Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

Those paperback tomes of lore (always titled something like 'The Book of Gauldrauk') that were common back in the day when games were released on 4 discs, in large boxes, were impressive feats of autism, but you would have had to be equally autistic to read them.

The Dark Wheel - the novella that came with Elite is pretty good.
 
I dunno how "unpopular" an opinion this will be, but: I think shmups are better with stories. In fact, I think a well-told story can elevate a decent shmup into a fantastic and memorable experience.

To illustrate my point, I ask that you take a listen to this song here:
Yeah, yeah, it's Touhou music. Shut up, ZUN's a good composer.

In a vacuum, the music sounds pretty good, but the thing that elevates the song in my eye is the storyline context in which this music plays.

To quickly summarize the plot of Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, a very angry mom teams up with Satan to extermine the race of Moon People to get revenge for the death of her son. As an escape plan, the Moon People plan to warp their Capital city to Earth. However, because they're afraid of Earth cooties, they intend to completely glass the Earth before they do so, exterminating all life in the process. Therefore, Reimu and company must put a stop to the madness before it gets out of hand.

The song I posted takes place during the "Extra Stage," some time after you've foiled Angry Mom's plans to exterminate the Moon People, so she whips out her Plan B: have Satan kill the Moon People while they're in stasis in the Dream World. With that context in mind, the tone of the music becomes clear. The song begins to feel very urgent, as the player and characters should be given the situation. After all, who knows what the Moon People might do if they get away with their heinous plan?

I've often heard it said that stories don't matter in shmups, but without LoLK's plot, I think the emotional response I get from this song in particular would be much more difficult to replicate.
 
  • Thunk-Provoking
  • Autistic
  • Like
Reactions: Wright, POWER IN MISERY and Calandrino
HL-style "cutscenes" aren't inherently a bad thing, is just that 99% of developers do them wrong.

HL games don't limit your movement and let you explore the enviroment for details (except on very few specific parts), which i know most of you won't give a shit about that detail, but to me it adds to the game, you don't REALLY have to pay attention and look at the NPCs talking to you, while other games basically force you to do so by restricting your movement and removing all your weapons until the NPC shuts up, Naughty Dog games and Duke Nukem Forever may be the worse examples of these, and it's very obvious when it happens.
 
  • Agree
  • Like
Reactions: The Last Stand, Jonah Hill poster, thegooddoctor and 5 others
BikeLock said:
I thought this was an "unpopular opinions" thread my dude? Stop being bad at Vidya.
Click to expand...
Fallout is a shitty jank shooter and people only play it for the world. VATS just makes the shooting slightly less garbage by letting you watch as heads explode.


I'm thinking about picking up a Sniper Elite when they go on sale, and maybe I'll like this feature when I try it, but I'm weirded out by the gorey killshot stuff. Obviously I'm not the sort of person that minds video game violence in general, but I feel like there's a difference between the entertainment of war as just war versus orgiastic revelry in gore, I don't really like the idea of some loving close-up of a German conscript getting his nut blown off.
 
  • Feels
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: Wright, Drag-on Knight 91873, anustart76 and 1 other person
Book Thief said:
I dunno how "unpopular" an opinion this will be, but: I think shmups are better with stories. In fact, I think a well-told story can elevate a decent shmup into a fantastic and memorable experience.

To illustrate my point, I ask that you take a listen to this song here:
Yeah, yeah, it's Touhou music. Shut up, ZUN's a good composer.

In a vacuum, the music sounds pretty good, but the thing that elevates the song in my eye is the storyline context in which this music plays.

To quickly summarize the plot of Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, a very angry mom teams up with Satan to extermine the race of Moon People to get revenge for the death of her son. As an escape plan, the Moon People plan to warp their Capital city to Earth. However, because they're afraid of Earth cooties, they intend to completely glass the Earth before they do so, exterminating all life in the process. Therefore, Reimu and company must put a stop to the madness before it gets out of hand.

The song I posted takes place during the "Extra Stage," some time after you've foiled Angry Mom's plans to exterminate the Moon People, so she whips out her Plan B: have Satan kill the Moon People while they're in stasis in the Dream World. With that context in mind, the tone of the music becomes clear. The song begins to feel very urgent, as the player and characters should be given the situation. After all, who knows what the Moon People might do if they get away with their heinous plan?

I've often heard it said that stories don't matter in shmups, but without LoLK's plot, I think the emotional response I get from this song in particular would be much more difficult to replicate.
Click to expand...
I have never played a shmup with a notable amount of text and I genuinely do not understand what the fuck I just read. However, arcade and arcade-adjacent games do benefit from some kind of narrative coherence. When your support ship buddies get massacred in Thunder Force IV, you know that the penultimate boss must be made to pay. There's some cool text explaining how you got the bastards at the end but it's rendered in baffling Engrish. Truly Fantasy Zone has the deepest lore, though: FZ2 has both an alignment system and a Space Harrier crossover.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Book Thief
Gender: Xenomorph said:
I like Dead Island more than Dying Light.

Dead Island took itself less serious and actually had funny moments. Dying Light has better gameplay, but the story is generic and gritty.
Click to expand...
I liked that in Dead Island you can drive around the island from the beginning. Dying Light didn't get vehicles until DLC.
 
Mr. Krinkle said:
Final Fantasy peaked at VII and every game after that felt like an imitation of that game.
Click to expand...
Final Fantasy VII also kind of felt like they were heavily basing it after VI. I mean, the characters were new, but at some point it just felt like The Empire Shinra was trying to take over the world while a rogue agent formerly employed with them, Kefka Sephiroth was trying to destroy the world...

It's more different than EarthBound was to Mother 1, but I can't shake the feeling that I've seen it before. (As for the Mother series that's a rant for another day).
 
Pissmaster said:
Metroid Prime was one of the worst FPSes I've ever played, and it's unbelievable to me that it's so well received. The Metroid series as a whole is pretty boring, but Metroid Prime feels like they took all of the worst aspects of Halo and crammed it into a completely toothless, boring excuse for an FPS. I figured at the time the hype and praise was cope because Gamecube finally had a new FPS all to itself, but Metroid Prime Trilogy on Wii became one of those rare and expensive games, and now there's a remake, and the game still looks like shit.
Click to expand...
I like it, but I get where you're coming from. I'm not a big fan of FPS games so its easier combat and focus on exploration was what drew me in. It also had amazing graphics and music.

I do think the series is overrated in general though, and several entries haven't aged that well, including Super Metroid (maybe the most overrated SNES game).
 
  • Like
Reactions: Broseph and Pissmaster
I'm always very confused when people put Bloodstained in the bad game category. Yea absolutely it's not as good as the upper echelon of Castlevania games like Symphony of the Night or Aria of Sorrow but I can name probably ten Castlevana games that are much worse than it.

Do people just dislike it because hating on crowdfunded games is a /v/ meme or something?
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: std::string, Broseph, Neet Tokusatsu and 1 other person
Calandrino said:
I have never played a shmup with a notable amount of text and I genuinely do not understand what the fuck I just read. However, arcade and arcade-adjacent games do benefit from some kind of narrative coherence. When your support ship buddies get massacred in Thunder Force IV, you know that the penultimate boss must be made to pay. There's some cool text explaining how you got the bastards at the end but it's rendered in baffling Engrish. Truly Fantasy Zone has the deepest lore, though: FZ2 has both an alignment system and a Space Harrier crossover.
Click to expand...
I can think of a few other examples of Shmups with narratives if need be.

Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer boots up with a long introductory cutscene explaining how the heroine's father got kidnapped by aliens, so she runs off to hijack an advanced prototype spacecraft in attempt to go rescue him.


Periodically, the game gives you additional cutscenes to further develop the plot, which makes it more interesting and memorable as a game in my mind.

And of course, we have Zero Wing, which I think needs no introduction for its... introduction.


Meanwhile, I played Mushihime-sama, and while the game and art direction is decent, it kinda felt forgettable due it lacking any kind of characterization or narrative within the game, despite every example I've mentioned thus far predating it. Maybe I'm just spoiled with the way Touhou beats you over the head with lore and narrative, but I think even just a few lines of dialogue could've helped.
 
  • Like
  • Thunk-Provoking
Reactions: Calandrino and SSj_Ness (Yiffed)
Mr. Duck said:
HL-style "cutscenes" aren't inherently a bad thing, is just that 99% of developers do them wrong.

HL games don't limit your movement and let you explore the enviroment for details (except on very few specific parts), which i know most of you won't give a shit about that detail, but to me it adds to the game, you don't REALLY have to pay attention and look at the NPCs talking to you, while other games basically force you to do so by restricting your movement and removing all your weapons until the NPC shuts up, Naughty Dog games and Duke Nukem Forever may be the worse examples of these, and it's very obvious when it happens.
Click to expand...
Adding onto this, I hate how if you turn away, the dialogue gets softer, especially if it's difficult to know who's talking. I get that it's supposed to add to you being in the conversation but it's annoying, I can't magically hear someone better if I'm facing them versus being turned away.

Though I'll disagree on restricting movement, just because I like it when games slow you down so that you don't accidentally reach your destination before the conversation ends. For something like GTA I'd just pull the car over and wait until everyone was done talking.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: The Last Stand, std::string, Friendly Primarina and 1 other person
Let me talk about EarthBound. The SNES original is a pretty decent JRPG. It's perhaps the most overrated game on the Super Nintendo but I played through it a few times and I generally enjoy it.

Mother 3, on the other hand, is NOT a good game and I'm sick of pretending it is. I mean, it's okay...but to put it on any sort of "top 20 list", is, as the President would say, malarkey.

It looks and sounds worse than EarthBound due to being on the GBA, INCREDIBLY poorly paced, bogged down with useless party members, the story wavers from melodramatic garbage to complete nonsense, and it fails to do the one thing that had been promised for a decade--conclude the story set out by EarthBound.
 
  • Agree
  • Disagree
  • Dumb
Reactions: Mexican_Wizard_711, Sugriva, std::string and 6 others
Arthur Morgan said:
Though I'll disagree on restricting movement, just because I like it when games slow you down so that you don't accidentally reach your destination before the conversation ends. For something like GTA I'd just pull the car over and wait until everyone was done talking.
Click to expand...
RDR handled this well. Holding the X/A button would "lock" your horse's speed to your companion's. Since it was your companion setting the pace, the conversations would (usually) end by the time you reached the mission.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: Ughubughughughughughghlug, I got rabies, The Last Stand and 3 others
I don’t get where the dislike came from regarding the fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us. If anything, I still think it’s a fun game to play. Plus, I liked the DLC where you get to play as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was a nice touch.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back