bad game for its time. It's very basic, but a good introduction for RPG mechanics and the like, for those who weren't familiar with such things.

What, no mention of the battle music?

 

[IKEBURNER]

Sonic Frontiers is better than SA2

 

[Iron Jaguar]

Open world games are stupid and should have a linear narrative instead.

 

[Kheapathic]

What, no mention of the battle music?

Battle music was fine, in fact I enjoyed most of the music in the game. I never understood the hate it gets, without considering that the people bitching about it never played it when it was relevant. Sure I can look at it and be like "Yeah, it's basic, even compared to what came before it." But all the USA had before it was 1 on the NES and 2/4 on the SNES. I dare to say Final Fantasy wasn't a name in the USA until 3/6 came out; but too many zoomers and people who were too cool for gaming back then want to admit it. So they just look back at it and scoff, because 4 and 6 (which didn't exist at the time) is so much better.

Side rant; there's a YouTuber out there who has some retro "Was it any good" stuff he does; and my main problem is I look at him and can tell he's a good 10+ years younger than me. Then he's gonna tell the internet if something from his time being in the ether to a small child was any good. You wouldn't fucking know Junior.

 

[IKEBURNER]

Okay. I'm certainly going to get flamed for this.

The newer Sonic games are not really that bad. (I haven't played Sonic 06) Meh and mediocre at best.

Anyway, does anyone here remember how the Sonic fanboys are raging at IGN over their Sonic Unleashed review?

I'll do you one better, Sonic Frontiers is better than SA2

 

[Sugriva]

Open world games are stupid and should have a linear narrative instead.

This feels like a bad and dumb opinion, but I have to agree. Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring were both great games, but I would have rather just had a new traditional zelda and a dark souls 4 instead. Open world was a cool gimmick the first time I played one, but now there's just way too many of them.

Unpopular opinion tax: There's actually more good games now than ever. Stop buying $60 AAA dogshit and start playing indie games that actually have soul and passion put into them.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

Breath of the Wild

This was one of the very few open(ish) world games that I really enjoyed. It was immediately accessible, so I wasn't wandering around aimlessly or having to grind for 100 hours to get decent weapons and armour.

 

[Matt Damon]

Open world games are stupid and should have a linear narrative instead.

Open-world games can be cool, but it absolutely requires an entirely different design philosophy that most developers don't bother with. It's similar to how Nintendo realized that the traditional start-point/end-point level design of Mario didn't translate well into 3D and instead created large open levels with multiple objectives in Mario 64.

A huge number of games have an "open world" just for the sake of ticking a box on a marketing buzzword list and exist as a glorified (and needlessly tedious) level hub that merely connects sections with more constrained traditional linear design. The one that always sticks out in my mind is Metro Exodus, which made a big deal in the gaming press of taking the series "open-world" and would've been better without the pointless hub world sections.

 

[Jeff_the_Thriller]

"Motion control bad"

I used to be in this camp until I played a shooter in VR very recently. I don't think it even qualified as a very good VR shooter. It was some Walking Dead game for PS VR. I could line up shots so fast once I got the hang of it. It wasn't as fast as a mouse but definitely quicker than a controller.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

Metro Exodus, which made a big deal in the gaming press of taking the series "open-world" and would've been better without the pointless hub world sections.

I agree. The hub world parts were tedious and annoying because they weren't skippable, whereas the actual game itself was fantastic.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

Linear songle player games with well thought out pacing and well designed experiences need to make a comeback.

Not everything needs to be a sandbox and have crafting mechanics.

Unpopular opinion tax: There's actually more good games now than ever. Stop buying $60 AAA dogshit and start playing indie games that actually have soul and passion put into them.

Every "top 2022" games list is mostly indie titles and i can't help but feel is a massive cope and a sign of a really bad year in gaming.

That market is a good way to fill the gaps with genres that AAA doesn't bother anymore like rts spreadsheet simulators and the usual retro bait. but thats about it. I used to be really big into indies but don't bother anymore,

 

[KorokiKokoro]

I used to be in this camp until I played a shooter in VR very recently. I don't think it even qualified as a very good VR shooter. It was some Walking Dead game for PS VR. I could line up shots so fast once I got the hang of it. It wasn't as fast as a mouse but definitely quicker than a controller.

That's what perplexes me the most, we've seen several people using VR and playing several shooters with great results yet somehow a large majority of the public still insist on using objectively inferior hardware in twin stick aiming that need a crutch to be remotely decent.

An easy solution to the speed issue is having a separate sensitivity slider similar to a mouse so people aren't twisting their entire bodies to line up shots at a snails pace.

 

[IKEBURNER]

I agree. The hub world parts were tedious and annoying because they weren't skippable, whereas the actual game itself was fantastic.

I loved last light and 2033 because of the linearity it felt like a descent to hell

 

[Neet Tokusatsu]

First person shooters are better when they're linear instead of mazes. I don't like having to search for the exit.

Well Half Life pretty much killed DOOM clones for nearly two decades for a reason, better to keep things moving and always have something to shoot rather than being lost on a maze for half an hour looking for switch or lever.

Mazes are fine as long as you have an arrow pointing you to objectives and exits. I never cared much for the boomer shooters where you can get easily lost. Totally destroys the flow of the game. You launch it, you blow shit up, you kill some mobs, you have a great time, and then the game SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECHES to a halt while you run around a lot of corridors that look the same, just looking for the exit and being fucking bored, in your action packed shooter that's supposed to be a blood pumping exciting experience.

and then the game lets you know you didn't find all the secrets and items in a level, after you just scoured the whole thing, and it feels like shit

That's Turok 2 in a nutshell, i tried to play that game (without the hints activated) a few months ago and i got lost for nearly two hours in the very first level and i wasn't able to find the exit, no wonder why many new "boomer shooters" seem to be a bit more linear.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

The SNES didn't seem that popular with Western devs in general. Maybe it was a pain to get a game licensed for it?
The best Western games in that era were usually on home computers and the Mega Drive.

Yeah, looking at what Genesis had, it did seem to have more of them, or at least of a higher quality anyway. Sonic 3D Blast, Aladdin, and the Ecco the Dolphin, Toejam & Earl, and Vectorman games stand out to me. A few of those might rank pretty highly among people's favorites for Genesis. It's also notable that Sonic 2 & 3 received assistance from western studios.

 

[The Last Stand]

Yeah, looking at what Genesis had, it did seem to have more of them, or at least of a higher quality anyway. Sonic 3D Blast, Aladdin, and the Ecco the Dolphin, Toejam & Earl, and Vectorman games stand out to me. A few of those might rank pretty highly among people's favorites for Genesis. It's also notable that Sonic 2 & 3 received assistance from western studios.

The Genesis had the advantage of power, mass appeal and price. SNES had brand recognition and innovation with its games. Genesis had blood and boobies. Which one would you want?

Although, I will give the N64 props for introducing an analog stick into the mainstream.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

The Genesis had the advantage of power, mass appeal and price. SNES had brand recognition and innovation with its games. Genesis had blood and boobies. Which one would you want?

Although, I will give the N64 props for introducing an analog stick into the mainstream.

Did it have the advantage of power? I think it had a faster processor they dubbed blast processing or something, but overall I'm pretty sure SNES was the stronger system. Maybe each had their own advantages, idk, but SNES games looked better and definitely sounded better with few exceptions.

I think Genesis games usually had a slightly higher resolution too, but I'm not so good with the technical shit, I just know how the games ended up looking.

I'm also not sure Sega had more mass appeal than Nintendo, pretty sure they just got into next-gen early which propelled them to success. That tactic actually worked for Dreancast at first too, it had a strong launch, but they were running on fumes and couldn't support it properly for long.

N64 also was, I think, the first console to have 4 controller ports by default, at least among the big 3 at the time.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

I'm also not sure Sega had more mass appeal than Nintendo, pretty sure they just got into next-gen early which propelled them to success. That tactic actually worked for Dreancast at first too, it had a strong launch, but they were running on fumes and couldn't support it properly for long.

N64 also was, I think, the first console to have 4 controller ports by default, at least among the big 3 at the time.

The Genesis must have been like the atom bomb competing against the NES but against the SNES it really wasn't all that.

I must have played a hundred Genesis games as a kid, i had a best friend who had all the classics for it but very few stick out in my memory nowadays compared to snes games.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

The PSP Go looked pretty fun to use, but it just sucks to see people complain more about the design than how much the games will be able to play on there.

 

[Matt Damon]

I'm also not sure Sega had more mass appeal than Nintendo, pretty sure they just got into next-gen early which propelled them to success.

That was definitely part of it, but it was a combination of things including a significantly less restrictive licensing model for publishers and marketing that was pretty successful at capturing '90s x-treme and appealing to an older demographic.

I'm convinced Sega made a Faustian deal with the devil when they released the Genesis. They did something as difficult and unlikely as overthrowing Nintendo's total dominance of the console market and then spent 30+ years right up to today comically failing over and over at nearly everything.