Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[I got rabies]

I don’t give a flying fuck about Elden Ring. It looks like the most bland, inoffensive normie tier r/im14andthisisdeep game I’ve seen in a long time.

Actually I’ll say that about the Souls series in general. Take away the “OMG! Leik it’s soooo difficult guiz!” gimmick and nothing really of interest is left.

If a Souls game is the hardest thing they've played, then they don't know what difficult means. Maybe they should try Shinobi on the PS2 or Heart of Darkness. Or a Fromsoft game from the 90s, although those are mostly hard because they're designed like garbage. While I'm on the subject of Fromsoft, they have literally been making the same game for about 25 years. If Dark Souls deserve praise, it might not be because Miyazaki is a good director or because Fromsoft did a good job, it might be because DS is King's Field 12 or something. It better start gitting gud if you're releasing the same game this many times.

Haven't played King's Field 17 Elden Ring yet but I'm eager to see if I'll meet a depressed soldier telling me there's no hope left, a curse I'm afflicted with to explain why I have infinite lives bc I'm in a video game rather than being actual good lore, a bridge protected by a dragon, a naked cannibal woman with a cleaver, a knight who sacrificed himself to the darkness, a big poison swamp, a young maiden/cleric, some shady guy who ends up betraying me, Patches, a friendly giant, a moonlight great sword, etc.

 

[Kulee Baba]

While we're talking about long and difficult to remember combos, Bayonetta can be pretty bad about that.

Are you serious? You can button mash the hell outta Bayonetta. The combos are just there for people who enjoy memorizing and doing crazy style combos.

 

[Matt Damon]

I am physically unable to see any difference between 4K and 1440p. I think my eyes just aren't sharp enough.

One of the worst fads ever was during the early days of HD when every fucking game wanted to use ultra-thin hard-to-read fonts to show we were in the HIGH DEFINITION FUTURE.

 

[The Ugly One]

That's because they knew the system.

Aesthetics = art direction. Better graphics means nothing if your art direction is bland.

The PS2 and Gamecube both had more bandwidth just for reading textures than the Xbox did for the entire system, which is why the top exclusives tend to run at far more stable framerates than anything on the Xbox. And since, unlike the PS2, the Cube could draw high-color textures and do a fair number of then-advanced effects, a lot of people felt like the Cube titles ultimately looked better.

The Xbox had the most advanced GPU in the world when it launched, but it was so bandwidth-starved that doing anything interesting with it meant your game ran like ass.

 

[Ben Kenobi]

If a Souls game is the hardest thing they've played, then they don't know what difficult means. Maybe they should try Shinobi on the PS2 or Heart of Darkness. Or a Fromsoft game from the 90s, although those are mostly hard because they're designed like garbage. While I'm on the subject of Fromsoft, they have literally been making the same game for about 25 years. If Dark Souls deserve praise, it might not be because Miyazaki is a good director or because Fromsoft did a good job, it might be because DS is King's Field 12 or something. It better start gitting gud if you're releasing the same game this many times.

Haven't played King's Field 17 Elden Ring yet but I'm eager to see if I'll meet a depressed soldier telling me there's no hope left, a curse I'm afflicted with to explain why I have infinite lives bc I'm in a video game rather than being actual good lore, a bridge protected by a dragon, a naked cannibal woman with a cleaver, a knight who sacrificed himself to the darkness, a big poison swamp, a young maiden/cleric, some shady guy who ends up betraying me, Patches, a friendly giant, a moonlight great sword, etc.

One thing that is unique to the Dark souls series is how much people will defend or condition themselves of horrible design in to thinking its good or clever cause they have played these games dozens or hundreds of times.
Like this guy in a comment section on defending Malenia:

"Oh to enjoy myself in elden ring i just needed somebody to get me every bullshit overpowered item and then the game was fun!"

Here we have a guy who has played trough the game 10 fucking times but he still can't dodge bosses attacks cause they are badly designed.

I present this with no comment.

I played DS 1,2, Sekiro and part of Elden Ring without guides. Out of those I felt like Sekiro was the fairest and there was never anytime I was like fuck this im just gonna watch a youtube guide. If you need to look up a guide to beat something cause of some contriving bullshit then it's just poor game design that you wouldn't exuse on anything but dark souls. "Cause it's suposed to be hard"

"Took me more then 100 hours and 2 playtroughs to start having fun"

 

[The Last Stand]

R*'s GTA IV is R*'s magnum opus yet, not just for GTA, but within its entertainment medium. It deconstructs criminality and American culture without being too abrasive at the player's expense or sacrificing its mature intent. Video games CAN be art, especially with its interactivity.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

@Ben Kenobi I don't understand who is sinking 100 hours into a single game, not something specifically designed about being played forever (like a lot of strategy or multiplayer games are), in that short a time frame, and not even liking it.

 

[Matt Damon]

R*'s GTA IV is R*'s magnum opus yet, not just for GTA, but within its entertainment medium. It deconstructs criminality and American culture without being too abrasive at the player's expense or sacrificing its mature intent. Video games CAN be art, especially with its interactivity.

I've heard other people say this and I just don't get it. It's not a BAD game, but it never struck me as anything especially noteworthy or artistic.

It was just as derivative of its influences as every other GTA game and the multiple ending implementation sucked because only the Roman-dies ending made any sense. They sacrificed a lot of the series' wackiness and satire to do a more serious world and story and I don't think the dramatic writing was strong enough to make it pay off.

 

[CuzinEd]

The Souls games aren't hard because they require skill. It's mostly about you roll dodging around on the ground like a douche bag and they use an old Jap video game trick to make them appear challenging. That old trick would be poor hit detection. For everyone else who sees it the games are just frustrating.

There, I said it.

 

[I got rabies]

You don't have to dodge roll all the time, you can also use a shield. It works well until the game decide the boss can break your guard and empties your entire stamina gauge in one hit. How dare you hold a button like a peasant instead of learning le difficult timing like a boss?

 

[Mr. 0]

N64 should've whupped PSX's ass and it's because of idiots that it didn't

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Nintendo's first party games were the best looking games at the time

Metroid Prime and Star Fox Adventures look fucking amazing.

 

[The Ugly One]

N64 should've whupped PSX's ass and it's because of idiots that it didn't

I wouldn't say they were idiots. 3D programming was new, the N64's architecture was exotic, and it was quite some time before efficient microcodes were released by SGI & Nintendo. Plus, he's taking advantage of the fact that the Expansion Pak gives you an extra bus so that the GPU can access it while the CPU uses the main RAM. The single system bus was the most crippling feature on the N64.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

and even when they finally give an xx70 12GB, they gave it a 192 bit bus

That's just how the memory modules are designed. A 32bit bus per module makes it so that a 12gb card can't have a 256bit bus. It can have a 96bit bus(3x4GB modules), 192(6x2GB modules) or 384(12x1GB modules). The first is a very budget option, the second is a solid mid tier and the third one is very high end and very expensive.

The graphics card space is in a very weird place right now due to this and it leads to things like 8GB 3060Ti's and 12GB 3060 non-Ti's.

 

[whogoesthere]

The indie scene, such as it was, peaked around 2012-2013. Most of it was still trash but there were a few diamonds in the rough. Now it’s digging through piles of shit to find a corn kernel

To be fair, that's always the case. When WoW did fucking gangbusters with its profits, everyone wanted to hit that next MMO. Some of them were interesting, most were shite. Nows it's mostly a graveyard of perverts, not like its golden era.

I think the middle market is still going strong, more so with eastern euros getting more involved with making games, I think we will have a healthy time to come. I think the best games always come from this part anyway, no one gives a shit about Days Gone or Risk of Rain, but cheki breki stalker is a small part of the Internets culture, everyone knows that series. A fucking janky, ex-bloc poverty nation cobbles together a genre defining game, full of charming bugs and fucking awful English translations.

 

[Meat Target]

RE: FromSoft fanboys: their perceived "hardcore" status has mutated into Stockholm Syndrome. Believe me, I like Souls and like the challenge, but don't tell me that FromSoft's litany of bugs and unfair, arbitrary bullshit is always just misunderstood genius game design.

 

[Matt Damon]

Nerds are way, way too impressed by developers making nebulous promises of grand, complex ideas and not nearly interested enough in elegant implementation of simple mechanics, even though the latter is always the core of what makes a game good. Give me the well-worn but exquisitely refined design of something like Symphony of the Night over yet another promise of a fully-realized alternate reality in a "realistic living, breathing world" any day.

A lot of gamers are forever hoping for some kind of transcendent life-changing experience (remember the ludicrous hype for Spore or No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk?) when merely excellent games is the best they'll ever get. If you ever expect games to become more than just games, be prepared for a lifetime of disappointment.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Nerds are way, way too impressed by developers making nebulous promises of grand, complex ideas and not nearly interested enough in elegant implementation of simple mechanics, even though the latter is always the core of what makes a game good. Give me the well-worn but exquisitely refined design of something like Symphony of the Night over yet another promise of a fully-realized alternate reality in a "realistic living, breathing world" any day.

A lot of gamers are forever hoping for some kind of transcendent life-changing experience (remember the ludicrous hype for Spore or No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk?) when merely excellent games is the best they'll ever get. If you ever expect games to become more than just games, be prepared for a lifetime of disappointment.

I agree with that but those that promises much also tend to reign it in quite a lot to balance and tune things. There is a charm to huge and janky systems that most players can learn how to break over their knee in novel ways when they start to figure it out. What makes a lot of games dull is having so many "options" but there is a path of progression they really, really want the player to follow and they can't be allowed to deviate from it.

I think it was Rise of the Dragon where if you knew the game you could just hang out in a certain place until a certain time/date and shoot a certain character, then the game was done. An adventure game turned into a hitman mission, that's fun.

 

[Matt Damon]

There is a charm to huge and janky systems that most players can learn how to break over their knee in novel ways when they start to figure it out. What makes a lot of games dull is having so many "options" but there is a path of progression they really, really want the player to follow and they can't be allowed to deviate from it.

While I don't necessarily disagree completely, I think people tend to over-romanticize jank. They'll remember the one time something unique and unexpected happened but forget the fifty times that the jank broke a mission completely forcing a reload or whatever.

I find the older I get, the less tolerance I have for trying to make something broken accidentally work.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

While I don't necessarily disagree completely, I think people tend to over-romanticize jank. They'll remember the one time something unique and unexpected happened but forget the fifty times that the jank broke a mission completely forcing a reload or whatever.

I find the older I get, the less tolerance I have for trying to make something broken accidentally work.

Not jank that breaks the game, but jank that goes with the flow. And I call it jank because that's what it is seen as today, that's why I brought up Rise of the Dragon because the game allowed you to sequence break it as if you knew what you were doing(and you knew what you were doing at that point). Sequence breaking is a form of jank, right?