Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[I Love Beef]

Fighting games are just the worst. I've heard people compare it to learning a musical instrument, but as a multi-instrumentalist I can tell you it's actually much worse.

They are. As much as I love fighting video games myself, I honestly cannot stand them when it comes to the hardcore competitive/diehard "mainstream titles/"true fighters" only bruh" crowd that has crowded around it nowadays. As much as I'm not up to par like my salad days, they've been reduced down to hitbox scrambles and "mind games" than anything remotely related to the game itself. And I can totally agree with your sentiment, fighting games have stagnated to where nothing is "organic" anymore. I'm no expert fighter, but in real life, not every blow you're going to make will be 100% on your opponent. You're going to be mislead, you're going to be tired/antsy to where you're going to miss a few blows, and you're probably going to land outside of your intended position, but outside of a life or death situation, and even then, all it takes is expert training to minimize mistakes, continue the onslaught and one hit to a vulnerable spot to end it all, and no fighter is walking away like a fighting god. tl;dr fighting games have become extremely calculated in terms of competition and "expert levels". They aren't the badass fight scenes we see in martial arts and action movies and shows or in huge real life annual events, they're still the same kind of fucking game from the late 1990s. The only games that have dared to be more "realistic"/action like are Fighting Vipers 2 (the escape counter and the super armor counter mechanics) and Last Blade (actual exchanges of clashing blows by pressing forward to step in and enact the defensive maneuver). You also don't need to be super accurate to enact those, unlike SFIII's Parrying (beginning to feel the overrated on that game rn).

Honestly, fighting games are going to become niche because it refuses to tread new territory in terms of gameplay, as what skyii said.

The simple fact is that complexity and obtuse nonsense does not equal depth.

Spoiler: HATE SPEECH AND ANTI SJW FAUXGRESSIVE TRIGGER WARNING NOT FOR FAGS DEATH TO TRANNY PEDOPHILE NIGGER CHUDS

I'd concur. I think the problem is with communication, application, and a failure to concentrate on actual player-gameplay interfacing adaptation as well as simplifying advanced systems into more efficient and wide spectrum open ended results in this day and age. If you didn't get the last two things I said, don't worry. TL;DR the whole spheal of mainstream devs worrying too much on graphics than gameplay is very real. You'd think that by now, we'd be playing video games like in .hack// where gameplay is super advanced to where even if you're not playing up to the "expected" output of an intended role, you're still great and excel at something within a range your own strengths can get you, and actual gameplay is fun because it is divergent without removing itself from its core concepts. Those two things are the kinds of things a lot of veteran video game players and enthusiasts are able to see from those older generations of video games, or at least I do. (How's that for diversity, you yellow journalist hacks?)

Instead, a lot of video game mechanics and gameplay now are stupidly designed towards a specific use that must be perfected in order to win and progress, and instead of teaching them new things along the way to help them towards a more advanced level, beat and conform the player to only play a specific way. Not all games should have be like this, and some games do the beat and mold by attrition way very well, but I honestly think the future of video games (if we'll even get that far imho) is by an actually immersive, choice complex but simple to pick up way of playing video games, the stuff actual VR claims is doing, but only has it with the physically immersive element these days.

The point is that game devs seriously need to code and they seriously need better drives than to want to relive the times when they could do nothing but play video games. I'd love to too, but we live in times that older media swore we'd make like super advanced games that didn't play like the real life 2000s.

fuck me I might as well get back into game development again

the spoiler header is because of infosec, just incase, feelin' paranoid

Where we come we call it shinin'.

SHHHH! Do you wanna get sued!??

 

[Spruce Supremacist]

Unpopular opinion: Counter-Strike peaked with release of CS 1.6

Counter-Strike: Source had updated graphics and other benefits of Source engine, but had worse gunplay and lost features from GoldSrc engine (e.g. func_vehicle), not to mention many custom gamemodes didn't translate from CS 1.6 to CS:S very well.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is what completely killed the original community driven experience. When it originally came out it was met with with little enthusiasm as it was mostly like CS:S but with different visuals and weapon roster. Over time it became a game aimed mostly at sweaty tryhards (moreso than previous games because of introduction of matchmaking) with community servers being hidden away and VALVe restricting the extent of custom server customizability (such as forbidding servers letting players visually change their knives into ones they don't own). Horrible cash-grab, visual clutter features like skins litter the game (the game would be more tolerable if you could disable them locally, but VALVe insists that you must see little Johnny's super duper rare stat-trak poop-pattern piss-worn pistol in action). I'd even say that weapon skins to CSGO are the same what hats were to TF2 and I hate it.

tl;dr Counter-Strike 1.6 is the best game in the series and every sequel that followed only got worse.

 

[Matt Damon]

tl;dr Counter-Strike 1.6 is the best game in the series and every sequel that followed only got worse.

I suspect that's probably a unpopular opinion among zoomers, but just an undeniable, obvious truth among oldfags.

I still think of CS:GO as "that gay new one", even though it's 11 years old at this point.

 

[Problematic User Forever]

Funny as the memes were, I had to double-check my post.... I swear I did NOT type that.

Suuuuuure ya did, bot. lol

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

You can make fighting games appealing to the masses without dumbing the controls down to single button inputs and auto combos.

Simplifying inputs should not let a bad player perform well if the game is well designed. Stuff like knowledge of the mechanics and reading your opponent is where the skill lies, but people conflate dexterity with skill for some bizarre reason. Mashing buttons better shouldn't be the determining factor in who wins unless it's Mario Party.

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

The tutorials in almost all fighting games are half-assed when they even exist and do nothing to explain the incredibly complex, information-dense systems at play that all interact with each other. In matches, there's very little audiovisual feedback that tells the player when they've done something right or wrong - you're just expected to know, expected to have memorized all the theoretical knowledge before you ever start a match. Fighting games make even the most obtuse strategy games look user-friendly and approachable by comparison.

Wait, how do you not know when you did something right in a fighting game? There's a life bar that got shaved off, a character will flinch from the impact and a hit counter will go up.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Wait, how do you not know when you did something right in a fighting game? There's a life bar that got shaved off, a character will flinch from the impact and a hit counter will go up.

There's a lot of micro decisions that do not give an obvious (or even any) indication it was not right. It can be something as simple as your positioning being a tiny bit off or not understanding where the hit and hurt boxes are for each and every frame of animation.

Example, say you do a Super attack that moves your character forward like Blanka's in SF2. If you get punished for using it incorrectly it might not be immediately obvious why, especially since some moves have wonky hitboxes.

It's kinda hard to explain without going in-depth and citing exact games, versions, matchups, and exact situations. Not every mistake results in lost life, and even if it does you might not understand exactly what went wrong.

 

[Matt Damon]

Simplifying inputs should not let a bad player perform well if the game is well designed. Stuff like knowledge of the mechanics and reading your opponent is where the skill lies, but people conflate dexterity with skill for some bizarre reason. Mashing buttons better shouldn't be the determining factor in who wins unless it's Mario Party.

The perfect ideal of game controls should be "it happens on-screen the moment you think it and works predictably and perfectly every single time". Obviously current technology doesn't allow that, but most games strive to make their controls as simple and intuitive as possible, so you can forget about the translation layer between your thoughts and what happens in-game.

Fighting games add multiple layers of execution difficulty exclusively to make you more likely to fail at translating your thoughts into what happens on-screen. If someone can give me a reason why the 'pretzel motion' in King of Fighters games exists beyond being a mechanical barrier to entry, I'd love to hear it.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

The perfect ideal of game controls should be "it happens on-screen the moment you think it and works predictably and perfectly every single time". Obviously current technology doesn't allow that, but most games strive to make their controls as simple and intuitive as possible, so you can forget about the translation layer between your thoughts and what happens in-game.

Fighting games add multiple layers of execution difficulty exclusively to make you more likely to fail at translating your thoughts into what happens on-screen. If someone can give me a reason why the 'pretzel motion' in King of Fighters games exists beyond being a mechanical barrier to entry, I'd love to hear it.

"git gud scrub reee"

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Unpopular opinion: Counter-Strike peaked with release of CS 1.6

CS 1.6 is the best online shooter ever made. That's an unarguable fact. Office 24/7 back in the day was hours of fun. Cool community, no try-hards, vote to kick for campers, private servers, oh man, those were the days.

 

[I Love Beef]

The perfect ideal of game controls should be "it happens on-screen the moment you think it and works predictably and perfectly every single time". Obviously current technology doesn't allow that, but most games strive to make their controls as simple and intuitive as possible, so you can forget about the translation layer between your thoughts and what happens in-game.

Fighting games add multiple layers of execution difficulty exclusively to make you more likely to fail at translating your thoughts into what happens on-screen. If someone can give me a reason why the 'pretzel motion' in King of Fighters games exists beyond being a mechanical barrier to entry, I'd love to hear it.

Hey man, Geese Howard is no joke. I'd say it's also representative of his fighting energy manifesting at first as the "base" of the Raging Storm, before he slams down to make it sharply blow everything apart. Besides, would you like scrubs to spam Geese?

ngl even the mainline Real Bout games did away with the pretzel motion and made Raging Storm easier to perform

 

[There Is Light At The End]

My big point of contention with the asari (Liara in particular) is that it feels like the writers really insist upon them. Garrus is a popular character because he's so likable while Liara is popular through brute force.

More I played mass effect, the more I liked Ashley, despite biofail fucking up her appearance in 3.

 

[Night Crawler]

I have been messing around with one of those handheld emulators people buy and use now. I have been downloading ROMS of retro games. The OS on the handheld also allows screenshots of box art to display. A lot of those box arts for games look way better than the actual games. Even if the game is good the box art usually looks way cooler than the actual game. That's one thing I don't miss about older games. The box art basically being a form of false advertising. These days if you see the art for a game you know you will be getting that or at least know what you are getting. It's one of the reasons why I took to newer modern games so well. By the time I got a PS1 I was pretty much tired of old 16 bit games. All I ever wanted was games that looked like what was seen in the box art. 3D modern games pretty much delivered on this. Those cool cover arts used on the Castlevania games then you get into the game and some guy with a whip shuffling across the this flat 2D level. That kind of ended with the 3D era of video games. Definitely by the time the PS2 Xbox and GC came along. What you saw on the cover art is what you got. It's still that way. After that all people worried about was getting a cool looking cover art and not if the game was actually like the art.

 

[Raging Capybara]

The inputs you need to do in fighting games to perform a single move are very similar to cheat codes, because that's exactly what it is.

 

[ArthuriusMartyrius]

The Quake II remake utterly sucks and aside from messing up the visuals by making everything unnecessarily brighter, they also fucked up the AI. The Berserker is a prime example where they brought back cut attack animations that were cut for a fucking reason because they make it literally impossible to emerge from an encounter with one without taking damage, all because a bunch of sub-80 IQ retards complained that they were "too easy" to fight ignoring that they are supposed to be easy to kill solo which is why the game tended to throw them at you grouped with other enemies.

This also extends to other enemies like shielded ones which now take twice as much damage to take down for some bizarre reason, enemies that can reel you in with hooks which now have target-tracking which is almost impossible to dodge unless they are far enough away that you can move to the side as they are attacking, enemy placement has been completely messed up so the remake will literally spawn enemies right behind you in a lame attempt to force "difficult" encounters plus enemies will now jump between floors which completely defeats the purpose of the level design which had multiple floors with different groups of enemies in the original.

And the thing is that none of these changes actually make the game challenging, they just make it unnecessarily frustrating. Weapon damage has also been increased so even the toughest enemies go down like a sack of potatoes pretty quickly. This is just another confirmation of my observation that modern game developers have absolutely zero fucking clue how to design gameplay, even when they are handed a decently-made system they just HAVE TO shit it up with boneheaded changes. This is what happens when the field is populated by cretins who graduated with "game development degrees" as opposed to old-school game developers who came from varied disciplines and applied that knowledge along with a genuine passion for making fun stuff to play to create good game mechanics.

In short, screw modern video game developers, you lot all deserve to be fucking homeless.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Excellent comparison. I'm sure there's a community of racing game fanatics somewhere out there that seethes over the popularity of Mario Kart.

Mario Kart has the exact same problem, but the gameplay is the opposite extreme.

Mario Kart is so simple and has so many balancing mechanics that winning comes down to more luck than skill, unless you count long standing exploits and manipulating the system to get good power ups.

But it has a fierce fanbase of consoomers that refuse to admit that games like Sonic All Star Racing Transformed are better by improving while Mario Kart sits around wallowing in nostalgia.

The only games that have dared to be more "realistic"/action like are Fighting Vipers 2 (the escape counter and the super armor counter mechanics) and Last Blade (actual exchanges of clashing blows by pressing forward to step in and enact the defensive maneuver). You also don't need to be super accurate to enact those, unlike SFIII's Parrying (beginning to feel the overrated on that game rn).

There are two* games I recommend.

First is a game called Fighters Destiny on N64. You don't have health. Instead it uses something like Judo or Karate rules where you have a certain number of points, with points gained for throws, knock downs, ring outs, and KOs, based on the difficulty of performing them. Throws can be countered by pressing throw, which itself can be countered. It still has the complex inputs, but since no one knows that game it lead to some great matches.

Another is the UFC series on Dreamcast and PS2 (I know it's not one game, but they're similar). Each character has a unique moveset and combos, but there's almost no special inputs. You can also counter and grapple, and there are tons of ground stances. It's a bit hard for normies to understand, but once you get over that initial learning curve, it can lead to tense fights that are either over in seconds, or run for multiple rounds before going to the judges. Sometimes you trade blows, sometimes it's rolling around looking for an opening to go for an arm bar. It plays better vs a human, but you should go for it if you get the chance.

 

[Matt Damon]

Unpopular opinion: the vast majority of arcade games suck.

And I'm not just saying "durrrr they steal your quarters", I mean that most of them offer a really lackluster, bare-bones, and intentionally frustrating experience for the player that relied on spectacle rather than being fun. If my formative years had been spent in the arcade rather than with 8 and 16-bit consoles, I think I'd have concluded that video games are a shitty fad.

 

[X Prime]

Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite was okay.

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

My unpopular opinion is that fighting games peaked between 1995 and 2000. It was during the era where a little complexity was there but there were still various concepts to be explored like the initial Capcom Vs games, early Tekken, Fighting Vipers, etc. Fighting games were a lot more fun as it seems like there was more explanation beyond the simple Street Fighter 2 era but not at the autistic designed for EVO fighters like we see today.

 

[fishercat]

I like games with janky graphics and goofy looking characters. I don't like realistic ultra HD graphics that set your computer on fire. Get that Unreal Engine shit outta here.