Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Scarthew]

On a visceral level, I do not understand why games like this cannot be made anymore.

If you mean old school survival horror games signalis or tormented souls might be up your alley

 

[Judge Dredd]

Personally I strongly disagree with this idea of simply taking a past dollar price, applying some official inflation statistics onto it, and then arguing that it is converted to "today's price"

Yes, but also no.

The simple fact of the matter is that games were bought, played, and experienced differently back then.

Games weren't "dead" simply because 3 months went by without a major content update. Buying games full price on release day was a rare thing, with most new games being limited to a Christmas or birthday gift. I have fond memories of amassing a huge PS2 collection by going to GAME frequently and taking advantage of their "£8 each, or 3 for £15" type deals. I also have good (and bad) memories of renting games from the local Blockbuster, and I remember people having binders full of pirate PS1 games they never played. And of course, the Xbox 360 was rife with people buying games day 1, and binging it over a long weekend so they can trade it in for maximum store credit.


Not only is there no 1:1 comparison with that stuff, but it takes a while to explain, and shoots down the picture nostalgia tards like to paint of the good old days being a string of classic after classic.

So I'm playing PS1 Parasite Eve.

On a visceral level, I do not understand why games like this cannot be made anymore. It is pretty for its time, interesting, self-contained, and experimental, while not being too much of a slog gameplay wise.

I will also say that to my memory, the best classic Resident Evil game is actually Parasite Eve 2. I will have to see if my memory holds up.

Parasite Eve 2 was shit on at release for not being scary, for playing weirdly, and generally being a bad Resident Evil clone. But to me it was always a classic. I think reviewers and players of the time tried to play it as a Resident Evil game, and not an action RPG. It's also not helped by PE1 not getting a PAL release.

I should also add, play the NTSC version if emulating. The PAL version is extremely slow, so backtracking or multiple playthrough eventually become painful as Aya plods along like a crate of bricks. However, certain other elements, like escaping grapples without injury, are far easier in PAL.


I also recommend the best game on PS1, Dino Crisis 2. That's another game that looks like Resi, but is actually a different genre. We never got a true sequel to it, unfortunately.

I should also mention Parasite Eve 3: The Third Birthday on PSP. I didn't finish it, and it's not a good game, but it's hardly the train wreck reviews at the time said it was. Maybe it gets worse?

 

[X Prime]

Maybe it gets worse?

It turned out poor Aya was refreshingly vulnerable to the FF13 writer.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Hatred is a really bitching game
Light-hearted fun

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Comparing games prices across decades is a fools errand, especially modern prices vs those in the 90s.

BAck then, gaming was a lot of people's only source of media entertainment, that and the four channels on terrestrial TV. So £30 back then might be £70 now, but it isn't, not really.

No-one as spending money on phones, phone plans (fuck you BT), netflix, hulu, PSN+, Gamepass, amazon etc etc. Your income was more free to be spent on non-retard tax

 

[Rololowlo]

I played The 3rd Birthday a few years back and found it very good, whereas the one who mentions it has to tiptoe around it with "it's not as bad as everyone says".

Cases like this makes me glad I don't follow gaming news, people pile on games -or praise them- seemingly entirely at random and I can't count the number of times I had a great time with hated games... including a few worst-game-ever™.

Some of these were coop games (Colonial Marines, Sacred 3) so it was funny to wait until the credits to tell my wife we had just played the worst game ever.

And more on topic, unless one is dead allergic to either the Parasite Eve lore or really bummed out that it's a spin-off instead of a true follow-up (see also: Dino Stalker), I have no idea how one can play a game as good as The 3rd Birthday and find it an uphill battle to recommend it.

 

[Scarthew]

Games weren't "dead" simply because 3 months went by without a major content update.

"dead game" says the steam post on the game with 30k active players and a lobby is full at 4-10 players meaning you're ever waiting to play ever.

 

[TheHarbinger]

Games weren't "dead" simply because 3 months went by without a major content update.

Not true for many arcade games. Fighting games would get updates once a year or sometimes twice a year. There were ways to patch the rom in your cabinet or swap out the CD or DVD in some games to offer balance or gameplay updates. Street Fighter II would get five arcade versions in four years. Then another version for its 10th anniversary for arcades. And those updates generally required the purchasing or a new board and sometimes a new full cabinet depending on what region you were in for distribution. So from 1991 to 1994 if your arcade wanted the latest version of SFII you'd need to purchase five versions of the game.

And lots of PC games would get bonus content every couple of months. Then when the game was finally done you'd get the 'Game of the Year' version or some collection where everything would be on one or two discs. If there was no GOTY edition then sometimes that content would be very difficult to find before places like the internet archive or rom sites started collecting them.

 

[The Hardest R]

Is Blue Stinger bad? I hear mixed things about it but I've always thought it seemed pretty cool.

It was alright. The big selling point is that it was a holdover until Resident Evil Code Veronica came out the following year. Plus it did not have the PS1-era tank controls.

Buying games full price on release day was a rare thing, with most new games being limited to a Christmas or birthday gift.

I generally agree. My last post talked about pawn shops but garage sales and flea markets were popular too. Plus borrowing from friends. Now these days you have people who buy Skyrim multiple times. Part of it is social pressure too - it was less cool to have a big library of games than now. Growing up I was limited to playing a few hours on the weekends and holidays and that was it. Getting a couple games a year was basically all that I could pull off. Every family is different but my time with the “Intendo” was very limited.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Star Fox Adventures and Assault were unfairly maligned and were great games for their time. Adventures was a great Rare-3D adventure/puzzle game, and Assault was a wonderful shooter/flight game that I'd rate is as good as Rebel Strike.

The simple fact of the matter is that games were bought, played, and experienced differently back then.

That was because back then, games were released complete 90 percent of the time, and most downloadable content is just add-ons.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I will also say that to my memory, the best classic Resident Evil game is actually Parasite Eve 2. I will have to see if my memory holds up.

It holds up incredibly well until you reach the underground lab. I got stuck and never went back.

Not to be a boomer or anything; but if you like videogames to a decent degree, the 1990's were a fucking magical time with all the shit that was being made.

Gaming was at it's best in the 90's. Late 80's-early 00's has unmatched output compared to any other period.

Star Fox Adventures and Assault were unfairly maligned and were great games for their time.

SFA is still the best Zelda clone, better than a bunch of actual Zelda games.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Gaming was at it's best in the 90's. Late 80's-early 00's has unmatched output compared to any other period.

To me, gaming's period of growth came from the 80s to the early 2010s. 2013 was the last year I saw games that innovated. Everything else has been just an HD copy of things that came before.

 

[Scarthew]

Is Blue Stinger bad? I hear mixed things about it but I've always thought it seemed pretty cool.

play illbleed instead.

Gaming was at it's best in the 90's. Late 80's-early 00's has unmatched output compared to any other period.

1996-2006 best decade. The entire n64/ps2 life spans. That excludes the SNES though except really late games like DKC3.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

I played The 3rd Birthday a few years back and found it very good, whereas the one who mentions it has to tiptoe around it with "it's not as bad as everyone says".

Cases like this makes me glad I don't follow gaming news, people pile on games -or praise them- seemingly entirely at random and I can't count the number of times I had a great time with hated games... including a few worst-game-ever™.

Some of these were coop games (Colonial Marines, Sacred 3) so it was funny to wait until the credits to tell my wife we had just played the worst game ever.

And more on topic, unless one is dead allergic to either the Parasite Eve lore or really bummed out that it's a spin-off instead of a true follow-up (see also: Dino Stalker), I have no idea how one can play a game as good as The 3rd Birthday and find it an uphill battle to recommend it.

It's very much a Tetsuya Nomura game, far more extreme in his personal tism than the Final Fantasy VII Remake or FF XIII. The handling is superb as a bullet dodger, the waifu design is the best thing about it (I wish women dressed like that now), but the story involves time travel and is super confusing. Voice acting was really shit too. I had no idea Yvonne Strahovski was in it until I looked it up because the ADR direction was so weak, so she had no idea how to play the character.

 

[SIMIΔN]

Baldur's Gate 1 was boring and reliant on Cheese to win. People who try to play it after BG3 are wasting their time.

BG2 is almost as outdated graphically, but makes up for it with the epic story and diversity of encounters.

 

[God of Nothing]

Baldur's Gate 1 was boring and reliant on Cheese to win. People who try to play it after BG3 are wasting their time.

BG2 is almost as outdated graphically, but makes up for it with the epic story and diversity of encounters.

unpopular and wrong
on all three accounts

It has been a long time since I've played a conventional run of the Baldur's Gate Trilogy. I prefer soloing it to be honest. Less micromanaging, a better feeling of progression, and I feel like I have the biggest penis when I reach the end. Feels good, man.

 

[X Prime]

It has been a long time since I've played a conventional run of the Baldur's Gate Trilogy. I prefer soloing it to be honest. Less micromanaging, a better feeling of progression, and I feel like I have the biggest penis when I reach the end. Feels good, man.

The best is when you get a couple people to co-op it that way.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

To me, gaming's period of growth came from the 80s to the early 2010s. 2013 was the last year I saw games that innovated. Everything else has been just an HD copy of things that came before.

That's a more gracious period than I'd grant, the early 80's doesn't have much at all, but I suppose mid 80's could be argued. 2010s...well, at least as far as AAA, I'd disagree. There's fleetingly few PS4 gen games I'd consider great, and I'm not sure there's even one masterpiece among them all (Nintendo aside). Plenty of 6/10 stuff.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I have no idea how one can play a game as good as The 3rd Birthday and find it an uphill battle to recommend it.

It was one of, if not the first game to be docked points by the games press for woke reasons.

And yes, that is a troon reviewing the game. They'd go on to work with Anita Sarkeesian.

I didn't play it until years later. I had to switch it to easy mainly because the enemies are such bullet sponges that it gets tedious. The story makes no sense. And character switching is a mechanic that has never really worked for me. I don't like RE0 for that reason. And since the game wasn't good enough to keep me interested to completion, it's one that I can't really recommend.

But on the other hand, I have a really low bar when it comes to game quality. I enjoyed other "bad games" like Legendary or Wolfenstien 2008.

It holds up incredibly well until you reach the underground lab. I got stuck and never went back.

Really? For me, one of the big hurdles that makes me give up on a playthrough are when you first arrive in town as it's full of tedious puzzles and back tracking. Turning the car on the lift, getting the bottlecap out of the vent, going into every bloody hotel room to shoot at those little monsters that pop.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Really? For me, one of the big hurdles that makes me give up on a playthrough are when you first arrive in town as it's full of tedious puzzles and back tracking. Turning the car on the lift, getting the bottlecap out of the vent, going into every bloody hotel room to shoot at those little monsters that pop.

The exploration is fun and the mood is great. I guess it's more of a vibe thing. I like the environment and set pieces, the hotel is cool and I like the giant enemy that attacks it. It's some memorable stuff imo.

Mechanically it may not be solid, pacing might need work, it's been a while but I can believe there's issues. I just think it's one of those games that is good in spite of its flaws (except the lab!).