Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Judge Dredd]

I don't know about MCC or MW, but Titanfall 2 had a good system where you chose what modes you likes and it would matchmake you into those modes. It stopped (or at least drastically slowed) modes other than team deathmatch being a wasteland.

Though ultimately I think if I had to choose, I'd go server browser. With the caveat of their being vanilla servers available.

 

[The Last Stand]

I don't know about MCC or MW, but Titanfall 2 had a good system where you chose what modes you likes and it would matchmake you into those modes. It stopped (or at least drastically slowed) modes other than team deathmatch being a wasteland.

Though ultimately I think if I had to choose, I'd go server browser. With the caveat of their being vanilla servers available.

I forgot about Titanfall 2. I should revisit that game. I wish EA gave Titanfall another chance beyond Apex Legends.

 

[popnloch ness monster]

Sleeping Dogs is not underrated

 

[Tenshi Eating A Corn Dog!]

Dragon's Dogma is massively over-rated and an outright bad game with some good ideas.
The combat is pretty good (for some vocations and not counting the really janky climbing system) but the progression is so terrible that basically no matter what you'll have to play something you don't like to get at the very least augments you want for your main vocation.
Not having control over your stat growth is dumb, but the stats are also so simple that it works on Super Mario RPG tier maths. You can argue that they don't matter much due to items, but the better stats you have the less you have to carry to shore up bad stats. On top of that not all stats are equal. Defense stats besides health are nowhere near as good as damage stats and the really important one is stamina. Running out of stamina is ass and stamina items are less plentiful than healing items.
Gear could be interesting, but there're no different movesets and gear is 99% number go up rather than adding cool effects. Even the rings that change how skills work just make them "skill but bigger number or more". Also, BBI gear is so broken that even lvl 2 gear makes the game a joke versus almost every enemy including most BBI enemies. It actually makes the combat worse because it becomes spamming a single skill and winning against even boss monsters in seconds (except the two worst bosses in the game; Death and Daimon Form 2).
Skills are incredibly unbalanced and vocations tend to be narrow with the only exceptions being the hybrid vocations. It's not even just that certain skills are just numerically better, but a lot of the bad skills are also really lame and / or niche. Some even get worse when upgraded. Most of the basic and advanced vocations will equip the exact same skills and augments every playthrough.
Pawns are dumb. Really fucking dumb. They suffer the exact same thing of you will build them one way but even worse because they don't get access to hybrid vocations that could actually have some variety. Not that it matters because the only way to build a good pawn is to equip them with the most brain dead skills. Most of the inclinations you can give them will also lobotomize them even more somehow.
The game world is whatever. Its highest point is equivalent to a large chalice dungeon from Bloodborne. The open world is churning through hordes of non-threatening trash mobs that will outright respawn in the air infront of you for hours. It isn't even pretty enough to at least admire the scenery while you walk around. Enemies are really samey and I feel like there needed to be less variants of monsters that are just "monster but stronger / different damage and status effects" and more things like Saurians with different weapon types. At least they tend to get one different move.
The quests are whatever. They're usually excuses to fight enemies which is what they should be. When they're not or especially when they're time wasters (that quest where you get taken on a run back to the bridge near the starting area just to go back to Gran Soren comes to mind) they're awful and actually make me mad. Quite a few of the mandatory quest bosses really aren't great including the Grigori and the post-game final boss.

TL;DR Dragon's Dogma could've been an okay to good action game but it's bogged down by RPG parts that are so awful they even drag down the one thing the game has going for it.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Dragon's Dogma is massively over-rated and an outright bad game with some good ideas.

Joseph Anderson has a good video on it where he argues it's basically a grind and gear game disguised as a skill game.

 

[The Last Stand]

I wish GTA V did not blow up the way it did. Whether it's Internet culture or the GTA community itself, but it has regressed since then. When people think of GTA, it's now GTA V or San Andreas because of memes. That's not to say there's not good content about GTA V, you have to go through a lot of BS to get there. It's so popular, it's worn out its welcome as its own thing. It attracts the lowest common denominator. It's like having/wanting a PS5 because it's so popular. It's a vanity product at this point.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I wish GTA V did not blow up the way it did. Whether it's Internet culture or the GTA community itself, but it has regressed since then. When people think of GTA, it's now GTA V or San Andreas because of memes. That's not to say there's not good content about GTA V, you have to go through a lot of BS to get there. It's so popular, it's worn out its welcome as its own thing. It attracts the lowest common denominator. It's like having/wanting a PS5 because it's so popular. It's a vanity product at this point.

I want to know what planet you are living on that you ever thought GTA, at any point, was not the normalfag game of all normalfag games. It's in the holy trinity of GTA, COD and Madden.

 

[The Last Stand]

I want to know what planet you are living on that you thought GTA was ever not the normalfag game of all normalfag games.

The planet with no TikTok, no mass clickbait, no microtransactions, circa 2014.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

The planet with no TikTok, no mass clickbait, no microtransactions, circa 2014.

Well, I don't know how old you are but for me I feel like, mentally, GTA was always a big thing? Like it was always something every kid new about and coveted and usually owned. But I also was introduced to GTA through San Andreas - actually, only played it and V, hated V, and I'm proud of both those facts - so I might be an example of that. Was GTA not that big a deal before San Andreas?

 

[The Last Stand]

Well, I don't know how old you are but for me I feel like, mentally, GTA was always a big thing? Like it was always something every kid new about and coveted and usually owned. But I also was introduced to GTA through San Andreas - actually, only played it and V, hated V, and I'm proud of both those facts - so I might be an example of that. Was GTA not that big a deal before San Andreas?

It was, but video games weren't as mainstream compared to now. Of course, you have the rapid expansion of the Internet to think for that. Around 2009, Call of Duty was THE video game to talk about.

 

[Tenshi Eating A Corn Dog!]

Joseph Anderson has a good video on it where he argues it's basically a grind and gear game disguised as a skill game.

He's correct. Did he mention that 90% of gear isn't interesting enough to justify it being that way?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

It was, but video games weren't as mainstream compared to now. Of course, you have the rapid expansion of the Internet to think for that. Around 2009, Call of Duty was THE video game to talk about.

Well, I guess that also depends on what it's mainstream for. Little boys and male teenagers, they all played games. I hear old-timers here talk about people getting bullied for playing games, and I think, what, in the Stone Age? Back on your Amiga Commodore COLOSSUS whatever? The idea sounds so far fetched, I don't doubt it but it's hard for me to imagine.

Girls, on the other hand, did not game. I think there were two things that changed. One was gaming was pitched to them through shitty phone games. And I can remember back to when Internet losers would get really pissed at "casual gaming" and Candy Crush and stuff, for no reason other than spite that other people like different things. That might have been a slow but sure gateway. Women played the phone games, men, not near as much. This was all when smartphones took off, I remember when those were still businessmen's luxuries. Then, I think a lot of the girls got lured in by the men. At the first it was fat chicks, smelly nerds, people like that, but epic gaming got to be so common women had to decide they liked it so they could chase the Chads around. Just like the many women who don't have a genuine interest in male spectator sports, but women tend to adopt (at least in a superficial way) male interests for attention/to bond.

I don't think, remembering back to it, that older adults played games, and younger ones didn't take them real seriously. They were still taboo in a way like toys are for adults. (Or were, who knows with adults watching bullshit like Bluey now.)

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

While playing Greedfall, my least favorite faction is the Natives because they fall into the Noble Savage trope. While they have Ullan being a sneaky fucker and uses you to weaken rival clans, they also make it very clear that he is the exception to their culture and find his actions dishonorable. Meanwhile, every other faction has a sinister side that is quietly endorsed by their governments: Theleme has the Ordo Luminous enacting inquisitions, the Bridge Alliance conducts experimentation on human test subjects, the Nauts' replenish their numbers by making client factions sell their children to them for their services, and the Merchant Princes sell their children to the Nauts. Combined with bland costume design, the Natives are boring, spiritually aware people that the game insists are correct because their god exists.

And all it would have taken to make them interesting--even in a game play sense--is to make Ullan a big threat when you complete his quest line. Once he does business with the Bridge Alliance, his faction has access to firearms, so now Natives have guns and magic. They can then be used as a proxy force for the Alliance and you'd have to fight them in Bridge Alliance quests.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

GTA has been mainstream since GTA III. Even discounting the "games weren't mainstream" back then talk, GTA still became mainstream thanks to Jack Thompson types.

The problem people have with it now isn't that GTA became mainstream, but that the "mainstream" became a horde of late Millennials, Zoomers and Gen Alpha faggots.

 

[The Last Stand]

GTA has been mainstream since GTA III. Even discounting the "games weren't mainstream" back then talk, GTA still became mainstream thanks to Jack Thompson types.

The problem people have with it now isn't that GTA became mainstream, but that the "mainstream" became a horde of late Millennials, Zoomers and Gen Alpha faggots.

GTA became "mainstream" through word of mouth and reactive marketing. Reactive, meaning that DMA knew that its concept would cause hysteria which would have OTHERS do the marketing FOR them. It felt natural. Now, most advertising for games feel forced.

 

[The Ugly One]

Dragon's Dogma is massively over-rated and an outright bad game with some good ideas.

I quit when I found out the sword I needed required harvesting something like 20 large fish, and they randomly spawned in one nearby creek. I went five or six times and found one fish. This game is Exhibit A in why I hate crafting in RPGs.

It was, but video games weren't as mainstream compared to now. Of course, you have the rapid expansion of the Internet to think for that. Around 2009, Call of Duty was THE video game to talk about.

Video games have been a huge business since the late 70s. Maybe not being always online made it seem like they weren't a big deal, but back in my day, we were watching Mario cartoons and eating Zelda cereal on Saturday morning.

 

[Meat Target]

I don't think, remembering back to it, that older adults played games, and younger ones didn't take them real seriously. They were still taboo in a way like toys are for adults. (Or were, who knows with adults watching bullshit like Bluey now.)

IMHO, there's still a stigma of immaturity around video games. It's still seen as something for kids and manchildren, even though it has arguably surpassed the popularity of TV and movies as a medium.

Unpopular opinion tax: there's nothing wrong with reusing assets or engines. Complaining about that is like complaining that an author didn't type their novel on a word processor they developed from scratch, instead of using Microsoft Word.

 

[The Last Stand]

Video games have been a huge business since the late 70s. Maybe not being always online made it seem like they weren't a big deal, but back in my day, we were watching Mario cartoons and eating Zelda cereal on Saturday morning.

I'm using the term "mainstream" euphemistically. Viral marketing. Let me try to find a comparison to illustrate what I mean.

MW2:

Notice how this trailer uses celebrity endorsement while keeping into video game culture that made MW2 beloved. Hell, the title is an obvious acronym for an homophobic slur that is often used as an insult in comms. And this was for multiplayer.

MWII:

Notice the high productive values indirectly advertising 21 Savage as an purchasable operator for MWII. NO GAMEPLAY. No premise of what to expect from MWII as a video game. "Squad up" is an overused term from social media. It's basically, "how do you do, fellow kids?"

 

[The Ugly One]

I guess what is different now is that about 2010 is when the first adults who were raised on video games became mature professionals. Think about it. If you got an NES in 1986, then in 2010, you'd be in your thirties, which is right about the age of lower-tier decision makers in marketing. So now, the adult professional world is full of people who know video games, when that wasn't true in the 1990s.

 

[The Last Stand]

I guess what is different now is that about 2010 is when the first adults who were raised on video games became mature professionals. Think about it. If you got an NES in 1986, then in 2010, you'd be in your thirties, which is right about the age of lower-tier decision makers in marketing. So now, the adult professional world is full of people who know video games, when that wasn't true in the 1990s.

Video games matured AS their initial audience matured. Even so, video games proved that various audiences can enjoy the hobby. Same applies to cartoons.