Unpopular Opinions On Gaming

[Spark Of Spirit]

You should at least demo, rent, borrow, or torrent a game before making an actual judgment on it, though. You don't have to buy it, but you should find some way to play it, unless it's just obviously broken like Ninjabread Man or whatever.

But that's thing, when you've played games for so long you get used to all the tricks developers use. I didn't have to play Black Ops because I knew what it would be like, what it would control like, and what all the gameplay would consist of. Sure enough, I asked my friend who played it and it was exactly what I expected it to be. I didn't have to waste my time or money on it because my discernment ability was good enough that I could tell what it would be like.

Sure it doesn't work for developers like Valve, Nintendo, or Platinum, since they make all sorts of different games but in this era of cinematic hallway simulators and broken RPGs with cliched dialogue choices and poor combat- I'd wager you could give an educated guess on how they would turn out as a whole.

[Foggle]

That's only really true of yearly sequels and their obvious imitators, though. You can't base your opinion of Dragon Age 2 on how you feel about Dragon Age: Origins, for instance, because they're nothing alike. Though at the same time, if you absolutely HATE horror games, you already know that you aren't going to enjoy Amnesia or Condemned.

[Spark Of Spirit]

But as far as I can tell we are talking about obvious imitators and yearly sequels. The original stuff is far and few between, which is obviously stuff you can't quite judge since there's nothing to compare it to such as Wonderful 101, Nintendoland, or the original Portal.

As for Talon's example, my interest for Sonic 06 fell out the second it was revealed when it looked exactly like Sonic Adventure 2 except worse- like every other Sonic game that had come out at the time. So when they revealed it was one of the worst games of all time, I had already forgotten all about it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Heck, look at Ensatsu-Ken and Ninja Gaiden 3. He was right about that and he didn't even need to play it.

True, but I'm always right, so that's no surprise.

At any rate, to be fair, in the case of Ninja Gaiden 3, I did have a good judgement on how lacking the game was since I had played the hell out of the first 2 games (I've beaten each of them at least 4 times a piece), so I being that this game was based on the same mechanics but stripping most of the advanced stuff away, I was noticing how limiting and repetitive the game was.

To be honest, in most cases I will at least try a demo for a game before I say if its bad or not. However, in terms of me saying whether a game would appeal to me or not, I tend to agree more with Desensitized that you don't need to play the game to know that you just won't enjoy it. I know that for most movie shooters and modern action games, if the preview footage is showing a lot of gameplay elements (or lack thereof) that don't interest me, then the game itself will just be a bore for me. In all honesty....that's kind of why I have held off on Max Payne 3 up until now. I still plan to try that game because I liked the first 2 titles, but I must be perfectly honest and say that I think a good deal of the footage that I've seen for the game looks pretty boring and unappealing to me, not really capturing quite what I enjoyed about the older games.

Another example of a game that I called that I wouldn't think was as great as everyone else did was Batman: Arkham City. Everyone saw the footage for the game and thought it looked awesome. As you all remember, I saw the footage for that game and I thought it looked....OK. Everyone finally played the game and thought it was awesome. I finally played the game and thought it was....OK. So, yeah, in that regard I can pretty much tell when a game will appeal to me or not.

That said, I will admit that judging games by this method isn't completely fool-proof. One example is how I had seen quite a bit of footage of Resident Evil 4 and thought it looked decent but assumed I wouldn't like it nearly as much as everyone else who said it was one of the greatest games ever made. Then I played through the entire game and concluded that it really was one of the greatest games ever made, as some games just need to be experienced for you to understand how damn good they are. So, yeah, sometimes I can be wrong by only just looking at a game and not trying it. That said, games like Resident Evil 4 are usually the exception rather than the rule, IMO. I can usually tell when a game is going to be pretty "meh" by looking at the footage, so I still tend to go by that method, myself.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I wonder how many people who ragged on Wind Waker before they played it took their comments back on the art style. That's a perfect example of incorrectly judging a game before you play it because, graphics aside, it plays as well as any other Zelda.

I mean when I saw Super Mario Sunshine revealed I was plenty disappointed, but it wasn't because of the water mechanics or Bowser Jr or the story or whatever. It was because it looked like the sequel to Super Mario 64, a game I didn't enjoy nearly as much as everyone else. When I played it, nitpicks aside, that's exactly what it was just with a water pack.

In fact if the next 3D Mario is designed like 64 I'm going to remain unconvinced until I play it myself. Because I know the formula, and I'm not much of a fan of it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I wonder how many people who ragged on Wind Waker before they played it took their comments back on the art style. That's a perfect example of incorrectly judging a game before you play it because, graphics aside, it plays as well as any other Zelda.

Based on the fact that the game never even came close to the sales figures of Ocarina of Time and even lost out to Majora's Mask but quite a significant margin, I conclude that a lot of people not sold on the art-style of the game didn't even give it a chance and still haven't. I agree that its unfair to judge the worth of a game based on their art-style alone. Sometimes I think people put a bit too much emphasis on that element, and while I can't deny that its important, I don't think its fair to ignore how the game actually executes its gameplay.

I mean when I saw Super Mario Sunshine revealed I was plenty disappointed, but it wasn't because of the water mechanics or Bowser Jr or the story or whatever. It was because it looked like the sequel to Super Mario 64, a game I didn't enjoy nearly as much as everyone else. When I played it, nitpicks aside, that's exactly what it was just with a water pack.

Interesting. As someone who enjoyed Super Mario 64, I wasn't impressed with what I saw of Super Mario Sunshine either, but to me it didn't look anything at all like Super Mario 64, but rather just a 3D Mario game with a water-pack gimmick (Somehow it almost resembled Luigi's Mansion to me more than it did Mario 64, to be honest). I think that we can both agree that the game looked uninteresting in the previews, though, even if we disliked what we saw for different reasons, apparently. That said, I can't really say anything about the game because to be honest I never played it (well, technically I did, but it was just a demo at an EB games store, and it was only for about 5-10 minutes).

[Spark Of Spirit]

I wonder how many people who ragged on Wind Waker before they played it took their comments back on the art style. That's a perfect example of incorrectly judging a game before you play it because, graphics aside, it plays as well as any other Zelda.

Based on the fact that the game never even came close to the sales figures of Ocarina of Time and even lost out to Majora's Mask but quite a significant margin, I conclude that a lot of people not sold on the art-style of the game didn't even give it a chance and still haven't. I agree that its unfair to judge the worth of a game based on their art-style alone. Sometimes I think people put a bit too much emphasis on that element, and while I can't deny that its important, I don't think its fair to ignore how the game actually executes its gameplay.

That's a real shame, too. Because the game runs really good and Toon Link is really expressive and animated well. It's really a shame that Nintendo basically relegated the style to handhelds.

I mean when I saw Super Mario Sunshine revealed I was plenty disappointed, but it wasn't because of the water mechanics or Bowser Jr or the story or whatever. It was because it looked like the sequel to Super Mario 64, a game I didn't enjoy nearly as much as everyone else. When I played it, nitpicks aside, that's exactly what it was just with a water pack.

Interesting. As someone who enjoyed Super Mario 64, I wasn't impressed with what I saw of Super Mario Sunshine either, but to me it didn't look anything at all like Super Mario 64, but rather just a 3D Mario game with a water-pack gimmick (Somehow it almost resembled Luigi's Mansion to me more than it did Mario 64, to be honest). I think that we can both agree that the game looked uninteresting in the previews, though, even if we disliked what we saw for different reasons, apparently. That said, I can't really say anything about the game because to be honest I never played it (well, technically I did, but it was just a demo at an EB games store, and it was only for about 5-10 minutes).

Well, there was also the issue that the level design and the objectives in Sunshine were pretty terrible as a whole. I've come around to collectathon platformers in recent years (Sunshine sort of falls into this more than 64, though) and really enjoying Banjo Kazooie and Jak & Daxter, but I recently tried to start SM64 over and still managed to lose interest. I can't find my copy of Sunshine to try that again, but being that I couldn't get any further in SM64, I doubt I would get much further in Sunshine since it's simply not as good.

I know some people on this site enjoy Super Mario Sunshine, but I really didn't like it at all. I sort of wish they would put that adventure style of game into another franchise or something because Galaxy and 3D Land are much better formulas in my opinion.

[Grave]

I actually don't play any demo's, which is why I don't call any game "bad" (I just have no interest). Like Spark, I've been playing games for quite some time and I can usually tell if I'm going to be interested in a game by watching videos. Which is quite odd because I'm at a standstill with DmC.

As for Wind Waker, first I'll say that I didn't get a GameCube until late 2007 (And that's because I never intended on getting anything from Nintendo after the N64), and yes I'm one of the ones that misjudged it due to the artwork, however, once I actually got the game, much like Twilight Princess, I was done with the Zelda series as a whole.

[talonmalon333]

The funny thing about Sunshine is that the only parts of the game that I liked were the ones where the game stripped you of that water backpack and tossed you into those secret levels, where you just had to get through using traditional platforming. Sometimes, that's all you need in a Mario game.

That's a real shame, too. Because the game runs really good and Toon Link is really expressive and animated well. It's really a shame that Nintendo basically relegated the style to handhelds.

I actually think that worked. The Twilight Princess style just really lends itself to the type of game and world that Zelda presents. Wind Waker's colorful look really lends itself to a beautiful 2D sprite-based game, which I hope they go back to.

[Foggle]

As for Wind Waker, first I'll say that I didn't get a GameCube until late 2007 (And that's because I never intended on getting anything from Nintendo after the N64), and yes I'm one of the ones that misjudged it due to the artwork, however, once I actually got the game, much like Twilight Princess, I was done with the Zelda series as a whole.

Does this mean you didn't like them?

[Grave]

As for Wind Waker, first I'll say that I didn't get a GameCube until late 2007 (And that's because I never intended on getting anything from Nintendo after the N64), and yes I'm one of the ones that misjudged it due to the artwork, however, once I actually got the game, much like Twilight Princess, I was done with the Zelda series as a whole.

Does this mean you didn't like them?

Short answer, yes.

Longer version. I got bored of OoT's forumla being used.

[Kiddington]

Here's what I got on Sunshine:

-Dreadfully boring
-Little to no variety between levels
-Gimmicky as hell
-Yoshi is completely useless (seriously, why does he DISSOLVE IN WATER)
-Story sucks
-Voice acting sucks
-The music isn't even all that great (except this)

Need I go on? I know I've beaten the dead horse on this one already, but this really is the worst Mario game ever made (unless you want to split hairs and count that CDI junk, but in this case, I don't). My most recent playthrough only confirms it.

[talonmalon333]

"Hey let's make a Mario game where you spend a good portion of the game doing nothing but cleaning. That won't be a total disappointment to the fans. "

[Nel_Annette]

And yet, it's still one of my favorite Mario games. 

[talonmalon333]

And yet, it's still one of my favorite Mario games. 

Sorry about that reaction. What I meant to say was...