Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

It's up there with the original FEAR where the clever AI is praised, but it's all smoke and mirrors.

FEAR's AI was very good at the time. I don't know what you mean by "smoke and mirrors," but there really wasn't much like it when it came out, particularly the ability of NPCs to interact with the environment. Good article about how it worked:

It was still an overrated game IMO, because 90% of it was just walking through nearly identical office building floors over and over.
 
Horror games try to impart the experience of horror, a dreadful experience. Games with horror aesthetics have a different gameplay style with horror elements. If doom is a horror game then everything in the souls series except sekiro is a horror game, especially bloodborne. No, gamifying horror inherently requires removal of player agency and rarely does it work with giving the player agency. Some walk that middle line well, nightmare creatures, RE and bloodborne do that. Others in the silent hill lineage are just mostly linear with multiple endings. The horror gameplay itself is being put in a horror situation with limited agency. If you're given a shooting and ammo system but the bullets do no damage, then that system has no purpose except to make you feel deprived. That's not gameplay, that's a smokescreen narrative device.
By saying that, you've defined away any aspect of horror games. Doom does try to impart a sense of dread. Some more than others (Doom 64, Doom 3) but there is, or was, an attempt.

This goes back to the Amnesia and Outlast genre. When those games became popular, it was declared, repeatedly, that a game isn't horror if the player has a gun or some other means to defend themselves. The definitions constantly shift depending on what's popular or scary at the moment.
 
By saying that, you've defined away any aspect of horror games. Doom does try to impart a sense of dread. Some more than others (Doom 64, Doom 3) but there is, or was, an attempt.

This goes back to the Amnesia and Outlast genre. When those games became popular, it was declared, repeatedly, that a game isn't horror if the player has a gun or some other means to defend themselves. The definitions constantly shift depending on what's popular or scary at the moment.
That's fair, like I said there are games which stride the line between gameplay and spectacle. RE, Bloodborne, Nightmare creatures, Doom 64/3, eternal darkness sanitys requiem, don't starve, the forest and some others. But theyre not the bedrock of horror as an experience because as an experience it requires deprivation and it relies on spectacle. Its a genre of game which relies on a format of game, which is to say the linear rollercoaster ride format. A basic thing like a scare say requires scripting, requires manufacturing, it cannot be an organic interaction. That's the thing about "horror as a game" which is what horror games are supposed to be. Otherwise horror games are similar to adventure games in that they're as broad as required and lack distinguishing gameplay features.
Also the second part is stupid, a game can be horror if it has guns but if the bullets don't do damage then the gun is useless which is what I mean. The game can function without a gun.
 
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I don't know what you mean by "smoke and mirrors,"
The "smart" AI is merely the guy who did the AI and the guy who designed the level were desk buddies during development and had the mindset of having the AI move around and interact with room you find it in as best it can. Like kicking over a desk or throwing down a rack of shelves to provide makeshift cover, then if the player is too focused on one, another will move around to flank you or if they can't they'll try to retreat and flank, the game teaches early on that the AI are never alone and work together. They made the AI act as a mercenary force using basic squad tactics. In addition the AI had lots of audio call outs for what you're item you're specifically hiding behind and would communicate like a merc force would so it does sell a smarter AI. For the time it's incredible work but rather basic compared for today, makes it a much greater shame that no modern FPS tries to replicate it. The AI not the 90% office buildings and turrets
 
Sims 2 has ownable cars, or are you talking about base game content only?
I'm talking about drivable cars. Multiple transportation types in general; hot air balloons (dlc), motorcycles, bikes, skateboards (generations expansion), witches brooms, hoverboards (into the future expansion), fairy wings (supernatural expansion), Dr Who phonebooth (supernatural), tractors (dlc), alien spaceships, company cars, subway train stations (late night expansion), etc. Every job had car pooling which was an interesting touch. Kids picked up for school buses every morning and dropped off at home in the evening by bus.

Additionally, Sims 3 had special vehicles you could service which contributes to the Handiness skill. The Firefighter job allowed you to make repairs to the firetruck. There is a junked retro car you could buy and slowly restore to sell for a lot of money, drive yourself, and could even have sex in the car wherever it was parked.

Sims 3 even has that extra step in detail where in the Generations expansion, adult sims could teach teenage sims how to drive and they would spend around a few in-game hours stopping and going, slowly advancing in speed the more they near skill completion. If teenage sims stay out too late past curfew, there is a chance they may get caught by police and driven home in a cop car.


This is just a minor feature in Sims 3 that largely goes unnoticed because of how natural the gameplay is.
 
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Every job had car pooling which was an interesting touch.
That has been since vanilla 1, how is that novel? 2 even had a helicopter and AL let you buy one. Some sims even fly to work when they're on certain careers.
There is a junked retro car you could buy and slowly restore to sell for a lot of money, drive yourself, and could even have sex in the car wherever it was parked.
That is also in 2 (came with Freetime), and sims can woohoo in all cars, not just the restorable one (the helicopter is also a woohoo place).
Hell, I remember people complaining about sims 3 cars because they didn't even bother with animations, they just teleport in and out. Even the junk car just teleports to the driveway despite having the sims get in and out.
If teenage sims stay out too late past curfew, there is a chance they may get caught by police and driven home in a cop car.
Again, this is also in 2, although in a slightly different way. A teenager can sneak out or ask for permission to go out at night, and if they pick the first option it's possible for the police to catch them and bring them back in their patrol car.
 
The "smart" AI is merely the guy who did the AI and the guy who designed the level were desk buddies during development and had the mindset of having the AI move around and interact with room you find it in as best it can. Like kicking over a desk or throwing down a rack of shelves to provide makeshift cover, then if the player is too focused on one, another will move around to flank you or if they can't they'll try to retreat and flank, the game teaches early on that the AI are never alone and work together. They made the AI act as a mercenary force using basic squad tactics. In addition the AI had lots of audio call outs for what you're item you're specifically hiding behind and would communicate like a merc force would so it does sell a smarter AI. For the time it's incredible work but rather basic compared for today, makes it a much greater shame that no modern FPS tries to replicate it. The AI not the 90% office buildings and turrets
Yeah, the funny thing is that flanking/pincer moves aren't built into the AI at all. It's just a simple "move to cover" system. So there's like 3 spots of cover in front of you when you enter combat in an area but there's 4 enemies. 3 of the enemies take the cover spots in front of you while the 4th enemy has no cover spots left for him. However there's cover spot to the side of you. The enemy could just run towards it but it is told to minimize the time exposed, so it ends up taking a route around the level to get to the cover on your side.

It's one of those moments of "simplicity is genius" instead of having some immensely complex AI system built in.
 
I was always confused if that was the remake or not, it seemed like a new title. I've Platinumed Automata, does know how that turns out ruin anything about the first game?
It is a remake of Nier Replicant/Gestalt and mostly no, Automata and Replicant are separated by thousands of years. You do have those Project Gestalt docs that do mess with the twist in Replicant, but since you already know humanity died, I don't think it's that big of an issue.
 
There is one single example of Fromsoft going full Western Game company and making an idiotic change to appease a subset of the audience: It's when they removed poise as a proper mechanic in DS3 on because the PVP community wouldn't stop bitching about guys with heavy armor winning all the time. So now, heavy armor sets are basically meaningless because you get slower, your damage reduction is neglicble, and bosses can still stagger the fuck out of you.

I remember people made a big stink about this years ago but replaying DS1 reignited the memory in my head.
 
I don't know what you mean by "smoke and mirrors,"
Others covered this a bit already, but some of the things the AI do aren't that clever, but are given the impression of being clever via the callout system, marketing, and reputation. It's still good, but the reputation is way overblown.

To give a couple of examples. "OMG! The enemy tries to flank you!" As @Edgy But Dull said, the AI will try to move to a random spot behind the player. This is "dumb" behaviour but having the leader say "try to flank him" makes the player think this is genius. It not uncommon to have a guy run around a window to your side, then dive through the window the wrong way. In any other game, this would be condemned as dumb AI, but because the player has been primed to think of the AI as amazing, they'll fill in the blanks and say "he jumped through the window to get into cover!"

For the time it's incredible work but rather basic compared for today, makes it a much greater shame that no modern FPS tries to replicate it. The AI not the 90% office buildings and turrets
Other games have similar behaviour. A mod that replaced the Half-Life 2 Combine voices with plain English is great for this. They also try to flank, will call out locations, throw grenades when the player hides in cover. It gets little credit however because combine use surgery terms, like "clamp, cauterize, sterilize." When you kill a squad of combine quickly, the lone survivor with run away to cover, firing wildly while screaming "Outbreak outbreak outbreak!".

I don't remember if Fear 2 and 3 use the same AI, but because people don't like those games as much, they don't get credit.

I want to say the Batman Arkham games have complex AI for their stealth sections, but it gets no credit either. Again, could be wrong.

The problem is that "smart" AI doesn't mean "good" AI. Games like Doom and Mario don't benefit from enemies being clever. Iirc there was a Transformers game that used FEARs AI system, but then ditched it for the sequel because it was costing a lot of performance for little gameplay gain. Sometimes there's even work put in to make AI stupid for the purpose of fun gameplay. This is why snipers in games often use laser sights or sit in tall buildings when it doesn't make sense too, because walking along, falling down dead, then hearing the gunshot 3 seconds later doesn't make for fun gameplay. Many good stealth games don't have guards that turn 180 unless something makes them, so that the player can sneak up behind them for a take down.

 
There is one single example of Fromsoft going full Western Game company and making an idiotic change to appease a subset of the audience: It's when they removed poise as a proper mechanic in DS3 on because the PVP community wouldn't stop bitching about guys with heavy armor winning all the time. So now, heavy armor sets are basically meaningless because you get slower, your damage reduction is neglicble, and bosses can still stagger the fuck out of you.

I remember people made a big stink about this years ago but replaying DS1 reignited the memory in my head.
Poise didn't make it into DS2 either but it's easier to forget as the meta for most of its cycle was still guys in heavy armor stacking a stupid amount of defensive buffs. Remember helixodons? Stacking as much heavy armor as possible including the turtle knight chest piece, plus the mastodon halberd, helix halberd, and like six defensive buffs. If they were real Gamers, they had one of those invisible weapon wings or used hidden weapon. That playstyle eventually got nerfed to where you could only cast one body buff and one weapon buff, similar to DS1 but still didn't undo all of the defense gained from absurd leveling, enabled of course by soul memory being an abortion of a mechanic. I like how there are different types of self buff in ER that can stack but I don't like how unclear it is as to what's what.
I have a schizo theory that someone at From thought low skill faggots like Soulbrandt and Team Majula (and rurikhan lmao) were groups to be courted, evidenced by them flying many of them out to Japan for extremely early exclusive access to what can only be assumed to be a build of the game crafted for feedback. The reason I think this is the case is because immediately after making their return, many of them deep throated the game, praising it as the second coming of Christ, when we all know it was a loose turd. These are likely responsible for at the very least affirming many of the garbage mechanic changes that have trickled down since.
But yes, DS3 nerfed this even further, cutting out the high defense of heavy armor. Poise was what made DS1 pvp as good as it was and it was probably only like that because toggling was a thing. There's a reason that pvp in 2 and 3 died quickly and I have no idea why there are people out there who remember the pvp in 3 being good. It wasn't. 3 was the game that popularized the series and I think many of the proponents of this view never played DS1, never bothered with its pvp, or were so butthurt over getting poisestabbed they uninstalled.
 
Is there any horror game where you fight the monster, other than resident evil and its clones? Even silent hill has non existent combat, it's not meaningful combat by any means.
That's part of the story telling of early silent hill games. You play as an average person who isn't going to know how to fight well. You are meant to run from enemies and not kill everything. It's a limitation used as a story device, because tank controls made combat janky anyway, like how the fog made things scarier, but was used because of draw distance initially. Basically turned lemons into lemonade.
 
I want to quickly expand a bit on what I said about the Half-Life 2 AI I posted above.
Other games have similar behaviour. A mod that replaced the Half-Life 2 Combine voices with plain English is great for this. They also try to flank, will call out locations, throw grenades when the player hides in cover. It gets little credit however because combine use surgery terms, like "clamp, cauterize, sterilize." When you kill a squad of combine quickly, the lone survivor with run away to cover, firing wildly while screaming "Outbreak outbreak outbreak!".
The Half-Life 2 AI can be quite advanced. Here's a video showing how the AI will time their attacks to keep constant fire on the player.

But then people say Half-Life 2s AI is dumb because of things like this.

Other stuff broke over time. Combine dropships had a machine gun to give cover fire, it broke at some point and now it's possible to walk up to the dropships and gun the combine down as they march out single file.
 
the meta for most of its cycle was still guys in heavy armor stacking a stupid amount of defensive buffs
One of my buddies that's a PvPtard has apparently been dumpstering melee tards in Elden Ring by doing this. He stacks every single defensive buff possible, including Ironjar Aromatic, but still wears cloth armor to bait melee tards to run in and trade with him while he just channels Rock Blaster.
 
In any other game, this would be condemned as dumb AI, but because the player has been primed to think of the AI as amazing, they'll fill in the blanks and say "he jumped through the window to get into cover!"

In 2005, interacting with the environment at all was hardly ever seen; the pathfinding algorithm occasionally glitching was not a big deal (the AI was also capable of finding cover, so I'm not so sure what you described was actually a glitch). The main thing is they didn't actually coordinate with each other, but there was a group manager that would assign goals as a group to several close agents at once. So yeah, the coordination is an illusion.

Other games have similar behaviour. A mod that replaced the Half-Life 2 Combine voices with plain English is great for this. They also try to flank, will call out locations, throw grenades when the player hides in cover. It gets little credit however because combine use surgery terms, like "clamp, cauterize, sterilize." When you kill a squad of combine quickly, the lone survivor with run away to cover, firing wildly while screaming "Outbreak outbreak outbreak!".

This is from the IGN review, published 20 years ago:

"AI is certainly impressive in that NPCs work as teams, flank, react to sound and movement, and then engage with lifelike aggression"
 
Is there any horror game where you fight the monster, other than resident evil and its clones? Even silent hill has non existent combat, it's not meaningful combat by any means.
Eternal Darkness, Alone in the Dark, any game based on Alien, Fatal Frame, Cry of Fear, Deadly Premonition, and Dead Space all come to mind.

Hell, even Luigi's Mansion and Parasite Eve if you'd count those.
I was always confused if that was the remake or not, it seemed like a new title. I've Platinumed Automata, does know how that turns out ruin anything about the first game?
Replicant and Gestalt were the original two, each were slightly different versions of the same game (technically a spinoff of Drakengard). 1.22 was a remake in Automata's engine for the 11th anniversary.
The music was remastered, the voiceovers were redone (some parts worse and some parts better), certain parts that originally got cut out due to time constraints were put into the main game, and it feels much less clunky than the original(s). Some of the songs were also changed, some weapons were rebalanced, ending D no longer irrevocably wipes your save (just do the very short E path, which was based on a fan story), and they made the God forsaken decision to replace block+light attack's heart stab with Automata's "press circle to finish off".
There's other differences I'm leaving out for brevity, but those are the big ones that come to mind.

It definitely won't ruin it, but it might lesson the impact of some parts. Still definitely worth playing, especially if you're the type to get emotionally invested. It's still my favorite game over a decade later, although you'll probably find it a little more repetitive than Automata. I highly recommend you read every bit of flavor text and try to 100% the sidequests if you play it.
If you were read everything obsessively in Automata like a maniac then you'll definitely have had some parts spoiled for you already, just try to push it out of your mind.
Feel free to message me if you have any questions, I could talk about this game all day lol
 
That's part of the story telling of early silent hill games. You play as an average person who isn't going to know how to fight well. You are meant to run from enemies and not kill everything. It's a limitation used as a story device, because tank controls made combat janky anyway, like how the fog made things scarier, but was used because of draw distance initially. Basically turned lemons into lemonade.
Yes that is what I said. It's a smokescreen story device, it's still corridor rollercoaster gameplay. It doesn't even have cod campaign levels of gameplay fidelity. That's not gameplay in the traditional sense, that's a storytelling gimmick. Ofc it's probably different down the line when you you get more weapons and the power level increases but things like system shock and dark souls do that better in comparison (static hub levels with branching paths which locks progress behind power levels). Silent hill is not completely linear but by nature horror games require linearity unless they're survival games otherwise you can't make them scary enough. The scary set pieces require linearity and require the player to be deprived of agency. Sometimes they can defy those expectations like with fear and alien isolation cause the ai is very good.

@Judge Dredd the thing about half life ai is for it to create epic scenarios which is what gabe newell said or warren Spector said I think. The purpose of the ai is to get killed by the player but in such a way that the player feels intelligent for pulling it off. Now that doesn't necessarily mean the ai should be challenging, challenging ai is strategy game ai which uses cheap and dirty tricks to get ahead. Fps ai is built upon by landmark titles each of them contributing bits to it, like with doom and halo for orthogonal design, like with half life for spectacle, like with fear for tactical decisions. It's definitely complex but it's not meant to be a challenge unless you're on higher difficulties, even then the damage numbers are buffed instead of ai enhancements. It's meant to be fun, it's meant to make the player feel intelligent with their tactics and experimentation.
 
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It is a remake of Nier Replicant/Gestalt and mostly no, Automata and Replicant are separated by thousands of years. You do have those Project Gestalt docs that do mess with the twist in Replicant, but since you already know humanity died, I don't think it's that big of an issue.
From what I understand, in Nier Reincarnation there are humans being stored on the moon in the ocean. The last remaining android 10H guards them until the events of Reincarnation begin where the ending implies a true human is brought back to life. Not sure if Reincarnation takes place during, before, or after the Automata true ending so 10H could meet the reconstructed 2B and 9S.
 
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