Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[The Ugly One]

On the other hand, tons of people praise Valve for not turning DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike into Lowest Common Denominator shit

MOBAs are already a highly simplified, streamlined take on the RTS that appeals to normies, and Counter Strike is significantly easier to get into than a true milsim. They were already lowest common denominator games the day they were conceived. The cycle is like this:

1. Game is with a raw, unrefined idea that appeals only to sperglords due to an extreme learning curve.
2. One of the sperglords takes the fun ideas from the original game, drops some the absolute most autistic bullshit, creates something popular with a shallower learning curve. Sometimes it's different enough to be thought of as a new genre (e.g. RTS -> MOBA)
3. New, popular thing creates a whole new group of sperglords
4. Someone else takes the refined idea and makes it even more normie-friendly, with an even shallower learning curve
5. The sperglords from (3) throw a tantrum because they think they're in group (1) and are being "betrayed"
6. Sperglords from (1) don't really say anything, they've moved on to train simulators or something even more autistic

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

(I've never watched Buffy. Maybe I should just to get the origins of wokeshit.)

Watch it, it is a fun show. Avoid fan girls. First two seasons aren't that good, then it picks up. Then they give Angel the boot and everything becomes 300% better. It's fun as in funny, fan girls treats it as a drama and that is giving it too much credit.

The first Buffy game on Xbox was actually pretty good, it's a stiff as hell DMC1 with some good ideas. Just like DMC1 it's probably painful to go back to. There was a sequel that was probably a better game but vidya had evolved, even on the xbox, so I didn't play it as much.

(The Lost Vikings doesn't count)

Unless its called "Blackthorne" or "the Lost Vikings," you mean?

You two are forgetting about Rock'n'Roll Racing, that one was great. You could even play as Olaf from Lost Vikings. That was when they were called Silicon & Synapses though, pretentious name, not as bad as Artificial Mind & Movement. Those guys rebranded as A2M during the development of Wet. At this point the most pretentious studio name might be Valve.

This might not be an unpopular opinion but it is, because people don't know what they want: Jagged Alliance 2 did the start of the game right. You are thrown into battle and fight your way to take over a small area. Figure it out or start over. After that the RPG stuff starts to open up. So many RPGs won't let you play the game until you have gone through 30-45 minutes of dialogue, cutscenes, forced interactions and tutorials.

 

[Pissmaster]

Unless its called "Blackthorne" or "the Lost Vikings," you mean?

EDIT: Sorry didn't see the smalltext where you specifically mention the latter... still saw no mention of the former tho.

I suppose it also goes without saying that I would defend the first two Warcrafts. I honestly found Diablo I fun back in the day but Phantasy Star Online is pretty much objectively better.

Sure, every SNES game they make is fine. Studios change personnel constantly, and I'm sure nobody involved with Blackthorne or The Lost Vikings made any decisions on retarded shit like "ackshually Solder 76 is gay!!!!". That's an annoying thing about video game discussion, how tons of broad and varied teams are all collected under one roof, so criticizing a game company always necessitates a whole league of asterisks.

Criticising or defending Valve is tricky. There is stuff to criticise and stuff to praise, but it's hard to do any of that.

It seems anyone with opinions on Valve has to be some kind of screeching autist who watches way too much Tyler McVickers. Want to talk about how Valve dropped Win XP and Win 7 support, thereby gutting their retro library? How about how their use of focus testing resulted in interesting features being cut from Left 4 Dead 2? Nope, instead you're only allowed to complain about third party CSGO gambling sites, Steam greenlight, Cinematic Mod, and how Half-Life: Alyx was VR only.

I am a fan of Valve and I have never bothered with anything related to CS:GO, Cinematic Mod, or VR overall. Steam Greenlight is long gone and I never had much of an opinion on it.

Valve's done a hell of a lot to make PC gaming a serious thing, and thank goodness for them, because PlayStation and Xbox are both tied to globohomo, and Nintendo now makes expensive controllers that break for their console with graphics that look straight out of 2005.

 

[Matt Damon]

While it's always very fun to shit on self-important open-source devs and the communities of insufferable condescending autists around such projects, I do feel some sympathy when I look at the Reddit page for something like Fightcade and it's just thread after thread of illiterate ESL retards asking the same braindead questions over and over while acting indignant that the free software someone created and hosts on their own dime requires even the slightest bit of effort or understanding on the user's part.

 

[X Prime]

While it's always very fun to shit on self-important open-source devs and the communities of insufferable condescending autists around such projects, I do have to have some sympathy for them when I look at the Reddit page for something like Fightcade and it's just thread after thread of illiterate ESL retards asking the same braindead questions over and over while often acting indignant that the free software someone created and hosts on their own dime requires even the slightest bit of effort or understanding on the user's part.

People are really, really stupid and entitled when it comes to fan projects. If you think that's bad, you should see the kind of abuse actual programmers, semi-competent artists, et cetera for such projects get on Discord. Often from, yes, ESL types.

Seems the worst are always Latin Americans and Europeans.

 

[Spit bucket]

I really don't like side-scrollers. Maybe it's because I grew with mostly 3D games but I can never click with a 2D platformer. I recently picked up Blasphemous on steam and while I think the game is well made with beautiful sprite work I'm not enjoying it that much. I also know it's supposed to be a "2D Dark Souls" but I dunno maybe it's not a genre I'm could ever get into even if I go for shit like Hollow Knight or baby mode with Shantae.

 

[Sleazy Car Salesman]

What about survival games that do have a win condition or story mode with specific win objectives? There's a fair number of those.

Those I agree are more like games. I'm talking more in line with things like Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress or Ark, more similar to what Pissmaster talked about here:

Those are akin to endless arcade games where the goal is to get the highest score. The goal is to try and survive longer than anyone else, with ever-dwindling resources and ever-growing danger.

But my issue is that a lot of survival games have respawning resources and no real ramp up of danger unless they have zombies. And I'm totally sick of zombies. I was already totally sick of zombies like ten years ago.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Watch it, it is a fun show.

Since it might be a while until I get around to it, what is it in the show that inspired so many woke-scolds and millennial writers? Is it just because of the quipy writing was fresh at the time, or was there more to it?

I have never bothered with anything related to CS:GO, Cinematic Mod, or VR overall.

Agreed. My unpopular opinions (at least according to Half-Life/Valve fans. I imagine they're fairly normal outside of that.)

• CS:GO loot boxes and skins were always bad.
  • and third party gambling sites were not in Valve's control, so why they should be blamed for it I don't know.
• Cinematic Mod was an optional mod with itself having an option for Alyx replacements. It's not something people should have been mad at to begin with, let alone a decade after the last update.
• Greenlight is old news and people should get over it.
• Demanding HL Alyx should have a flatscreen version is like demanding a version of HL2 without physics, or L4D without co-op.

 

[The Last Stand]

If somebody says that a game is "woke," y'all best explain to me how. Because I don't see it.

 

[Matt Damon]

On the subject of fighting games, here's one I suspect some people will disagree with:

"Guest appearances" in fighting games suck. It was already gimmicky when Soul Calibur 2 did the Link/Heihachi/Spawn thing 20 years ago and it's only gotten worse with the advent of paid DLC characters. You're paying extra money on top of the game you already bought to be exposed to cross-promotional advertising.

Fighting games may not require much suspension of disbelief, but good ones do have consistent art direction/character design and guest characters shit all over that. I don't want to see John Rambo in Mortal Kombat, I don't want to see Ninja Turtles in Street Fighter, and I don't want some Final Fantasy K-pop faggot in Tekken.

I'll make an exception for Super Smash Bros or Vs-type games because the multi-game roster is central to the premise right from the start.

 

[The Last Stand]

Fighting games may not require much suspension of disbelief, but good ones do have consistent art direction/character design and guest characters shit all over that. I don't want to see John Rambo in Mortal Kombat, I don't want to see Ninja Turtles in Street Fighter, and I don't want some Final Fantasy K-pop faggot in Tekken.

I can see cross promotional characters working in Mortal Kombat. Jason from Friday the 13th, Alien, Predator. That makes sense in content with Mortal Kombat's unapologetically gory gameplay.

"Guest appearances" in fighting games suck. It was already gimmicky when Soul Calibur 2 did the Link/Heihachi/Spawn thing 20 years ago and it's only gotten worse with the advent of paid DLC characters. You're paying extra money on top of the game you already bought to be exposed to cross-promotional advertising.

Remember when Kratos from God of War appeared in MK9 for PS3/Vita owners? So, the PS3 version was more complete than the 360 version. That's a ripoff because you're paying more for less. Now that fighting games are online, that creates an imbalance.

 

[Kheapathic]

On the subject of fighting games, here's one I suspect some people will disagree with:

"Guest appearances" in fighting games suck. It was already gimmicky when Soul Calibur 2 did the Link/Heihachi/Spawn thing 20 years ago and it's only gotten worse with the advent of paid DLC characters. You're paying extra money on top of the game you already bought to be exposed to cross-promotional advertising.

Fighting games may not require much suspension of disbelief, but good ones do have consistent art direction/character design and guest characters shit all over that. I don't want to see John Rambo in Mortal Kombat, I don't want to see Ninja Turtles in Street Fighter, and I don't want some Final Fantasy K-pop faggot in Tekken.

I'll make an exception for Super Smash Bros or Vs-type games because the multi-game roster is central to the premise right from the start.

I remember Soul Calibur 4 splitting Vader and Yoda between the PS3 and 360; then eventually (I don't even remember when it happened) decided to put them on the other console. And I carry the sentiment for guest characters, because everything, especially rights, come with a cost, a cost you should be putting into the game you're already making. Because I'm a retard who doesn't watch TV, I had no idea (or cared) who Negan was or what he's doing in Tekken 7, and while I loved getting Geese, I'll maintain that the best Tekken Character since 7 started its DLC is Lidia. But now, throw in the already shit business practices, and we have Ed Boon saying he has 7 DLC characters lined up for a game that's not even out yet, and three of them are comic book characters... and that's on top of some characters already being assist only, so you're making characters, but not even giving them full use.

Remember when Kratos from God of War appeared in MK9 for PS3/Vita owners? So, the PS3 version was more complete than the 360 version. That's a ripoff because you're paying more for less. Now that fighting games are online, that creates an imbalance.

While it's not a 1:1 comparison; Street Fighter x Tekken had about half its roster behind the DLC paywall on PS3 and 360, meanwhile the Vita version of it had the full roster unlocked... and yes, the PS3 and Vita version were able to play against each other. I'd take a character I can't use due to platform over half the roster being locked up for no fucking reason.

 

[skykiii]

If somebody says that a game is "woke," y'all best explain to me how. Because I don't see it.

I don't understand why this got "dumb" stickers because in some cases this is actually a valid question.

I've seen plenty of games get labeled "woke" and then it turns out the wokeness is either very hard to spot, or else you would only know if you followed the creator's twitter. And I honestly think we should distinguish between "you can spot a pride flag in one teensy pixel of an image that is only on screen for five seconds" and "every five minutes the game stops so the characters can loudly announce that they support BLM."

One of the most ridiculous cases I saw, someone claimed Shantae was woke because it starred a "girlboss."

 

[Judge Dredd]

"Guest appearances" in fighting games suck. It was already gimmicky when Soul Calibur 2 did the Link/Heihachi/Spawn thing 20 years ago and it's only gotten worse with the advent of paid DLC characters. You're paying extra money on top of the game you already bought to be exposed to cross-promotional advertising.

I'll make an exception for Super Smash Bros or Vs-type games because the multi-game roster is central to the premise right from the start.

You cut right to the heart of the matter. There should be a semi-casual fighting game, built on a AAA engine with actual talent behind it, that crosses over all these properties. Imagine an 80s movie fighting game where Robocop, Terminator, Aliens, Rambo, and maybe even Batman all fight each other using a variant of Mortal Kombat with all the autistic combo memorization stripped away.

It'll never happen though because getting all the studios to allow these IPs in a single project without being buggered with is almost impossible. The AVP franchise is good as a game series, but that crossover only works because they're all owned by Fox. So instead we get one time cameos.

I vaguely remember some indie game tried to do it with horror characters, but I never heard much about it. Dead by Daylight seems to have the horror cameo niche covered pretty well.

I honestly think we should distinguish between "you can spot a pride flag in one teensy pixel of an image that is only on screen for five seconds" and "every five minutes the game stops so the characters can loudly announce that they support BLM."

They are the same thing.

There will never be an objective measure of wokeness because those that try either miss notable examples, or create a bunch of false positives. Your example of Shantae being woke because "girlboss" is an example of that.

People keep pretending things like cosmetics or political messages don't matter, because they're hard to defend without sounding stupid or shallow.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

If somebody says that a game is "woke," y'all best explain to me how. Because I don't see it.

There are definitely woke games out there, but I have this unpopular opinion that the real damage Gamergate/Anita did was cause such a large section of the gaming community to just call anything that features a minority or a woman shit just on the basis of them being there.

In the same way that normies expect too little from games in the sense that they'll take every assfucking that comes their way in microtransactions, hardcore gamers have reached a point where they expect too fucking much from games. I don't know why it happened exactly, but it feels like last generation hardcores reached a point where games needed to be absolutely flawless or they are fucking garbage, which is such a weird position to take when a certain level of jank was just a normal part of gaming.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

This raises something I wondered for a long time.

I remember hearing at release that StarCraft 2 had an amazing single player game, but after those initial reviews the single player was completely ignored in favour of the multiplayer. I remember hearing the mod tools were excellent too, but I never heard of any notable mod outside of a tower defense mode (which I think was to demo the tools).

I'm wondering what the single player was like, and if it holds up.

Have you read the TnA for SC2?

Pretty much everything you make in the SC engine; games, characters, stories, etc. Blizzard owns.

 

[The Ugly One]

If somebody says that a game is "woke," y'all best explain to me how. Because I don't see it.

A game is being "woke" any time it compromises the integrity of the story or setting to conform better to woke demands for "representation."

1. Gratuitous, unnecessary negroes
2. Anyone ever saying, "LOL, white males, am I right?"
3. Setting-inappropriate diversity supersquads
4. Token queers, especially in a historically inappropriate setting
5. Trannies, anywhere, ever
6. Awkwardly censored speech
7. Fridge-shaped women with side-shaves
8. Ultra-women who are instantly better than men at everything in a realistic setting (i.e. not Bayonetta or whatever)
9. Ahistorical or setting-inappropriate tolerance of homosexuality
10. Setting-inappropriate or ahistorical feminism.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Survival games are not games, there is no win condition and no goal to accomplish beyond "gather resource to craft thing to gather more resource". It's even worse if there's a respawn mechanic since then there isn't a lose condition either.

This is retarded. Even in the more general usage of the word "game" it doesn't require a win condition, kids playing cowboys and Indians outside are playing a "game" and there's no "winner."

 

[The Last Stand]

A game is being "woke" any time it compromises the integrity of the story or setting to conform better to woke demands for "representation."

1. Gratuitous, unnecessary negroes
2. Anyone ever saying, "LOL, white males, am I right?"
3. Setting-inappropriate diversity supersquads
4. Token queers, especially in a historically inappropriate setting
5. Trannies, anywhere, ever
6. Awkwardly censored speech
7. Fridge-shaped women with side-shaves
8. Ultra-women who are instantly better than men at everything in a realistic setting (i.e. not Bayonetta or whatever)
9. Ahistorical or setting-inappropriate tolerance of homosexuality
10. Setting-inappropriate or ahistorical feminism.

Closest examples I can THINK of are Borderlands 3, Far Cry 6 and Gears 5. Borderlands 3 has some of the most obnoxious writing I've heard yet. This applies for all media; "mature" humor boils down to casual swearing, juvenile talking points, "meme of the day," political preaching, it borders to shallow parody.

 

[The Ugly One]

Closest examples I can THINK of are Borderlands 3, Far Cry 6 and Gears 5. Borderlands 3 has some of the most obnoxious writing I've heard yet. This applies for all media; "mature" humor boils down to casual swearing, juvenile talking points, "meme of the day," political preaching, it borders to shallow parody.

COD: Vanguard is an especially egregious, recent example. Another one:

11. Centering homosexuality over things that relate to far more people

For example, MW2 has a bunch of gay sex flags to use for your profile. Recent spooderman has the fag flag all over NYC (even more than real NYC does).