Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Welfare Bum]

Half-Life 2 is an objectively inferior game to the original.

 

[Achtung Bitter]

why wouldn't you want it to control normally instead?

Because that would result in ‘normalized’ level layouts like I mentioned. I want TR to stay that game with a high replay value, a game where you hunt for (unreachable at first glance) secrets and master the quirky dodging of traps. I want levels to be a playing field, designed primarily as a challenge. If you drop the grid layout, and don’t create anything to substitute that, you’re just left with running around, gameplay-wise Anniversary lost everything I played TR for.

Resident Evil never had nearly as much depth to it, but it’s a very different game and besides I liked it, so I won’t call it a product of its time.

 

[The Ugly One]

As long as it isn't sexualizing the characters I don't see a problem. It's Japanese so I wouldn't be surprised if it does, but those screenshots just showed boring dialogue with badly designed yet fully clothed girls.

By "into this," I mean, really into it. If you find those particular shmups to be fun, okay, sure. I'm not a bullet hell conoisseur, so maybe these ones are especially good. However, there's no reason for a grown man to be obsessing over comic books about magical little girls and collecting their figurines and all that crap.

 

[demicolon]

Well, collecting comics about magical little girls and their figurines is not necessarily suspect, but reading/writing specific comics about magical little girls is, especially if there's none of that stuff in the source material.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

But even then, think about how you reach the dragon in the first place. You first go into a cave and get diamonds, which is normal. Everything after that is completely retarded and not explained at all, because minecraft is not a normal game.

It's actually kinda funny thinking about it how I've been playing Minecraft on/off for years and I always get to the point of "Are we ready to fully explore the nether yet?" before getting fucked by a stray arrow, losing my diamond armour and going "fuck this, I'll play something else".

Absolutely nothing is explained, and the retard developers behind it keep adding pointless resources like copper or new shitty mobs and there's not a single hint about any of the steps to get to the endgame. Luckily there's no POINT in the endgame as you get a scrolling text ending that looks like it was written by a 3 year old.

So all you end up doing is mining, building a nice little town and then giving up after your friends stop visiting the server. Then coming back months later, realising you can't remember where anything is and starting a new map and then a new map and then a new map because Minecraft is only good as a social timesink.

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

Isn't magical girl for girls?

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

No its more about the deliberare design of animation to sell a more grounded experience. But its also to get you thinking before you leap since you have less safety nets. Ico, Rain world, Oddworld. Games that show the value of this design philosphy by being masters of their craft.

Usually they are just clunky for clunk's sake. Look at Another World, you're basically expected to fail repeatedly. The best platformers give you good control, then build the levels around that rather than gimping you. But to a certain extent I suppose it's preference.

Because that would result in ‘normalized’ level layouts like I mentioned. I want TR to stay that game with a high replay value, a game where you hunt for (unreachable at first glance) secrets and master the quirky dodging of traps. I want levels to be a playing field, designed primarily as a challenge. If you drop the grid layout, and don’t create anything to substitute that, you’re just left with running around, gameplay-wise Anniversary lost everything I played TR for.

Resident Evil never had nearly as much depth to it, but it’s a very different game and besides I liked it, so I won’t call it a product of its time.

Let's put it this way. Would Mario 64 be better or worse with tank controls? I know you can build levels around those controls, which is what TR apparently did, but do you think SM64 would still be as well regarded now if it controlled like that?

Resident Evil has quite a bit of depth in its controls. Obviously not as much as a platformer but you had to really maneuver and aim precisely. It is quite a different game though.

By "into this," I mean, really into it. If you find those particular shmups to be fun, okay, sure. I'm not a bullet hell conoisseur, so maybe these ones are especially good. However, there's no reason for a grown man to be obsessing over comic books about magical little girls and collecting their figurines and all that crap.

If they really like the games then the comics are just an extension of it. Figurines is where it gets to be a bit much.

Well, collecting comics about magical little girls and their figurines is not necessarily suspect, but reading/writing specific comics about magical little girls is, especially if there's none of that stuff in the source material.

Maybe my reading comprehension is poor but I don't really understand the distinction you're drawing.

 

[Scarthew]

Usually they are just clunky for clunk's sake. Look at Another World, you're basically expected to fail repeatedly.

Failing repeatedly is the point though. They put a lot of effort into those death animations especially in a game like Hearts of Darkness. Trial and Error design isn't inherently bad.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Failing repeatedly is the point though. They put a lot of effort into those death animations especially in a game like Hearts of Darkness. Trial and Error design isn't inherently bad.

I don't know man, I think we're just gonna have to agree to disagree. If you're intended to fail then it ain't much of a game, it's rigged.

 

[demicolon]

Maybe my reading comprehension is poor but I don't really understand the distinction you're drawing.

Man, you're better off not understanding, believe me.

 

[The Ugly One]

It's fair to say the controls work if you have patience, but why wouldn't you want it to control normally instead?

This is like asking why I wouldn't want to see Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times remade with color and sound in digital 8K. The technology is archaic, but the work is designed around the archaic technology and can't be separated from it. In the case of Tomb Raider, how the levels are designed and the digital controls are inseparable. It's outdated now, sure, and really was showing its age by the third game, but you can't change one without completely changing the other.

Let's put it this way. Would Mario 64 be better or worse with tank controls? I know you can build levels around those controls, which is what TR apparently did, but do you think SM64 would still be as well regarded now if it controlled like that?

The Jazz Singer would not be well-regarded if it were a silent film. This still doesn't mean Modern Times should be a talkie.

Well, collecting comics about magical little girls and their figurines is not necessarily suspect

Disagree. There's no good reason for a grown man to find idiotic stories about magical little girls interesting.

 

[Scarthew]

I don't know man, I think we're just gonna have to agree to disagree. If you're intended to fail then it ain't much of a game, it's rigged.

Its not rigged, death is of low concequence and sells the actual danger of the world. So many games use artificial tricks to create an illusion of danger. The trap filled pyramids of prince of persia, the alien worlds of flashback, hearts of darkness and oddworld. These are actually dangerous hostile places and you know this because they kill you on a moments notice. Amd thats not to say theyre entirely unfair you're not likely to die to every hazard and they have good telegraphing. There's nothing wrong with dying being a teaching experience.

 

[Achtung Bitter]

Would Mario 64 be better or worse with tank controls? I know you can build levels around those controls

Mario 64 isn’t in the same ballpark. It plays a lot differently. With all that criticism of TR, one would think you’d notice. See, I don’t want those levels, I want a playfield like in Minesweeper.

Resident Evil has quite a bit of depth in its controls.

I put dozens of hours into Re2 and 3, read every single file and epilogue, went from barely escaping Nemesis to owning him at every encounter. Great games, but they have very little depth aside from perhaps mastering knife in 3.

 

[Scarthew]

Let's put it this way. Would Mario 64 be better or worse with tank controls? I know you can build levels around those controls, which is what TR apparently did, but do you think SM64 would still be as well regarded now if it controlled like that?

This is totally flawed thinking. They're different games with different goals, not every game has to be the same. This thinking is why every game today is an homogenous blob. Tomb Raider simply isn't Mario.

 

[NeonFlux]

It's okay to like a game even if everyone else finds it dogshit or woke.

I bought RDR2 5 years after release for 30$, installed some non-kosher mods from basedmods, and I still had a blast playing it despite knowing about the game's themes.

Did I give money to people who hate me? Yes, but I dont give a shit because from an accelerationist's viewpoint, They're going to make GTA6 as dogshit or mediocre as they can get away with in response to RDR2's warm reception. Plus the Houser Bros are gone so there's no more tard wrangling and it also seems like half the dev team are indians now.

It's also okay to enjoy games with liberal or proto-woke themes, The OG Fallout games (as well as New Vegas) and Bioshock are still great games but i can understand that one series was made by a 90s liberal gay man who couldn't handle being told he couldn't put faggot shit into his early games, the other is made by a subversive Jew who ripped off System Shock 2 and made a more console normie friendly version.

 

[demicolon]

Disagree. There's no good reason for a grown man to find idiotic stories about magical little girls interesting.

I met a guy once who was very into Harlequin romances. I didn't find it weird or anything, mostly because he looked like a mutant who could snap me in half with bare hands.

 

[Book Thief]

How much? If you just messed around in the opening area or beat the first stage then it's not much to judge the game by, and in that case your primary experience is through an unintended method. I'm sure the co-op was miserable because Nintendo themselves deemed it miserable enough to remove from the game.

I've borrowed it from a friend back in high school who grew up with it, since I've bought an N64 second-hand (this was around the time the 360/Wii U was the latest console), and decided I didn't like the controls even back then, despite loving games like GoldenEye and OoT. I also played through more-or-less the whole game with said friend via (believe it or not) another, older Co-Op mod with that same high school friend. I think we got something in the realm of 60 Stars before we decided to do the exact same thing and BLJ up the infinite staircase.

This part is a legitimate skill issue. By the time you reach Bowser you should have a feel for the distance between yourself and objects required to grab them.

So it's a skill issue that, when trying to grab a constantly moving target, pressing the B-button can randomly cause you to either grab the thing, or fly a thousand miles in the opposite direction?

Do you even hear yourself? This is what I'm talking about when I say your mind paved over the jank. Hypothetically, if grab and dive were different buttons, this wouldn't be an issue, but here we are.

I've never experienced this, Mario always does what I want him to, he just feels kinda shitty doing it.

Then you're gonna have to tell me what ancient witch voodoo you perform to get the Red Coin on Dire Dire Docks, because he just refuses to triple jump on that fucking boat. I never played it as a kid, but as an adult, I feel the frustration of those kids in that Got Milk commercial.

He definitely can technically; if you watch professional players they make him look like he controls like Mario from Odyssey. Problem is you shouldn't need to be an autist who mastered the controls through obsessive play to make Mario do precise movement.

I will agree with you that comparing a casual player to a speedrunner is a bit unfair. These people have thousands of hours of playing the same game over and over, and so they could make even the worst games look like they control like a dream.

So the bias and experience with it you're alleging I have is fictitious, I'm rather objective about SM64, beyond just loving the character and IP so much in general. If it wasn't Mario then maybe I'd think somewhat less of it. But really, the issues are just not that bad, they are very significant but don't ruin the game. It's just a matter of expectations and not letting relatively minor issues ruin what's otherwise a good game. Maybe it's not "great", wrong choice of words I used, but it is pretty good, it's a classic.

I'm not 100% certain about as to whether or not your bias is affecting your view point, but I'll give you props: at least you acknowledged the game has some issues and tried to engage with me in a civilized manner, unlike some others in this thread who saw me waltzing into the unpopular opinions thread and having the gall to say the game everyone else played when they were six didn't age well. Judging by your previous comment, it seems like you have actual experience with the Touhou series (though you erroneously called Double Spoiler "Double Focus"), so you probably thought "Eh, not for me, but it's harmless otherwise," which is totally fine by me.

Everyone else, however, deserves infinite top hats for immediately jumping to insults because someone dared to badmouth their beloved Bing-Bing-Wahoo. God forbid someone post an unpopular opinion in the unpopular opinions thread! I swear, I wanna print out some of the responses here, frame it, and hang them on my wall.

As long as it isn't sexualizing the characters I don't see a problem. It's Japanese so I wouldn't be surprised if it does, but those screenshots just showed boring dialogue with badly designed yet fully clothed girls.

ZUN has gone on record to say that he has no interest in sexual, romantic, or fanservice elements, and has no intention of putting them in his games...

...so I'm not really sure how posting cover art of a fully-clothed adult woman is supposed to be some kind of scandal. Forbidden Scrollery is about Kosuzu being an idiot who keeps opening up Necronomicons and causing supernatural shit to happen, which naturally pisses off Reimu. Since it's official Touhou material, and thus has the official graces of ZUN, there's nothing really sexual about it.

 

[The Ugly One]

This is totally flawed thinking. They're different games with different goals, not every game has to be the same. This thinking is why every game today is an homogenous blob. Tomb Raider simply isn't Mario.

I think the biggest contrast is between Tomb Raider and Uncharted. Uncharted is trying to be Tomb Raider without understanding what made the game good. I think the modern over-the-shoulder combat controls do work a lot better than Tomb Raider's very clunky controls that completely break down when an Atlantean gets in your face (seriously, exploding enemies that jump at you were a horrible idea), but Uncharted misses out on what really makes Tomb Raider work, mainly the maze-like levels, the precise jumps, and figuring out where to go.

In Uncharted, the maps are standard 7th gen corridor layouts for smoothbrain gamers. An individual room might be a bit of a puzzle, but typically, once you pass through a room, you're done there. Moreover, there's really no challenge to finding the way to navigate. Because there's so much junk around the levels, things you can grab onto are brightly colored, and even if you don't see them, you can just move your joystick around until Nathan Drake changes his posture, indicating the direction you're pointing is a valid jump.

I met a guy once who was very into Harlequin romances. I didn't find it weird or anything, mostly because he looked like a mutant who could snap me in half with bare hands.

Still weird to be into erotica targeted at women, but those aren't stories about children.

 

[Scarthew]

So it's a skill issue that, when trying to grab a constantly moving target, pressing the B-button can randomly cause you to either grab the thing, or fly a thousand miles in the opposite direction?

Do you even hear yourself? This is what I'm talking about when I say your mind paved over the jank. Hypothetically, if grab and dive were different buttons, this wouldn't be an issue, but here we are.

Its not random, its a hitbox and you missed. Also if you dive into his tail it grabs automatically so you missed twice and also if you're diving you already fucked up anyway because dive is what happens when you punch while moving too fast.

 

[The Ugly One]

Then you're gonna have to tell me what ancient witch voodoo you perform to get the Red Coin on Dire Dire Docks, because he just refuses to triple jump on that fucking boat. I never played it as a kid, but as an adult, I feel the frustration of those kids in that Got Milk commercial.

You don't need to triple jump at all.