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.
Absolutely hate any game that’s long for the sake of being long. Take AC Valhalla. Halve that game, turn it into a less open/less grindy game, a narrative mode if you will. It would be soo much better. I don’t want to spend hours hacking the same enemy, riding the same horse or travelling. So boring.
There are soooo many games to play, I don’t want to be wasting my time. Insert Hogwarts, God of War, RDR2 etc
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.
I always hated complex combo systems in fighting games like Tekken and Street Fighter. Fighting games shouldn’t be about being able to input 50 super precise key combinations in the span of 1.5 seconds. It should be about positioning, timing, improvisation… Guilty gear strive and super smash bros is proof of this. Every game that gatekeeps new players for not memorizing the built-in combo that takes 60% of your opponent’s HP feels like it’s still stuck in the 90’s arcade game era. Most fighting game series refuse to move forward. There, I’ve said it.
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.
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’ve never played a military shooter, but Battle Bit is piquing my interest.
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 :)
It’s not a super-hot take, but art style >>>>> graphics when it comes to “beautiful” looking games. There are games coming out today that can run on a toaster that look far better than many AAA titles with all the fancy lighting effects and ray tracing that require you to dump 4-digit sums into a monster gaming PC to fully enjoy, all due to how the smaller games masterfully handle their art design.
The sentence “I lost my gear / They took my gear” has never been followed by a fun part in any videogame, ever
Based on the sentiment I see online, my hot take is that Deep Rock Galactic is way over-hyped and is actually pretty shallow. It’s a fine turn your brain off game, but I don’t think it’s as great as people make it out to be.
Games are for fun. If you’re not having fun, stop playing. Don’t spend effort on griping about the game; just stop playing and do something else. Do not go on the game forum and spend hours arguing about whether the game started sucking with the last release or two years ago. Just stop playing and do something else with your time & energy. Stick a potato in the ground and see what happens.
Software quality varies widely in online games; even for “simple” games such as abstract strategy board games. One of the highest-quality pieces of game software is lichess. Most board-game software, even for other abstract strategy games like Go, absolutely sucks compared to lichess. The best Go client is KGS; it’s pretty good, but it’s no lichess.
Regarding CCGs: Hearthstone is terrible. Magic Arena is okay. Eternal is fine but I stopped playing it when Magic Arena released for Android. Mythgard is pretty neat. Runeterra is probably okay if you’re already into the League/Arcane characters.
Paying for games is fine, but consider your opportunity cost in both money and time. (“Opportunity cost” is an economist’s way of asking, “What else could you be doing with this money and time?”) Maybe you just want to go see a movie instead. Or go stick a potato in the ground and see what happens.
Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection is an astonishingly good collection of puzzle games that runs on pretty much any computer or device you use. You can install it for free on your phone. It’s all open source, no ads, no bullshit, just puzzle games.
If the game you’re paying for is pissing you off, consider whether you’re paying for the service of being pissed off. Maybe just stop doing that?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
I killed Ganon and still had no idea how to actually do these things.
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.
Developers who lock the FOV of their games have no idea what they’re doing.
Looking at you sea of theives…
Removed by mod
I do. (Hot take incoming) People are absent-mindedly maxing that slider and making the game butt-ugly because they heard some pro plays the game like that to see as much of the screen as possible. That Wasn’t even the same game btw.
They are not playing the game competitively so all they do is make it ugly as hell for no gain. It’s like using wrist straps to deadlift. Consider getting better at the game instead.
Same for screen shake actually. Some idiot game dev overdid it 10 years ago and now everyone turns it off even though it is subtle nowadays and makes actions feel a lot more impactful.
You’re not special when you say it makes your head hurt. You just played a game where screen shake was badly implemented.
Removed by mod
Look at the entire sea of theives community.
I’ve had my posts deleted from the steam community forums for simply asking who else wanted higher than 90 fov
Removed by mod
Just as a wild guess, it might be related to performance tuning on consoles. If you increase the width of the view frustrum, you’re throwing more stuff on the screen.
Souls-like games aren’t difficult, they just show you how impatient the average player is. Very rarely do those games actually challenge your ability or technical skill, and instead they just test your patience with annoyingly-defensive enemy behavior that encourages impatient players into aggressive, risky gameplay.
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.
Games were more expensive in the 90s, when you take inflation into consideration.
Games now cost 3x as much. My pay hasn’t increased 3x. So even with inflation. Games are more expensive now.
Games during the NES/SNES era were $50+. Are you saying games now cost $150+ dollars? Or are you just in a region where inflation/currency has made prices shift more than in the US?
deleted by creator
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.
My hot take: Skyrim is the most overrated game of all time. Not bad, but overrated. My phone hardcrashed while I typed out the reasons why I think so, so I won‘t anger the gaming gods further this time.
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.
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.
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.
