Unpopular Opinions On Gaming

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

...Sooooo yeeeeaaaah... I'm one of those people who doesn't like the series much.

different strokes

Ha! It happened to use as well. Now I don't feel like an idiot anymore.

[gunswordfist]

i thought i was the only one that hated anything about perfect dark.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Like most people here, I can't stand big Internet of Magazine publications for gaming. Journalists these days are incredibly corrupt, are hardly qualified to be experts in their claimed filed, and really have such a disconnect between what deluded ideas they have of what gaming should be, and the things that gamers actually want to play.

Having said that, I do have one lone exception to date, and for me that's Game Trailers. They are by no means perfect, as they have their share of flaws as well, but what I have respected about them over the years is that, unlike any other website or magazine, this seems to be the last BIG site (unless you count Giant Bomb as a big site, but I've always thought of it as an independent one) that seems to be staffed by people who actually enjoy games for what they are and know what they are talking about.

You can see this in most of their reviews, as well, especially when you compare it to most other big sites. In fact, here are some of the things that stand out to me in comparison:

-They rarely, if ever, place a high level of importance on graphics. I've seen so many big gaming sites knock games hard just for not looking as good as most AAA games do, but GT reviews, while noting things like that, always place much more importance on technical performance than how pretty the graphics are, as they should, since that's what matters more in the end.

-They actually accept and even seem to love difficulty in games, so long as it is balanced. Whereas I've seen too many reviewers berate games for being "too hard," as long as it's well-designed, GT will actually praise games for being challenging.

-They don't shit on something just because it's old. If they honestly feel that a re-released game hasn't aged well, they will be honest about it and give their reasons for believing so. However, more often than not, they will give it a fair shake and seem to relish revisiting old titles and admiring what was and still is good about them.

-They refrain from jumping on the "hate bandwagon" almost all of the time. With maybe just a couple of minor exceptions (and for games that probably deserved the hate), you'll never see this site give anything below a 5/10 to a game that just flat-out doesn't deserve it. For instance, Ninja Gaiden 3 is a game that I despise, personally. Even so, I can definitely say that it's nowhere near as broken or unplayable as it would need to be to earn the 3/10 that IGN and many other sites quite over-dramatically slapped onto it. GT was one of the few sites to be positive about the game while properly criticizing what was wrong with it. They did the same for RE6, and even if you hate that game, you can't deny that as an actual game in and of itself, it's not nearly as bad as many of the review scores that it got. I thought it was pretty ballsy of GT's reviewer for that to be honest about his opinion in spite of how much hate that might get him. The most recent example is The Legend of Korra, which many reviewers trashed without clearly even understanding how to play the game. GT gave it a 6.5 in a fair review explaining what was good and bad about it, and I have to commend that in this day and age, when it seems to be more popular for paid journalists to slap an undeserved 3/10 on a game like that and proceed to whine about many issues that it doesn't even have, as confirmed by other actual gamers who actually played the game, understood it's mechanics, and could say that many of the criticisms are flat-out untrue. The same goes for Anarchy Reigns, which most other big sites shat on, but GT once again gave it a very fair shake and a more appropriate review score. They are also among the few who actually praised The Evil Within for being a true survival horror game instead of pushing out and being another action game with some horror elements in it.

-On top of all of that, their interests just seem to lie in a similar direction to mine when it comes to gaming: they appreciate actual good game design. Hence why they are obviously huge fans of Platinum, are among the few sites that actually appreciates Nintendo and doesn't crap all over the Wii-U (aside from Michael Pachter, who to be fair isn't actually a member of their review staff; they just feature his videos on their site, even if he is a complete fucking idiot), and they regularly discuss old-school classics because they are just into that stuff.

None of this is to say that they are perfect, because I disagree with them on plenty of things. For instance, they, like many, have an irrational bias against 3D Sonic games, and I've found that sometimes they either over-praise some games, while being a bit too harsh on others, but even in those cases it's usually almost always still in respectable enough boundaries where I don't feel that same sort of disconnect with their views as I do with most other big gaming sites and publications.

Overall, this is just the only real but journalist site that I ever follow for game previews and new reviews. More often than not, their opinions actually have some credibility to them, IMO.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I just decided to do this on a whim,and I don't intend to go to far with this subject, but I just felt strangely compelled to reflect on last generation and see what my top most overrated and underrated games from it were. Now, being that I don't like to use the term overrated at all. And don't want to get into that sort of discussion, I'll refrain from mentioning any of those. However, as for underrated games, I should mention that the ones that I picked did get good reception for the most part, but they either had a lot of people hate on them as well for lousy reasons, and/or severely underperformed in sales. Here's what I got:

5. F.E.A.R. 2- This one is low on the list because admittedly it did alright for itself, but a lot of fans of the first game seemed to hate on it either because it went multiplatform and was thus simplified enough for console gamers, or just didn't manage to stack up to the original in general. Both complaints are completely true, but those don't mean that this is anything less than a good game. I honestly had a lot of fun with it, and the mechanics are arguably some of the most solid and refined of ANY shooter from last gen. I've played enough Call of Duty to know that, as far as single-player goes, this honestly feels a lot better to play, IMO.

4. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance- The game did well enough with critics, but a ton of hardcore MGS fans really unfairly backlashed against it, and others claimed that it was just a generic hack n' slash game, which is simply flat-out untrue.

3. Alan Wake- The game got good enough reception, but it barely sold on the 360 and had to have a PC port just for Remedy to actually make some profit off of all of their hard work, and I firmly believe that, next to Vanquish, this was the best TPS experience of last gen. Speaking of which....

2. Vanquish- This game really deserved to do a lot better than it did. It's just as simple as that. Look, I like Gears of War just fine, but how does that series get rewarded for doing the same thing over and over, while this one gave us something fresh and new that we hadn't seen in the genre, and as a result just doesn't perform well for it? Man, fuck modern gamers.

1. Shadow Complex- Once again, great reviews, but this one is on the top of my list because I'm utterly convinced that, even if it did initially do well on XBL, pretty much everyone seems to have forgotten that it even exists. Did we ever get any indication of a sequel? Of course not. Has anyone acknowledged it in the countless lists of the best games from last gen? Not from anywhere that I've seen, outside of maybe making near the very bottom of a top 100 list that I remember seeing from some obscure site. This was honestly one of my favorite games from last gen, and it feels like nobody even cares that it exists anymore.

Understandably, I probably should call this list the most overlooked or forgotten games from last gen, as they aren't technically underrated, but my point stands that, from all of the games that I have played from this recent era, these ones simply didn't get the level of attention that they truly deserved.

Next I may do a list of my most underrated/overlooked games from the 6th gen, and that one gives me a lot more material to work with. Probably enough for a top 10 list, at least.

[Foggle]

I don't like F.E.A.R. 2 nearly as much as I once did, but it certainly had a lot going for it that most modern FPS's don't. It's depressing how Monolith never got the chance to correct the mistakes they made developing that game with a proper F.E.A.R. 3.

The MGS fanbase is horrible. Not as bad as a lot of other big name franchises, but their response to MGRR being developed by Platinum was so childish and petty; this kind of shit is why Kojima will never be allowed to move on from the series. Also, while MGRR may have done well with critics, it still scored markedly worse than DmC across the board despite releasing at almost the exact same time and being a genuinely better game. Annoying.

Alan Wake ended up being slightly disappointing after all the ups and downs its years of hype had, but the end result was still pretty fantastic. It also had one of the top 3 best moments in any video game from the entirety of last gen IMO (I refer, of course, to the farm level). I wish Remedy made more games... hopefully without egregious product placement next time.

Shadow Complex was excellent. I wish it had gotten a retail release or a PC port for Steam, though; I keep forgetting I own it. It's too bad the studio behind that game only makes iOS stuff now.

Next I may do a list of my most underrated/overlooked games from the 6th gen, and that one gives me a lot more material to work with. Probably enough for a top 10 list, at least.

Or, like, 30.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You see, I'm probably the only person who wasn't disappointed by Alan Wake even a little bit. Admittedly, I wasn't hyped on it until just a year before its release, but seeing it for what it is, I firmly believe that it is one of the best TPSs that I've ever played.

[Foggle]

You see, I'm probably the only person who wasn't disappointed by Alan Wake even a little bit. Admittedly, I wasn't hyped on it until just a year before its release, but seeing it for what it is, I firmly believe that it is one of the best TPSs that I've ever played.

I remember them hyping up some sort of mystery/investigation element before release. For some reason, I always thought it was supposed to an open-world detective adventure game, not a supernatural third-person shooter. I guess that could have just been bad advertising, or maybe the entire concept changed between the initial concept and the final release, I dunno. I loved the game, definitely, but I was kind of bummed that it was nothing like I'd come to expect.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

From what I can tell, it was initially supposed to be more of an open world atmospheric mystery game, but it wasn't working out and Remedy reworked the entire game into a more linear, action-focused piece instead of releasing a crappy product that didn't measure up to their original vision. Personally, I prefer the atmospheric TPS that we got to what the original concept for the game was, though. I'm just not much of a fan of big open games unless they have a tight focus to go with them and keep the story interesting and the missions engaging. It may just be part of my personal preferences based on how I can only play in much shorter intervals these days, but basically the version of the game that we got was more up my alley, anyways.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Alan Wake makes me wish SWERY and Remedy would get together and combine their talents for a new paranormal detective game. Each has a few faults the other does, and would smooth out each others rough areas.

It's just such a shame both of them take so long to make games.

[gunswordfist]

who's swery?

[Nel_Annette]

Deadly Premonition. D4.

[talonmalon333]

Here's an unpopular opinion that I'm not sure if I've posted before.

Metroid Prime, despite being Retro's "masterpiece", is highly overrated. It's a very good game. The level design, sound, and art direction are out of this world. However, the backtracking to collect key items and the scanning are, in my opinion, awful. I get that Retro thought it would be an interesting concept to make the lore of the setting hidden, and you had to uncover it yourself through scanning. But to me, it just came off as long winded "tell, don't show" exposition, with a lot of big, fancy words that are just off putting to read. Call me a dumb modern movie watcher, but making every other word in a paragraph so big and fancy is why I find The Hobbit to be an easier read than The Lord of the Rings. And late in the game, when you have to collect all of those different key items (I honestly forget what they are), it's dreadful. That's Skyward Sword tier backtracking/padding.

[Rosalinas Spare Wand]

Lemme top that one.

The 2 Donkey Kong games Retro developed blow the Metroid Prime Trilogy straight out of the water.

[gunswordfist]

everyone here seems to agree with that.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I still haven't played any Metroid Prime game, but I was initially turned away from trying them when a lot of fans of those games who had never even touched one of the first two 3D Ninja Gaiden games were saying that those wer shitty games from a shitty developer. Granted that, Team Ninja has since become a shitty developer, but that doesn't mean that their games developed from their primes rent among the best action games out there, which they totally are. Anyways, that absurd negativity towards awesome games just due to personal bias made me not want to play the Metroid Prime games to spite people like that. I have since realized that it just makes me as idiotic as them do do that, and one day I'll play through the MP trilogy, or at least give it a fair shake.