Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[AN/ALR56]

There were actually elements of Far Cry 2 I felt were downgraded in 3.

The best example people tend to agree with me on was the weapon system. In Far Cry 2 you carried 4 weapons. Your machete, a sidearm (some kind of pistol, the flare gun or the sawed off shotgun), a primary weapon and the special weapons (RPG, LMG etc)

What made this unique was the player also had safe houses where you could save the game and store your weapons. It gave you an additional incentive to find safe houses because they kept an extra "kit" of your weapons for when you'd wanna go into a mission with a different set of weapons. (IE: If you wanted to fight that next mission with your assault rifle instead of the sniper rifle.

With Far Cry 3 they made combat much more forgiving, and this is best shown in the weapon system and the takedown system. Where you could carry 4 assault rifles if you wanted to and there was no reason to tailor your load out to a specific play style unless you intentionally went out of your way to do so.

There was also the health system which was a very noticeable downgrade over Far Cry 2. In FC3 health items were more sparse but you could heal yourself without them very slowly. However there was no way to switch between what kind of healing you wanted to do. This meant even if you just tripped and got a tiny bit of fall damage you'd have to expend an entire health item to heal it.

In FC2 you had three ways to heal yourself. Synerettes, water and saving. Synerettes healed you fully and you could find them at outposts or in mission areas, and you could locate them on your map. Water was found wherever and healed a single health tic. And saving could be done at a safe house. Moreover if you took damage but it didn't fully remove a health tic it'd regenerate gradually. I really liked this and as a result fall damage wasn't as annoying as it was in FC3.

There were numerous other reasons but those were the big two behind why I preferred FC2 to FC3. That and it had probably my favourite implementation of weapon degradation (and given the setting it actually makes complete sense why it exists in the game).

I also dont like the transition from a sad,cold mercenary to a college student that becomes a rambo by tatooing special symbols on his arm.

 

[Watcher]

I also dont like the transition from a sad,cold mercenary to a college student that becomes a rambo by tatooing special symbols on his arm.

That… was actually something I thought could've been done really well. But I think they just executed it poorly.

I understand what they were trying to do. Make the protagonist undergo a kind of arc where he becomes more like Vaas and likes violence. The problem is though that you never really feel the protagonist become more experienced or sadistic as a character. Adding to that right after the tutorial once you get weapons, you are death incarnate and there are no gameplay elements that make you feel like a weaker and more pathetic character.

I found the more infuriating bit to Far Cry 3 was how many times Jason Brody gets captured and they don't just execute him. I think it was 4 or 5 times which really annoyed me.

They really should've rewritten the story to be more down to Earth and less metaphysical and should've put more emphasis on character development. Since the bad ending to the game really feels extremely jarring considering you spend the entire game trying to find your friends and in the bad ending

Spoiler

you kill them because Citra tells you to and Jason just wants to get laid

 

[Burned Man]

I loved Far Cry 2. I didn't mind weapon jamming and I liked the buddy system even if they could die. My only complaints are the rapidly re spawning checkpoints and the fact that whatever faction you worked for still shot at you. Like you would kill 20 or so guys on your faction on the way to the objective. At least there were friendly NPCs in Far Cry 3 and 4, even if they didn't help much it was a nice change.

 

[dabluearmedbandit]

I think Far Cry 2 is the best of the series. The story was amazing, it was actually really intelligent and dealt with a mature ass topic in a really adult way. And the gameplay was amazing. I loved how enemies would grab their buddies if they were hurt and drag them behind cover, I actually enjoyed the buddy system, and the weapon jamming made fights tense as hell.

 

[Quail]

Yeah, I'm going to jump on the Far Cry 2 love wagon here, I recently completed it and have been playing through Far Cry 3, FC2 has it's issues but I'd say it manages to balance them out mostly.

The contrast of Jason Brody and whichever mercenary you play is exaggerated by the fact that both go by through roughly the same character arcs with the reputation system in FC2 and story in FC3, both start off as random punks expected to die in the next few days at the start and end the game as urban legends. The difference being that in FC2 the impact of reputation accumulated from completing missions is shown to how NPCs in ceasefire zones react to you (at the start they'll push you around if you get too close and tell you to leave, at the end they'll back off and respond in a more worried matter). Whilst in FC3 Brody seems to almost immediately go from some kid who barely survived escaping Vaases camp to being Snow White, Scourge of Pirates.

There's definitely elements of FC3 that I liked (like not having to constantly spend half my game time making the same journeys from bus stations to mission objectives), but FC2 had some nice touches. Also, the fire effects were beautiful, I know they're still in FC3 but they just seemed to be so much more impressive in FC2.

Still no clue on the story though the final act seemed to take a complete U-turn from where I was expecting it to go.

 

[Sweet and Savoury]

I'm having a lot of fun in Warframe.

But the critics are right, Grindy doesn't even begin to describe this game. It's got grind on grind so that you can start to grind.

But the graphics are sweet, the play is smooth and the story is pretty neat.

So I guess no to Destiny and yes to Grindframe.n

 

[Halberd Sonichu]

Resident Evil the Mercuries 3D is one of my favtiore games of all time and i want a sequel.

 

[GeorgeDaMoose]

That… was actually something I thought could've been done really well. But I think they just executed it poorly.

I understand what they were trying to do. Make the protagonist undergo a kind of arc where he becomes more like Vaas and likes violence. The problem is though that you never really feel the protagonist become more experienced or sadistic as a character. Adding to that right after the tutorial once you get weapons, you are death incarnate and there are no gameplay elements that make you feel like a weaker and more pathetic character.

I found the more infuriating bit to Far Cry 3 was how many times Jason Brody gets captured and they don't just execute him. I think it was 4 or 5 times which really annoyed me.

I really agree with this. One of the reasons I played Far Cry 3 was to experience this bratty kid turn into an experienced killer. The concept of that really appealed to me, but it was horribly executed in game. Like you said, the moment he gets that M1911 he turns into a trained soldier which was the dumbest thing. I expected something more along the lines of the CG trailer that they released awhile ago where Jason watches his friend get executed, barely escapes with his life, learns how to survive alone, etc. That would have been cool as shit and it would have really driven the story home.

Getting back to the topic though, I really like The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. It was such a fun game, had an interesting story, had decent DLC aside from the Horse Armor, and had an excellent tutorial.
Borderlands is getting really old, really fast. I didn't like the second game at all. The Pre-Sequel looks like more of the same except IN SPACE!?
The Lego Star Wars games were 10/10 and are still one of the best Star Wars games around.

 

[Hodor]

Not vidya but

I dislike Forgotten Realms. I mean, I dig the spin off settings (mainly Al-Qadim), and the early 2e stuff is okay. But as a setting? I'm not a fan- might be that I dislike the 'kitchen sink' approach of it, and how the whole 'NOVELS ARE CANON' shit makes it so everything about it is over-explored, and your PCs are going to be in the shadows of figures like Drizz't and Eliminster. It's sort of like why Dragonlance isn't really fun to play anymore- the entire setting has been explored and delved on by the novels.

Also Ebberon is my favorite setting, after Ravenloft because Ravenloft is the shit.

Borderlands is getting really old, really fast. I didn't like the second game at all. The Pre-Sequel looks like more of the same except IN SPACE!?

Borderlands is only really fun if you play it with a gaggle of friends, and even then there are better games to play.

 

[Watcher]

Not vidya but

I dislike Forgotten Realms. I mean, I dig the spin off settings (mainly Al-Qadim), and the early 2e stuff is okay. But as a setting? I'm not a fan- might be that I dislike the 'kitchen sink' approach of it, and how the whole 'NOVELS ARE CANON' shit makes it so everything about it is over-explored, and your PCs are going to be in the shadows of figures like Drizz't and Eliminster. It's sort of like why Dragonlance isn't really fun to play anymore- the entire setting has been explored and delved on by the novels.

I found the Realms was most interesting in Baldur's Gate. Mostly because the protagonist there meets several of the more famous characters (Elminster, Drizzt etc) but in the case of the latter you can kill him in both BG1 and BG2 and it leads to a few Easter Eggs. You also become this really powerful and feared character over the course of the entire trilogy and kill several of the most powerful monsters in the entire setting in the process.

Spoiler

as well as have the opportunity to ascend to Godhood at the very end of Throne of Bhaal

But yeah I was never a big fan of prebuilt settings for actual tabletop sessions. I felt that their entire purpose was if you didn't feel like making your own. They were better incorporated in games and novels.

 

[MayMay]

Well I'm pretty sure this one's unpopular enough.

I always hated the "second gen" of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (the explorers ones)
Why? Easy answer really

Spoiler: sperging. It's gonna be long

My biggest problem by a mile was the "heroes" of the story. As in they were basically useless. Okay so the partner had a thing that turned out to be a key. That's basically all the use they really were. Sure the player had some future vision thing... that was barely any use either. Sure didn't make them any more suited to stopping Dialga.

Pretty much everything else is "have to be saved immediately afterwards" or most offensively "kicked without a fight"

Now, there are cases in a lot of games where you're up against a foe so powerful you have no hope of defeating them. Naturally they win, you're left licking your wounds and it bothers everyone for some time. Then later in the game they face off against that exact same foe with a critical difference: actually standing a chance. Thus taking down this opponent is basically a way of saying "look how much more powerful you've gotten!"

Except that last part never happens with any of these cases.

When you have to get saved or are effortlessly defeated by foes and can never surpass them, it just makes the heroes look incredibly useless (like, Mike Dawson tier useless) and as a result, the antagonist extremely pathetic.

It's like why not send Wigglytuff? Hell, shove a fucking oran berry down Skuntank's throat and send him. Or that Luxio/Manectric with no real plot relevance that can still kick your ass and will always be better than you.

Again, they're all better than you and always will be.

And yet you can beat Dialga?

What a fucking wuss, a rattata could probably kick it's ass. And the players' too.

And yeah, that does completely wreck it for me.

Ironically the one I didn't have a problem with is the one that people complain about a lot, the Grovyle fight. Sure he didn't know it yet but he was fighting someone he had known for ages. You could just say he subconciously knew what you'd do and if anyone could get a opening on you it'd be him and I'd buy it.

Or at least I would if it wasn't for everybody else and their magikarp being able to punt you with no effort.

I hate it when a game is making constantly question: "Why in the hell is this idiot supposed to be the hero?" There's facing adversity and then there's having no talents, special abilities or even the ability to actually have some semblance of victory. Hell, even Mike Dawson was less of a loser than the PMD:E protagonists. He had to cheat to win at carnival games but at least he sorta won them at all.

Seriously, I really, really hate that. Something similar basically ruined Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire for me too.

 

[Jaimas]

Not vidya but

I dislike Forgotten Realms. I mean, I dig the spin off settings (mainly Al-Qadim), and the early 2e stuff is okay. But as a setting? I'm not a fan- might be that I dislike the 'kitchen sink' approach of it, and how the whole 'NOVELS ARE CANON' shit makes it so everything about it is over-explored, and your PCs are going to be in the shadows of figures like Drizz't and Eliminster. It's sort of like why Dragonlance isn't really fun to play anymore- the entire setting has been explored and delved on by the novels.

Also Ebberon is my favorite setting, after Ravenloft because Ravenloft is the shit.


Borderlands is only really fun if you play it with a gaggle of friends, and even then there are better games to play.

Honestly, the problem with FR isn't even that there's nothing to explore, it's that the general setup has left the game series with zero stakes at high levels in the wrong ones. This is less a problem with the setting itself and more a problem of the supplemental materials and certain writers.

Some of the Vidya and TT games of FR though work fantastically well. The problem, in my experience, is when you incorporate the variety of ridiculously overpowered NPCs in the setting into the framework. Elmunchkin is by far the worst offender here, and though Drizz't has a bad rap because of copycat concepts, he's nowhere near as bad as Elminster. It's very telling that the best FR works fucking forget that the likes of Elminster exists and gives the PCs more free reign. Some of the other high-level chars in the setting, like Lord Nasher, can even be kind of hilariously useful to the setting because even though he's a badass who gets shit done, he's pretty much leashed by his need to manage a fucking country, which is, to put it simply, a big fucking deal and explains why he needs the PCs so much.

A big problem is that EVERYTHING NOVEL IS CANON means you have to simultaneously incorporate the best and worst. That means placing your CS Gotos alongside your Dan Abnetts. There's a reason other works declare all offsides work noncanon, and it's to avoid this exact problem.

The biggest (and saddest) bit of madness in this though is how WotC tried to fix this. Essentially, 4E comes out, kills absolutely everyone or ruins their shit in some other fashion, breaks how the entire world works so it fits with 4th Edition, and expects this to somehow fix the problem, and then is legitimately surprised when fucking everyone hates it. The lorefags are pissed because the canon got shredded for expedience, the center-line guys are pissed because they threw the baby out with the bathwater, and the casual fans come to a setting that is quite literally unrecognizable. They could have thrown FR out entirely, created a new setting from scratch, and it'd have done less damage to Forgotten Realms than 4th Edition did.

I'm aware that WotC has a history of fucking up settings that would have sold themselves (not producing Ravenloft or Dark Sun through the entire 3.x era, just as an example), but that's still an amazing mismanagement.

 

[DuskEngine]

respawn and the confusing story for most(you have to focus your attention on dialog and the in-game journal to understand it completely)are the bad sides of this greatly under rated game.

The checkpoint respawns really broke the game for me, tbh.
And yeah, the atmosphere and plot was a lot more interesting in 2 than 3.
I don't mind the confusing story, it reminds me of Dark Souls or System Shock or something like that.

Speaking of-

System Shock 2 is still the best 'Shock game.

 

[AN/ALR56]

The checkpoint respawns really broke the game for me, tbh.
And yeah, the atmosphere and plot was a lot more interesting in 2 than 3.
I don't mind the confusing story, it reminds me of Dark Souls or System Shock or something like that.

Speaking of-

System Shock 2 is still the best 'Shock game.

I do think there is a mod that fixes it.
Another mod makes enemies even more smarter and they have a more realistic health.

 

[Sunny-D]

The water temple in OoT was not that difficult or confusing. Hell, the only N64 Zelda dungeon I remember having trouble with was the stone tower temple in Majora's Mask. Similarly overblown nostalgia difficulty? whitney's miltank. Did no one catch a geodude or realize that there was a machop in-game trade right in Goldenrod?

I don't like Amnesia or really any horror game where you have no weapons and have to hide rather than any method of fighting back. Unfortunately that seemed to include Outlast, I REALLY REALLY WANT to like that game, the atmosphere and everything is great, and I keep trying to "give it another shot" but I just can't stand that mechanic. I know it's supposed to heighten the fear and tension by making you feel helpless, but for me, it only ever made me annoyed.

Actually, the only survival horror game that ever actually scared me was Fatal Frame. I love the Silent Hill series, but it never actually scared me, I just enjoyed the atmosphere and all the weird shit. I can't hold that against them, though, I think I'm just hard to scare.

 

[c-no]

In terms of lore and all, I honestly don't mind Fallout 3. Sure the lore may butcher the series in ways like with BoS being good guys and the Enclave being around but I honestly don't mind, especially if I thought of it from the perspective of a 19 year old who goes out into the wasteland and not know of all its rules and such. On that same note, as much as how people gush on 3 and/or New Vegas being superior, I feel they may never stand against 1 or 2 but that may just be me with bias along with loving Fallout 2 a lot.

 

[Watcher]

Sure the lore may butcher the series in ways like with BoS being good guys and the Enclave being around but I honestly don't mind, especially if I thought of it from the perspective of a 19 year old who goes out into the wasteland and not know of all its rules and such

There's a great deal more.

Fallout 3 lacks any moral ambiguity. Which was a staple of the series up until that point. In Fallout 1 the player could

Spoiler

join the master if he felt convinced of his plans

With Fallout 2 the Enclave was a much more grey organization that was full of characters who had more defined and realistic goals than "we wanna poison the water machine that gives everyone free water".
This also translated to the side characters. Like the slavers at Paradise Falls who all come off like murderous evil people. Or how the Brotherhood of Steel are just the white knights of the Wasteland rather than a xenophobic organization of technophiles who cling to technology of the past and try and salvage it. The developers at Bethesda were more interested in how cool a location like Paradise Falls or Megaton might look to the player but not how those characters might act from a realistic storytelling perspective.

This was something Fallout New Vegas deliberately tried to remedy. The conversation with Caesar in his tent being possibly the best example I can cite.

I've previously made the observation about how the game takes place 200 years after the bombs fell, and how radioactive fallout doesn't linger in water for that long. And how in Fallout 2 the New California Republic is portrayed as a form of government with it's own currency (In the form of NCR dollars), paved roads and electricity in it's capital and a form of citizenship and military. By comparison Fallout 3 takes place in this nebulous continuity where the world never advanced after Fallout 1.

With New Vegas they had to explain a great deal about why people still use Bottle Caps instead of NCR dollars (and both exist in the game) and why the NCR didn't expand further into the United States. But I felt this was all largely a reaction to how most of the original fanbase didn't like Bethesda's interpretation with Fallout 3.

I felt the lack of moral ambiguity and the style over substance approach to Fallout 3 was more flawed than the butchering of the lore. The latter was much more tame in comparison. Todd Howard stated in an interview during Fallout 3's development that he generally wants to feel like a hero when he plays an RPG. And that above all else is indicative to the writing problems Bethesda games have.

 

[Sunny-D]

It might be a bit of a cop-out, but in the argument of Fallout 3 vs. New Vegas, I can only ever say that I like them both for different reasons. New Vegas has got superior storyline and consequences for faction and morality choices, far superior companion depth in conversation and quests, and definitely feels more fleshed out. But 3 has got setting and atmosphere that I prefer. Wandering around urban wreckage is more interesting than a desert. It also made 3 a better blank slate for modding it to hell, and things like DC interiors to add more buildings and stores that could be scavenged and explored was exactly the kind of thing I could pour hours into. I also didn't like how the method of handling speech challeges changed in FNV, but that was probably since I liked being able to save and reset speech challenges for that percentage chance of success.

I've put more hours into New Vegas, but FO3 has got a special place in my heart. The prospect of a sort of best of both worlds combination, plus how well they handled Lonesome Road in particular, for me - is making me extremely goddamn excited for Fallout 4.

 

[Watcher]

was probably since I liked being able to save and reset speech challenges for that percentage chance of success.

Apparently it was entirely due to how most players wouldn't feel it necessary to level up speech in Fallout 3 that much because once you got it to level 50 or so, you could just savescum a few times and complete every speech challenge.

With New Vegas they wanted you to be able to play a character who can talk through a lot of the challenges and that it would be just as valid as any other skill. It's why you can bypass Lanius/Oliver by having 100 speech.

 

[Sunny-D]

Apparently it was entirely due to how most players wouldn't feel it necessary to level up speech in Fallout 3 that much because once you got it to level 50 or so, you could just savescum a few times and complete every speech challenge.

With New Vegas they wanted you to be able to play a character who can talk through a lot of the challenges and that it would be just as valid as any other skill. It's why you can bypass Lanius/Oliver by having 100 speech.

Yeah, although with the level cap and how irritating it'd quickly become to keep restarting hoping to get a 10-15% speech chance, I generally ended up with 100 in speech by the end anyways. Hell, maybe with 4 they'll go the Skyrim route anyways and have skills level up as you use them.