Most overrated "classic" games (anything before the PS2)

[Rome's rightful successor]

Civilization III, lacks the cheesy charm and (due to hardware limits) the mod scene of it's predecessor, civ II. They made the civ leaders intentionally ugly for some reason in this one as well.
There is nothing this one did that it's predecessor or the ones that came after it did that was much better.

 

[The Ugly One]

I go pretty easy on old games. Doom wasn't supposed to be paced like CoD to begin with, though the formula got stale halfway through Doom II even at the time. Turok was targeted at the N64 launch. X-COM's rng is a relic of its time. Etc.

However...

Halo 2's campaign was an embarrassment at the time, the simps were gay, and it absolutely did not deserve its glowing reviews. It was not and is not a good game.

Metal Gear Solid always had overblown, gay, retarded plot that didn't make any goddamned sense. It appealed to sperglords who lived with a Playstation plugged into their brains.

 

[Lone Wandering Courier]

Halo 2's campaign was an embarrassment at the time, the simps were gay, and it absolutely did not deserve its glowing reviews. It was not and is not a good game.

I played through Halo MCC and I was not a fan of the gunplay in any of them. The guns felt like pea shooters without any real punch to them. I kinda liked the mood and vibe of 3 ODST though (well at least the night sections).

 

[Judge Dredd]

Romero's visionary mind is also a gigantic meme, Daikatana followed by 20 years of nothing is enough proof of that.

I thought that was well known?

I'm no id historian, but my understanding was the golden age of id worked because the team complimented each other. eg. Romero and Tom Hall were the creative ones, Carmack was the technical one, and they each tard wrangled each other. The reason their individual output was mediocre after they split is they didn't have that complimentary force any more.

Speaking of which. Whatever happened to that FPS Romero was working on? I remember a Kickstarter and him releasing a Doom wad to promote it, then nothing.

 

[BetterFuckChuck]

Ocarina of Time is like THE first example of soys holding up a game thats not that great but tells a story maaaaaan in order to convince Ebert's ghost games mean something. Meanwhile Majora has better mechanics AND story, tho I still feel like the people who cry over that game are stupid it's at least a genuine classic that is an example of games as artistic expression of the developers

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

I thought that was well known?

I'm no id historian, but my understanding was the golden age of id worked because the team complimented each other. eg. Romero and Tom Hall were the creative ones, Carmack was the technical one, and they each tard wrangled each other. The reason their individual output was mediocre after they split is they didn't have that complimentary force any more.

Speaking of which. Whatever happened to that FPS Romero was working on? I remember a Kickstarter and him releasing a Doom wad to promote it, then nothing.

Thats the story. Probably true about their internal dynamics but they are no different than any other studio who did well in the 90s and went bust. Like rare or Akklaim.

The Id software guys were outclassed very quickly and even if Romero stayed they would have keep trying to make boomer shooters and would have been on the way out shortly. Yet the way they are written about is something out of this world, i don't think even Miyamoto himself has had as much press kissing his ass and calling him a genius. Someone right now could fins the cure of all cancers and still not be as revered as Carmack and Romero were for making Doom and Quake

 

[Quijibo69]

Super Mario 64: Felt it was outdated even when it was released. Needed more time in the oven, hardly any levels unlike other Mario titles. The 64 controller doesn't help either.

 

[Agent of Z.O.G.]

Chrono Trigger
For a lot of the games you see blindly placed in top 10 list, at least you can say they innovated or did something well for the time. Chrono Trigger has absolutely nothing going for it besides the nice looking sprites and decent music, and does absolutely nothing new besides be a game that 5 year olds can beat.

 

[augment]

No game will ever be more overrated than Final Fantasy 7. I've done the calculations.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

It's still a fun game for a few minutes in the same way any early arcade type game is but it's clear the only reason pong had any fame was because it was the only kind of product of its kind in existence at the time.

There was a great version we played a lot on PC, it was called Western Pong I think? Shared keyboard of course. You could fire one slow moving bullet(until it exited the screen) and if the ball hit it it would gain speed and reflect back, if it hit the opponent they would be stunned for a second or two. It was really fun because it enabled you to corner the opponent in a different way and neat a twist on pong that I never saw before.

I also agree on Doom but beyond the game there's a cult that treats Carmack as a demigod.

If John Carmack opened a digital store to challenge Steam and used id money to fund it, everyone would sing his praises. If Gabe Newell didn't follow through on his promises... well, people wouldn't say anything. But it little Timmy, rival of Carmack and superior to Newell opens up a store to challenge the hegemony people are suddenly upset.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Halo 2's campaign was an embarrassment at the time, the simps were gay, and it absolutely did not deserve its glowing reviews. It was not and is not a good game.

I never liked Halo 2 either, even tried to replay it in 2017 and didn't even finish it.

But then I played Anniversary and had a great time with it, call me as shallow as you want, but having the graphics be 10,000 times better than the ugly plastic looking graphics of the original that were ugly even when they were new helps you enjoy the combat a lot more.

It still lacks 1 and 3's sense of scale and I'll never understand why they thought those ugly graphics were worth the trade off in 2004, but the new coat of paint it got helps a lot.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

This one came a little later, but WoW.

I always knew this was shit the moment I saw it. It's not innovative or good, it's just your generic subscription based MMO. It doesn't do anything other MMOs didn't and it doesnt have a unique mechanic or world. The setting is literally a continuation of WC3's lore and it was trash.

Overrated piece of garbage.

 

[RX-78]

Donkey Kong Country 2 and 3. The first one was fine, and I don't know what it was, but its two sequels didn't hit the same way to me.

3 is disliked because kiddy kong is retarded on every level, but the real killer is that this is the game where rare first indulged in it's boomer-humor, glut of pointless characters, and meaningless sidequests that have no pay off. To elaborate the first point, rare cannot into immersion at all; they are retards who absolutely love the idea of self-aware comedy. 2 started this bullshit by referring to the collectibles as video game hero coins and Diddy's secondary goal is being recognized as a video game hero, but 3 is where the cancer metastasized and became untreatable.

This is a big reason for why people prefer the original DKC so much--aside from Cranky's complaints about ACM graphics and nicer sound, there is none of that inane tardation and the player has every liberty to imagine him or herself swinging through the trees as a dumb monkey ready to bully alligators. Frankly, all of rare aside from the first DKC is wet shit and the series benefited so much from Retro Studios taking over and scrubbing it clean of that limey filth.

My pick would be "basically every 90s PC game"

I did my best to give Ultima, Wizardry, and the like a shot. Words cannot describe how happy I am that the genre outgrew those series.

This. The worst part is that if you complain to a hardcore fighting game fan about the obtuseness of these mechanics, they just brush it off and call you an idiot for not being able to magically intuit these mystical button combinations that fighting games to this day insist they use. This shit was outdated the moment Super Smash Bros. hit the scene, with its "Direction + Button" system of inputting commands. No more memorizing retarded button combos that exist solely to sell you a strategy guide on how to perform a basic move. Instead, you know exactly how to perform the moves due to the simplicity of the inputs, so all you need to do is learn how to use your character's moveset.

There are several moves in traditional fighting games that would not adequately transfer to smash's B-button set up, and as skykiii points out the input for a command move is supposed to resemble the physical action of the move itself. I think this is an excellent normalfag filter, and having seen smashfags fail to pull off a qcf repeatedly I can attest to the effectiveness. I will admit that as the 90's went on some inputs became pretzel motion bullshit, but the idea is sound.

tells a story maaaaaan in order to convince ebert's ghost games mean something.

I don't know why soycucks are still trying to convince boomers that vidya is a legitimate story telling medium. The fact that vidya out performs every other aspect of the entertainment industry every year is proof enough of that, and the long and short of it is that boomers hate any form of interactive medium in the first place because thinking about something means less time to sit on their ass and absorb television.

I get that some people are still upset that their dad wouldn't play Super Mario World with them, but its time to leave that baggage in the hospice along with their parents.

 

[Rich Evans Ayypologist]

There's a few different ways to approach it, but it seems unfair to really compare modern understanding of the medium to the designs-as-they-were at the time. Like, Neverwinter Nights was this big, huge, groundbreaking, awesome game when it came out, but it's such a slog to play through at these days, as a lot of CRPGs do. I didn't play FF7 when it was a new, shiny thing for example, so it does seem a little unfair. Similarly, I really cannot stand dumping any time into Planescape: Torment, but it wasn't as bad compared exclusively to its peers.

I think I probably have to go with DK64, although lately it seems like more people have been shining the light on that one not actually being good for much but presentation. Like, I don't think the old Mario Kart or Ocarina of Time really are that interesting anymore, but at the time, I do remember that my younger self couldn't get enough of the things. Even a shitshow like Sonic Adventure 2 had me coming up with ways to try to mooch off of friends who had game consoles to be able to play it. But DK64, despite how amusing the rap was, was something I never really found myself wanting to come back to and was one of a handful of games that I just couldn't bring myself to slog through and finish.

 

[The Ugly One]

DK64 is fun if you're not autistic and trying to 101% it.

 

[skykiii]

Metal Gear Solid always had overblown, gay, retarded plot that didn't make any goddamned sense. It appealed to sperglords who lived with a Playstation plugged into their brains.

Metal Gear Solid made PERFECT sense! The LaLiLuLeLo had a naked woman in the corner visual and fission stole the 61 scissors and that's how infantilelephantism works, and its al lthe Cuban Missile Crisis' fault! What don't you understand?

 

[skykiii]

I think I probably have to go with DK64, although lately it seems like more people have been shining the light on that one not actually being good for much but presentation...(post shortened)....But DK64, despite how amusing the rap was, was something I never really found myself wanting to come back to and was one of a handful of games that I just couldn't bring myself to slog through and finish.

Someone right now could fins the cure of all cancers and still not be as revered as Carmack and Romero were for making Doom and Quake

The thing that bothers me--and this is something I should use to revive my "astroturfed by the internet" topic... I don't particularly have a memory of Quake and DK64 being revered at the time.

Quake is a funny thing to me. My first exposure to it was just as a demo included with some magazine. It wasn't advertised or anything... I just installed it, played it, beat the demo and went about my day. I liked it well enough but it wouldn't be until a few years later I decided I wanted to own the full game....

But thing is, I actually remember a large contigent of people arguing Quake was kinda disappointing, even at launch, and some magazines I had even had "Quake vs Duke 3D" articles, which usually wound up saying that sure, Quake is technically impressive, but Duke is more colorful (in more ways than one), had a better variety of weapons, etc....

Nowadays I hear that Quake was universally beloved from the word go. Something seems wrong here.

As for Donkey Kong 64, I don't recall anyone praising that when I was a kid. Not just my friend groups but I recall even magazines and such saying it was mid, average or above-average at best, and one of the lesser of Rare's platformers. But again, now it seems like I always hear it described in positive terms.

I actually never played DK64 myself... by the time it came out I had jumped ship to the Playstation, and I just wasn't into collectathon platformers. I was in a snobby phase at the time and saw games like DK64 as beneath me.

I'm mixed on the SNES Donkey Kong Country games. Like, they were neat at the time, but now I find their gameplay a bit too basic. There's a long-debunked rumor that Shigeru Miyamoto once said DKC proved Americans will put up with mediocre gameplay for the sake of graphics. Sad he didn't really say that, because well... it wouldn't have been incorrect.

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

Donkey Kong 64 was just another Rare platformer. They decided after the first level to end any kind of connection with the DKC games and just make generic desert, ice, etc. levels. Lots of padding added in too. In some ways I liked how Rare pushed the N64 hardware further each game they released. Banjo Tooie was not very fun but it was a technical achievement for the Nintendo 64. Nintendo themselves stopped trying at a certain point, seemed like it was Rare’s job to fill in when Nintendo wouldn’t.

Final Fantasy VII got the hype it did because people were wowed by the idea of pre-rendered backgrounds, full motion video, and that it came on three CDs. Square decided to take all the worst aspects of FF7, add a fourth disc, and turn it into FF8. FF8 got a ton of backlash but I don’t think people realized where Square was going to take it from there.

 

[bloodywreckceremony]

Oregon Trail. Specifically, the 1985 version.

I wanted to play Dark Castle.

I hated playing OT. I would kill my family off as fast as possible.

But it seems like everyone else just loves every version of this stupid game ever made.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Sonic Adventure: It looked great for 1998, but the game was never good. Level deisgn was poor, camera was shocking and it had so much filler. What kid wants to run away from a robot as Amy or find crystals as Knuckles or fish as Big, they want to go fast with platfroming.

I actually just got done playing this and while the graphics are still snazzy and it has some neat levels and an overall charming 90s vibe, having to play the same levels over and over again to get the real ending fucking sucks, pure fucking filler.

And yeah, the camera is sometimes awful, Sonic never really made the transition to 3D as well as Mario and while Adventure has a lot of charm it's still a downgrade over the Genesis games at the end of the day.

Melee is so fucking broken that literally half the roster doesn't even function correctly. It's the product of a rushed development cycle, and it really shows under a cursory amount of scrutiny. I can't fathom how the Melee community still manages to fellate that game in spite of it being so blatantly and obviously flawed to the point where nobody uses 80% of the cast because they're either bugged to the point of uselessness, or just utter shit in terms of balance.

The thing you have to remember is how utterly mind blowing it was to see Nintendo characters in that level of fidelity at the time, as well as it's overall vibe.

But yeah, the actual combat can be janky.