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Your controversial gaming opinions?
- Thread starter tgrfawcett
- Start date
I don't want to get into argument about platform exclusives, I understand why those are a thing even if I would rather play games on a platform of my own choosing. But I don't really agree that they push creativity in a major way, I feel smaller games are doing this more. Games that can take bigger risks, games that are ment to sell hardware aren't usually the biggest risk takers and breaking the mold. Innovation in games rarely starts on console platforms anyway.
It's hard for me to write this since it makes me sad that this is now considered controversial, but:
I really really like Bioshock Infinite and its DLCs, and I think it's a great game with a really cool sci fi story and original setting. The gunplay was also great with all the different powers and made for some great encounters.
I really really like Bioshock Infinite and its DLCs, and I think it's a great game with a really cool sci fi story and original setting. The gunplay was also great with all the different powers and made for some great encounters.
I think the combat is decent, but goddamn the encounter and enemy design is fucking boooorrrriiing.
I'm half tempted to be a dick and say "Why should I? Nobody else here ever has to explain themselves for some reason." But... y'know what, sure. Everyone in this thread, take notes, this is how you should be explaining your shit.
First off, SOR2 has more of everything, which is pretty much going to be my central thesis here.
First off, it has more characters. More importantly, I feel like these characters generally feel more unique than FF's cast. Skate, for example, can run, which makes him feel way more different than Max, who's incredibly slow, but has more grab moves than Haggar did. Blaze and Axel aren't quite as unique, sure, but their moveset is large enough that there's generally a difference playing between them. In Final Fight however, it feels more you're picking between one special ability, whether its "can throw knives", "can piledrive", or "can do that walljump nobody uses".
The extra moves is the important part, I'd say, because once you've put enough time into the controls, you can string together big, damaging combos by mixing your basic string and your special moves. That feels good.
Beyond that, SOR2 wins in variety, which I'd say is the most important part of a BEU. Beat-em-ups live and die on how fresh they stay, how often they mix things up, and the game does very well with that. You've got so many different types of enemies that have different patterns. You've got the bikers who throw grenades, to name one, something Final Fight never had.
There's also the stage design. It's pretty flat, sure, something SOR3 would improve on. But it's the locations that I feel are worth noting. Final Fight, you mostly go through dingy slums, with a few exceptions. SOR2 has the baseball stadium, the theme park, the island, the robot factory -- with actual robots to fight, tying in with my point of the enemy variety... there's just more to look at, more new stuff introduced to keep things interesting.
I also appreciate that SOR2 isn't nearly as unfair as Final Fight ever was. It can't be, by virtue of being a console game. FF was always kind of a quarter muncher, and SOR2's multiple difficulty options and clearer enemy patterns mean that skill counts for a lot more, I'd say.
Really, the only thing Final Fight objectively has over SOR2, I feel, is how many enemies can be on screen at once. Which is important, sure, but I never felt like SOR2 ever had too few enemies, unlike a lot of other BEUs I could name.
Sure some those could fit into the "rarely" I mentioned like Pikmin I assume, haven't played it. I've been bit out of the loop with Nintendo between N64 and Switch, so I'm not super familiar with examples. But Nintendo definitely keeps doing their own thing and does stand out from their competitors, with software and hardware. I commend them for that and I don't think their hardware choices should be called gimmicks but rather features. That's probably controversial.
I assumed so. Aren't those dominantly Japanese developed, atleast the types you are interested in? I thought Japanese games are largely still catering to Japanese market and their preferences first. Isn't Platinum still doing good stuff atleast (besides few licensed stinkers)? What studios that once did good stuff have failed you in recent years? Did you like the older God of War games, not sure if those are "character action" but hack and slash atleast. These genre definitions and how people use them get bit muddy for me. I'm genuinely interested to hear your point of view, I'm not that big into character action myself even though I've enjoyed most of what I have played. Which happens to be games from Platinum.
Calling people bad consumers who like different things than you is kinda that. Or did you mean you get physically attacked when you say that gameplay focus is most important to you?
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The only encounters that I liked were the Valkyries.
Even then, a bunch of those were just variations of each other, so they got pretty boring.
Video games never have, never will be with some industry and consumer nerds religiously believe it to be. Certain individuals continue to obviously (or think their not obvious) bitch about "cinematic experiences" and follow up their stupidity shit talk with "go watch a or read a" How about you go fuck yourself?
Gaming is a big pie with many flavors. Stop being a greedy fuck because developer don't serve only your preference. And stop acting like you got nothing to play because a lot of people hype-love cinematic games. And some studios focus on them.
Gaming is a big pie with many flavors. Stop being a greedy fuck because developer don't serve only your preference. And stop acting like you got nothing to play because a lot of people hype-love cinematic games. And some studios focus on them.
But what if you play deep, mind-bending games on Easy?
Crusader Kings II, RimWorld, Kerbal Space Program, Caves of Qud, Out of the Park Baseball.
Yup, if there's an Easy mode I'm on it.
No shame.
Game designers and creators should be able to make whatever games they want, starring whatever characters they want, portrayed however they want. Feel free to criticize them, but in no way should they ever have to change their creation to suit your needs or agenda. Spend your time praising the creators you like rather than trying to destroy the ones that don't cater to you.
Thanks for the write up. I appreciate it. I think you've got some good points. I'm actually working on a remake of Final Fight, so I'm looking at addressing some of these.
Most of the most creative and ground breaking games are arguably 3rd party/cross platform...
With AAA games? Not really, AAA first party stuff overall has put out way more creativity.
Unless you're referring to indie games, I'd sure like for you to give some examples.
If we're talking indies, definitely. My favorite games of this generation are mostly indies.
I guess the Easy mode thing bothers people when they something like "the combat in this game as no strategy or all you have to do is mash A to win". When anyone that played on medium or higher knows that isn't true.
This is kind of diametrically opposed to my "controversial" gaming opinion. To me, cartain gamers, especially some the the vocal forum going ones, are spoiled. When it comes to value for money, gaming is by far the best entertainment medium. The risk, complexity and investment required in game development has only gone up since the 90, yet prices today are basically lower than ever before. Studios are shutting down and consolidating left and right, crunching is everywhere and cost effectiveness is a huge problem. Despite this, games offer more replayability than ever before, game systems are much more advanced, production values are better than ever, graphics are constantly improving, yet some gamers have weaponized the term "anti-consumer" and are smugly using it in every situation where they are even remotely displeased, most of it unwarranted. There are of course some cases where developers/publishers have messed up, such as with Battlefront 2, but those cases are few and far in between. Lets not forget either that most games can be bought for 40 dollars or less just a few months after release, so prices get even more reasonable over time. So in my opinion, gamer greed is far more prevalent than the so called "publisher greed".
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Not the person you asked, but one recent example for me would be For Honor's take on fighting games. I find it pretty unique and genre bending. And I think they took a risk with that.
I got swords, I got bow and arrows. I bombed shit. I got to fight dungeons before going in them. Cool abilities. Side quests.
What was taken away from me again?
We're probably going to disagree on what "AAA" means (because I think AAA is relative to its time period), but this is how I see it in terms of seminal games. The first party ones are bolded (there aren't that many).
Pong (Atari, first party) -- duh
Space Invaders (Taito, third party, ported endlessly) -- created the shmup
Adventure (Atari, first party) -- early action/adventure that established persistent worlds in games; hugely important
Donkey Kong (Nintendo, third party, ported endlessly) -- established a lot of platformer conventions
Pitfall! (Activision, third party, ported endlessly) -- first platformer with an actual sense of world
Tetris (third party, ported endlessly) -- the puzzle game
King's Quest (Sierra, third party, ported endlessly) -- established the narrative adventure genre
Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, first party) -- popularized the platformer
The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo, first party) -- established most conventions of the Action/RPG genre
Final Fantasy (Square, third party) -- established a lot of Japanese RPG conventions
Street Fighter 2 (Capcom, third party, ported endlessly) -- basically defined how 2D action games should play; absurdly seminal
Sid Meier's Civilization (Firaxis, third party, ported endlessly) -- defined the strategy genre
Alone in the Dark (Infogrames, third party, ported endlessly) -- created survival horror, far more important than Resident Evil, which was just a ripoff
DOOM (id Software, third party, ported endlessly) -- popularized first person shooters, established the PC mod scene, first game with solid networking
TIE Fighter (Lucasarts, third party) -- perfected space sims, incredibly advanced dynamic music system
Super Mario 64 (Nintendo, first party) -- established 3D platformer conventions
Quake (id Software, third party, ported endlessly) -- 75% of the games made today could be recreated in this game's engine; this was tech from the future; ridiculous achievement
Command & Conquer (EA, third party, ported endlessly) -- popularized RTS games
Final Fantasy 7 (Square, third party) -- made JRPGs mainstream and set the tone for most contemporary console RPGs
Half-Life (Valve, third party, ported endlessly) -- set the tone for contemporary games with scripted events even though it ultimately lives in Quake's shadow
Everquest (Sony, third party, ported to Mac and Windows) -- proved that MMOs could actually work, established most of the conventions
Devil May Cry (Capcom, third party, ported endlessly) -- established how 3D action games should play
Grand Theft Auto 3 (Rockstar, third party, ported endlessly) -- proved/popularized/set conventions for open world action games
World of Warcraft (Blizzard, third party, ported to Mac and Windows) -- popularized MMOs
Half-Life 2 (Valve, third party, ported endlessly) -- 3D games aren't allowed to ship without physics engines after this; it's that influential
Resident Evil 4 (Capcom, third party, ported endlessly) -- perfected 3rd person shooter gameplay
Dark Souls (From Software, third party, ported endlessly) -- combining the Demons Souls mechanics with an interconnected world was completely genius, and this popularized a new subgenre
Minecraft (Mojang, third party, ported endlessly) -- welp
Basically, most seminal games weren't even made by first parties. A lot of polished, derivative games are...
Every game made since 2012, pretty much, is derivative of one of these games.
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I agree with every single one of your opinions.
I wish there were more people like us.
I feel this is the main reason I always preferred the Streets of Rage series to all the beat em ups of arcade origin, it doesn't feel so tuned to credit munching like all the rest and you can easily change the difficulty if you feel its too easy or too hard(western version of 3 unbalancing things excepted).
And to mention something you haven't already covered, for some reason I can't explain I have a lot of love of the side switching vault move that most characters in the series have and I greatly miss it in every other game in the genre. It even bothers me when I see others playing SOR like Final Fight and never using it.
Nice list I appreciate the effort, I'd throw immersive sims there too. Not sure if it should be Deus Ex or System Shock deserving the credit. Doesn't seem to be most popular genre nowadays though unfortunately.
Okay, but what if the creators these people like stop catering to them? And what do you mean by "trying to destroy?"
They are some of the most annoying people you'll find online for sure.
Visuals are the single most important quality of video games. They are called video games, not gameplay games, or framerate games, or story games. While those other elements are definitely important, not being able to get immersed in the world visually = me not wanting to touch the game, regardless of how good everything else is.
Video games just means they are games that you play using a screen, so technically they are still that, games, toys and the main purpose of those is to provide entertainment with how you use them and their rules. Them looking better is always a undeniable plus but it doesn't make them good by itself, just like a beautiful board game (notice that game is the most important part of board game and video game, the first word mostly being there to dictate by which mean the game offers the player to experience it) with shitty rules will never be worth playing but a ugly one with god tier rules deserve to stay in your library forever.
You're talking about grappling mechanics in a genre with all the depth of a kiddie pool.
Just like when a show stops being enjoyable, stop watching. Move on. The creator wants to do something different so let them. And by destroy I mean slandering them and trying to brand them racist, sexist, homophobic or whatever other word people these days use when they don't get what they want. If their creations fall on deaf ears then the crowd has spoken and they can continue to create for themselves if they wish.
Easy to say that when you arbitrarily ignore the aspects of them that make them unique.
I was replaying Uncharted 4 today because I got a new 4K TV and this was all I could think. They both have terrible gameplay and you literally just moved from cutscene to cutscene where your character survives the most bullshit, ridiculous situations.
I bought UC4 on sale just for the spectacle on my 4k HDR set and even then I regretted my purchase as the game was a lethargic slog that I had to force myself to complete only a week ago.
I disagree. Regardless of how good the story or gameplay is, if what I am seeing does not appeal to me, I do not stick with it.
Sure it is.
Vanilla Minecraft was/is awful and I fell off of it rather quickly. With mods (such as in that picture), however, I can easily be drawn into the world and stick with playing the game.
May I ask what games you consider great?
Genuinely curious.
