Owyn_Merrilin said:
I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying they're only levelling the complaints at people who like it way too much. I'm saying it's the years of glowing praise from people like that that caused the backlash, which is currently against /any/ praise. The same thing literally happened to FFVII, for the same reason.
No, I understood that. But much of the "bashing" seems to stem solely from an intrinsic hate of the game, regardless of the level of praise it received.
The irony of the whole thing, though, is that many of the detractors talk about people constantly talking about the game when, in fact, most of the times the game is even mentioned is in the hate threads.
Edit: as for the difference between threads praising HL2 and bashing it, your memory seems to be the opposite of mine. I'll grant you that my memory of these forums doesn't go back as far as yours does (my join date was in 2010, I'd been lurking for a few months when I signed up), but I don't remember any significant amount of HL2 bashers... really ever. The closest I've seen is periodic threads where people say they finally tried it after years of hearing how great it was, only to find out that it's really nothing special by modern standards, and are now confused as to why it gets so much praise.
The praise itself tends to show up randomly in other threads, and not be so much in its own thread. We've kind of had an exponential decrease in the amount of praise it got every year since I joined, but especially for that first year and a half, I was seeing it mentioned in just about every other thread, and always in a positive light.
Mmm...I may have been on the forum longer, but I can recall quite a few "bashing" threads started in the time you've been here. Save for 2011 and 2009, we see them almost on a weekly basis. Often multiple times a week. (usually one feeding off of the previous) Most get lost in the shuffle or get closed shortly after, though.
As for the ones who post "after finally trying it", just as many say the game is worthy of it's "praise" as say it's not. Either way, there are three primary types of posters in such a thread. Some, as I described before, almost always jump in to heap a host of negative criticism, many times against the fans more than the game.
Others, a much smaller few, say questioning the games praise is "blasphemous". Those people annoy the level-headed fans as much as they do the detractors.
A vast majority of those posting either defend the game, giving their opinion on it
(because the OP asked why people like it) or say they are indifferent to it.
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For people to be angry about posters praising the game...in threads that asks for their opinion....is ludicrously stupid. That's what often bothers the fans. Not that people don't like the game, but that people insult them
for liking it.
It becomes incredibly tedious to have ones opinion on something, ones enjoyment of a thing, constantly questioned and insulted.
I mean, really? Why is it a bad thing for fans of a game to talk of their enjoyment with it, especially in light of someone starting a thread specifically asking why people like the game?
Should people suddenly STOP liking a game, simply because they played it years ago?
For that matter, why do so many posters around here have to ask the fans why they like a game?
Halo, Call of Duty, and to a degree Mass Effect fans often face the same criticism. But I guess that's become the nature of the gaming community at large today.
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Regardless, I think we've derailed the discussion enough. Heh.
In the interest of putting it back, I've thought of another game I love immensely that is now considered "uncool" to like.
Crackdown.
It had it's faults, but it was still a blast to play. Especially with a friend. It's a shame the sequel was so awful and that Realtime Worlds had to shut its doors.
the servers just sucked
