Any weird/controversial opinions? I’ll start. Before the remake, the best version of Resident Evil 4 was the Wii version. The Wiimote controls old Resi’s tank controls better than any other controller at the time. The PC version had a bunch of little bugs and detractors that the Wii version just doesn’t have.
I’ll extend this by saying that the Wiimote is actually pretty damn good for shooters, and particularly good for accessibility. Not having to cramp up my hands to press buttons is awesome for having arthritis. Aiming with the Wiimote and moving with the nunchuck just feel really natural, you barely have to move your fingers for anything.
People spend way to much time complaining about how games are not perfect in their eyes, instead of taking it at face value. They get literally outraged when a game doesn’t function exactly how they want, instead of finding a game they actually enjoy.
Back in the day we’d just pick whatever looked cool at the store and hoped it was decent. People have the right to complain, but its gotten out of hand and modern gamers are whiney as all hell.
Edit: just want to clarify, I’m mainly refer to post launch and established games. If a game promises somthing and is released half baked, 100% people are in the right to complain.
Because modern games are expensive. And the hardware you need to run them are also expensive.
So if you buy a game, you expect it to work as advertised. When you’re then presented with a buggy and glitchy mess, obviously you’ll get angry.
Gamers didn’t just become whiny, publishers became greedy and sloppy.
Imagine a trailer for a new movie. It looks cool. All the famous reviewers said it looked cool. So you pay to go see it at launch. And you’re presented with one short action scene, followed by 2 hours of watching paint dry.
That’s exactly what so many new modern, marketed games are like.
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I think with media people tend to watch critics review entries that they can’t keep up with and they adopt some of their habits. The thing is someone who plays every game is going to notice any aspect that’s been done better before and point it out as part of their review. But the more positive reviewers will state that they did enjoy the game and that part seems to get lost sometimes.
I could spend an hour telling you things I didn’t like about Tears of the Kingdom. Its still probably the best game I played this year.
Graphics don’t fucking matter if only high end systems can run the game
Most AAA games are boring. All the big games from the last few years are just plain boring. They found a formula back in the 2000’s that they never expanded upon or really changed in any way shape or form. The focus is on visuals and story (and I gotta say, the stories are pretty fucking cringe a lot of the time unless you’re a 13 year old) or skinnerboxes and psycho tricks to keep you addicted and the gameplay remains the same stale shit it’s been for over 20 years. I feel like AAA games are games for people who don’t play games, because the actual game part is always the worst part about them.
This is facts. I’m a zoomer. AAA games haven’t meant shit to people my age for the most part. The 3 undebatable most important games of my generation are Minecraft, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and Undertale. Talk to any gamer under the age of 25-30 and they will likely agree with at least 2/3 of those. All those games started with one person dicking around. We’re fully in the era where the formula is starting to stink like piss because it’s so stale. We’re going to see a “crash” of sorts soon, the infinite growth these shitty publishers have seen off games as a service isn’t infinite
To be fair, 2 of those games are legit some of the GOATs. I’ve been gaming since my mom played Mario with me in the early 90s, and those two games are something else.
I remember buying the Minecraft alpha for $10, and there wasn’t that much to do, but it was strangely addicting.
What do you mean, AAA games expand upon the formula…
When small indie studios create unique smash hits and then all we see from AAA studios are clones of that game with more monetization. If that’s not capitalist innovation, then I don’t know what is.
Having damage numbers flying off the enemies when you hit them or other frivolous BS isn’t actually innovation, man.
Back then AAA meant the game had budget, scale, graphics, polish… Nowadays all of these qualities are present in AA devs, and plenty of indies as well.
I feel like the only real differences the AAA has is 1) very detailed and realistic graphics (which does not equal good looking or good art direction, mind you), and 2) a lot of overhead management and investors. These investors are all looking to make returns on investment, which is probably why they so strongly discourage taking risks by deviating from the pre established formula, and strongly encourage absurd monetization practices.
Not to say there’s no good AAA games nowadays, Fromsoft is amazing with their souls borne series, and Zelda is pretty solidly designed imo.
AAA also tend to spend a lot on celebrity images and voice acting. Which is weird to me. I don’t think anyone bought Cyberpunk just for Keanu Reeves.
Yup. As an adult with less time to play, you really notice how much AAA games are just copy and paste with a new area on a map or same mission, but different npc.
I just picked up the 2022 remaster of Pacman World from 1999. The game design in that game is so nice. Each level has new enemies and new platform mechanics. I feel like only indie games bring innovation like that today while AAA is just rinse and repeat. (For the most part anyway…God Of War and Zelda are good examples of companies doing it right)
I think that some of the problem is that AAA games leverage a high budget. That lets them do things that you can only do with a high budget. But in order to pay for the development, they cannot afford to move down the long tail very far. To be a financial success, they must sell many copies. And it’s safer to target a genre that is known to be able to sell to a large playerbase than to do something that has not demonstrated the ability to do so in the past.
People who get video game burnout or say gaming is dead or whatever are victims of AAA marketing.
Most of the time I see posts like this they complain that they bought all the newest games with great reviews and aren’t having any fun. Normally it’s Sony games and other cinematic experience kind of games. Or they are games that they put 100’s of hours into. They are doing the same stuff over and over and getting bored.
Unfortunately critics care more about production values and polish than novel game mechanics. Plenty of interesting games get overlooked due to being a little weird or not fitting in modern game conventions. If you only play the big budget AAA stuff you are going to get burnt out because they all copy each other trying to be the next “big game”. If you play games that get bad reviews, have weird mechanics, or do something different you won’t get burnt out. I like to recommend the Gravity Rush games to people who have a playstation and are burnt out on the “cinematic” games. They typically have never heard of it and end up having a blast with them. Makes me sad when I see people still buying games based on metacrtic scores. They miss out on so much.
I know this post is about games specifically, but this is so true about all media. It’s wild how many people bemoan how “bad” movies/tv/music/etc is, when it’s super obvious their only frame of reference is mainstream media that’s mostly doing the same thing all the time. If they took a look just once at indie content creation, they’d see there’s so much cool stuff out there. But their so locked into the “right” media that they don’t consider anything else.
Getting back to games, I rarely ever buy AAA games anymore. There’s so much cool indie stuff being released all the time, it’s simply not worth it to me to deal with all the downsides that come along with AAA games.
I definitely agree it applies to all media. There’s always something good to find but you need to dig sometimes. A great AAA game is normally well made and can be a lot of fun but rarely are they unique or surprising.
Ugh you’re not joking. Many of my friends that game complain about the same thing, yet getting them to try any new game that isn’t League of Legends, Apex, Dead by Daylight or Destiny is like pulling teeth.
The worst part is that most of those games have an endless grind or some sort of FOMO mechanics that encourage people to keep playing even though they’re having an awful time.
Perhaps they’re the kind of people who see anything that doesn’t require at least 100 hours per month to progress as a waste of time. I used to play that often until I found a job. Went from 5+ matches of league daily to maybe 2 per week.
There’s legitimately 0 purpose to playing a bit of a game when it won’t change the status quo of your life.
All we want is a game that’s worth wasting our life on.
I guess that is how people in monogamous relationships see polyamory…
Completely agreed. Seriously, if anyone genuinely feels like gaming has become stale, go play Hi-Fi Rush and Pizza Tower (both having come out this year).
AAA games are more interested in keeping you on a virtual engagement treadmill than simply being fun.
I still don’t know how to go about finding these. I’ve had so many bad experiences I hardly know what I like anymore. All I “know” is I’m not big on FPS games. But at the same time I loves The Last of Us.
It’s hard to find something unique but I’ve found some of my favorite games by taking a gamble and playing a game I don’t know much about. If the box art looks cool or I like the trailer I give it a try. Game critics don’t help much as they only like specific kinds of games so I can’t rely on them too much.
Yeah it’s hard. I might go retro :)
I’ve never played a military shooter, but Battle Bit is piquing my interest.
@LeylaaLovee When you play a long game (i.e. 60+ hours) all the way through, it’s hard to tell how much of it was genuine enjoyment over some kind of weird sunk cost situation.
Kind of like watching a show that goes on for a ton of seasons. You get into a habit and despite inconsistent quality, you keep going back and you’re not sure why, especially after the really bad parts.
It’s why I understand *some* of the 100+ hour playtime negative reviews, & am skeptical of positive ones.
Exclusives can be beneficial. By exclusives, I don’t mean Sony/Microsoft pay the developer for exclusivity, that sucks. What I’m referring to is a developer picking a platform and developing a game using that platforms full potential. Games like Zelda, Crash Bandicoot, God Of War, Last Of Us all took full potential of their consoles architecture and brought pretty good games.
Yeah, I think most people in general are fine with Nintendo exclusives, since it’s nearly the only console maker on the market that doesn’t ship out what is essentially just an optimized pc. Especially since the Nintendo emulation scene is so incredibly thriving, games being exclusives there is generally only true on paper.
With that said: Fromsoft I am begging you release Bloodborne on PC I need my 60+ fps no motion blur game that is wetter than a crushed tomato and edgier than London’s knife bins’ contents. I want to replay it but I don’t have the magic box anymore goddamnit…
Exclusive optimisation is amazing. Some of the games they squeezed out of some consoles is amazing. I can’t believe tears of the kingdom runs so well on the switch. There was also an amazing PS2 game called “black”.
I can’t comprehend how Nintendo managed to make Tears of the Kingdom on a console like the switch. And I’ll check out Black, thnx for the suggestion
Paradox Interactive is eventually going to release so many DLC that they eventually collapse inward from their own gravity and implode, taking the company’s future with them.
They’re basically in an arms race against The Sims
And now they’ll have their own Sims game, so they’ll be going into overdrive.
That isn’t a hot take though, everyone and their mother makes jokes about how many DLC there is for Paradox Interactive games.
Here’s the real hot take -> I don’t mind the amount of DLC on Paradox Interactive games. Every game of their I’ve played was really good on its own, and I only buy any DLC after I’ve poured tens of hours into the main game, usually not because I feel like anything was lacking from the main game, but just because I want an excuse to keep playing it. So for all I care, they can keep making all the DLC they want if the base games keep being this good.
That is hotter than mine. You must not mind paying a lot of money.
How’s it any different than buying a new game though?
In the end, is paying $30 for DLC and getting another 50 hours of gameplay really that much worse than paying $60 for a new game?
As long as I actually use the DLC, to me it’s equivalent. I’m paying money to extend the hours of entertainment I’m getting.
Ive got collective thousands of hours in paradox titles. The good dlcs (and there are trash ones I haven’t bought) adds dozens of hours of playtime. They also keep the mod community active which adds hundreds more.
It seems expensive but 10-20 bucks every few months is reasonable to me.
My bigger issue is some of them are starting to feel very paytowin with the feature/power creep (compare vanilla Russia/Ottomans in EUIV to dlc versions for an example)
It’s a game I like and it gets more and more stuff. The only times games keep adding more things to itself is either a very infrequent constant subscription fee, or more frequent DLCs. There’s only so much you can do off the sales of the base game.
I guess you can spend a lot of money if you buy them on release, but I personally never do. And both their games and the DLCs pack are always on some sale. I’m pretty sure I bought Stellaris for like 10 euros and eventually bought a bunch of its DLC in some DLC pack for another 10 euros. The same for Cities Skylines basically. 20 euros for the amount of fun I took out of those games is hardly a lot.
I’m fine with paying money as long as what I’m getting for it is commensurate to what I’m paying. I don’t think that Paradox is a particularly bad actor there (not the best, either). I mean, the DLC model permits funding production of more stuff for a game that one likes in a direction that one would like.
There are a number of games where DLC is sold by publishers at vastly higher prices than the content in the base game, though, and where the base game is kind of indadequate on its own. That is something that I’m not really enthusiastic about.
It probably works out about the same as buying a subscription for a game, which many do for lots of games. I still think it’s egregious, but then again I own all Stellaris DLC, so…
I just bought Stellaris utopia dlc, despite not being able to tell you if the game I’m looking at it galactic civilizations 3, Stellaris or endless space 2 (I own all 3, I will play one of them some day). When I do play one of them I’d like it to be an enjoyable situation, which I’ve heard Stellaris needs utopia to be.
Also I love paradox games.
Honestly whenever I see a game on sale for <$20 and I open it only to see 5+ DLCs that increase the price, I just close the page and move on without even bothering to research whether or not I should buy the DLCs. Fuck that mess.
The popularity of skill based matchmaking decimated game design that allows people of different skill levels to play together and progress in a multiplayer setting. Most games actually punish you for playing with better players on your team instead of allowing you to help somehow without being a liability. And when you are, the game is no longer winnable and people get extremely pissed off ensuing you won’t get to play with them again.
Everyone i play games with gets the “sbmm is one of the worst things to happen to video games” rant every single time i play a game that has it. I dont play them often thankfully
Any way you can clarify the negatives of SBMM or have a good yt vid or something that explains it? In theory I like the idea because I think back to unranked halo 3 and one game I’m a god and the next I’m getting absolutely destroyed and it kinda sucked having such a wide gap lol
The short of it is really 3 main issues and ill use cod as the example:
First it makes it difficult for friends of different skill levels to play together and have fun. Me and my boys cant play cod together because ill go 30-6 one game where they barely break even and then for the rest of the night theyll go like 6-12 because i popped off too hard. Making it so we play 3 games before they arent having fun cause im just better at the game than them.
Second reason is it ruins any casual experience. Most days, for me a grown adult with a full time job, id like to just hop and play casually in my free time but with sbmm and the constant fluctuation in the system and where it places you can spend many, many games in a row in an absolute sweat fest without any reprieve. The skill level of a playerbase is typically on a bell curve meaning your much more often to face average players without sbmm, because thats where most players fall in the skill range. With sbmm you are waiting for whatever algorithm to have mercy on you and give you an easier lobby. Which can lead to a cycle of getting stomped for a couple games then stomping others for a game, rinse, repeat. Most people would i know would rather just roll the dice than trust some arbitrary system to place them in a lobby that may be fun.
Third issue is its redundent. In most competitive games there is a casual and competitive/rabked mode. If i wanted to play against people guaranteed to be my skill level id play ranked. Refering back to issue one, i dont play ranked with those friends because we vary in skill, casual would be the mode for that situation but due to sbmm being in casual both modes really just seem to be ranked.
Bonus reason: When mw2 came out in 2022 there was talk about using sbmm to manipulate people using the data to keep them winning just enough to keep playing but not enough to ruin others experience. Sounds great to some but to me thats not what competitive games are about. And i definitely dont need some studio dictating how much fun i have in a game, telling me essentially when i get to win.
Interesting points, thanks!
Breath of the Wild is merely okay.
It’s kind of tedious, the weapon durability system is annoying, and the visuals are held back by the Switch’s weak specs.
Hideo Kojima’s games are bad.
For context, when I was 11 my friend told me that MGS was incredible, so I went to his house to play it. It was fucking tedious. I spent hours shuffling around grey corridors, interspersed with painfully long dialog and cut scenes that were mostly about nothing.
Then, years later I decided to go back to MGS V and give the series another try. I had the exact same reaction to it as the original game. Endless waffle about characters and situations that meant nothing to me, uninspired modern military aesthetics, and boring locations.
They were clearly very well-made games, and I appreciate that people have massive regard for them. I just don’t like them at all.
Upvoted for providing one of the few real hot takes in this thread. I’m a huge MGS fan, but I can see why people wouldn’t like it. MGS plays with realism a lot, all while also playing with ideas from Hollywood. It makes for a very strange mix.
Now this is a hot take - I tend to agree with you. MGS has always felt like more B-movie than game, featuring a convoluted story that doesn’t justify the enormous amount of cutscenes. The stealth gameplay that’s there pales in comparison to titles like Splinter Cell too.
Personally, the best Metal Gear game in my mind is Rising: Revengeance, and it’s not even close. Highly recommend you play that one if you haven’t already.
I mean the b-movie feel is definitely the attractor, not a detractor for fans. I totally understand how thats not everyone’s cup of tea tho.
I will say that the stealth sandbox in MGS3 and MGSV rival what other great stealth titles like Splinter Cell, Thief etc have to offer.
I would probably like the MGS games if they didn’t have 2 hour cutscenes, but I just can’t handle that.
Edit: Also, I probably have permanent damage from how much I rolled my eyes when I saw that PlayStation magazine cover for MGS2 saying “The Greatest Game Ever Made?!”
Well, the problem is you’ve played the worst MGS games. 5 is the most realistic, and it’s worse for it. It’s also fairly early chronologically, so it doesn’t do as many interesting things. The best stuff it does are references to great things that come in other games. Open worlds just generally make games worse. They slow everything down because they make you travel across space that does nothing.
4 is probably the most fun game, 3 is probably the best game, and 2 is probably the most interesting game. 3 is getting a remake (it’s a fan favorite and chronologically the first game, I’m not sure which is the reason for it being the first remake), but who knows if it’ll be good.
We don’t need bigger open worlds. I’d rather have a Far Harbor sized Fallout every other year than a FO4 sized game after 8.
Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t a good game. Everything is ridiculously time consuming, buggy, and slow for no reason. Painstaking attention to detail on insane things nobody will ever see or care to look at (like horse balls shrinking in cold weather) is not a good enough reason to be considered a good game.
This is a good one, I salute you! RDR2 is one of my favorite games of all time, I had to clutch my pearls for a minute there!
Great world, terrible game.
This is the perfect take. As soon as I unlocked the open world, I hunted all the legendary animals, got all the cool gear, upgraded my weapons, and that was pretty much the end of it. I played like 3 more missions and they were all boring time consuming garbage.
I feel like modding is sometimes a good answer to situations where a developer has spent a lot of money creating assets, but the gameplay that they made with those assets is limited.
I wonder if there’s potential for ways to try to take commercial advantage of that, like have another developer basically bulk-license the assets from an existing game and then just produce new gameplay. I can’t really think of many examples off the top of my head. Some commercial FPS mods, but usually they make larger changes than to just gameplay.
I feel dirty for upvoting your objectively wrong opinion, but you earned it!
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Third-person shooters suck. The character model gets in the way of seeing and I don’t need to see the super tacticool costumes. And the more decent third-person shooters switch to first-person for aiming down the sights anyway.
Cards in video games suck. Unless it’s simulating a real card game. Otherwise we don’t need powerup cards and such, use some other mechanic. My level 89 death knight doesn’t need to be pulling cards out of his pockets.
Motion blur, vignetting, depth of field, lens flare, none of these should be the default. Show me the game world clearly.
The sentence “I lost my gear / They took my gear” has never been followed by a fun part in any videogame, ever
That island in Breath of the Wild though
I’m currently playing through Breath of the Wild for the first time and I don’t think it’s an amazing game. I think it’s decent and fun enough, but it has a lot of grindy BS and aimless wandering, plus a story that is a rehash of literally every Zelda game every made, but now with 100% more open world.
Seriously how many times are we going to beat Ganon? And good God the voice acting is cringe.
Also, I just freed the second divine beast and I still have no idea how to dodge or flurry rush.
Zelda games straight up have a very mediocre story. And often nothing about their world building makes much sense either. They’re definitely a series built only for fun gameplay. Everything else is just glue to hold the gameplay together.
Personally, I love the gameplay and exploration, but you’re definitely right about the story and voice acting.
PS: dodging should be the same as jump (x). Lock on with ZL and point the movement stick to the side you wanna dodge to, the jump. If you pull the stick back, you’ll do a backflip. Whether you want to jump back or to the side depends on the enemy attack (eg, do they swing horizonal or vertical?). If you dodge juuuust before the enemy attacks, you’ll get a slow motion during which you’re prompted to spam y to rapidly attack. Especially useful for tough foes like lynels.
I got bored after like 8 hours of looking for things to do before I just said “fuck it, I guess I’m killing Ganon.” I don’t know when I am meant to go find the Master Sword but I was able to get it without having a quest and just using my knowledge of Hyrule from past games (“sword in forest!”) and I activated the 4 ancient machines; but then I couldn’t find many side quests that weren’t just fetch quests for things I already had in my posession.
TOTK actually has shit to do. I thought BOTW was a bit bare bones before, but given it was Nintendo’s first go at it I just thought it was that. But TOTK makes BOTW look like an alpha build of a tech demo for TOTK.
There’s shrines near the start of the game that teach you to dodge & flurry rush;
While locking onto an enemy, jump while moving to the side or backwards at the last second before an enemy attacks-- if the timing is done correctly, you can flurry rush. The trick is finding the timing for each enemy type, though you start to get a feel for it.
It’s a grindy mechanic, but I really enjoyed filling out the compendium once you upgrade your Sheikah Slate-- taking pictures of things became the focus of the game for a while, and I’m glad that TOTK improved upon that.
BotW was the first Zelda game for me, and it was such a massive disappointment. It’s just open world without any redeeming qualities, with every single mechanic existing just to support open world. Felt more like a sandbox than a game. It’s fun for about 2-3 hours, but then I just got really bored
I did finish it, because hey I paid for it, but it was not really something too fun for most of the time
EDIT: And I’m still mildly salty that BotW got GOTY in a year we got Nier Automata and Persona 5
Turn on japanese audio.
So I can’t understand anything without subtitles?
Yes. Way better voice acting.
I’ve never understood this idea. Usually I see it in reference to anime. How can you even appreciate the voice acting when its in a language you don’t understand while you are trying to read something in English?
You don’t need to be able to know the words to understand the emotions. It’s asking why watch any movies in the original language.
When I went to go see Star Wars Episode 3 when I was overseas, the English version with subtitles was packed while the local language dubbed version had a moderate crowd. People want to see the original because the delivery is usually just better, even if they can’t understand the words.
How can you know if the delivery is better if you don’t even know which words are being inflected upon, if they are being said awkwardly, so on and so forth.
That you use Star Wars kinda cements the point. The prequels were infamous for their odd dialogue and stilted deliveries.
It’s not that the voice acting or delivery is better; it’s that you can’t tell the difference because you don’t know what it should sound like.
You can still tell when someone sounds stiff and awkward vs when someone sounds genuine.
If someone gives an emotional monologue in tears, their acting ability should be clear. Even if you don’t speak the language.
The english dub in BOTW is distractingly bad because it wasn’t written for english. The characters saying ridiculous things sounds better when it’s in Japanese, and most of the time with Nintendo games it doesn’t even matter what they are saying it’s just sound.
It’s a decent game but once I beat it I’ll likely never play it again
And it’s so ok that I have a hard time getting back to it after breaking for a few weeks
