Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[The Last Stand]

No a fetch quest would be returning things. This is climbing a playground and getting rewarded for reaching certain spots.

Collect BANJO to unlock this level. That's "returning" something.

 

[starborn427614]

No a fetch quest would be returning things. This is climbing a playground and getting rewarded for reaching certain spots.

The best collectathons take you on a tour of their levels.

 

[Dynamite Bean]

Half Life 1 is better than 2 and all it's episodes in everyway, gameplay feels more fun to go through, no shitty vehicle sections(unless you count on a rail which isn't that bad) black mesa and New Mexico is a far more interesting setting than 2's generic dystopia in eastern europe, both have equally good atmosphere, better music and funner weapons, and I just find the campy action thriller tone a more fitting theme for the series than 2 trying to go uber serious with everything
Xen is ass but if you know what you're doing it's over before you know it

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

Half Life 1 is better than 2 and all it's episodes in everyway, gameplay feels more fun to go through

I think both games have combat that's mediocre at best, but it's far easier to handwave the shortcomings of a first game from a new developer in 1998 than a big-budget, highly-anticipated game in 2004.

 

[Megaton Punch]

When it comes to RTS I don't think it was just Esports that killed it, to me it's that the rise of accessible information made it so that players would know the optimal strategies and with that they all stopped feeling like games you dicked around with and more like work. I never memorized build orders in Starcraft or Warcraft 3, I just did what made sense to me as a player. That changed time with Starcraft 2, Starcraft 2 it felt like even newbie casuals were expected to be at the top of their game.

MOBAs didn't usurp the genre just because they're far more easy on a ground level. MOBAs have a shitload of complicated variables, variables that make it so there's not a simple streamlined process. There's no two games of DOTA2 that are likely to play out the same way.

The day I started theorycrafting was the day I permanently ruined the entire RTS genre for myself. As a kid I was happy with upgrading everything, making the coolest units, etc. As an adult, I involuntarily start running basic calculations regarding unit efficiency and resources per minute and all that autistic shit and it completely sucks the fun out of the game even though it's the "correct" way to play and is the only way not to get instantly destroyed in PVP. In most RTS games it's painfully obvious that there is exactly one correct route to take every single game, so once you've played one you've played them all.

I think pretty much anyone over a certain age can relate. And I don't think it's a coincidence that as the average age of a gamer goes up, the genre sinks even further into the Swamps of Sadness, never to be seen again.

 

[Judge Dredd]

It goes hand in hand with retards talking about how people "optimise the fun out of games" despite the article they're cribbing from

I didn't know there was an article that started that discussion. Got a link? I'd like to read it sometime.

There's so many articles and videos that have done harm to game development. I've ranted about how the "how do they eat" video killed Bethesda games, but it's true. They're focusing on getting rid of memeable flaws that making a fun core game doesn't matter any more.

I've grown tired of blaming management/executives for the state of game quality (which they are at fault with in a lot of cases). The real issue is that the gaming industry is rife with so much blatant incompetency and then we're suppose to feel bad for these literal retards getting canned. The only sympathy I have is for the few remaining competent whites and asians getting fired while the token DEI hires that do jack shit and avoid the layoffs because they're too valuable.

Destiny is the best example. People kept blaming Activision, but from everything we saw Activision game Bungie a lot of leeway, far more than is reasonable. When Bungie announced they were going independent, I was mocked for saying it wouldn't fix the game. Destiny 2 has gone into maintenance mode and it's still a mess.

The Kickstarter era of games really showed how much of a lie the whole "our games are rushed and mediocre because of evil publishers!" thing was. Most of the games churned out from Kickstarter funding ended up being just as rushed and as mediocre as publisher-backed games were. Obsidian in particular were a hilarious example, whining about the evils of publishers and how they were the bane of all developers when they were begging for funds on Kickstarter and later Fig, then a few years later bending over for Microsoft and telling us how great it was.

Now we have the other lie that it's impossible to make a game on a Kickstarter budget because so many Kickstarter games wasted their money. Double Fine Adventure made well over their goal and they still had to split the game in two.

Console hardware figures are faked, as are MAU numbers on the majority of games. The whole industry is seeing a massive contraction but you're told not to believe your lying eyes and that the piss dribbling down your back is really rain.
Numbers are bloated and inflated to keep the industry looking healthy. People go along with it under the believe that the industry is getting more and more popular and more players join every generation, it's a lie. 150 million PS2's sold, 150 million Wii's sold, 150 million Switch consoles sold, 150 millions PS360s were sold.

The last part I disagree with but agreed on the whole. You don't have to look far for proof. Claims like "The fastest selling game" make no sense. People assume that means it sold a lot, but it doesn't. It means it sold "fast", whatever that means. It's like how films now count the "opening weekend" as Wednsday-Monday. Or how many journos and fanboys don't know the difference between profit and revenue.

The day I started theorycrafting was the day I permanently ruined the entire RTS genre for myself. As a kid I was happy with upgrading everything, making the coolest units, etc. As an adult, I involuntarily start running basic calculations regarding unit efficiency and resources per minute and all that autistic shit and it completely sucks the fun out of the game even though it's the "correct" way to play and is the only way not to get instantly destroyed in PVP. In most RTS games it's painfully obvious that there is exactly one correct route to take every single game, so once you've played one you've played them all.

I remember playing Supreme Commander competitive with a friend, and while I was trying to build a base, an army of cool tanks, my friend just charged his commander into the middle of my base and killed himself, setting off a nuke and resulting in a technical win for him. Second match he just rushed early game artillery because unless you rush defenses for it you're screwed.

The fantasy of Supreme Commander is this

But the end result in the few games I played was a rush with dozen early game units because that's the meta.


I've also had people get mad at me when I pointed out that playing casual co-op games like Payday 2 as these sweaty competitive skill tests was dumb. It's a game that's meant to recreate the feeling of 90s heist movies like Heat. Not a game where you play the meta to prove your 1337 gamer skillzz or grind Diamond Heist 20 times in a row because it's the fastest way to level up.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

I didn't know there was an article that started that discussion. Got a link? I'd like to read it sometime.

I think it's this one.

I really believe the root problem is the Internet and the fact that all of this information is already compiled and distributed across the world by a crack team of terminal autists two hours after a game launches.

The slow process of discovering optimizations used to be a central part of playing the game - no wonder games all feel so boring and tedious when most players aren't discovering anything and skip right to performing a rote optimal strategy laid out in a guide.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

The last part I disagree with but agreed on the whole. You don't have to look far for proof. Claims like "The fastest selling game" make no sense. People assume that means it sold a lot, but it doesn't. It means it sold "fast", whatever that means. It's like how films now count the "opening weekend" as Wednsday-Monday. Or how many journos and fanboys don't know the difference between profit and revenue.

This bit always make me laugh. "Sony revenue jumped 45% this year!! amaizng Zomg!!", yet they sold less hardware and fewer games. They never ask about profit and companies never show profit, so revenue becomes pointless.

Then again, journoscum are paid off by companies to hype shit, they're a marketing department on retainer and the fanboys are marketing bots and fake. Fanboys don't exist anymore because there's nothing to be a fan of.

There are no more people buying consoles today than there were in 1999. 150 million +/- 10 million handheld consoles sell, and the same for traditional consoles. There's overlap, for sure, like how everyone apparently owned a Wii and a PS360. The numbers never vary that much, yet gaming was a lot less popular in 1999 than 2024. So, what gives?

 

[crowabunga]

I remember playing Supreme Commander competitive with a friend, and while I was trying to build a base, an army of cool tanks, my friend just charged his commander into the middle of my base and killed himself, setting off a nuke and resulting in a technical win for him. Second match he just rushed early game artillery because unless you rush defenses for it you're screwed.

The fantasy of Supreme Commander is this
But the end result in the few games I played was a rush with dozen early game units because that's the meta.

SC and SC:FA pissed me off, and still piss me off, because of this. You have the dogshit lobotomite skirmish AI, or you have real players.

The former lets you play out the fantasy but gets old quick, the latter is a tightrope of pain organized around competitive minmaxing. Oh, and the campaign in SC:FA was fun, but SC's is a tutorial up until the very last mission or two.

For all of its failures I preferred SC2 for multiplayer, because the faster, simplified gameplay meant minmaxing felt frantic rather than like a tedious waste.

 

[TheArtilleryman]

I miss 3D platform collectathons. A Hat in Time was the last great one.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I think it's this one.

I really believe the root problem is the Internet and the fact that all of this information is already compiled and distributed across the world by a crack team of terminal autists two hours after a game launches.

The slow process of discovering optimizations used to be a central part of playing the game - no wonder games all feel so boring and tedious when most players aren't discovering anything and skip right to performing a rote optimal strategy laid out in a guide.

Thanks. I'll give it a read.

But you're right about the internet. Data mining is also a major problem. Mortal Kombat 2, Goldeneye, and to a lesser degree GTA SA thrived because of myth making and friends swapping stories. It's why no amount of HD texture packs can bring back the Goldeneye because of that. There's lots to mention, from claims of being able to rescue Sonya in MK2, to someone's uncle that supposedly got the cheat on facility and could drive the speed boat to the island on Dam in Goldeneye. Data mining resulted in a lot of cool stuff like the Citidel in Goldeneye, but for the most part it results in removing any mystery from a game.

I remember Payday 2 managed to shock people with it's ending because the files for the ending were kept as a seperate DLC you got for free on beating the game, this was to stop people data mining the ending as soon as the patch dropped. This might also explain why Half-Life 2 Beta and Resident Evil 1.5 are still cool to me, because data miners can't dump the data.

There are no more people buying consoles today than there were in 1999. 150 million +/- 10 million handheld consoles sell, and the same for traditional consoles. There's overlap, for sure, like how everyone apparently owned a Wii and a PS360. The numbers never vary that much, yet gaming was a lot less popular in 1999 than 2024. So, what gives?

The first thing that gives is second world/"the developing world" or whatever you want to call it. Places like communit Russia and Brazil didn't have consoles, and when they did it was usually knock offs. That's been changing over time.

A great example of this is to look at top 10 most popular games of all time lists. You might expect the list to be things like Minecraft, GTA5, and Fortnite. While those games might be present, chances are half the games are things you've never heard of.

To use film as an example again. I repeatedly heard it said Avatar 2 was the most popular film ever, but I couldn't find a single person who'd seen it. Turns out the film was huge in some parts of the world.

That said, given there's nothing of value released on console since the PS4 (unless you count some Nintendo games) I don't buy that Sony and MS are selling more consoles than they were at the height of the PS2 or Xbox 360.

 

[X Prime]

The first thing that gives is second world/"the developing world" or whatever you want to call it. Places like communit Russia and Brazil didn't have consoles, and when they did it was usually knock offs. That's been changing over time.

The Russians aren't usually too bad. It's the Brazilians that make you want to eat a bullet in despair at the state of humanity and it's been true for years.

Russians can at least make something interesting sometimes. Brazilians just make slop. What's the peak of Brazilian game production, overpowered DBZ Mugen characters?

 

[Edgy But Dull]

There are no more people buying consoles today than there were in 1999. 150 million +/- 10 million handheld consoles sell, and the same for traditional consoles. There's overlap, for sure, like how everyone apparently owned a Wii and a PS360. The numbers never vary that much, yet gaming was a lot less popular in 1999 than 2024. So, what gives?

PC gaming has massively exploded in size in the past few decades. Younger gamers that are just joining the consumer base are immediately indoctrinated on playing on PC because their favorite Twitch streamer plays on PC or older gamers have become fed up with consoles and finally made the jump to PC.

The highest selling PC game of 1999 was Rollercoaster Tycoon for $19.6 million. Meanwhile Palworld sold 15 million copies this year on Steam while the game cost like $30. All the growth has gone to the PC gaming side of the industry.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

PC gaming has massively exploded in size in the past few decades. Younger gamers that are just joining the consumer base are immediately indoctrinated on playing on PC because their favorite Twitch streamer plays on PC or older gamers have become fed up with consoles and finally made the jump to PC.

The highest selling PC game of 1999 was Rollercoaster Tycoon for $19.6 million. Meanwhile Palworld sold 15 million copies this year on Steam while the game cost like $30. All the growth has gone to the PC gaming side of the industry.

PC gaming rises and falls every decade or so. If the growth has increased on PC then there are a group of normies that refuse to let go of their consoles.

@Judge Dredd The first thing that gives is second world/"the developing world" or whatever you want to call it. Places like communit Russia and Brazil didn't have consoles, and when they did it was usually knock offs. That's been changing over time.

A great example of this is to look at top 10 most popular games of all time lists. You might expect the list to be things like Minecraft, GTA5, and Fortnite. While those games might be present, chances are half the games are things you've never heard of.

That leaves me to wonder if the market has shifted to 3rd world countries, and as @Edgy But Dull says, that growth has gone to PC, then how are consoles still pulling in 150 million sales? Or, will we see this generation as the one where the collapse starts? Xbox will tap out at 30 million consoles and I can't see Sony hitting 75 million unique sales and will combine Ps5+Ps5Pro numbers into one, like MS did.

 

[std::string]

Russians can at least make something interesting sometimes. Brazilians just make slop. What's the peak of Brazilian game production, overpowered DBZ Mugen characters?

Brasilieros are the masters of hilariously janky simulator games. Closely followed by Croatia.

Never stop, Brazil.

 

[X Prime]

Brasilieros are the masters of hilariously janky simulator games. Closely followed by Croatia.

Never stop, Brazil.

I thought Germans did those actually. Whoops.

 

[Gondola Enjoyer]

Brasilieros are the masters of hilariously janky simulator games. Closely followed by Croatia.

Never stop, Brazil.

Serious Sam was a simulation of what I had to do to get to school every day.

 

[Judge Dredd]

The Russians aren't usually too bad. It's the Brazilians that make you want to eat a bullet in despair at the state of humanity and it's been true for years.

Russians can at least make something interesting sometimes. Brazilians just make slop. What's the peak of Brazilian game production, overpowered DBZ Mugen characters?

I was talking more of the consumer side. I know basically nothing about them however. I've heard that the NES was never sold in Russia, and instead their version of the NES was a cheap knock off called Dendy that played NES games.

On the development idea, it's strange how little comes out of India.

That leaves me to wonder if the market has shifted to 3rd world countries, and as @Edgy But Dull says, that growth has gone to PC, then how are consoles still pulling in 150 million sales?

I don't think they are. It's all Hollywood accounting.

That said, if they are being honest (and that's a big if), I'm guessing they are selling the same amount but spread over a wider area. But in the UK at least, I don't believe the sales numbers. The PS2 and Xbox 360 were ubiquitous, but I only know one person with a modern console.

Or, will we see this generation as the one where the collapse starts?

The collapse has been on going for a while. The console collapse has been on the horizon for a while, but ultimately the ease of use, unique games, and uniformity of a console was their selling point. PCs got easier but still too scary for normies. However, consoles have been shooting themselves in the foot, turning themselves into shitty PCs in an attempt to chase the smart phone business model.

I know this is meant to be an unpopular opinion thread, but I'm far from alone when I say that either consoles shape up next gen and drop their reliance on patches and multiplat AAA wokeshit, or it'll basically just be Nintendo vs Steam.

 

[Edgy But Dull]

If the growth has increased on PC then there are a group of normies that refuse to let go of their consoles.

Most definitely, there is a chunk of the population that will never make the jump. Whether it be childlike nostalgia for playing on a console or being too stupid to build your own PC, a lot of people will hold onto their consoles forever.

That leaves me to wonder if the market has shifted to 3rd world countries, and as @Edgy But Dull says, that growth has gone to PC, then how are consoles still pulling in 150 million sales? Or, will we see this generation as the one where the collapse starts? Xbox will tap out at 30 million consoles and I can't see Sony hitting 75 million unique sales and will combine Ps5+Ps5Pro numbers into one, like MS did.

PC gaming largely competes with the Xbox and Playstation consoles in the "high end market" and Nintendo exists in its own lane, largely unhindered by this gradual shift in the market. Even back in the early 2010s, I remember people saying that the best strat was PC+Nintendo Console. There's also the factor that the Nintendo Switch is a hybrid console, utilizing their handheld market to bolster their console market. Nintendo also possesses an image of being the "family safe" console, so it is the default and singular choice for parents with kids <12 years old.

So while the PC gaming market has massively expanded in the past two decades and a lot of it has been from people abandoning the console market, there are some old guard that refuse to make the jump to PC gaming as mentioned. Then you have the new people getting into the gaming market that are just like those people, so they'll pick console. The "high end" console market has been contracting because its been gaining people as the market grows but its slower than the rate of which people are leaving that market. The PS5 had an explosive start where its console sales were ahead of the PS4 for its first year but its monthly sales have been consistently lagging behind after that. So there is a decline that all the executives see and are deeply concerned about but it isn't enough of a decline to cause the console market to immediately collapse. They're just silently trying to build up their foothold in the PC gaming market to offset their declining consoles.

There's also the people that grew up with shit like the PS2 but have grown up and left the gaming market entirely. However while those people left the gaming market, some of them may be parents and they'll just get their kid a Switch by default.

 

[Thiletonomics]

While Forza Horizon got mocked for adding a Battle Royale mode (The Eliminator) to the game, and in a racing game out of all things, since BRs are usually first- or third-person shooters, I actually don't mind it, and it's actually better than some actual FPS BR titles. The gameplay in The Eliminator is even easier than most BRs. You get car drops, race against other players head-to-head to get a better car/take your opponents one, and the Final Showdown race is a free-for-all race to the end, meaning that Eliminator games will eventually end, and doesn't devolve into a massive game of chicken at the end. There's also no collecting the equivalent of gun attachments (i.e. car parts) in The Eliminator.

The fact that the game mode was added in Forza Horizon 4, and also appears in 5, and queue times don't go too long, is good too. I don't know if they use AI opponents to fill player spots if there's not enough players queueing, or for the first few games of playing the mode.