Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[xXx: State of the Union]

I don't see how DOOM became THE defining FPS on the market.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this as I was only 3 or 4 when Doom came out.

But basically it was fun as shit for the time, it was edgy, it had mod support (or was that Doom 2?) and basically ran on everything.

Edit: Also had a kick ass shareware version. People forget about shareware I think.

Edit 2: Also wasn't Doom actually a pioneer for networked multiplayer, too?

 

[The Last Stand]

If the gaming industry continues its direction with live services, delistings and digital only purchases, piracy will become a necessity JUST to enjoy the products you've bought and to actually have the opportunity to EXPERIENCE said products.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

If the gaming industry continues its direction with live services, delistings and digital only purchases, piracy will become a necessity JUST to enjoy the products you've bought and to actually have the opportunity to EXPERIENCE said products.

I could see the bigger issue being that gaming as a whole becomes a completely live service experience that can't be emulated properly.

Hasn't this already happened with a bunch of mobile "games"?

 

[Canoodler]

I think Code Vein is one of the best Soulslike games.

 

[Psyduck]

Finally decided to give Persona 5 a second chance (i just couldnt handle the UI. Still can't but i'm working through it) and while its serviceable so far, i wish the game's world didnt suck your dick as much.

It's an odd thing to complain about, but i don't like how perfect i am as the MC. Supposed to be a criminal, but surprise! My file is one of those "good" crimes (basically you saved a woman from a drunk harasser), yet i still get the bad boy rep around the school. Also, i instantly become the most popular kid even before im even enrolled. Everyone talks about you, rumors about how badass you are float all over...

You dont approach anyone, all the interesting/pretty people find you and no matter what you say to them, they'll always want to be around you. Everything you say to your friends is in one sentence yet you're somehow the life of the party.

I know all previous Persona titles had this too, and while i really liked them at the time i played, maybe im just getting older. I dont want a high school fantasy, if youre gonna make me a criminal on probation laying at the bottom of the social pole, then go through with it!

Also i still fucking hate that UI. I get it! It looks stylish! GIVE ME A BREAK

 

[X Prime]

I know all previous Persona titles had this too

I was about to counter with Eternal Punishment, but then I realized that they made the adult main character Maya fall for the bad boy high school senior Suou instead of the cop older Suou who could cook, had his shit together, and was supportive of her the whole adventure.

Thus proving your point for you.

 

[Seventh Star]

I don't see how DOOM became THE defining FPS on the market. I don't find it fun to navigate through maze levels trying to find key cards, secret rooms or awkward first person platforming.

You can mod it to play as an old woman if you want. It's still fun to this day.

 

[eDove]

I think Code Vein is one of the best Soulslike games.

Code Vein is good. It's not nearly as good as Lies of P in terms of soulslikes, though. I'd say it's better than Lords of the Fallen but not better than Salt & Sanctuary.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

I don't see how DOOM became THE defining FPS on the market. I don't find it fun to navigate through maze levels trying to find key cards, secret rooms or awkward first person platforming.

I was going to address this yesterday, but I was lazy.

And to preface this, I actually sort of agree that DOOM is over-rated, now, but... Well, it's kind of a perfect storm of a lot of things.

• Marketing. Seriously, if you don't remember those days, DOOM was huge. For a company that was still at the time heavily into the Shareware model, DOOM had a huge marketing blitz.
• On that, it was Shareware. For children too young to remember shareware, once upon a time developers gave us a huge chunk of games for free, to entice us to buy them. No, these weren't your modern "demos". You could have lot of fun with the shareware versions of games - for a lot of kids, that was all they ever had. But it was the best marketing money could buy, if you game was good. Which leads us to...
• DOOM was good. Was it fucking-super-awesome-best-thing-ever good? Nah, but it was still really good for the time. The controls were smooth, the action was fairly intense, the art was really good for the time... And I don't just mean "oh it was edgy and gory and satanic", I mean it was well done. It showed a good understanding of the hardware limitations and used the tech to it's best advantage. Sure, there were other FPS games. But honestly, at the time, even I have to admit DOOM was basically the cream of the crop.
• And let's not forget the music. Again, is it the best thing ever? No. But in an era where most people were still more used to PC games going "bleep bloop" and little tinny music loops that repeated every 10 seconds, DOOM had an actual soundtrack that was catchy and memorable. Even the plain MIDI version was pretty good.
• However, as long as we're talking about "gory" and "satanic"... This kind of cycles back to "marketing", but don't dismiss the impact of negative PR. And boy did DOOM have a lot of it.
• "Doom Runs on Everything". More true now than then, but even back then... DOOM had an official Linux port, it got ported to the mac, the SNES, the N64, the Sega Saturn, the 3DO, you name it. About the only platform that was still relevant that it never landed at the time on was the Amiga, for, apparently, technical reasons. It's since made it there, but that's only in the relatively modern era.
• Modability. DOOM was moddable. And boy did fans mod it.
• And of course, then we come to multiplayer. It had really strong multiplayer, and was hugely popular at the time.
• Plus the iD software guys were always very fan-forward. They were doing blogs before blogs were really a thing. I remember fingering their .plans. That bought them a lot of bonus goodwill. People liked them. They were basically geek rockstars.

 

[BMO_]

Journos were right about Days Gone. It fucking sucks.

 

[Retard of the Month]

Turn-based combat isn't gameplay. I love Final Fantasy 6 and 7, Chrono Trigger, and Persona 5, but the gameplay is definitely a sour spot for them and I'm glad the later FF games moved away from it and towards something more like Kingdom Hearts and Devil May Cry.

 

[Biggie Smalls' Taint]

It's an odd thing to complain about, but i don't like how perfect i am as the MC. Supposed to be a criminal, but surprise! My file is one of those "good" crimes (basically you saved a woman from a drunk harasser)

This happens in the Yakuza series, too. You play as a big, bad mafia man... who never really does any crime and goes around beating the shit out of anyone who acts like a real criminal.

 

[The Last Stand]

This video has aged well given how Battlefield is handled.

I prefer console Battlefield over PC Battlefield. The smaller scaled maps on BF3 are more balanced because of their size and reduced player count. It's also a testament of how DICE can design maps on various scales. Also, PC Battlefield has poor server security.

It's way better than CoD now.

 

[Homoshrexual2]

If a game doesn't regularly make you quit it in frustration before you finally beat it, it's a basically a movie and isn't worth playing.

 

[Book Thief]

Black Mesa's Xen is much worse than the original Half-Life's.

Sure, the original had a lot of annoying Low-G platforming in first person, and the ammo was scarce, but as annoying as it was, it was a short 30-45 minute ending to a 5-hour game, so the annoyance doesn't last long. Black Mesa on the other hand not only made it ten times longer, but replaced the annoying first-person platforming with annoying puzzles that were so fucking repetitive and annoying to deal with. That makes Black Mesa's Xen feel like much more of a slog than the original ever was.

I don't see how DOOM became THE defining FPS on the market. I don't find it fun to navigate through maze levels trying to find key cards, secret rooms or awkward first person platforming.

I know this is supposed to be a place for unpopular takes, but... what? DOOM had no jumping at all. There was absolutely no platforming to be had. So either you're confusing it with something else (like Half-Life, another classic FPS that IS known for having annoying first-person platforming), are confusing the source ports with the original, or you're just making stuff up to pad out your complaint.

But to properly answer your question: because it was genuinely revolutionary for its time, and it has survived this long despite being such an outdated gaming engine by having a very healthy modding scene.

 

[WULULULULU]

Journos were right about Days Gone. It fucking sucks.

The only thing that was unique in that game was the "horde" mechanic but World War Z and even before that, L4D and L4D2 did hordes in a balanced and much more gameplay satisfying way. The hordes in Days Gone just feels like a tsunami of bullshit that instantly kills you the moment your character has a pixel of a touch.

 

[Edgy But Dull]

The only thing that was unique in that game was the "horde" mechanic but World War Z and even before that, L4D and L4D2 did hordes in a balanced and much more gameplay satisfying way. The hordes in Days Gone just feels like a tsunami of bullshit that instantly kills you the moment your character has a pixel of a touch.

It was a neat idea to have a limited gas system that made you consider your fuel reserves and use slopes to conserve fuel....for like the first two hours. And then it got very old after a while.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

I know this is supposed to be a place for unpopular takes, but... what? DOOM had no jumping at all. There was absolutely no platforming to be had. So either you're confusing it with something else (like Half-Life, another classic FPS that IS known for having annoying first-person platforming), are confusing the source ports with the original, or you're just making stuff up to pad out your complaint.

There were a few levels where there some annoying stairs and ledges you could fall off to your detriment, sometimes into things like hellslime. I wouldn't personally call it "platforming", but that's what I assumed they meant.

But to properly answer your question: because it was genuinely revolutionary for its time, and it has survived this long despite being such an outdated gaming engine by having a very healthy modding scene.

DOOM wasn't revolutionary in a player-facing way, exactly - there were FPS games prior to DOOM, and even ones with 3D environments - after a fashion, anyway. Ultima Underworld, for example. What it did do was put everything together and do them better than anyone else at the time. Sometimes that's enough.

Behind the scenes Carmack did some impressive work to get it running on the hardware of the era, though.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

Lol@ zoomers comparing Doom to modern day fps. "Muh I played it today and doesn't feel that great".

Nigger, you forget that for the time, Doom was the best at the time.
* Doom wasn't a technical marvel, which means computers wouldn't struggle to run it. Most 'technical marvels' you nostalgia about ran at 3FPS on 90% of machines, if at all.
* Didn't look amazing either, but amazing looking games back then didn't even run on 90% of the computer. Either the directx was out of date, or the driver was wonky, and that's if it's not one of the 30% of the PCs that crash trying to run it fnr.
* Console exclusivity was a big ass hassle too. Few people had a console, fewer people were in a shop that sold the game, fewer publishers would chose to publish outside of the US, UK, Europe or Japan. And even then, very likely, your local shop didn't have a physical copy of the game. Most likely it wrestled with a shitty unconfigurable control scheme that could not be rebinded.

So yeah, playing a game NOW on your PS emulator at constant 30fps without crashing and rebinding the controls, yea that game feels great. But at the time, it didn't.

 

[whogoesthere]

* Didn't look amazing either, but amazing looking games back then didn't even run on 90% of the computer. Either the directx was out of date, or the driver was wonky, and that's if it's not one of the 30% of the PCs that crash trying to run it fnr.

Also on PC, not everyone had a graphics card. And even if they did, it was a mess with voodoo and others not working well with some games whilst other cards did. Doom was the game pretty much anyone could play, so it was always the talk of the playground as everyone likely played it. I remember Hexan being a real bitch to play, and the first Rainbow Six which could run without a GFX but only at about 0.5 fps.