Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[whogoesthere]

This also applies to every single metal cover of any game track you can think of. Jesus, they all sound the same

Its the same genre of metal they always use. Its ripped from what is sometimes called American New Wave, basically groove from the 2000s onwards.

It would open up some very interesting themes and visual styles of they tried some black or doom metal for a change.

(please no power metal, unless its British or American style, all the rest is really gay (sorry Japs, you failed on this one))

 

[Rick The Stick]

Its the same genre of metal they always use. Its ripped from what is sometimes called American New Wave, basically groove from the 2000s onwards.

It would open up some very interesting themes and visual styles of they tried some black or doom metal for a change.

(please no power metal, unless its British or American style, all the rest is really gay (sorry Japs, you failed on this one))

There's tons of what you're talking about if you wanna actually look for it, but I'd argue looking for covers of video game music is autistic. Just listen to the actual tracks, cause you won't find anything better.

I also disagree that the covers are any sort of groove metal. They're all firmly on that faggoty metalcore realm, and occasionally the autistic speed metal/super shredder guitar wankery. Guys like ERock and Family Julez. There's only so many open note gallops/chugs and obnoxious sweep picking before it just sounds like every other metalcore band with 1k listeners on Spotify.

 

[skykiii]

Baldur’s gate 3 was overhyped dogshit.

Honestly I never even liked the first Baldur's Gate.

Admittedly, I only ever played the original Windows 98 release, so I don't know if the "Enhanced Edition" would fix my problems... some may well have been "me" things, like the story, characters, and atmosphere not connecting with me, or how a lot of NPC encounters were coded as "this guy walks up to you and initiates a chat as soon as you're in their line of sight, even if you have an Invisibility Spell active"....

.... But my biggest issue was the interface. For whatever reason, the OG Baldur's Gate controlled like a Real-Time Strategy game, despite being an RPG. And this had a way of making me feel disconnected from the proceedings. In most RPGs, exploring the environment is a very active process. In original BG, exploring means I click off into some random black void area and then just sit back and twiddle my thumbs while my characters' pathfinding AI does the work, only getting involved if combat starts or there's an NPC encounter.

.........................

While I'm crapping on classic PC games:

System Shock 1 (original--I never played Enhanced) is 10x better than System Shock 2.

In fact I honestly don't get the love for System Shock 2 in general. SS2 has some great setpieces and story sequences, but the actual gameplay is rotten... and I put this down entirely to that the game tried to be more like an RPG (the first game is essentially more like a first-person Metroidvania).

One aspect of this is that now there's too many cases of things being decided by die rolls. Things like the door hacking thing LOOK like puzzles you could solve, but in actuality the game has already decided behind the scenes whether the puzzle is solvable or not. Once you realize that, the minigame becomes just clicking lights and hoping the door can open this time (compare the first game, where door-hacking was an actual puzzle).

I also never jived with the whole idea of putting points into character skills. In a nonlinear game this might work... but System Shock 2 is totally linear, and in such a case it would be easier for it to just let you pick a class that gets set upgrades at level-up. Especially since a skill point system makes you think you can build a character any way you want, but the reality is you have to stick to specific loadouts or the game just becomes impossible.

And that's just off the top of my head. When I first played System Shock 2, I recall having a million problems with it--worse since I had just come off of playing and beating the original System Shock for the very first time. I recall the feeling that any time SS2 tried to improve upon the first game, it actually made it worse. Charged items having their own meter instead of there being one battery that powers everything might sound good on paper, but in practice it means you have to constantly check how much juice you have instead of having one convenient meter on screen at all times (and which, incidentally, drains really slow. I'd rather have the one battery I can easily check that drains slowly versus the five that I have to pull open my inventory to check and which all drain in seconds).

My biggest disappointment was getting rid of the stimpatches. That was a very interesting idea in the first game--drugs that gave you boosts but could also have side-effects if overused. Some of these worked in interesting ways. The speed stimpatch was my favorite--it essentially caused you to go into Bullet Time (years before The Matrix came out!) to simulate being super-fast. The funny thing was this actually had utility beyond just moving fast. For example there's this one point where you get locked in a room with a bomb.... using a speed patch there will literally double your time limit!

In System Shock 2, you instead get the speed hypodermic needle. With this, there's no interesting bullet time effect or secondary usage... it literally just makes you move faster. That's it. It's only utility is for moving really fast.

It's like the designers of SS2 looked at any good idea the first SS had, and said "how can we ruin it?"

But of course SS2 has one of thost autistic fanbases that will hold it up as perfect and will get down your ass for saying anything bad about it.

 

[whogoesthere]

There's tons of what you're talking about if you wanna actually look for it, but I'd argue looking for covers of video game music is autistic. Just listen to the actual tracks, cause you won't find anything better.

I also disagree that the covers are any sort of groove metal. They're all firmly on that faggoty metalcore realm, and occasionally the autistic speed metal/super shredder guitar wankery. Guys like ERock and Family Julez. There's only so many open note gallops/chugs and obnoxious sweep picking before it just sounds like every other metalcore band with 1k listeners on Spotify.

I think I wasn't clear, my mistake.

The game music that is metal tends to have a very generic groove metal sound.

The covers I am not really aware off, I would never look for something like that. (why search for shitty metal when I can just listen to actual albums and shit).

Its strange but I know what you are saying with metalcore, but I still think of shit like Poison the Well as metalcore for some reason. To be fair, a lot of crossover with those genres, you can throw deathcore into that mix as well, all very similar.

 

[The Ugly One]

There's tons of what you're talking about if you wanna actually look for it, but I'd argue looking for covers of video game music is autistic. Just listen to the actual tracks, cause you won't find anything better.

I also disagree that the covers are any sort of groove metal. They're all firmly on that faggoty metalcore realm, and occasionally the autistic speed metal/super shredder guitar wankery. Guys like ERock and Family Julez. There's only so many open note gallops/chugs and obnoxious sweep picking before it just sounds like every other metalcore band with 1k listeners on Spotify.

I like how ever single sub-genre of metal is just a different 2-second section of a random song off British Steel turned into hundreds of albums of sheer monotony.

System Shock 1 (original--I never played Enhanced) is 10x better than System Shock 2.

Objectively correct opinion.

In fact I honestly don't get the love for System Shock 2 in general. SS2 has some great setpieces and story sequences, but the actual gameplay is rotten... and I put this down entirely to that the game tried to be more like an RPG (the first game is essentially more like a first-person Metroidvania).

It's another case of "you had to be there." It was a lot bigger than SS1, and the graphics were a lot better. SS1 really did look like ass at 320x240 and maybe 20 fps, and in the 1990s, more complexity = better, so all of SS2's added nonsense, which today feels like so much extraneous bullshit, won a lot of fans. Two decades later, that kind of complexity is no longer novel, and the graphics no longer impress anyone, so it just feels cumbersome and annoying, and the enhanced edition of SS1 lets you play it at high res and a smooth frame rate.

 

[Judge Dredd]

They are not legitimately fun unless you enjoy shitty mechanics, cheap deaths, and deliberately unfair gameplay masquerading as "difficulty", they're generic as fuck and interchangeable

This is why I prefer the knock offs. The Surge 1 and 2, despite each having a difficulty spike part early game, are less cryptic, and are difficult without the trial and error bullshit.

one of those guys that insists Clover Studios is the second coming of Christ,

If gaming is going to have charity cases, I'd prefer experimental interesting failures like Clover game, over diversity hires and US leftie politics.

In fact I honestly don't get the love for System Shock 2

I didn't play it until long after release. There are some cool thing about it. The first time a monster charges at you with a rusty pipe while screaming at you to run away and how he doesn't want to do this is really creepy. And it's hard to judge the story since the big reveal is spoiled even in modern marketing material (I don't know about at the time), and only really works if you know the plot of the first game.

That said, the gameplay is bad. It's easy to screw yourself over with the wrong build as a newbie. And when the recommended solution to even pristine guns dissolving after only a single mag of ammo is "edit some game files" you know that someone somewhere fucked up big time.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

System Shock 1 (original--I never played Enhanced) is 10x better than System Shock 2.

System shock 1 is a better game, system shock 2 is a better rpg. There's a lot of bullshit in SS2 which I didn't like, respawning enemies, drip feeding levelling currency and using the usage currency for hacking among other things while SS1 appealed to my resource hoarding autism and power level scaling cause you get too many weapons and too overpowered by the second half. I've heard from crpg fags and talk online that what they consider good RPGs must always limit resources to force you into choosing playstyles which Im personally not into. I prefer jrpg types which give you too many resources and give you a chance to be overpowered if you make the right choices, power fantasy games basically which I don't think crpgs ever do because you can't stat exploit or resource manipulate out of situations. I think Deus ex is sorta the perfect balance, it had the opportunity to have the worst gameplay tendencies of system shock 2 but ig Warren Spector realised the mistakes he made.

 

[The Ugly One]

That said, the gameplay is bad. It's easy to screw yourself over with the wrong build as a newbie.

This was a deliberate design trend in the 90s. The idea was that part of the game's challenge should be figuring out how to make a build that isn't dog shit, and that this would reward players who learn the system and add replayability. Diablo II is revered primarily because of how useless most builds are, and how smart dedicated fans felt when they figured out how to make a Paladin that could survive the Act I boss. Monte Cook even purposely put trap feats into D&D 3rd edition.

With the explosion of internet guides, avoiding trap builds has become trivial, and build-as-minigame is largely seen as bad design (because it is).

 

[skykiii]

I prefer jrpg types which give you too many resources and give you a chance to be overpowered if you make the right choices, power fantasy games basically which I don't think crpgs ever do because you can't stat exploit or resource manipulate out of situations.

Sounds to me like you just haven't played the right CRPGs. My memory is I actually usually preferred MS-DOS stuff like the Gold Box or even the early Wizardry games (the ones that became big in Japan, remember) and other games from that era being more basic and actually playable like that.

Funny thing tho, it feels like the introduction of the mouse borked a lot of CRPGs. The later Ultima games tried to have point and click interfaces which were actually far more cumbersome to use than the earlier keyboard-driven ones. The only problem with the early games is literally every key on the board did something and you almost felt compelled to keep the manual propped open, but its surprising how years later I still know Z is the stats key.

Wizardry 6 was also when that series went downhill... not because of the controls though (it actually controlled fine IIRC), just that the first Wizardry games were easy to understand mechanics-wise, but Wizardry 6 did that thing where you had dozens of races whose differences you didn't understand, dozens of classes that sound like minor variations on the same thing, and it had a skill system and you're constantly second-guessing "when is this gonna come up in the game?"

I fucking hate feats and skill systems in RPGs. They basically amount to "you will get screwed over at X point unless you put two points into this skill" (which in fact is something I recall happening in System Shock 2). I much prefer games where things like traps are an actual puzzle the player can negotiate or solve, rather than something that automatically resolves itself if the game detects you have a thief character with five points in trap-spotting.

 

[Calandrino]

Idk why people like the gba and ds,

Most of the ds especially is just shovelware now, who the fuck plays contra 4.

It's not fair to lump the DS or any other console in with the GBA, the Game Boy Advance is pretty much the absolute worst of all time. Contra is actually a typical example: the GBA Contra game was a cheap asset flip frankensteined together from pieces of the two 4th gen Contra games. Incidentally, Konami made a proper new Contra for PS2 around the same time. Even Wiiware got one. Whether or not Contra 4 is "worth playing today" or "aged badly", Contra Advance certainly wasn't worth playing on its release day, and it hasn't gotten any better since then. That's actual shovelware: crap thrown together in a rush to turn a profit on name brand recognition. And the GBA got more than the usual portion of it.

The GBA was a 2D console when 2D's stock was at a low point, two generations behind at a time technical progress in video games was still very rapid, and on the wrong side of the leap to 3D. But it sold a zillion units, because Pokemon, so publishers didn't ignore the revenue possibilities. So circa the 6th gen it was the designated shitting area for licensed games for little kids, crappy 2nd-4th gen ports, depressing attempts to "port" 6th gen games with prerendered sprites, and cheap sequels to existing franchises. Even a good chunk of the 1st party games are half assed outsource jobs like Minish Crap and three completely forgotten F-Zero games. The decent GBA games are direct-to-video sequels with debilitating screen crunch, fucked up audio, and half as many buttons as they need. The average ones are generic soulless cashgrab trashfires, not nearly up to the standards of crappy SNES games and not even interestingly bad.

Like most consoles, the DS has stuff. Dark Spire and Strange Journey are notable dungeon crawlers, the Izuna games are decent roguelikes, Dementium is a cool indie horror FPS, Meteos is an unusual falling-block puzzle game. Etc, etc. Plus the ones you already mentioned. It's something, take it or leave it -- assorted original games in assorted genres. As for GBA, if you're not on a holy mission to play every single Mega Man, Pokemon, and Yu-gi-oh game, there is nearly nothing. Here's a game slightly more fun than 99% of the GBA library: look through the list of every single GBA release on wikipedia and try to find anything not based on an existing IP... anything that's not a licensed game, sequel, or spinoff. It's got to be less than 5%, and even then it's mostly stuff like checkers games.

Well, what have we got... Ninja Five-O is kind of a cult classic sidescroller Shinobi clone, plays well although Konami apparently didn't put much money into it (the actual Shinobi Advance is a cheap western outsource job, virtually unplayable, 0/10 if I'm generous, average GBA game iow). Astro Boy is good, Godzilla Domination by Wayforward is nifty albeit tiny and short. Wade Hixton's Counterpunch is a cool Punch-Out clone, not quite as good as the original but you do get to be a guy with a mullet and beat up a woman, so I can't say it's not worth looking at. Double Dragon Advance is surprisingly the best Double Dragon game, possibly excepting the even-more-obscure phone game. Fortunately that one's coming to Steam etc. Um, it's got a couple of pinball games, like Pinball of the Dead isn't bad. Squeenix made some stuff. There's a good SMT remake, fluent Japanese required.

I mean if, god forbid, you were stuck in a prison cell with nothing but a GBA and a flashcart I guess you could find a way to pass time, but you might be better off with a 32X or something.

I feel like a lot of people forget that absolute dog shit that got pushed out during the fighting game boom that followed Street Fighter 2.

When Mortal Kombat was released and for at least like a year after, the only actual good fighting game was Street Fighter 2. Those early SNK games ain't winners. MK at least had a unique atmosphere and style and stuck out from the crowd.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

look through the list of every single GBA release on wikipedia and try to find anything not based on an existing IP... anything that's not a licensed game, sequel, or spinoff.

I autistically did this (there's more but these are the only decent/good ones I'm familiar with, excluding their sequels):

Advance Wars
Alien Hominid
Boktai
Car Battler Joe
Dokapon: Monster Hunter
Fire Emblem
Golden Sun
Karnaaj Rally
Riviera: The Promised Land
Sigma Star Saga
Summon Night: Swordcraft Story

I still think the GBA has a great library but I didn't realize how few good games it has which meet that criteria.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

It's not fair to lump the DS or any other console in with the GBA, the Game Boy Advance is pretty much the absolute worst of all time. Contra is actually a typical example: the GBA Contra game was a cheap asset flip frankensteined together from pieces of the two 4th gen Contra games. Incidentally, Konami made a proper new Contra for PS2 around the same time. Even Wiiware got one. Whether or not Contra 4 is "worth playing today" or "aged badly", Contra Advance certainly wasn't worth playing on its release day, and it hasn't gotten any better since then. That's actual shovelware: crap thrown together in a rush to turn a profit on name brand recognition. And the GBA got more than the usual portion of it.

I get this, turok X men metal slug advance and Ghost rider were the same as well. But the ds was pretty much the same. Just because there was 10% more effort on the parts of devs, 10% more original ip doesn't mean the library isn't full of cheap cashgrabs. Some of the original ip are themselves real crap. Drawn to life is a terrible game meant for a 6 year old. Nintendogs is just interactive tamagotchi for women. The Lego games were console downgrades. I know it's kinda unfair to expect hardcore gaming from the ds but it should at least go somewhere into hardcore territory, which is the problem I mentioned with the ds almost exclusively being a casual console, more than the Wii was billed as one cause the Wii at least got stuff like twilight princess, madworld, no more heroes, RE4, bayonetta, dkc returns, xenoblade and so much more.

The GBA was a 2D console when 2D's stock was at a low point, two generations behind at a time technical progress in video games was still very rapid, and on the wrong side of the leap to 3D. But it sold a zillion units, because Pokemon, so publishers didn't ignore the revenue possibilities. So circa the 6th gen it was the designated shitting area for licensed games for little kids, crappy 2nd-4th gen ports, depressing attempts to "port" 6th gen games with prerendered sprites, and cheap sequels to existing franchises. Even a good chunk of the 1st party games are half assed outsource jobs like Minish Crap and three completely forgotten F-Zero games. The decent GBA games are direct-to-video sequels with debilitating screen crunch, fucked up audio, and half as many buttons as they need. The average ones are generic soulless cashgrab trashfires, not nearly up to the standards of crappy SNES games and not even interestingly bad.

Like most consoles, the DS has stuff. Dark Spire and Strange Journey are notable dungeon crawlers, the Izuna games are decent roguelikes, Dementium is a cool indie horror FPS, Meteos is an unusual falling-block puzzle game. Etc, etc. Plus the ones you already mentioned. It's something, take it or leave it -- assorted original games in assorted genres. As for GBA, if you're not on a holy mission to play every single Mega Man, Pokemon, and Yu-gi-oh game, there is nearly nothing. Here's a game slightly more fun than 99% of the GBA library: look through the list of every single GBA release on wikipedia and try to find anything not based on an existing IP... anything that's not a licensed game, sequel, or spinoff. It's got to be less than 5%, and even then it's mostly stuff like checkers games.

This is also partially true but again, I'm going to call upon game quality and game status. The gba advance wars and gba fire emblems are seen as some of the best in the western canon. Onimusha tactics and fftactics are still fondly remembered. Nobody cares about days of ruin cause it's very mediocre. Nobody cares for age of mythologies or any of the other shitty ds strat games. Minish cap is a better game than Phantom hourglass and the more abysmal spirit tracks. Boktai 1 2 3 is still one of the best games of it's generation with no equivalent on the ds. The Pokemon games are fairly on the same level with the ds Pokemon probably being slightly better. Even if circle of the moon is shit, people remember the other two well, on the ds people only remember order of eccelsia because it was the last game in the franchise not because it was particularly great which it wasn't, great for ds standards but mid nonetheless. Dawn of sorrow was just plain crap, just below mediocre. Games which were great by ds standards end up reaching mediocre at best in comparison with the rest of game history and those which were exceptional by ds standards come close to being good overall. That's not the case for the gba because it had more games of objectively better quality which didn't rely on console gimmicks or hackjob attempts at console ports.

That's the problem, that's the part I'm most frustrated with especially with buyer's remorse. The ds had the potential to be a great console and not just a contemporary console demake port hosting device or a casuals first gaming device. The GBA tried to be a handheld snes and ended up being something good if not great. It has its own problems but it didn't try to pretend to be something it wasn't, it was a handheld SNES and it was exactly that. Nintendo marketed the ds as more than it was, it was supposed to be a handheld n64 or ps1 but they marketed it as casuals first gaming console and a worthy equivalent to the wii given the "revolutionary" touch screen and sensor controls, which it wasn't. I bought the ds cause my friends owned one and I wanted one too. But it was the only console I had because I was primarily a pc person while the friends owned a main console and a handheld. I was shocked to find out that by 2015, three years after I got it that it had nothing of value and they had stopped making games for it. I expected the ds to last me at least 8-10 years from 2012, including the games which released from 2004 onwards but it was disappointing to find out ds games released in 2006 were utter shite. It would've helped if they had made games capable of aging well like for the gba. If Nintendo had tried to market the ds as just a handheld n64, I feel developers would've put some effort into making games fit for the console, they wouldve probably given better remakes and remasters, ps1 style RPGs and the like. They could've put a port of strider or something. That's one of the worst parts, it's a 3d console but most of the games are 2.5D or top down and play like shit which is frankly insulting, embarassing lack of effort. Or they put in too much effort into an fps which runs at 15 fps and is a console port which is horrible to look at.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

I autistically did this (there's more but these are the only decent/good ones I'm familiar with, excluding their sequels):

Advance Wars
Alien Hominid
Boktai
Car Battler Joe
Dokapon: Monster Hunter
Fire Emblem
Golden Sun
Karnaaj Rally
Riviera: The Promised Land
Sigma Star Saga
Summon Night: Swordcraft Story

I still think the GBA has a great library but I didn't realize how few good games it has which meet that criteria.

Sorry for double post, technically advance wars and fire emblem are original ips in the US. They go back all the way to the nes in Japan with famicom wars and fire emblem shadow of dragon or some shit.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Nobody cares about days of ruin cause it's very mediocre.

It's actually by far my favorite in the series, I preferred the less cartoony style it went for.

Sorry for double post, technically advance wars and fire emblem are original ips in the US. They go back all the way to the nes in Japan with famicom wars and fire emblem shadow of dragon or some shit.

Yeah, that's true, in my head I always think of them as their first entries. I'd say they still qualify though, virtually nobody knew there were prior games to what we got.

 

[Georgio Cocklord]

Yeah, that's true, in my head I always think of them as their first entries. I'd say they still qualify though, virtually nobody knew there were prior games to what we got.

I actually like the prior entries, especially the nes fire emblems and super famicom wars cause they played like console games. The handheld versions had a lot of downgrades to fit em on handhelds but the prior entries played like a casual version of xcom. I like that, I hate xcom cause it has some really fucked mechanics but these felt more casual and less unfair. Plus pixel art was good, each game was pretty long especially nes fire emblems and the maps were pretty fucking big.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I actually like the prior entries, especially the nes fire emblems and super famicom wars cause they played like console games. The handheld versions had a lot of downgrades to fit em on handhelds but the prior entries played like a casual version of xcom. I like that, I hate xcom cause it has some really fucked mechanics but these felt more casual and less unfair. Plus pixel art was good, each game was pretty long especially nes fire emblems and the maps were pretty fucking big.

Yeah, the NES games seem pretty good. I played the first Fire Emblem when it was released for Switch, and it was certainly good for it's time I'm sure, but I prefer the remake Shadow Dragon much more (which was the last good Fire Emblem, ironically).

 

[Articles and Nudes]

Outside of the five main "dungeons", Elden Ring could have been pushed from the asshole of Ubisoft with all its recycled, wide open shit.

I really can't enjoy extra playthroughs.

 

[Mega Black]

Side dungeons in Elden Ring are unironically great and put all other open world RPGs to shame. Even if they are templates, they are always interesting and twisty to explore, often with decent puzzles or exploration.

Also unironically bring the chalice dungeon system back shit was cool.

 

[Raging Capybara]

Every catacomb has a different gimmick in Elden Ring. The caves are indeed repetitive but they are the minority. The mines are usually cool too, I like that one where there's an Astel hanging in the ceiling where you can see a chunk of a different cave on the other side. It makes everything feel organic.

The Chariots are the only bad thing about the side dungeons. But you can cheese all of them anyway so fuck it

 

[Rick The Stick]

Nice to see people still coping with ER being the worst example of copy-pasted, quantity over quality since Oblivions dungeons and caves.

Chalice dungeons were kinda shit in execution but great fun to explore. And I'd argue was the only time there was ever any actual community in these fromsoft games outside of PVP autism. It actually took cooperation to map out all the chalices and took years to do. That's cool. Beats the hell out of the "community" that just reads item descriptions and character dialog pretending like they're decoding the Dead Sea Scrolls