What are some of your UNpopular video game opinions? (real ones, not just ones for the sake of trolling or something)

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Journey has some nice visuals and was more or less worth the time and whatever minimal amount I spent on it but it’s a kinda nothing game that got hyped to the moon based on some pretentious “omg environmental storytelling and minimal dialogue = art” nonsense.

[Estil | 1,265]

1 hour ago, zeppelin03 said:

I was frustrated with limitations of the last gen for years so its been nice to use these new consoles.  The only frustrating part is needing to invest in a OLED or similar panel to get the most of all those features. 

What limitations exactly?  Like, what can a PS4 do that a PS3 cannot?  And what can a PS5 do that a PS4 cannot?  And what the heck is this OLED thing and why would it be a "needing to invest"?

I hope this isn't making me sound stupid or out of touch...

[Tulpa | 3,520]

30 minutes ago, Estil said:

I hope this isn't making me sound stupid or out of touch...

Not this post, no.

*shifty eyes*

 

[zeppelin03 | 314]

8 hours ago, Estil said:

What limitations exactly?  Like, what can a PS4 do that a PS3 cannot?  And what can a PS5 do that a PS4 cannot?  And what the heck is this OLED thing and why would it be a "needing to invest"?

I hope this isn't making me sound stupid or out of touch...

Battlefield 4 ran at 60fps on PS4 instead of 30fps on PS3.  That was a big difference immediately. Games ran smoother on the new console.  PS4 had HDR.  Horizon Zero Dawn looked great with it enable. 

PS5 has ray tracing.  PS4 cannot do that. Ratchet & Clank looks awesome with it enabled. The reflections on surfaces really stand out in levels with lots of metal and glass. Plus they stream in assets so fast on SSD you can do instant transitions between zones.  Ratchet should have been the big launch game to show next gen.

There is the resolution bump, texture detail, etc that goes up too.

OLED is a tv panel technology.  The LG TVs have variable refresh rate, 4k 120hz support, and other nice gaming features.  120hz let's you play the fidelity mode of Ratchet at 40fps instead of 30.  That is far smoother than 10 fps would suggest while getting the improved detail.  My wife just played Ori and the Will of the Wisps at 4k 120fps on Series X. It looked incredible and played really smoothly. 

Edited September 11, 2021 by zeppelin03

[Gentlegamer | 174]

Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy is better than Super Mario Sunshine

[MagusSmurf | 577]

On 9/11/2021 at 10:46 AM, Gentlegamer said:

Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy is better than Super Mario Sunshine

Never played the former but this seems pretty easy to believe. I like Mario Sunshine and all but being better than it isn't really a drastically high bar!

[Ze_ro | 2]

On 9/10/2021 at 9:17 PM, Estil said:

What limitations exactly?  Like, what can a PS4 do that a PS3 cannot?

I remember when I got a Dreamcast and thinking that they'd reached a technological peak... like, what is there that you couldn't do with this beast of a console? Pushing more polygons doesn't make for a better game.

Though I think the real answer comes more from memory, processor cores, and overall transfer speeds... not to push more triangles or to ray trace, but to simulate more elements of the world... physics, people, weather, etc. Not all games use the hardware for such things, but I think it really benefits large, open-world games like RDR2 and Horizon: Zero Dawn. I don't think those would have been possible on PS3 without serious cutbacks to the point of ruining the game. Hell, Cyberpunk barely even runs on the PS4 as it is.

I don't have a PS5 or Series X, so I can't say much about those... Maybe we finally have reached that tech peak that I thought the Dreamcast brought about... but the primary advantage seems to be the huge increase in loading speed, to the point where you can load huge amounts of assets on the fly without missing a beat. Maybe that's enough?

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

29 minutes ago, Ze_ro said:

I remember when I got a Dreamcast and thinking that they'd reached a technological peak... like, what is there that you couldn't do with this beast of a console? Pushing more polygons doesn't make for a better game.

Though I think the real answer comes more from memory, processor cores, and overall transfer speeds... not to push more triangles or to ray trace, but to simulate more elements of the world... physics, people, weather, etc. Not all games use the hardware for such things, but I think it really benefits large, open-world games like RDR2 and Horizon: Zero Dawn. I don't think those would have been possible on PS3 without serious cutbacks to the point of ruining the game. Hell, Cyberpunk barely even runs on the PS4 as it is.

I don't have a PS5 or Series X, so I can't say much about those... Maybe we finally have reached that tech peak that I thought the Dreamcast brought about... but the primary advantage seems to be the huge increase in loading speed, to the point where you can load huge amounts of assets on the fly without missing a beat. Maybe that's enough?

Pretty much this.  Games may not LOOK much different, or FEEL much different, but under the hood is where all the real advances are.  A game on PS5 may look similar to what could've come out on PS4, but it can do a whole lot more.  The real comparison would have to happen at the END of a generation though, not at the start.  Comparing a late PS4 game to an early PS5 game may not look like much difference, but an early PS4 game compared to a PS5 game yields a hell of a lot more variation.  As developers learn the ins and outs of the new hardware, they can push it to the limits of what the tech is capable of.  At that point, they release a new generation, which does what the current one does, but has more room to build on in the future.

[Brickman | 3,996]

On 9/12/2021 at 1:46 AM, Gentlegamer said:

Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy is better than Super Mario Sunshine

Love Jak and Daxter and it easily beats Mario Sunshine. I personally think if it wasn’t a Mario game it would have been considered a very mediocre game.

I actually think Sunshine is garbage and the anniversary collection confirmed my memories from the GC.

[MagusSmurf | 577]

Secret of Mana isn't a very good game. Just trying to successfully hit enemies gets you mired in ridiculous jank. The cooldown and charge times are one thing, you can see what they were going for, but if they were gonna go that route the game needed really solid hit detection. And instead it's kind of terrible AND the game also has hit and evasion stats for no good reason - it's an Action-RPG, players should just be hitting or evading manually! The magic system is also pretty busted (no real way for you to avoid magic or for enemies to stop you from spell-chaining them to death, building spells without grinding is kind of impractical) but I think that's generally acknowledged as a problem of the game so that complaint isn't "unpopular." There are also problems with the party AI and so on but I feel like focus on that lets the game off easy - the biggest problem isn't the combatants you don't control, it's that the basic combat just kind of sucks compared to any other overhead Action-Adventure of its era with a decent rep. And the game has no, like, puzzles or notably good exploration or whatever to help ameliorate this - the combat is the gameplay's main focus. Story and characters are pretty basic and generic too.

Final Fantasy Adventure is not that special of a game but I actually think it's better.

[Brickman | 3,996]

1 hour ago, MagusSmurf said:

Secret of Mana isn't a very good game. Just trying to successfully hit enemies gets you mired in ridiculous jank. The cooldown and charge times are one thing, you can see what they were going for, but if they were gonna go that route the game needed really solid hit detection. And instead it's kind of terrible AND the game also has hit and evasion stats for no good reason - it's an Action-RPG, players should just be hitting or evading manually! The magic system is also pretty busted (no real way for you to avoid magic or for enemies to stop you from spell-chaining them to death, building spells without grinding is kind of impractical) but I think that's generally acknowledged as a problem of the game so that complaint isn't "unpopular." There are also problems with the party AI and so on but I feel like focus on that lets the game off easy - the biggest problem isn't the combatants you don't control, it's that the basic combat just kind of sucks compared to any other overhead Action-Adventure of its era with a decent rep. And the game has no, like, puzzles or notably good exploration or whatever to help ameliorate this - the combat is the gameplay's main focus. Story and characters are pretty basic and generic too.

Final Fantasy Adventure is not that special of a game but I actually think it's better.

Agreed. I started it for my backlog challenge and gave up on it, pretty awful game and didn’t understand the praise it gets.

[Estil | 1,265]

2 hours ago, MagusSmurf said:

Secret of Mana isn't a very good game.

I managed to get about half way through that game...I should give it another go seeing as how there's a PS1 'Mana game.  I mean, you'd think it'd be a perfect JRPG for me...vibrant colorful graphics (as you'd EXPECT on SNES) and two cute chicks out of three party characters...but I found the way the menus and such work to be rather confusing and awkward.  

But this is supposed to be one of the all time JRPG greats and I'm sure it is for a reason.  I mean the whole idea of me doing JRPGs/PS1 in general is to relive those great historical games/moments and try to experience what it was like for those in the PS1's prime years and somehow knew exactly what the blue chip games for that system were.

Edited September 24, 2021 by Estil

[Estil | 1,265]

On 9/17/2021 at 11:31 PM, the_wizard_666 said:

Pretty much this.  Games may not LOOK much different, or FEEL much different, but under the hood is where all the real advances are.  A game on PS5 may look similar to what could've come out on PS4, but it can do a whole lot more.  The real comparison would have to happen at the END of a generation though, not at the start.  Comparing a late PS4 game to an early PS5 game may not look like much difference, but an early PS4 game compared to a PS5 game yields a hell of a lot more variation.  As developers learn the ins and outs of the new hardware, they can push it to the limits of what the tech is capable of.  At that point, they release a new generation, which does what the current one does, but has more room to build on in the future.

But then it wouldn't really be a fair comparison.  And of course regarding your last two sentences that was true from the very start obviously...but I really really miss the days when seeing a new console for the first time and what even its earliest games/software can do really excited the imagination.  You guys know I'm currently working on PS1 stuff (JRPGs in particular) and in Grandia it's actually a proper 3D polygon kind of game and I can imagine people were amazed at what the PS1 could do and wondered what could be done in the future (PS2 and then PS3) with machines that could handle even more polygons per second and new/different "graphics tricks/features".

I will concede that one Xbox 4 demo video was pretty neat the way it transitioned from 8th gen to 9th gen.  So at least there was SOME difference they could show.

[the_wizard_666 | 1,325]

2 hours ago, Estil said:

But then it wouldn't really be a fair comparison.  And of course regarding your last two sentences that was true from the very start obviously...but I really really miss the days when seeing a new console for the first time and what even its earliest games/software can do really excited the imagination.  You guys know I'm currently working on PS1 stuff (JRPGs in particular) and in Grandia it's actually a proper 3D polygon kind of game and I can imagine people were amazed at what the PS1 could do and wondered what could be done in the future (PS2 and then PS3) with machines that could handle even more polygons per second and new/different "graphics tricks/features".

I will concede that one Xbox 4 demo video was pretty neat the way it transitioned from 8th gen to 9th gen.  So at least there was SOME difference they could show.

It's simply a matter of diminishing returns though...the closer we get to being able to deliver photo realistic graphics, the less variation you're going to see between generations.  You can't get more realistic than reality after all.

[docile tapeworm | 4,204]

smw2 is a better game than smw.

and i like it when the babies cry in smw2

[Gentlegamer | 174]

1 hour ago, docile tapeworm said:

smw2 is a better game than smw.

and i like it when the babies cry in smw2

 

[CMR | 521]

On 9/23/2021 at 6:15 PM, MagusSmurf said:

Secret of Mana isn't a very good game. Just trying to successfully hit enemies gets you mired in ridiculous jank. The cooldown and charge times are one thing, you can see what they were going for, but if they were gonna go that route the game needed really solid hit detection. And instead it's kind of terrible AND the game also has hit and evasion stats for no good reason - it's an Action-RPG, players should just be hitting or evading manually! The magic system is also pretty busted (no real way for you to avoid magic or for enemies to stop you from spell-chaining them to death, building spells without grinding is kind of impractical) but I think that's generally acknowledged as a problem of the game so that complaint isn't "unpopular." There are also problems with the party AI and so on but I feel like focus on that lets the game off easy - the biggest problem isn't the combatants you don't control, it's that the basic combat just kind of sucks compared to any other overhead Action-Adventure of its era with a decent rep. And the game has no, like, puzzles or notably good exploration or whatever to help ameliorate this - the combat is the gameplay's main focus. Story and characters are pretty basic and generic too.

Final Fantasy Adventure is not that special of a game but I actually think it's better.

The issue I have is that, when you get to the witch's castle, every enemy suddenly becomes a boss.  They have tons of HP and can kill you in just a few hits.  Couple this with the stupid charge time on your attacks, and it's almost like the game is designed to make you start spamming magic.

[docile tapeworm | 4,204]

On 9/24/2021 at 9:15 PM, Gentlegamer said:

well when the guy said smw was the greatest game of all time, he lost all credability lol. thats obviously smb3. i like the way it looks and plays. plus how trippy it is when you morph into a helicopter?!!!! f ya!

[Gentlegamer | 174]

54 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

well when the guy said smw was the greatest game of all time, he lost all credability lol. thats obviously smb3. i like the way it looks and plays. plus how trippy it is when you morph into a helicopter?!!!! f ya!

 

[Tanooki | 4,940]

I've never finished Yoshi's Island, always left a bad taste the way it plays and ranking systems I find entirely demoralizing and grating when they taunt you let alone withhold things for not being so called perfect.  Couple that with it NOT being super mario world 2 as advertised, I passively bother with it now and again, but finishing it probably after this long won't happen, ever.

[Alder | 243]

25 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

I've never finished Yoshi's Island, always left a bad taste the way it plays and ranking systems I find entirely demoralizing and grating when they taunt you let alone withhold things for not being so called perfect.  Couple that with it NOT being super mario world 2 as advertised, I passively bother with it now and again, but finishing it probably after this long won't happen, ever.

I definitely see where you're coming from on all of those points. I played it as a kid and really enjoyed it just for what it was. The art, music, and story were great and it struck me as one of the most polished games on the SNES. But playing it as an adult, I'm in more of a completionist mindset than when I was a kid. Now, I'll replay a level over and over until I get 100/100, and end up burning myself out. But when I first played it, I thought it was cool to have a reason to play some of the levels again.

[TDIRunner | 2,744]

I've 100%'ed SMW2 ONE time, and the work was split between myself and my brother.  I don't think I will ever do that again.  I love the game, and I play through it every few years, but I only focus on getting to the end of the game.  In my opinion, the game stands on it's own without the point system.  Yes, I understand the "completionist" mindset, but that's a choice one makes.  I disagree with the opinion that it should be ranked lower because it's difficult to 100%.  

[WhyNotZoidberg | 585]

On 9/24/2021 at 8:46 PM, docile tapeworm said:

smw2 is a better game than smw.

and i like it when the babies cry in smw2

mfw I read that 

[Gentlegamer | 174]

Morrowind has the best combat of all Elder Scrolls games.

[Sumez | 2,969]

Elder Scrolls games have combat?