Unpopular opinions about video games in general.

[Koops]

FF7 remake

 

[Ray Trace]

Speaking of realistic graphics, why do they always gotta be FPS or Horror.. Okay there's also sports but like.. where's the other genres

Realistic graphics are very expensive to make, and the big publishers mostly focus on big-hitting genres; not everyone can render 4k 1080 @60 fps games.

Also, there's actually a pretty expansive set of genres that use heavy realism. Adventure (Uncharted, Tomb Raider), Racing (Forza), Open world TPS's (Red Dead Redemption 2), dungeon crawlers (Diablo III), action RPG (Skyrim) and yes, the mention of Squeenix's Final Fantasy and Sports titles too.

 

[I Argue About Politics]

There are good parts of realism; it's what gave us lighting techniques that makes scenery beautiful as well as the texturing. But you shouldn't go overboard on it because the more realistic you attempt something, the *less* believable the result will be (hence uncanny valley), and it'll certainly expose the constraints of animation and physics a game engine has.

Look at Cyberpunk 2077 and a lot of Ubisoft open world games like Assassin Creed; the animation and physics bugs completely undermine the world setting the games try really hard to do.

You want to tread the line of suspension of disbelief. Realism, however, falls in a spectrum; this is important to remember. Nintendo's foray into a touch more realism is what gave us Super Mario Odyssey and that was met with positive reception; it's pretty clear in development notes that the decision for the hair, extra hair details, metal wear, overall details, and so on correlates with the eventual New Donk City reveal and the realistic-like T-Rex (spare some feathers, the roaring, and awkward posing in the box art).

I mean look at this Chain Chomp. It has actual damage on it. That's a component of realism. And I generally like the idea of adding damage to this because damage tells a story of wear and tear. It can give indication Chain Chomps have charged and scratched a lot, got a lot of heavy scratching. With cartoon textures, it's super simple and it looks fresh from a production factory. Not saying it's "inferior" but you lose out on information that can be used to communicate. The textures still reinforce the steps toward realism Odyssey went with. It's still cartoon, but we slid a little to realism.

If you think FPS and Horror are the only games that use realism, then, uh, you're really far off; there's a lot more games that have really good realistic graphics. Uncharted (action adventure), Horizon Zero Dawn (open world), Ghost of Tsushima (open world), Cyberpunk 2077 (action RPG), Soulsborne games (Sekiro and Bloodborne), Forza/Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto/Red Dead Redemption 2 (open world), Starcraft II (RTS; that one is like 10 years old however and visuals look really choppy now). Additionally, some of those FPS games with realistic graphics don't aim for maximum realism and such, like a simulation, but use that to try to tell a story. I just don't think the storytelling and immersion from the Metro games can really be achieved as well if they opted for less realistic visuals.

But neither FPS nor Horror require realism to achieve their effects. But I think realism is a common choice for those genres as successful FPS and horror games are immersive. Metro games and Bioshock are both examples of FPS AND horror games that are good with immersion and it's partly why they're so praised. As Overwatch and Team Fortress 2 show, you can have great cartoony FPS, and successful cartoon horror games would be like Little Nightmares

I can also tell apart those games just from looking at them, so uh (and on the other hand, I can argue exactly the same for games I know little about, particularly the great amount of anime-style JRPGs). I think Starcraft looks a lot different from Sekiro which looks a lot different from Horizon Zero Dawn which looks a lot different from Red Dead 2 Redemption, but maybe I'm just familiar with those works. There's that upcoming Biomutant game that stars an anthromorphic animal, but the visuals themselves are realistic; I can tell that one really easily apart from the others as well. I mean, what are you guys going to characterize that one? It's clearly cartoon, but the texturing and environments suggest realism.

And there's also stylized realism like XCOM (Mario + Rabbids-like turn based shooter), Borderlands (action RPG) and Monster Hunter (action RPG; I think?)

 

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

People love to praise the Nintendo 64 and its library, but I honestly think the N64's library is the weakest out of all the major Nintendo platforms.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to downplay or dismiss the legacies or influences of stuff like Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, or GoldenEye 007 here; my problem with the N64 library and why I think it's so weak is because there's honestly so few games for the platform and entire genres have little to no representation.

Look at this picture:

That's all the games that were released for the Nintendo 64 in the United States, 296 games total. That might seem like a lot, but the Saturn managed to get 258 games released in the US when all was said and done. Sure, that is less than the US N64 library, but a system that managed to sell over 20 million units only having 38 more games than the system estimated to have sold between 1.8 - 2 million units is really not that good.

And that leads into my 'entire genres have little to no representation' thing. Sure if you like 3D platformers, sports games, and shooters of both the first and third-person variety, the N64 has you covered. But say you like RPGs, well on the N64 you got Paper Mario, which is obviously a great game, and then you got Ogre Battle 64, which is also fantastic but after those two you got uhhh.

Uhh.

Uhh you got fuckin Quest 64 and Aidyn Chronicles. Yeah.

And what about 2D platformers? Well you get a whopping five games to choose from there, sure two of them are Kirby 64 and Mischief Makers but still. Five.

 

[Ray Trace]

At least racing had a pretty good library, you had Mario Kart 64, Diddy Kong Racing, Beetle Adventure Racing, and Snowboard Kids 1 + 2. Pretty satisfactory if you ask me.

 

[MiracleDinner]

Only N64 games i really care for are the original super mario 64, which was good but not amazing and i am likely going to get the NDS version anyway, and paper mario 64, which is excellent

 

[Xananab]

"Too much water" is a perfectly valid complaint about Pokémon ORAS. I'm 99% sure that the people who make memes about that IGN review have either never seen the video, or have never played ORAS, thus meaning they don't understand what the complaint even means.

The reviewer didn't like how many water Pokémon were in the game, as it led to a balance problem. She also said that the water routes (Which make up around 40% of the overworld) were tedious. I don't really care about the "too many water Pokémon" thing, but I totally agree on the surplus of water routes.

ORAS has a theme of Land vs Water, so a large portion of the game takes place on the water. But while the land has a ton of different locals, the water is bland and boring. Diving is cool at first, and Pacifidlog town is okay, but most of the time you're surfing on the big, empty water routes with nothing interesting on them, where every single tile can trigger a random encounter. It's seriously the worst part of the game. Once you're finished with most of the game, you have to go through several boring water sections at once. It's the main reason why I don't like Hoenn as much as the other regions.

This whole situation is why I hate review scores. Arlo made a really good video about why they suck, but basically, people care more about the number assigned to a game than the actual written review. So when people saw that the reviewer gave ORAS a 7.8/10, they nitpicked the review and turned a very valid complaint into something that seemed like a minor detail. They even ignored her other complaint about HMs and made it seem like the only reason why it didn't get a perfect score was because of the water. I'm 100% sure that if the reviewer didn't give the game a score at all, the backlash wouldn't have been nearly as harsh.

Also, a 7.8/10 is still a great score.



TL ; DR - People should care less about whatever number is given to a game, and more about what information the review actually contains.

 

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

Don't forget how complaining about the water routes had literally been one of the Pokémon fandom's main goddamn criticisms of the Hoenn games since they came out on the Game Boy Advance. So why that very same criticism became a meme, I don't understand. I can only assume that maybe it started because of younger fans who'd never played the OG Hoenn games before thought it'd be funny in an attempt to make fun of video game reviewers?

Also my issue with review scores is that the numbering is completely fucked up in terms of what they mean. Like you'd think a game being 6/10 means it's 'above average' but it really means it's borderline trash.

 

[I Argue About Politics]

The real issue with the water routes lies a fundamental problem that has been only recently changed: random encounters. Hoenn's water routes could've been more fun if the random encounter was limited to just some reefs or such, like the water version of tall grass. No, they're treated like a vast expanse of underground and cave, which are already bad enough and have this reputation for stopping you every 5 steps you take.

I do think the complaints about water routes are a little overblown but I think I've just changed my attitude regarding wild encounters to just "destroy everything that appears" rather than flee. That being said, I never really remembered them being particularly terrible honestly; I always felt I spent more time in Mt. Moon or Rock Tunnel than in those routes, and Victory Road was certainly worse than the water routes just for requiring waterfall, strength, rock smash AND flash???

As for the amount of water Pokemon, water types do seem to be a majority in the dex. There's the Wingull and Tentacool spam and you do encounter Lotad and Surskit, and there's Wailmers, Spheals, Corphish and Carvanha (late game though), and then there's rain (but also sunshine), and there's deep sea Pokemon, and there's fishing. But a lot of those are late game, and some of these you won't encounter at all (Huntail, Gorebyss). Also water being majority isn't unique to Hoenn, as the generations prior also had water types that regularly outnumber the species count for other types including normal and bug (though Kanto has poison outnumber water).

The obsessiveness about numbering IS a problem. A 6/10 is basically "slightly above average, bordering on existing to exist". I think that's generally the idea for some games, but I also think context kind of matters. A 6/10 for a hyped up so-called """AAA""" game would indeed be considered intensely disappointed, just as how Paper Mario: Sticker Star, which was hyped up, was viewed as trash despite the mild scores. Cyberpunk 2077 getting that score would not reflect well on Cyberpunk, but I think something like Mario Party getting there would actually be okayish.... ....

And then there are games where professional review scores don't really match up to the perceived quality of the game.Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games regularly get middling scores on the professional side, but users tend to like them a lot more? Hell I recall Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon as cited among Nintendo's "dark" era examples for having relatively lowly rated Metacritic scores, but leaving out the usual inexplicable lukewarm reception professional critics have for these games. I mean I think the user score here for Super Mystery Dungeon more closely reflects my opinion on that game, and that disparity should be noted in Wikipedia at least, especially when the score, I don't think is from a raiding.

On the other hand, there's the usual professional reviewers frequently rating these Madden games constantly above 7/10 but you see user scores as like 0.5/10 such as Madden NFL 21.

So always take the scores with a grain of salt, and especially take context and relative perception into account. A 7/10 for a Mario Sports game is immediately seen as pretty standard and still a worthwhile Mario sports game (or at least that's a reasonable appraisal). The same score for Smash Bros. or Paper Mario, I generally think they have some flaws that hold the game back especially compared to the predecessors; in Smash Bros.'s case I'd wonder what the hell went wrong. Paper Mario: Sticker Star sat right smack on the middle of the 70-80 range for the Metacritic average and guessed how THAT turned out.

 

[Toasty Toad]

the game that causes the least amount of violences is flappy bird

 

[supermariofan]

Unless you’re trying to go for S rankings, I’ve played much harder games than Cuphead.

 

[Flygon64]

The monster catching genre needs more diversity in series
there are a lot of indie monster catching games but the problem with most is they're just trying to improve on Pokemon
whether they succeed at improving the Pokemon formula doesn't matter, they aren't trying to change it up

I just want to see a new formula in the monster catching genre. Pokemon has too much of a damn strangle-hold on the thing, there's no competition at all. What could of been competition is just dead, Yo-kai Watch, one of my favorite franchises ever, died because of Level-5's general incompetency in recent times and died over in the east with horrible sales of 4, the finale to the series. When was the last time you heard any real major news about Digimon in the west? I'm just crossing my fingers until some big AAA company comes along and makes a new original monster catching game and keeps it afloat.
Modern Pokemon is alright in my opinion, but man am I so damn tired of the same thing again and again with the fandom reacting the same way again and again
Where some new little Pokemon inspired game pops up and people shout to the heavens it will show it to the man but it gets forgotten a month later

 

[Ray Trace]

Shin Megami Tensei though.