Unpopular gaming opinions

[Poetic Nova]

Every copy of Half Life 2, Bioshock and Skyrim should be erased from existence.

Portal 2 blows Portal 1 out of the water.

Only stuff valve did great are Portal 1, 2 and the first Half Life (with a proper unofficial HD mod installed)

OT:
Half Life 2, a 10 hour borefest which got expanded to around 18 but never got a proper ending. Beta was way better.
Only Halo games worth playing are 2 and Reach.
Only good Zelda games are the first one for Nes, Ocarina Of Time and Twilight Princess.
I prefer the Metal Gear Solid remake for the cube over the original.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Halo: Reach is the best in the series.

That's right. Come at me, Halo fans. Tell me how Halo: Reach completely screwed up continuity and how it doesn't match canon. I don't care. It's the only Halo game where I actually cared about the characters and felt like I wasn't just playing a stereotypical space marine.

On that note, Halo did nothing that hadn't been done by previous shooters, and would have been completely forgettable if it wasn't on a console.

 

[Callate]

Um...only the first and third are really unpopular views. Everything else is the general opinion of The Escapist.

Oh, poke around, you can find plenty of people who will argue against all five. "Unpopular", I'll grant, is relative. Haven't really heard a lot of conversation about the merits of stealth mechanics; cover and regenerating health seem to get more time.

Games could use more gratuitous sex and less gratuitous violence.

Neither sex nor violence should ever be gratuitous. If you have either in your fictional media, be it book, film, TV show, or game; I have wonder what you're compensating for. Presumably that would be a lack of a well constructed plot, well developed characters, or both.

Chances are if someone is arguing in favor of "gratuitous" anything, they're not entirely serious. But for a moment, I'll play devil's advocate.

"Gratuitous", as given under definition 2 on Merriam-Webster online, means: "not called for by the circumstances; unwarranted" Much like "unpopular", such a term is always going to be subject to a certain relativity; one person might find the splatter of blood disgusting and unnecessary, while another might feel it gives gravity to a tense situation in a game.

And for many people (much as we might like to argue otherwise, especially when the media are looking for a scapegoat) that which is "gratuitous"- that is, excessive- can be a lot of fun. I don't personally get much enjoyment from, say, the over-the-top carnage involved in some of the God of War series's more excessive fatalities, but far be it from me to say that's going too far; for some people, obviously, it's not.

To put it down as a matter of "compensation", aside from being a rather unsubtle dig, seems to be missing something. "Gratuitous" levels of violence have made games like Mortal Kombat and God of War sell very well; the only thing their designers may be compensating for is the increasingly jaded tastes of the gaming public, and the need to draw another paycheck while continuing to work in their chosen field.

Now, seriously, I do think we could stand to dial things back a bit. It's becoming a little too common to see eyeballs bursting and spines ripped out of bodies; aside from the aforementioned comment about the audience getting jaded, it does begin to make everyone outside the scene go "what's wrong with you people?!" when that becomes not the exception, but status quo. But sexuality in video games, in the vast majority of cases where it's featured at all, strains the term "mature content". It's women who would go through lives with major lower back pain in clothing that would make a Fredrick's of Hollywood model blush, offered as rewards to he-men with three-day-stubble, no neck, and monotonic bass voices.

Just as other media need their extremes in order to find their "mid-points", though, it may well be that video games actually do need some more extreme displays of sexuality if they're going to ever be able to cover sex in a mature fashion. Maybe some "gratuitous" sex- in the sense of "excessive, at least to some sensibilities"- is something the medium as a whole might grow from.

 

[syrdefi]

"Silent protagonist" is not the same thing as "no personality", and both of those have been done properly.

Nintendo does continually remake the same handful of games repeatedly. And they are all wonderful, so that's not a problem.

Ocarina of Time, while a fine game, is not and never was an amazing masterpiece that all Zelda games or similar titles should be judged by.

Metal Gear Solid 2 has a much better narrative than its predecessor. Raiden was a great character before he got ninja-fied.

 

[LITE992]

Camping is a legitimate strategy.

 

[saruman31]

Skyrim was boring and after i did the main story, that was incredibly short, i stopped playing.
Mass Effect 2 was bad. It had the same plot, story ideea as Dragon Age Origins.
Pachter from game trailers does not give a shit about games except for when he makes money off of them.
There is no reason to play on a console if you can afford a decent PC.
PlayStation3 has best exclusive games ever.
Halo is total crap.
Starcraft 2 is a huge joke and it basically says: We are blizzard, you buy shit from us, loser!

 

[thanatos388]

"Silent protagonist" is not the same thing as "no personality", and both of those have been done properly.

Nintendo does continually remake the same handful of games repeatedly. And they are all wonderful, so that's not a problem.

Ocarina of Time, while a fine game, is not and never was an amazing masterpiece that all Zelda games or similar titles should be judged by.

Metal Gear Solid 2 has a much better narrative than its predecessor. Raiden was a great character before he got ninja-fied.

What! A non ninja Raiden fan? Kill the witch!

(Although i quite liked Raiden, he was and always will be far more interesting than Snake.)

Also I think Deus Ex while innovative was very boring to play unless you were watching things happen Half-Life style.

And I think Hitler was right.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

I think Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had one of the most amazing and interactive stories in a video game ever. It was better than Mass Effect

 

[Squidbulb]

Psychonauts is an awful game. It just feels so poorly made and reminds me of all those rubbish video-games based on cartoons that the PS2 had a lot of.
Also, I don't like Skyrim. Most of the quests are dull and in the entire game I haven't seen a single interesting character. Also, the combat is mediocre. In fact, I don't think I've ever played a good Bethesda game.
Halo 3 and Mass Effect 2 bored me in about half an hour.
All MMOs are terrible.
Gordon Freeman is one of the worst characters in a video-game I've ever seen (Other silent protagonists like Chell and Link aren't so bad- Chell because she doesn't really need to talk much anyway so it wouldn't make a difference to the story, and Link because he actually shows emotion).
Most point-and-click adventure games are pretty bad (The Walking Dead being an exception).
Sonic Unleashed is better than Sonic Generations.
The only good games by Valve are the Portal and Half-life series; the rest were okay but not great, some were just terrible without mods.
Anyone who utters the words "casual" or "hardcore" unironically deserves to be slapped in the genitals.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

I think Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had one of the most amazing and interactive stories in a video game ever. It was better than Mass Effect

I remember when you go back to Los Santos CJ is

Spoiler: San Andreas spoiler

Telling Smoke (I think) about all the stuff he's done in the rest of the game. And he mentions bringing down a drug kingpin, helping out a rapper, and owning part of a Las Venturas casino. And then you and the game realize how incredibly goofy the game has gotten vs. it's kinda gritty gang life style in the beginning.

Amongst game stories that don't take themselves seriously I think San Andreas is one of the best (Timesplitters Future Perfect is pretty good too when you travel through time to help yourself).

Finally, someone else who gets it. The story was well balanced. It could be goofy when it wanted to be and it could serious when it wanted to. My mind was blow when

Spoiler: San Andreas spoiler

When you fight Big Smoke and he tells you all he wanted was to get out the neighborhood and make a name for himself and I realized that was all CJ was trying to do the whole game. That and when you get CJ's bro out of jail and he doesn't care about all the things CJ has done and he just wants to go home.

The whole moral of the game is that you can never abandon your home and I can't remember that many games that taught me a lesson at the end.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Games could use more gratuitous sex and less gratuitous violence.

Neither sex nor violence should ever be gratuitous. If you have either in your fictional media, be it book, film, TV show, or game; I have wonder what you're compensating for. Presumably that would be a lack of a well constructed plot, well developed characters, or both.

Chances are if someone is arguing in favor of "gratuitous" anything, they're not entirely serious. But for a moment, I'll play devil's advocate.

"Gratuitous", as given under definition 2 on Merriam-Webster online, means: "not called for by the circumstances; unwarranted" Much like "unpopular", such a term is always going to be subject to a certain relativity; one person might find the splatter of blood disgusting and unnecessary, while another might feel it gives gravity to a tense situation in a game.

And for many people (much as we might like to argue otherwise, especially when the media are looking for a scapegoat) that which is "gratuitous"- that is, excessive- can be a lot of fun. I don't personally get much enjoyment from, say, the over-the-top carnage involved in some of the God of War series's more excessive fatalities, but far be it from me to say that's going too far; for some people, obviously, it's not.

To put it down as a matter of "compensation", aside from being a rather unsubtle dig, seems to be missing something. "Gratuitous" levels of violence have made games like Mortal Kombat and God of War sell very well; the only thing their designers may be compensating for is the increasingly jaded tastes of the gaming public, and the need to draw another paycheck while continuing to work in their chosen field.

Now, seriously, I do think we could stand to dial things back a bit. It's becoming a little too common to see eyeballs bursting and spines ripped out of bodies; aside from the aforementioned comment about the audience getting jaded, it does begin to make everyone outside the scene go "what's wrong with you people?!" when that becomes not the exception, but status quo. But sexuality in video games, in the vast majority of cases where it's featured at all, strains the term "mature content". It's women who would go through lives with major lower back pain in clothing that would make a Fredrick's of Hollywood model blush, offered as rewards to he-men with three-day-stubble, no neck, and monotonic bass voices.

Just as other media need their extremes in order to find their "mid-points", though, it may well be that video games actually do need some more extreme displays of sexuality if they're going to ever be able to cover sex in a mature fashion. Maybe some "gratuitous" sex- in the sense of "excessive, at least to some sensibilities"- is something the medium as a whole might grow from.

Well I suppose I can't really blame them for knowing their audiences so well after all that is one of the fundamental rules of communication.
However the definition you quoted was more or less what I was saying. Gratuitous as in unnecessary, superfluous, etc. If the sex and/or violence actually enhances the story (if applicable) and is not used to cover up for a lack of something else, then fine.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

The controller is better than keyboard/mouse.

Damn Straight.
I like big boobied female protagonists. I wish they'd have more of a personality, but then I could wish that for a lot of video game characters. In fact I'd just like more female protagonists, but thanks to the knee jerk reactions by neo-nazi feminists and self-righteous white knights, dev's are afraid to even touch a female protagonists in case it gives them the video game culture equivalent of 'cooties'.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Damn Straight.
I like big boobied female protagonists. I wish they'd have more of a personality, but then I could wish that for a lot of video game characters. In fact I'd just like more female protagonists, but thanks to the knee jerk reactions by neo-nazi feminists and self-righteous white knights, dev's are afraid to even touch a female protagonists in case it gives them the video game culture equivalent of 'cooties'.

Today i read this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/6529042/Combat-Barbie-Miss-England-Katrina-Hodge-launches-Miss-World-2009.html

This woman is "Mrs England", a super model and is also serving in Afghanistan. She successfully disarmed an escaped prisoner of a rifle twice then knocked him out with her bare hands. She showed up to basic training in heels and make up with a pink suitcase. Im not gonna lie, Shes attractive. Shes also amazingly kickass. I agree when i say devs shouldnt be afraid to make games where we can play as people like her. Shes a REAL person. And shes awesome. Let me play a game as her!

Anyway:

Im not against day one DLC.

I think piracy is bad for the industry and refuse to take part.

 

[drh1975]

I like EA, Bioware, and Mass Effect 3.
Legend of Zelda is the most overrated franchise of all time.
Multiplayer sucks. Yahtzee said it best: Any game that can't stand on its singleplayer-and its singleplayer alone-isn't worth shit.
Dragon Age 2 is not the worst game ever made. Brutal Legend is.
Metal Gear Solid 4 and Oblivion are boring as hell.
I will always join the Stormcloaks in Skyrim. Ulfric may be a horse's ass, but he didn't have my head on the chopping block. That was Tullius.

 

[PeterMerkin69]

Uncharted 2 was an ultra-linear piece of crap with mediocre writing and bad characterization. And a very bad shooter.

Skyrim is an empty, boring, disinteresting game. I will never understand why it's more popular than Fallout which got nearly everything right and had an alternate combat system to compensate for its awful FPS mechanics.

Video gaming needs more gratuitous violence. I can get entertainment and enrichment from passive media, sex from fellow humans, and adventure from life, but nowhere else can I safely and legally vent my perfectly natural aggression.

The vast, vast majority of video games are consumer entertainment, not art, and aspiring to the level of Hollywood ephemera is a dubious goal.

 

[Shocksplicer]

Dragon Age 2 was great, I'm replaying it right now.

GTA4 was complete rubbish, one of the most boring games I've played.

Red Dead Redemption was better, but buggy as hell and still fairly boring.

LA NOIRE was dreadful. Plus, they spelled noir wrong...

X-COM: Enemy Unknown was good, but ridiculously unbalanced to the point that playing past the halfway point was pointless.

 

[Jazoni89]

Here's some very unpopular opinions.

- Atari Jaguar, and the 3DO for that matter I feel are truly underrated systems that don't derserve the flak they get.
- I'm not too fussed about a story in a game as long as the gameplay is good.
- Even though i don't do it, I feel Emulation has done a whole world of good for the gaming community in general.
- I feel Metroid Other M is a decent game overall, perhaps even better than the Prime sequels in some cases.
- The only Bioware games i have enjoyed are the first two Mass Effects, and Jade Empire.
- I feel videogames can be enjoyed just like any other media by anyone regardless of age, and sex.
- Final Fantasy VIII was the best in the series in my opinion. It had more interesting things going on in it.
- If you consider Ocarina of Time as a bad game, I don't consider you a hardcore gamer in my humble opinion.

If you wear the term "hardcore gamer" as some sort of badge of honor, and view yourself as someone who gets to decide to is allowed in the club, then you deserve every bit of social ostracism, rejection, and failure that you reap. You earned it.

On topic:
-The reason the first Halo became popular is because it was the first console FPS that wasn't a broken mess.
-Fallout 3 sucked.
-Quantity of content does not equal quality. Some really long games are shit. Some really short games are awesome. I have no problem paying full price for a short, good game.
-We are paying less, when adjusted for inflation, for our games than we ever have. Especially when you consider how much they cost to produce.
-User-generated content, with very few exceptions, sucks.
-I have no desire for "realism" when I'm playing a shooter or a sports game. None.
-

Sorry man, but that's kinda harsh.

It's just my view, Ocarina of Time is a seminal masterpiece, and people hating on it just feels wrong to me.

If it's not your cup of tea, I'm fine with that, it's just calling it a bad game, and extremely flawed on a gameplay standpoint seems like that gamer is voided of any respect for gaming. Maybe causing the whole Casual vs Hardcore debate is silly over just one game, but I don't know what else to associate it with.

It's like if someone hated Star Wars and the Godfather, as a film buff you should at least respect them even though they are not your thing. As they did so much for the media in general.

I know my views are controversial, but at least you know a little bit of reason behind my madness. Whenever or not you think that's a legitimate reason it's up to you, but please don't personally attack me for my opinions thank you.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Here's some very unpopular opinions.

- Atari Jaguar, and the 3DO for that matter I feel are truly underrated systems that don't derserve the flak they get.
- I'm not too fussed about a story in a game as long as the gameplay is good.
- Even though i don't do it, I feel Emulation has done a whole world of good for the gaming community in general.
- I feel Metroid Other M is a decent game overall, perhaps even better than the Prime sequels in some cases.
- The only Bioware games i have enjoyed are the first two Mass Effects, and Jade Empire.
- I feel videogames can be enjoyed just like any other media by anyone regardless of age, and sex.
- Final Fantasy VIII was the best in the series in my opinion. It had more interesting things going on in it.
- If you consider Ocarina of Time as a bad game, I don't consider you a hardcore gamer in my humble opinion.

If you wear the term "hardcore gamer" as some sort of badge of honor, and view yourself as someone who gets to decide to is allowed in the club, then you deserve every bit of social ostracism, rejection, and failure that you reap. You earned it.

On topic:
-The reason the first Halo became popular is because it was the first console FPS that wasn't a broken mess.
-Fallout 3 sucked.
-Quantity of content does not equal quality. Some really long games are shit. Some really short games are awesome. I have no problem paying full price for a short, good game.
-We are paying less, when adjusted for inflation, for our games than we ever have. Especially when you consider how much they cost to produce.
-User-generated content, with very few exceptions, sucks.
-I have no desire for "realism" when I'm playing a shooter or a sports game. None.
-

Sorry man, but that's kinda harsh.

It's just my view, Ocarina of Time is a seminal masterpiece, and people hating on it just feels wrong to me.

If it's not your cup of tea, I'm fine with that, it's just calling it a bad game, and extremely flawed on a gameplay standpoint seems like that gamer is voided of any respect for gaming. Maybe causing the whole Casual vs Hardcore debate is silly over just one game, but I don't know what else to associate it with.

It's like if someone hated Star Wars and the Godfather, as a film buff you should at least respect them even though they are not your thing. As they did so much for the media in general.

I know my views are controversial, but at least you know a little bit of reason behind my madness.

There's no such thing as an objectively great game, or film, for that matter. You can't say that Ocarina of Time is broken, in the sense of not working. But you can't say "It is a good game, and if you don't like it, you have no taste in games", either. That isn't being a hardcore gamer. That is being a gaming snob. There is a difference.

And for the record, I find The Godfather to be extremely overrated. It is a 2 hour (at most) movie stretched out over three hours. Do I hate it? No. But the only trend I saw it start is one I personally dislike, that of the "gangster movie". That's not my point, however. You can't call Ocarina of Time a glitchy mess, because it's not. However, something being good or bad is purely subjective, not for any one person to decide "If you don't like this, you don't deserve to be called a gamer of my class". Again, there is a difference between "hardcore gamer" and "gaming snob".