Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Spud]

I can’t even get past the first (mini?)boss you find right at the beginning.

Try luring it away from the digger or if it's the digger try hit and run tactics. Other wise progress normally until you get higher level gear then go back and steam roll it. IIRC the guy by digger has a decent armour set for the early game.

 

[Peep Plops]

Play The Surge 2 instead, it's still not fantastic and the story is somehow even dumber than the first but the gameplay is way better.

 

[The Ugly One]

I recently played Banjo Kazooie for the first time after years of the internet telling me it was a good game...... I sadly didn't like it as much. Gruntilda's Lair is one of the most poorly designed hub worlds in a video game that I've ever played.
I also didn't like the fighting game style combo controls that the game uses and how certain enemies can only be defeated in a certain way. Like the egg launcher combo is way to close to the mount on the back of Kazooie combo buttons.

Banjo Kazooie aged like milk. It's notable mainly for being one the largest, prettiest N64 games of its day. There is a reason "find the crap devs sprinkled everywhere" is a dead gameplay mechanic. It's boring.

 

[The Hardest R]

Graphics are more than good enough nowadays. Hell, 1080p with magic software tricks will give great looking games.

1080p with 60 frames per second is still good enough for the vast majority of gamers.

They hated him because he spoke the truth

The writing was on the wall when AAA gaming started to be touted as “experiences” in the 360/PS3 era.

The weirdest thing about the DS is that its flagship game was a mario 64 remake. The game that single-handedly vindicated the analogue stick for 3d movement... on a console with no analogue stick.

I liked the DS remake quite a bit. I never had issues with the controls. However, the stick sensitivity was all out of whack with the Switch version of Mario 64. Still pretty disappointing how half assed Mario 3D All Stars was, considering a DS port was more ambitious.

I recently played Banjo Kazooie for the first time after years of the internet telling me it was a good game...... I sadly didn't like it as much. Gruntilda's Lair is one of the most poorly designed hub worlds in a video game that I've ever played.
I also didn't like the fighting game style combo controls that the game uses and how certain enemies can only be defeated in a certain way. Like the egg launcher combo is way to close to the mount on the back of Kazooie combo buttons.

It was basically them trying to cram as much of a game into a 12 or 16 MB cartridge as possible. Rare ramped that up to an extremely autistic degree with Donkey Kong 64 where certain kangz kongs could collect certain colors of bananas and open up certain things. It’s not a surprise this style of gameplay died when all platforms had access to significantly more storage than Nintendo 64 cartridges.

 

[The Ugly One]

DK64 is a much better game than Banjo Kazooie anyway, because it wasn't hard at all to find enough bananas and coins to beat the game. I spent a lot more time in B-K scouring a map for that one last note or Jiggy so I could finally advance than I did in DK64. DK64 is only bad if you try to 100% it, but 100%ing games is for fags.

 

[Swine Schwein]

It's one of the reasons I've been gunshy about playing Elden Ring - by all accounts, the game is design to be a challenge for the entire autistic masochist playerbase rather than the individual player and if you don't have a plan for a "build" and a wiki open while playing, you're going to get rolled.

That's so antithetical to the core of what I enjoyed about Dark Souls.

What did you enjoy about Dark Souls? I'm curious, not trying to argue at all.

 

[Scarthew]

I liked the DS remake quite a bit. I never had issues with the controls. However, the stick sensitivity was all out of whack with the Switch version of Mario 64. Still pretty disappointing how half assed Mario 3D All Stars was, considering a DS port was more ambitious.

I like some of the additions, multiple characters adds tons of replay value to a game thats already fun to replay, the new stars are overall pretty good the multiplayer was a fun distraction for a little while. But the hold Y to run is shit and so is that awful camera that makes it feel like youre in a third person shooter because of how close it sticks to you.

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

What did you enjoy about Dark Souls? I'm curious, not trying to argue at all.

I always really liked the ebb and flow of melee combat - knowing when to attack, when to dodge, when to wait and all that is really satisfying. When you're really hitting on all cylinders, it plays almost like a rhythm game.

Souls boss AI has no ability to deal with multiple attackers at once. Whether it's human or computer summons, bosses go after one target at a time and completely ignore everything else, even if they're being stabbed in the ass over and over. So you end up with this situation where you can make the fight fun for one player and a joke for multiple or challenging for multiple and damn near impossible for one.

I like the former, but the devs seem to be erring more and more toward the latter as the skill floor rises with each subsequent game.

100%ing games is for fags.

I'll never understand the autistic inclination to say "Boy, I sure enjoyed all the fun parts of this game. Now let's spend ten times that long doing frustrating busywork the developers put in as a sadistic joke."

 

[Calandrino]

It's pretty common in fighting games, especially ones that don't get dev support anymore.

But is it though. Don't use a code to pick the boss characters; don't use the platform-exclusive guest characters. Usually, that's it, and if there are only three tourney viable characters then that's just how it is. You'd just get laughed at if you said somebody didn't really win a match because they used too many throws or a 100% combo or whatever.

Competitive Smash is ban-happy because it's not a competitive game by design. Probably kind of the same deal with Pokemon and Dark Souls.

It’s not a surprise this style of gameplay died when all platforms had access to significantly more storage than Nintendo 64 cartridges.

How big is the average PS1 game, minus FMV and redbook assets? How short would DK64 really be if you took out all the repetition? I think it's not a technical limitation and they just did it because they hated children (fair enough).

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

How big is the average PS1 game, minus FMV and redbook assets? How short would DK64 really be if you took out all the repetition? I think it's not a technical limitation and they just did it because they hated children (fair enough).

True enough.
Final Fantasy 7-9 are all FMV & pre-renderized backgrounds. Took 3 discs in ff7 and 4 discs in 8 & 9.

 

[Local FloRida-man]

But is it though. Don't use a code to pick the boss characters; don't use the platform-exclusive guest characters. Usually, that's it, and if there are only three tourney viable characters then that's just how it is. You'd just get laughed at if you said somebody didn't really win a match because they used too many throws or a 100% combo or whatever.

Oh yeah, it def happens. It's been years so I forgot which game (I'm thinking it was either 3rd strike Chun Li or OG MVC3 Phoenix since thats what I grew up on) where the crowd had to be chastised because they kept chanting "KILL! THE! BITCH!" whenever she was on screen and cheering when she died. There have also been tournaments where the finalists were banned because they picked "low tier" characters (the organizers assumed they were both throwing.) And of course there's the obvious "spamming projectiles is cheating" army in pubs.

 

[Greenday87]

It's okay to gatekeep people out of your games.

 

[The Foxtrot]

It's okay to gatekeep people out of your games.

Gatekeeping should be encouraged.

 

[Seventh Star]

It's okay to gatekeep people out of your games.

Depends on how much. Just enough to make sure they're actually interested and try to play semi-seriously, not enough to be autistic competitive players.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

It's okay to gatekeep people out of your games.

Obligatory reminder

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

The time-release DLC model that's so prevalent in modern games seems insane to me. Do people really play through a game, then come back a few months later for ten more hours of (usually high-level) play, then do that like three or four times over an 18-month span?

Once I finish a game, I'm not interested in going back to it for at least a couple years and if I tried to, I'd spend the whole DLC saying "So wait, what was happening in the plot? How do these gameplay mechanics work again?" My brain purges that kind of useless information if I haven't played a game in more than a week or so.

 

[Mezger7]

I dislike level scaling in cRPGs. It takes feel of achivement and motivation - why even bother with gaining experience, if it makes enemies stronger?

 

[Swine Schwein]

I dislike level scaling in cRPGs. It takes feel of achivement and motivation - why even bother with gaining experience, if it makes enemies stronger?

This is a popular opinion, but also the correct one.

 

[The Ugly One]

I dislike level scaling in cRPGs. It takes feel of achivement and motivation - why even bother with gaining experience, if it makes enemies stronger?

I need to make a "tap the sign" meme about how D&D-style leveling assumes an adventure that dives deeper and deeper into an increasingly dangerous dungeon. It does not work and was not ever intended to work for a story-style adventure where, no matter how much you level up, street bandits are still a problem for you.

 

[Bowman Dan]

Dunno if this is an unpopular opinion because I haven’t seen it anywhere. Crash Bandicoot 1 shouldn’t have been given time trial relics in the N-Sane trilogy remake.

If you aren’t familiar with relics in Crash I’ll give you a brief rundown. Crash 1 and 2 just had gems to break all the boxes. Crash 3 added relics which you could only get in a time trial mode that unlocked if you replayed a completed level. You’d have to beat the entire level at once without dying and getting a faster time gave a better relic. This was encouraged to do late game because after beating the final boss the player is given a sprint powerup which lets Crash run real fast, self explanatory.

For clarification, I’m only talking about platforming levels, not gimmick levels where you're swimming underwater or riding a bike or anything, just normal platforming levels.
The relic difficulty scaling usually went like this:

Running powerup and optimal movement without dying = Platinum Relic
Running powerup without dying = Gold Relic
Beating the level without dying = Sapphire Relic

The optimal movement is key, which is where my opinion about Crash 1 comes from. Crash 1 has a much different and far more limited moveset to Crash 2 and 3. In Crash 1, you walk, spin, and jump, that’s it. Crash 2 and 3 you also add sliding which unlocks a whole new range of movement, and Crash 3 adds spin hovering. Slide jumps, slide spins, slide spin jumps leading into spin hovers, there's a whole new dimension to how Crash is controlled that playing for a relic is a completely different experience.

So what about Crash 1? Because it’s got no running powerup or sliding the best optimal movement you can really do is to never stop and jump the occasional corner. The moveset is so restrictive the exploration for optimization is insanely limited, which changes the difficulty scaling from what I mentioned before to:

Beat level without dying or stopping = Platinum Relic
Beat Level without dying = anything else, or fuck it maybe a platinum anyways

The challenge is no longer to tighten your control of Crash’s movement to shave every second off and find new ways to explore and optimize a level. It instead becomes the ability to beat a level in one go without stopping. Which I found way less fun. Relics in Crash 3 really feel like you're playing a new level because your approaching it in a much different way, Crash 1 is just memorizing the enemies patterns to sync your jumps.

I left Crash 2 out because I’m on the fence about relics in the remake. It’s got mostly the same moveset as Crash 3 and it gave you the dash powerup at the end, but the levels weren’t designed for that kind of playstyle. So sometimes you got retardedly easy platinums and other levels just wrung you through the shitter because they were so fucking long and tedious.