Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

I've never understood people who buy games brand new day of release or within the week of release, play it, and then trade it in for the next one. I rarely buy games right when they come out unless it's something I'm really looking forward to, because I like to wait and see how it turns out (Very glad I didn't get Gotham Knights) but even then, I don't get why you would want to buy something you know you're going to return for maybe a third of its value within a few weeks. Part of the reason I play games is to replay them.

Maybe it's just me, but it feels like "consoom product and then get excited for next product".
The ungodly prices of PC parts in recent years has really made me re-evaluate how much I care about playing new games.

I can stay 2-3 years behind the newest releases and enjoy the benefits of both dirt-cheap hardware and (comparatively) complete, unbuggy software. The pace of change in tech has slowed so much that who cares whether I'm playing the newest Assassin's Creed game or the last Assassin's Creed game? How much has really changed that warrants paying top dollar?

Obviously there's a different cost-benefit analysis if you like online multiplayer games that require a large active playerbase, but for somebody who only plays games as a solo hobby?

 
I've never understood people who buy games brand new day of release or within the week of release, play it, and then trade it in for the next one. I rarely buy games right when they come out unless it's something I'm really looking forward to, because I like to wait and see how it turns out (Very glad I didn't get Gotham Knights) but even then, I don't get why you would want to buy something you know you're going to return for maybe a third of its value within a few weeks. Part of the reason I play games is to replay them.

Maybe it's just me, but it feels like "consoom product and then get excited for next product".
I don't ever sell a game I buy (why would I remove even the most distant option of replaying for the few pennies gamestop would give me?), but this sounds perfectly logical if a person wants to play the game at their leisure - don't know how long they'll take to get around to it - and therefore don't want to have to deal with the rental time limit.
 
People tended to like the Assassin's Creed DLCs but I played two and thought they were both dogshit.

Freedom's Cry especially had this fever pitch of critical acclaim for being about woke mandingos killing slavers, but it was hot garbage. Instead of playing in new mechanics to its Haitian maroon setting, maybe making a focus on navigating dense jungles or blending in socially with disguises in a complex society, or anything, it just was more Black Flag but with a big shotgun. But moreover, the Black Flag formula doesn't work in that setting. The ships work well when you have vast areas to explore, the ability to actually voyage from place to place, find stuff along the way. I thought when it was annoucned that we were getting the whole small islands part of the Caribbean that was cut off of Black Flag, but it was just the little bay around Haiti. That's it. That's like sailing a remote controlled boat in a toilet bowel. Moreover, people praised it to high heaven for how it relentlessly revealed the horrors of slavery through its little side missions, but I found that they came so ridiculously often that it lost all realism and became absurd.

Dead Kings had a similar issue. It was pitched as being the dArKeSt Ac YeT, set in the necropolis of the French kings with (Animus-related) ghosts. That could have been a very interesting thing, try to play off AC as a horror game. But the gameplay instead turned out to be the same shit but in cramped tunnels that weren't suitable for it, and the tone was laughable, it was actually the goofiest of all of them, you have a literal child sidekick. It sucked.

Unpopular because I remember a lot of people making a big deal out of how good they were (comparing them favorably to their main games!).
 
People tended to like the Assassin's Creed DLCs but I played two and thought they were both dogshit.

Freedom's Cry especially had this fever pitch of critical acclaim for being about woke mandingos killing slavers, but it was hot garbage. Instead of playing in new mechanics to its Haitian maroon setting, maybe making a focus on navigating dense jungles or blending in socially with disguises in a complex society, or anything, it just was more Black Flag but with a big shotgun. But moreover, the Black Flag formula doesn't work in that setting. The ships work well when you have vast areas to explore, the ability to actually voyage from place to place, find stuff along the way. I thought when it was annoucned that we were getting the whole small islands part of the Caribbean that was cut off of Black Flag, but it was just the little bay around Haiti. That's it. That's like sailing a remote controlled boat in a toilet bowel. Moreover, people praised it to high heaven for how it relentlessly revealed the horrors of slavery through its little side missions, but I found that they came so ridiculously often that it lost all realism and became absurd.

Dead Kings had a similar issue. It was pitched as being the dArKeSt Ac YeT, set in the necropolis of the French kings with (Animus-related) ghosts. That could have been a very interesting thing, try to play off AC as a horror game. But the gameplay instead turned out to be the same shit but in cramped tunnels that weren't suitable for it, and the tone was laughable, it was actually the goofiest of all of them, you have a literal child sidekick. It sucked.

Unpopular because I remember a lot of people making a big deal out of how good they were (comparing them favorably to their main games!).
Nah they're dogshit 100% liberation was dogshit too.
 
Guild Wars 2 is slowly circling the drain these days; I mean, we all know the game has had a fairly shit story right from the get-go, but the past few expansions of the game have really started putting the nails in the coffin. The constant focus on gender politics - strong women, weak men, troons and fags everywhere, etc. - is one of the bigger issues, as it pretty much makes ever plot and antagonist into the same general mold; Path of Fire was fairly solid, but Icebrood Saga and End of Dragons - where the gendercult really began to infect everything - are both complete shit.

There's also the fact that, now, the game doesn't even have any kind of antagonist; spoilers for the expansions:

The dragons are practically all gone, now, the allied dragon Aurene is pretty much in control of everything, the Charr Flame Legion - i.e., the original antagonists of both GW1 and 2 - have all collectively and completely reformed and joined up with the wokeshit Diversity's Edge, the Frost Legion - made up of right-wing stand-ins/"fascist-minded" Charr - are all dead, and there are no further enemies or plotlines for the PC and co. to even fight against anymore.

Seriously, there's nowhere the devs can really go with anything, anymore; I mean, FFXIV at least had a few lingering plot threads the devs could use to write more stories, but ANet have completely wrote themselves into a corner at this point. They've apparently got another expansion in the works at this point, but...

Anyone else got thoughts on this?
 
Last edited:
  • Informative
Reactions: Matt Damon
Unpopular opinion: Dragon Quest is better than Final Fantasy, and it has been for a very, very long time. Since the SNES era, Final Fantasy increasingly wastes your time with bullshit, and increasingly takes away anything that would resemble playing a game. By FF XII/DQ VIII, Final Fantasy is no longer a game in any meaningful sense, while Dragon Quest remains what it's always been, a basic paint-by-numbers RPG built around a straightforward battle system which, while simple, is fine for what it is.

The ungodly prices of PC parts in recent years has really made me re-evaluate how much I care about playing new games.

You can play the newest games at 1080p and medium-low settings on ancient hardware, we're talking creaking toasters that are 8 years old. Really, there's never been a better time to be gaming on PC.
 
Nah they're dogshit 100% liberation was dogshit too.
In Rogue they're constantly playing up Adewale as like the coolest most elite assassin buck ever that everyone wants to prep and it's obnoxious, especially since he was the sidekick to Edward.

Edit: My thought process wasn't clear, I read that and was thinking about how heavy Ubisoft focused on slavery as a theme for it to have gotten two dedicated mini-spinoff games (Liberation and Freedom Cry).
 
As somebody without any nostalgic feelings for the Megaman Battle Network games, holy shit do they exhibit almost every single annoying JRPG trait. Trying to figure out where I'm going in these identical-looking maze levels with random battles breaking my concentration every three seconds is like a digital simulation of having ADHD.

It's less a game and more of an annoying chore to keep children occupied on long car trips.
 
I'm sick and fucking tired of canned animations. Watching that Dead Island 2 gameplay demo pissed me off. They have this impressive multilayered gore system but every single attack is some kind of scripted QTE bullshit.

I don't mind the occasional execution move or special attack but come on.
 
As somebody without any nostalgic feelings for the Megaman Battle Network games, holy shit do they exhibit almost every single annoying JRPG trait. Trying to figure out where I'm going in these identical-looking maze levels with random battles breaking my concentration every three seconds is like a digital simulation of having ADHD.

It's less a game and more of an annoying chore to keep children occupied on long car trips.
Those came out around the time I was getting out of Mega Man. I just remember thinking "They gave up on Legends for this?"
 
  • Feels
Reactions: nah and Matt Damon
People seemed to like Far Cry 5's graphics and map and I don't understand why. The graphics were mediocre at best and the place felt kind of lifeless, like a generic forest that captured none of the sense of monumentalism or grandeur of the West (see Ambarino in Red Dead 2 for an example of landscapes that do manage to at least partially get that, or Roanoke Ridge in the same as an example of "forest" being used to creative a very memorable and distinctive stretch of map).

The biomes were also all the same. You can play one biome for great variety by creativity and subtleties, but here it mostly came down to that Holland Valley was more farmy, the river valley area was more open and sparse, and the mountains were quite rugged. Montana is notable in that it goes from a cold plains to sweeping mountains, and it is north enough to have very thick blizzards that can clog a pass. Again, Red Dead shows some good examples of like terrain with Big Valley and its transition into Ambarino.

The map could have been a million times better if it had transitioned from open prairie like land with lots of flowers and tall grasses to forested woodlands and finally into soaring peaks, heavy snow drifts, a very cold Winter environment. They took the laziest possible way with making that map and I think it really suffers for it.
 
As somebody without any nostalgic feelings for the Megaman Battle Network games, holy shit do they exhibit almost every single annoying JRPG trait. Trying to figure out where I'm going in these identical-looking maze levels with random battles breaking my concentration every three seconds is like a digital simulation of having ADHD.

It's less a game and more of an annoying chore to keep children occupied on long car trips.
I'm irrationally upset at the truth.

The recent trend of putting character creator mechanics in a lot of games. Not only is it a waste of resources, but also a lazy cop out. Especially AAA developers can't write a compelling main character to save their lives. Fuck off with this shit.
It's way too common, it has its place but yeah, it needs to fucking go.
 
It's hard for me to think of a genuine unpopular opinion, as it would be dependent on quite a bit of factors. Like one example if that would be Mother 3 where I got to the first boss and was killed after I defeated it. Either because I missed something or it really did go into lol so random game mechanic (looking it up afterward I found out that I needed to do something special, havent played it since). My opinion there would be, why is this game built like this, but again I might have just missed somehting.

But my pick, as I was reminded of this by a Scott the Woz episode. is that 2012 was actually one of the best years for gaming, and the last quality year for Western/American without a ton of lame bullshit that would sidetrack later American games.

Now i could pick apart various aspects of these games. Not a single one is perfect, no game really is of course. Granted if you dont like shooters or sequels, this year would likely suck. But look at each year following this.

You had great indie games like Mark of the Ninka and Hotline Miami. In Japan you had Fire Emblem Awakening. The return of Xcom and a ton of very competent shooters.

Black Ops 2 which I would say is the last good COD game (its issue is that it introduced cutscenes with your character model that would be leaned on heavily in later installments).

Spec Ops the Line (a well done story, but the game felt like a beta build of Mass effect 3, also essentially was the nail in the coffin for yet another tactical shooter series)

Mass Effect 3 (a giant game, unfortunately over ambition and the last quarter is a mess, also loot boxes. I'd like to thank EA for removing the best part of the game in the re-release)

Max Payne 3 (equal parts great and trash in regards to its story, I personally would cut the Sao Paolo bits and inject more Jersey. The gameplay, look, and story were better in Jersey. A good ending for Max though as a chatacter)

Binary Domain (starts out slow like every game from the Yakuza studio, but ends up being a balls to the wall Gears clone that makes robots a million times more fun than in Gears of war 4)

And Far Cry 3, a game that more or less has crippled Ubisoft, but I would argue it was the best of the year. Bonus points to the Buck storyline as that is when the game picks up and hits its groove.


There are other games from that year but to me 2012 was baller
 
  • Thunk-Provoking
Reactions: TVB
Gaming communities didn't die because of lack of interest like so many claim they did. They died because of cliquish groups of high schoolers treating randoms off lfg as less than human. Fuck off its not unreasonable to be decent online. The "internet dumbass theory" is just glownigger bullshit because if it was true at all, then most of this thread would not be even close to anything resembling civil discussion.

Its no surprise that we went from trash talking lobbies of mw2 where people went back and forth to REMOVED FROM FIRETEAM on a whim as soon as the option to boot players from the lobby was given to them from what devolved into matchmaking lobbies in most games today.
 
Back