What Are Your Unpopular Gaming Opinions? (Ver. 2)

[Sari]

Hate the Mario series? Love the Virtual Boy? Can't stand a new popular title? Share here! It doesn't matter how you feel about something, just as long as it's about gaming (doesn't have to be Nintendo-related).

The previous thread got locked due to people being uncivil, but I was given permission to create a new thread. Although I can't enforce these rules since I'm not a mod, I suggest that you explain your answers when you can, and don't lose your marbles when someone feels different about something (there is a reason as to why those opinions are unpopular).

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To start off, I liked Uncharted 2 better than Uncharted 3 (mainly because of story/level design).

 

[finalark]

Hopefully we'll keep it together this time. Maybe we'll get more activity. Anyway, my contribution for today:

I don't like Silent Hill 2, I think it's far inferior to the first and third games.

To start off, I liked Uncharted 2 better than Uncharted 3 (mainly because of story/level design).

I'm pretty sure most people would agree with you.

 

[Minato]

I'll be monitoring this. Keep in civil guys.

 

[MajinBuu272]

I actually like assassin's creed 3 a lot more than 2

 

[FamilyTeam]

Yes, last time this got kind of out of hand towards the end, I remember it.
Let's just keep it clean, people.
Anyway...
This may or may not be unpopular depending on where you hang out, but I'll say it anyway: Awakening is the best FE game. I have played the other supposed "best" ones and IMHO the only thing they have going for them that Awakening doesn't is objective variety, since Awakening has only like, 3 different objectives the whole game and PoR had at least 6 different ones by the first third. Awakening honestly seems pretty much objectively better than the rest in my eyes.

 

[Sari]

I prefer GTA IV over V. Liberty City in IV felt much more alive, whereas Los Santos in V just felt like a giant movie set. V's story was also just really bad and didn't really motivate me to keep on playing.

Also I'm probably the only person that actually enjoyed getting friend calls in IV.

 

[FamilyTeam]

I prefer GTA IV over V. Liberty City in IV felt much more alive, whereas Los Santos in V just felt like a giant movie set. V's story was also just really bad and didn't really motivate me to keep on playing.

Also I'm probably the only person that actually enjoyed getting friend calls in IV.

You're not alone. In any of that.
I do know that people complained that GTAIV was too serious and they wanted a goofy storyline and atmosphere back... but surely I can't be the only one that thought that was some massive step back.

 

[Substitution]

Well, time to see how long threads lasts.
(On a side note though I'm amazed that thread went down before "What Did Nintendo Do To Upset You?") Anyway...


I feel like gaming as a whole has started to get safe when it comes to creativity. Almost like AAA and indie games alike have slowly started going towards "safer genres" and nostalgia. I just don't think there is as much of a push for different ideas as it used to get.


Which honestly I find to be a shame. I think video games as a whole can do a lot more than people give it credit for. There is a lot the medium can do, if not more so than any other art medium out there. It's very unique in the way it operates, and there's is so much more it could do.


It just at times it feels like we've gone back to the old mentality comic books had where it's just entertainment and nothing else.
(It's also that idea that I still think we have yet to finally find that antithesis to "video games aren't art" yet, but that's a discussion for another time. Though I do think it's very much possible).

 

[Minato]

(On a side note though I'm amazed that thread went down before "What Did Nintendo Do To Upset You?") Anyway...

There was a lot of stuff in that thread that was way worse than the Nintendo one where I'd have to intervene. I'm stressing it now, I don't want to see any of that SJW vs Gamer Gate stuff in this thread again. All it does is lead things to be off topic and insults to be thrown meaninglessly.

The unpopular opinion thread and Nintendo thread do get the most discussion in Light House unfortunately, but it is what it is. Having discussions is good, but hounding people for certain reasons isn't, so it hopefully won't come to that.

 

[Zerinus]

Love the Virtual Boy?

Hell yes, what can I say? It's fun to play on.

I own a Virtual Boy, and one of the things I do for most of my friends is to let them try it out. Nobody has ever really disliked playing on it except for like one person, who complained about it giving him a headache.

Yeah, it does give you a headache after a while and can hurt your eyes, but it's definitely way ahead in its time.

 

[mario123007]

Hell yes, what can I say? It's fun to play on.

I own a Virtual Boy, and one of the things I do for most of my friends is to let them try it out. Nobody has ever really disliked playing on it except for like one person, who complained about it giving him a headache.

Yeah, it does give you a headache after a while and can hurt your eyes, but it's definitely way ahead in its time.

Yeah, kind of ironic when VR is starting boom recently. Virtual Boy technically was the first VR ever made. Not sure if this was the reason why Nntendo still don't want to enter VR market for now.

 

[Minato]

Yeah, kind of ironic when VR is starting boom recently. Virtual Boy technically was the first VR ever made. Not sure if this was the reason why Nntendo still don't want to enter VR market for now.

After the Wii U's situation, they probably want to take a safer and cheaper bet right now, haha.

 

[iAmMatt]

Mine is actually smash related.

Pichu is bottom tier.
Kirby is second to bottom.

I genuinely think that kirby should be higher than pichu. His upair is amazing and his nair is good for cheap gimps.

 

[mario123007]

After the Wii U's situation, they probably want to take a safer and cheaper bet right now, haha.

But with many semi-big actions they took recently (Pokemon GO, Mario on iOS), who knows?

 

[jcx]

My unpopular opinions?

•Advance Wars > Fire Emblem
•Undertale has poor gameplay
•Shadow Tag is not ban-worthy in Pokémon ORAS OU Singles

 

[Ocarina Stealer]

•Undertale has poor gameplay

I'm inclined to agree here. It's pretty novel at first but I tire of it pretty quickly.

 

[jcx]

I'm inclined to agree here. It's pretty novel at first but I tire of it pretty quickly.

Well, the reason I don't like Undertale's gameplay is because it makes the game feel more like a bullet hell shooter than an RPG. The story is amazing IMO, but the fact that enemy attacks are like waves of bullets in games like Touhou or 1942 turns me off from the game altogether. I'd rather have a crappy story than crappy gameplay (Advance Wars Dual Strike is my personal favorite example to go by; you could tell I'm a fan of that game if I say it's better than Fire Emblem ).

 

[FamilyTeam]

Well, I have to know.
Do you say Undertale has bad gameplay because it plays like Touhou, or that its gameplay is not as good as Touhou?
It seems that most TH players agree that Undie just kinda plays like a poor-man's version of that game. The patterns are, for the most part, just simplified versions of patterns you'd see in your average TH game set to Easy/Normal. It never reaches even a 10th of the difficulty TH does and it's not even close pace-wise.
I haven't played Undie that much aside from the first hour, but from what I have seen and gathered from my other friends that play Touhou that have also played Undie, that seems to be the case.

 

[jcx]

Well, I have to know.
Do you say Undertale has bad gameplay because it plays like Touhou, or that its gameplay is not as good as Touhou?
It seems that most TH players agree that Undie just kinda plays like a poor-man's version of that game. The patterns are, for the most part, just simplified versions of patterns you'd see in your average TH game set to Easy/Normal. It never reaches even a 10th of the difficulty TH does and it's not even close pace-wise.
I haven't played Undie that much aside from the first hour, but from what I have seen and gathered from my other friends that play Touhou that have also played Undie, that seems to be the case.

I said Undertale had poor gameplay because it plays like bullet hell shooters in general. It's not that I hate bullet hell, it's just that I don't like having that aspect in an RPG.

 

[FamilyTeam]

I said Undertale had poor gameplay because it plays like bullet hell shooters in general. It's not that I hate bullet hell, it's just that I don't like having that aspect in an RPG.

Well then it's not so much that the gameplay is objectively poor, then, more so that you don't like it.

 

[finalark]

The Souls games have no reason to be RPGs. For such a skill-oriented series, there's no reason to add a numbers game on top of it.

 

[lucrass]

Where is the next Tenchu?? Is there anything now-a-days that even compares to that classic ninja feel? Splinter cell, Shinobi and Assassin's Creed lack the simple martial arts and primitive combat theme I'm thinking of. Way of the Samurai comes to mind, but thats an old title and not based on stealth.

 

[PlayfulMushroom]

No need to be soft:

- Undetale is severely overrated. There's nothing special about the game; bland characters, bad music and lackluster gameplay. I'd give it a 3/10 if I was asked to review it.

- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was a revolutinary game upon it's release, but in hindsight it's definitely one of the worst games of in the Zelda franchise.

- Super Mario Sunshine is the best 3D Mario game (not counting 3D World).

- The Last of Us is one of the worst games Naughty Dog has designed.

- Fire Emblem is so bad and cringeworthy that I'll never lay my hand upon another game in the series.

 

[finalark]

- Fire Emblem is so bad and cringeworthy that I'll never lay my hand upon another game in the series.

Fire Emblem's not about story. It's about ball-crushingly hard difficulty and that feeling of satisfaction when you devise a strategy that overcomes the challenge.

Ever since the series' conception in the early 90s I'd say the story has always been the weakest part. If you really want to enjoy the Emblem for what its supposed to be, make ample use of that skip button and enjoy the game play.

 

[ThatsBullocks]

• Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is so insanely derivative and uninspired, with a bland artstyle and a mixed bag of character design ranging from meh to awful, resulting in a game that just feels shallow and soulless, going especially downhill after the first three dungeons; it baffles me how people hold it in such high regard and how Nintendo has insisted on TP being the new "core" Zelda game. I will say, though, that even though half the dungeons totally suck (Lakebed Temple, Forest Temple, City in the Sky, and especially Hyrule f**king Castle), the other half are some of my all-time favorites in the series.
• Similarly, Link Between Worlds was only okay. Sorry, but I can't see why people also consider this as such an incredible Zelda game, just because it calls back to Link to the Past. It copies a great deal of LttP's overworld, along with a general crapton of its content (story, items, game progression, theming, etc); the dungeons are way too easy even with the minimum equipment, however (and bringing in additional items than the mandatory one just makes them a joke); the one real notion of difficulty/punishment that exists (i.e. renting your items) is ruined by being able to buy them (Rupees are so easy to come across, you'll literally be richer than God), and then extra-ruined by them being upgradeable.
• I will agree with Undertale actually being pretty bad; I feel confident in saying that more after a year since its release. The game boils down morality to insultingly simplistic absolutes (and we know who deal in absolutes...), trying too hard to guilt the player for doing anything more than just sitting there and accepting abuse like a battered housewife on COPS, going too far to actually punish the player for taking a choice offered by the game (the absurd increasing wait times for enemies to spawn after killing them and the game pretending to be tainted and broken after finishing the Genocide Route are the worst examples). Plus, the story's clearly the major draw of the game since that's the impetus for replays, but this becomes such a hassle when there's so much annoying puzzle garbage in the midst of it all (Hotlands, ugh).

 

[LancerStaff]

I don't think any kind of "open world" anything belongs in any major Nintendo franchise, especially the big three. BotW has been nothing but a disappointment so far.

 

[finalark]

I don't think any kind of "open world" anything belongs in any major Nintendo franchise, especially the big three. BotW has been nothing but a disappointment so far.

 

[LancerStaff]

I think everybody would agree with me when I say that it's not a very well designed game... For it's time sure but being literally lost all the time and having to hunt every grid for upgrades wasn't ever fun.

ALttP did it much better making it more rigid and linear. ALBW's greatest faults come from it's lack of an order.

 

[finalark]

I think everybody would agree with me when I say that it's not a very well designed game... For it's time sure but being literally lost all the time and having to hunt every grid for upgrades wasn't ever fun.

ALttP did it much better making it more rigid and linear. ALBW's greatest faults come from it's lack of an order.

I'm not going to say that LoZ1 one is a good game. Because it's not. It's directionless, obscure and honestly pretty boring. But what I'm getting at is that having some semblance of an open world has always kinda been Zelda's thing. There's no reason to not go all the way.

ALttP did it much better making it more rigid and linear. ALBW's greatest faults come from it's lack of an order.

I'm willing to argue that ALBW's faults come from it being a glorified ALttP rom hack.

 

[LancerStaff]

I'm not going to say that LoZ1 one is a good game. Because it's not. It's directionless, obscure and honestly pretty boring. But what I'm getting at is that having some semblance of an open world has always kinda been Zelda's thing. There's no reason to not go all the way.



I'm willing to argue that ALBW's faults come from it being a glorified ALttP rom hack.

Openness past the first game has always been weak or nonexistent. Zelda 2 up to MM has a main order with a handful of main items that can be skipped without major glitches... With some minor exceptions like OoT's slightly flexible order. Dungeons don't have to be completed until certain points but why would you leave them half finished? Every other handheld Zelda and everything after MM requires you to complete every dungeon before moving onto the next, often even with major glitches. All the way? I'd rather go all the way and strip out the rest of the openness. Hell, I'd take a totally linear Zelda game with a level select like Mario. I'd know because I have one already, heh.

That's not even a problem. Like, the overworld looks similar and it reuses music for the first three dungeons... And that's about it. Metroid Zero Mission is closer to Super then ALBW is to ALttP.

 

[finalark]

Hell, I'd take a totally linear Zelda game with a level select like Mario.

Well, let's be honest here. Dungeons are the most fun part of Zelda. I'd probably like LoZ game like that. But I'm willing to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt with BotW. The open world looks fun, I'm excited to see how they expand it and I'm glad that they're taking a more RPG approach to the game.

That's not even a problem. Like, the overworld looks similar and it reuses music for the first three dungeons... And that's about it. Metroid Zero Mission is closer to Super then ALBW is to ALttP.

It also shared several of the same dungeons. The over world wasn't just similar, it was nearly identical. The whole game was made to be evocative of ALttP. I know that Nintendo is in the business of crashing in on nostalgia lately, but if I really want some ALttP nostalgia I'll just go play ALttP.

Although while we're talking about Zelda, here's an unpopular opinion: I just don't like LoZ anymore. I used to love the franchise to death and went out of my way to get my hands on anything LoZ. But these days I just can't bring myself to see one through to the end anymore. I really just don't find them fun and whenever I'm playing one I feel like I'm forcing myself. What LoZ does other games do better. Other games do combat better, other games do dungeon crawling better, other games do puzzles better, everything LoZ does I can find somewhere else but better.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the franchise and what it's done for video games. Hell, I still consider it the best entry point for anyone who wants to see what this whole scene is about. But after you've spent your childhood and much of your adulthood free time playing as many games as I have the series just kind of loses its charm when you find better stuff.

 

[FamilyTeam]

Well I am honestly always relieved to see more people that think the original LoZ has basically aged every single second since it was released. It's nearly impossible to have fun with it if you have no nostalgia for it.
Speaking of ALttP, it was long the only Zelda game that I wouldn't trash on, but then I actually tried playing through it this year. You ain't gonna see me defending that one anymore! When the new battery I bought just for the damn cartridge to save died, I was actually relieved instead of angered to saddened.
They really had a thing for putting the main Zelda theme as the overworld theme in the older games of the series, didn't they? It's a good theme but not good enough to justify you listening to it every time you are outside. Also the game felt... a tad too repetitive for my taste. You may argue COD campaigns are repetitive, and you'd be right. But atleast they last 4 hours if you are good, not however long ALttP lasts. It felt like it took 4 hours just for the game to actually go somewhere.

Also, changing subject to talk about another SNES game... Super Mario World. I recently did another 96* run of the game after I bought my Wii U. Honestly... it really feels to me like SMW really didn't come together until the hacks came along a decade later. The physics in the game are excellent, yes, but it just doesn't have the levels to back it up. Sure, they're big, but they're not very interesting and I'm sure all of us know you can literally fly through every single one of them if you are skilled enough. Be it with a Cape or a blue Yoshi. Sorry if it sounds like I'm trying to sell myself off here, but I had a lot more fun playing my basic lower-end SMW hack I made back when I was 12 than I had playing through the entirety of the real game. Probably because I wouldn't give you items for free and my long levels actually had things going on in them.

 

[finalark]

. The physics in the game are excellent, yes, but it just doesn't have the levels to back it up. Sure, they're big, but they're not very interesting and I'm sure all of us know you can literally fly through every single one of them if you are skilled enough. Be it with a Cape or a blue Yoshi.

Last time I played through SMW was a few years ago with a friend. We ended up shooting the **** while we played it and finished it surprisingly quickly. SMW isn't even among my most played games or anything like that. The game is a lot like junk food. It's fun for what it is, but you just kind of mindlessly consume it and move onto the next level without a second thought.

 

[LancerStaff]

Well, let's be honest here. Dungeons are the most fun part of Zelda. I'd probably like LoZ game like that. But I'm willing to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt with BotW. The open world looks fun, I'm excited to see how they expand it and I'm glad that they're taking a more RPG approach to the game.



It also shared several of the same dungeons. The over world wasn't just similar, it was nearly identical. The whole game was made to be evocative of ALttP. I know that Nintendo is in the business of crashing in on nostalgia lately, but if I really want some ALttP nostalgia I'll just go play ALttP.

Although while we're talking about Zelda, here's an unpopular opinion: I just don't like LoZ anymore. I used to love the franchise to death and went out of my way to get my hands on anything LoZ. But these days I just can't bring myself to see one through to the end anymore. I really just don't find them fun and whenever I'm playing one I feel like I'm forcing myself. What LoZ does other games do better. Other games do combat better, other games do dungeon crawling better, other games do puzzles better, everything LoZ does I can find somewhere else but better.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the franchise and what it's done for video games. Hell, I still consider it the best entry point for anyone who wants to see what this whole scene is about. But after you've spent your childhood and much of your adulthood free time playing as many games as I have the series just kind of loses its charm when you find better stuff.

See, that's what I don't get... The open world doesn't seem to add anything to the game and the combat is still just walking up and pressing B a few times. Inflating the numbers given and received without actually making it hard to avoid doesn't change anything. Three heart runs are hardly harder then normal ones if you have any remote idea of what you're doing. Since absolutely everything goes back to combat it's basically pointless.

ALBW shared some general dungeon themes... And, yaknow, every other Zelda ever. There were still a few totally new dungeons, like the Isle of Gales and Lorule Castle, and the other old dungeons generally focused on new gimmicks like the light and darkness and the spring dudes. Even with the overworld being like 80% the same you still progress through it differently and didn't spend a ton of time there anyway.

I like where Zelda is for puzzles for the most part... Though I really don't like how they keep on giving you everything right away. For most games that was the one sense of progression you had... SS I think had great combat, but they threw it all away for more spamming B so *shrug.*

Last time I played through SMW was a few years ago with a friend. We ended up shooting the **** while we played it and finished it surprisingly quickly. SMW isn't even among my most played games or anything like that. The game is a lot like junk food. It's fun for what it is, but you just kind of mindlessly consume it and move onto the next level without a second thought.

I'm like that for most games, lol. Usually there's some tougher parts that require actual focus... But SMW has maybe three levels like that.

Even NSMB usually had some kind of gimmick to toy around with and some hard star coins to grab, but in comparison SMW just feels bland. There's no reason to experiment or anything outside of like hidden coins or alternate paths... And the Dino Coins were just too tedious to go for.

Can't say I care for the physics either. They're built like Megaman, which I adore... But even with hacks with good difficulty curves it feels really easy and sterile. They're built for two or three hits and generally there's not a lot that you can risk. Megaman can take a few more hits and you feel a need to not die or you end up wasting ammo or something... In Mario losing a hit or a life is nothing. They really can't make it more then that or it's just frustrating. NSMB has risk and reward built into it's physics. Go fast and it's hard to stop.

 

[FamilyTeam]

Can't say I care for the physics either. They're built like Megaman, which I adore... But even with hacks with good difficulty curves it feels really easy and sterile. They're built for two or three hits and generally there's not a lot that you can risk. Megaman can take a few more hits and you feel a need to not die or you end up wasting ammo or something... In Mario losing a hit or a life is nothing. They really can't make it more then that or it's just frustrating. NSMB has risk and reward built into it's physics. Go fast and it's hard to stop.

The way I see most hacks trying to fix the obvious difficulty problem is surprisingly simple and it works: give the player a very limited access to powerups, lives and Yoshi (and preferably patch out the cape and Blue Yoshi's ability to fly), make the levels really long and that usually punish mistakes, put the player on a hurry with tighter timers, and use ROM expansions and memory patches to allow for far more enemies on screen at once.
This way, you can actually make it an incentive to get coins and Dragon Coins (even more so if you patch the game to keep track of Dragon Coins). If you make your hack start with only 3 lives instead of 5, make lives sparse, make it something like 8-10 levels between save points and make the whole thing difficult but fair, you already have a really good hack in the making.
Actually a lot of the better hacks tend to do this, so maybe you haven't played those?
What SMW hacks actually need to do to be good is to use patch gimmicks to make the game more fun, not turn it into some tech demo cough cough Brutal Mario cough.

 

[LancerStaff]

The way I see most hacks trying to fix the obvious difficulty problem is surprisingly simple and it works: give the player a very limited access to powerups, lives and Yoshi (and preferably patch out the cape and Blue Yoshi's ability to fly), make the levels really long and that usually punish mistakes, put the player on a hurry with tighter timers, and use ROM expansions and memory patches to allow for far more enemies on screen at once.
This way, you can actually make it an incentive to get coins and Dragon Coins (even more so if you patch the game to keep track of Dragon Coins). If you make your hack start with only 3 lives instead of 5, make lives sparse, make it something like 8-10 levels between save points and make the whole thing difficult but fair, you already have a really good hack in the making.
Actually a lot of the better hacks tend to do this, so maybe you haven't played those?
What SMW hacks actually need to do to be good is to use patch gimmicks to make the game more fun, not turn it into some tech demo cough cough Brutal Mario cough.

A lot of that is the exact opposite of what I want... Dragging out levels and saves is just tedium.

 

[FamilyTeam]

A lot of that is the exact opposite of what I want... Dragging out levels and saves is just tedium.

Making longer levels isn't bad if they're eventful. There's a lot of space in each level and all of the original ones barely use even half of the space they could've been.

 

[finalark]

Making longer levels isn't bad if they're eventful. There's a lot of space in each level and all of the original ones barely use even half of the space they could've been.

Long levels are good so long as they're memorable and require you to actually focus on what you're doing. I'd rather be stuck on a challenging level for a good twenty minutes than just blow through a short one and be barely aware that I just finished a stage.

 

[Bowserboy3]

I agree with there being longer levels if they're interesting, memorable, require you to be on point, lots of collectibles etc.

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze is an example of this done right. Fewer overall levels in the game, but each individual level is much longer overall, all packed with secrets and collectibles.

One of my opinions however is that games nowadays seem to not be as challenging, so it kind of makes a lives system irrelevant. That's kind of why I prefer Donkey Kong Country over Mario Bros for example (not to bash Mario Bros, I love that too. I probably favour DKC because that's the series I grew up playing by far the most). It's also a lot harder to grind lives without cheats/exploits in the DKC games.

It's either that, or that I have just gotten so much better at games, and I'm just more inclined to say it's that. Games with lives nowadays are no longer me thinking "I better get all these coins/banana's etc so I can get more lives, because I will need them later", and have become me thinking "I wonder how quickly I can max out my lives, or keep them as high as I can before losing one?".

That said, when there is no lives system, I often miss it, despite me thinking it becomes pointless. As pointless as it is, it might serve as a little extra challenge on a level or two. Yoshi's Woolly World is a good example here. I just miss it in general, despite me dying a fair few times.

I suppose that lives DO do is put a timer on how many times you can fail getting a secret/collectible. In DKC for example, if I fail getting a collectible, I can die and start from a checkpoint to try and get it again. However, if I have, say, 10 lives, I only have 10 chances to do this before I have to start the level from the beginning. In Yoshi's Woolly World, there are no lives, so I could just die whenever I wanted to if I failed at something without the worry of losing lives. I kind of miss that mini-challenge in that game.

 

[finalark]

To be honest, lives have actually been pointless ever since video games stopped being made for arcades.