Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Nobody left to actually stay on topic.

Im fresh out of unpopular gaming opinions. I cant think of a worse, actually gaming related opinion I have than "I like being sniped from things completely outside of my field of view with no warning" (Which I already posted several pages ago)

I think I know what your favorite Return to Castle Wolfenstein level is. It's the Forest Compound level. Fuck that level.

 

[Señora Airi]

Omori is popular, but really, I thought it was middle school emo grade.

Blame troons and video game essayists who love the "quirky game is ackshually a metaphor for depression" shit.

Most sports games are awful but they're fun with people you know.

My problem with modern sports games is that they often end up being the same game year after year with roster changes being the only big difference.

The other thing with sports games is that they somehow stripped, neglected and broke the single-player Franchise modes that were much more robust two decades ago.

Part of it seems to be their sociopathic shift to Ultimate Team modes, lootboxes and microtransactions.

My mind was blown when I picked up the next gen at the time XB1 version of an EA game at the same time as friends picked up the 360 version.

The current gen one looked amazing, but the single player Franchise mode didn't have a fucking draft, nor could the AI offer trades.

The other problem is all the zoomers buying it for "content" streaming, and boomers buying the games cause that's the only football video game they know. Between that and most "gamers" often saying that "sports games are not worth my time. If I wanted sports, I'd go outside", hardly anyone outside of a handful of people really call out the absolute greed. SoftdrinkTV is a good channel for more knowledge.

 

[el bandito loco]

I've been playing at least 2/3 games of NFL Blitz a week for over 20 years. Sports games suck now, the single player is nonexistent and just drop in and play arcade modes don't exist. That's wack.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Pokemon contests? Pokeblocks? secret bases? that shit is gay and useless.

It's the worst kind of filler trash there is.

The Gamecube is underrated and over-hated.

It really is, it should objectively rank right behind SNES.

Really? Last I checked, people loved the Wii, during its time, and the Wii U was compared to it unfavorably as the latter didn't capture the same success the Wii did. The Wii U was the console that got shafted since it had potential, but Nintendo tossed it aside for the Switch.

People soured on Wii and it was always divisive among core gamers. Wii U was received worse and will be remembered as the carcass picked clean by Switch.

consoles like the gamecube would have caused any normal company to go under, nintendo's cult protects them from such failures

It did poorly but I doubt they lost money. Wii U probably did actually lose money.

I actually didn't think highly of PS2's RPGs at all.

It was quantity over quality, but it definitely had its share of good stuff. PS1, SNES, & PS2 come to mind for the genre, and think I'd pretty much order them that way, personally.

 

[el bandito loco]

PS1 is hands down my favorite system. The best JRPGs of all time are mostly on it and it was the wild west of 3D games. The library is filled with weird shit. For every survival horror game on it, you have a point and click or light gun game. It was made in that edgy period of the 90s so every other game has a numetal call you a faggot aesthetic it owned. Twisted Metal 2 alone is hands down better than any game on the Saturn or 64. add Symphony of the Night & Spyro 2 and every other console and it's respective games are chumps, that's before mentioning FF7 or Xenogears, Silent Hill, etc ps1 is still unmatched in library

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

PS1 is hands down my favorite system. The best JRPGs of all time are mostly on it and it was the wild west of 3D games. The library is filled with weird shit. For every survival horror game on it, you have a point and click or light gun game. It was made in that edgy period of the 90s so every other game has a numetal call you a faggot aesthetic it owned. Twisted Metal 2 alone is hands down better than any game on the Saturn or 64. add Symphony of the Night & Spyro 2 and every other console and it's respective games are chumps, that's before mentioning FF7 or Xenogears, Silent Hill, etc ps1 is still unmatched in library

The PS1 library is one of the few systems with an insane quality and quantity of games, usually it's one or the other. I may have more absolute favorites on other consoles, but the sheer volume of excellent games is just unmatched.

The only way it loses out for me is if I get granular and pick it apart. My favorite JRPG is on Chrono Trigger (SNES), favorite horror game is Resident Evil 0 (GC), favorite adventure game/visual novel is Hotel Dusk (DS), etc, I'm not sure any of my absolute favorites in any genre or franchise is there, but if I were to make a top 10 for them then PS1 would probably be overrepresented.

 

[The Hardest R]

The PS1 is definitely where the Grorious Nippon peaked in terms of software content. The 32 bit system, basic 3D, and ease of programming allowed a ton of ideas to be explored. Sega’s instability and difficulty of programming on the Saturn and Nintendo’s retardation with the Nintendo 64 basically gave them no choice but to stick with the PlayStation. The Saturn had a much better sound chip and stronger 2D capabilities, though so there’s a number of classics on there as well. It’s easy to shit on the Nintendo 64 but I’d be lying if I didn’t have a lot of fun there either. As a kid at the time, a lot of good games came and went. I’m disappointed that Sony stopped selling much of their PS1 library online. They have some of it there but there is a large amount of good stuff I won’t be able to experience unless I pirate it.

 

[el bandito loco]

@SSj_Ness I agree, my very favorite games aren't on it, but it did have every genre represented with good to great titles. also I think the controller was the best one of the era. adding handles/grips to the snes pad was simple genius and once we got the analog controller and after that the dual shock it was game over for the competition.

@The Hardest R you're right I think the biggest thing the psx had going for it over that 64 was CDs were capable of so much more space for games and music than a cartridge (although 64 was a better multiplayer system) and it kicked segas ass because the Saturn from what I understand was difficult as fuck to program games for. the good games on both are probably better than most of the PlayStations alternatives (panzer dragoon, house of the dead, Mario 64, ocarina/majora) but the PlayStation had hundreds of great games over a single hundred great games for the other systems.

 

[instant]

I think I know what your favorite Return to Castle Wolfenstein level is. It's the Forest Compound level. Fuck that level.

This is the best marketing I've ever heard for the old wolfenstein games. Guess I know what Im playing on my next dry spell.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

If it's got good first-party games, nobody cares.

You say a lot of stupid shit, but this might be the absolute dumbest thing you've said and history has proven you wrong in *every* example for 30 fucking years.

 

[The Ugly One]

One reason that stands out, is the sunken cost fallacy in regards to the amount of time and money people spent on game (namely online ones, given that if the servers go down, the game is unplayable for the most part, private servers aside), because the said game is a very niche one (DOTA 2 fans come to mind, because of the superiority complex that some people have, that DOTA is the ONLY game they play), or because a game is virtually the ONLY game title in it's genre. (The Sims series comes to mind, and former TS4 Dev Grant Rodiek said something along the lines of this, saying that "There won't be a Sims 5, if Sims 4 fails", as a response to TS4 being extremely barebones on launch.)

The increasing pushes to make games into Live Services, with planned obsolescence, does not help matters either.

People need standard to rally under and throw pointy sticks at the enemy. For some, it's sports teams, and for others, it's a video game publisher.

@The Hardest R you're right I think the biggest thing the psx had going for it over that 64 was CDs were capable of so much more space for games and music than a cartridge (although 64 was a better multiplayer system) and it kicked segas ass because the Saturn from what I understand was difficult as fuck to program games for.

What Nintendo completely missed with CDs was how they fundamentally changed the economics of publishing games. The marginal cost of each additional CD printed was a dollar or two, while the cost of a cartridge was $15-$40. What this means with CDs is that you can do additional print runs if the first sells out and drop the price if it sells well...maybe go as low as $9.99, it's all gravy. With N64 games, you can't do that, you're losing money if you're below the cost of production. So f your game sells 100k units on PS1 and breaks even, you order up an additional 50k and cut the price to $19.99. If you sell through those, it's $500k+ of profit for you. Versus on N64, if you sell 100k and break even, you're done. This resulted in the double whammy of it being hard to make money on the N64 and there being fewer games on the shelves, making it overall less attractive to buyers.

 

[el bandito loco]

What Nintendo completely missed with CDs was how they fundamentally changed the economics of publishing games. The marginal cost of each additional CD printed was a dollar or two, while the cost of a cartridge was $15-$40. What this means with CDs is that you can do additional print runs if the first sells out and drop the price if it sells well...maybe go as low as $9.99, it's all gravy. With N64 games, you can't do that, you're losing money if you're below the cost of production. So f your game sells 100k units on PS1 and breaks even, you order up an additional 50k and cut the price to $19.99. If you sell through those, it's $500k+ of profit for you. Versus on N64, if you sell 100k and break even, you're done. This resulted in the double whammy of it being hard to make money on the N64 and there being fewer games on the shelves, making it overall less attractive to buyers.

that makes a lot of sense. I do remember at the time PlayStation games (greatest hits or not) were way cheaper. there was a mom & pop video game and toy store by where we lived when I was real little and my dad would take $100 and buy like 10 games at a time for me him & my brother. whereas n64 we'd get one for each of us on like holidays or something.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

You say a lot of stupid shit, but this might be the absolute dumbest thing you've said and history has proven you wrong in *every* example for 30 fucking years.

Except the Nintendo Switch practically proves you wrong.

It utterly sucks at playing modern third-party games, just look at its port for MK1.

Yet its first-party games are what's making the bread for that console, and why it's basically crushing the competition, despite being an outdated toaster with a gimmick when compared to said competition.

You're not every person in the world, and lots of people disliked the Gamecube for exactly the reasons I listed. So the problem isn't so much that you don't understand why the Gamecube was widely disliked, you've been told, and you simply refuse to believe anyone actually thought the things that have been said over and over continuously in the 23 years since the system launched. The fact that you claimed PS2 exclusives are all JRPGs suggest you've been nursing nuclear levels of denial for two decades, which is pathetic. Nintendo is a corporation, it doesn't love you, and a game console is just a toy, not part of your personality.

I didn't say PS2 exclusives were all JRPGs. It's just that a lot of JRPGs came out on the PS2. That, and many people liked the exclusives for the Gamecube, which is a trend that continued up to today with the Switch; the Switch UTTERLY SUCKS at playing third-party games coming out now, but its exclusives are what's carrying it, just as the exclusives for the Gamecube were tons of fun to play.

The fact that a console is carrying itself today mostly on first-party exclusives while barely giving a shit about third-party goes to show that first-party exclusives are the reason why people buy your console. Halo sold the Xbox to people. MGS4 sold the PS3. Because at the end, people can always play third-party games on a PC. They can do that better, since third-party games on a PC are moddable. Sure, there's people who played Battlefront or Skyrim on a console, but most people who do play those games nowadays play it on PC so they can mod it to hell and add all sorts of things.

I agree that a console is a toy. Which means that games exclusive to it are what allows it to live aside from being a poor man's PC that gets replaced once a man gets a decent rig. Third-party games are nice, but first-party games are vital to any console's life cycle.

 

[The Hardest R]

@SSj_Ness I agree, my very favorite games aren't on it, but it did have every genre represented with good to great titles. also I think the controller was the best one of the era. adding handles/grips to the snes pad was simple genius and once we got the analog controller and after that the dual shock it was game over for the competition.

@The Hardest R you're right I think the biggest thing the psx had going for it over that 64 was CDs were capable of so much more space for games and music than a cartridge (although 64 was a better multiplayer system) and it kicked segas ass because the Saturn from what I understand was difficult as fuck to program games for. the good games on both are probably better than most of the PlayStations alternatives (panzer dragoon, house of the dead, Mario 64, ocarina/majora) but the PlayStation had hundreds of great games over a single hundred great games for the other systems.

There are some good write ups online about it but Sega made numerous mistakes with the Saturn that made it challenging to meaningfully compete with the PlayStation but from 1995-1997, the Japanese Saturn lineup was pretty decent and any Saturn versions often had much better sound over PlayStation and if it was in 2D, it was a guarantee it was better on the Saturn.

that makes a lot of sense. I do remember at the time PlayStation games (greatest hits or not) were way cheaper. there was a mom & pop video game and toy store by where we lived when I was real little and my dad would take $100 and buy like 10 games at a time for me him & my brother. whereas n64 we'd get one for each of us on like holidays or something.

There were a lot of games that saw most of its success when they made the Greatest Hits at $19.99. Minimum wage was $5.15 at the time if I recall so some teenager working a weekend job can afford getting one of those games a weekend if they wanted and didn’t have much to lose if they thought it sucked. If I recall, an N64 Player’s Choice game was $39.99, which is still 1/3 off full retail price but the dirt cheap PlayStation games was a big deal back then.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

I had N64 and Playstation and it was basically I'd get whatever big Nintendo game was out on Christmas or my birthday, but with Playstation I was getting new shit every other week.

I remember there being a premium on multi disk JRPG's, but otherwise PS1 games were never more than like 40 dollars it felt like.

 

[Pissmaster]

Nintendo Switch is a 9th generation console. Wikipedia is wrong. It doesn't really make sense for an 8th-gen console to perpetually trounce the hell out of the 9th gen consoles years and years into their lives. And the Wii U still had a lifespan on par with how long SNES, N64, and Gamecube were current.

I had N64 and Playstation and it was basically I'd get whatever big Nintendo game was out on Christmas or my birthday, but with Playstation I was getting new shit every other week.

I remember there being a premium on multi disk JRPG's, but otherwise PS1 games were never more than like 40 dollars it felt like.

I remember them being $50, but I think it topped out there. I know there was always a lot of variety in the $20 bin. The SNES & N64 bargain bins tended to be full of crappy fighting and sports games, i.e. stuff that they couldn't give away.

 

[Calandrino]

Nintendo Switch is a 9th generation console. Wikipedia is wrong. It doesn't really make sense for an 8th-gen console to perpetually trounce the hell out of the 9th gen consoles years and years into their lives. And the Wii U still had a lifespan on par with how long SNES, N64, and Gamecube were current.

Sorry grandpa, Switch is retro. It came out a couple months after Trump was sworn in. Kids born the day it came out are in grade school. Its release date is closer to gamergate than it is to now.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

I remember them being $50

I mean I'm sure there were games that were 50. Probably big shit like Metal Gear Solid and stuff. Shit my parents probably bought me so I don't remember their price as much.

But by the time I got a PS1 in late 1998, there was so much good shit in the greatest hits category it didn't feel like it for me. It was the first time I was buying my own games and I was only like 8 or 9.

Meanwhile, anything decent on N64 was like 50 to 60 bucks minimum I think. Honestly, I didn't fill out my N64 library till around 2001/2002 when Gamecube launched.

 

[Pissmaster]

I mean I'm sure there were games that were 50. Probably big shit like Metal Gear Solid and stuff. Shit my parents probably bought me so I don't remember their price as much.

But by the time I got a PS1 in late 1998, there was so much good shit in the greatest hits category it didn't feel like it for me. It was the first time I was buying my own games and I was only like 8 or 9.

Meanwhile, anything decent on N64 was like 50 to 60 bucks minimum I think. Honestly, I didn't fill out my N64 library till around 2001/2002 when Gamecube launched.

I remember Squaresoft games being $50. I'm pretty sure Final Fantasy Tactics was, and that was a one-disc game.

As for N64, $50-60 was about right. Here's an ad from Nintendo Power, December 1999 that shows two Player's Choice games for $40. That was what they considered a budget price.


That atomic green N64 bundle isn't a bad deal. It knocks $30 off of the price of Donkey Kong 64 and still comes with the expansion pak.

Thirty bucks for Game Boy games, though, now that's highway robbery for how terrible so many were.

 

[The Hardest R]

PlayStation games initially were $49 but eventually dropped to $39, except for “premium” brands like Squaresoft games. Sony was always aggressive with pricing, first to undercut the Saturn (they dropped the price of PlayStation by $100 to sink the Saturn) and later the Nintendo 64. It’s a long way from the Soyny of today who now started introducing a $69 standard price for PS5 “experiences.”