Topic: Games You Feel are Overrated

@Maxz SMT is more serious I suppose IMO. It is missing much of the anime/pseudo dating/teenage angst trappings that the persona series has. SMT is less anchored by a "real world setting", even when it takes place in Japan as usually the world gets destroyed or you get warped away very quickly. SMT tends to have a pseudo narrative (pseudo because not every game incorporates it) where Lucifer is rallying against YHWH and that ties into the alignment choices. I was also grateful that IV went back to the first person view that III discarded. I think both have their strengths, although I enjoy SMT more than Persona myself. But SMT is full of spin offs...Devil Children was the more kid friendly version of the series.

GTA III. At the time, there were much better racing games and much better third person shooters. GTA III did not do much very well. It's like the Fast and Furious of the gaming world. Naff...but amazingly they keep churning them out.

@GrailUK GTA III let you take a baseball bat to a granny's head, beat her to a pulp and then nick her pension money. I'm not sure what else you could possibly want.

It's been quite some years, but I have a feeling the old dear was asking for it, pretty sure she made some uninvited comments towards me, so I would have just been trying to teach her that if she didn't have anything nice to say she should wallow in a pool of her own blood, and pay me for the privilege.

C'mon, when GTA 3 came out it was a total riot, 'jacking cars in the best open world yet realised in gaming, evading cops, shooting down helicopters, jumping off multi storey car parks...

I haven't played GTA 5 yet, but 4 was good but stick to the same mission mechanics as 3 too much. But 3... 3 was a revolution in gaming, at least to me.

"I hate fun"
k

My definition of fun involves putting various objects on my head and seeing how long I can go about my daily business without them either falling off or someone noticing.

It's surprisingly easy with games cartridges, but much harder with consoles (though N64 carts and GameBoy Micros show that this rule is not infallible).

The joy of the challenge is balancing the conspicuousity of the object against its inherent instability. And also obviously, just... well, balancing. Balancing the object on your head.

Thoroughly recommended for any fun-loving thrill seekers.

I always preferred Spirit Tracks to Phantom Hourglass. I felt that it fixed a lot of the problems with its predecessor, had more memorable bosses, and while train travel was more limited in some aspects, I found it refreshing (plus I like trains anyway).

Compared to other Zelda games, they don't measure up well. However, they're still quality games that were some of the best on the DS (IMO).

@Snaplocket: I may try Pikmin 2 at some point, but we'll see. Too many other games to play. XD

I haven't played much GTA other than a few short stints of Liberty City on my cousin's PS2 years ago. I wasn't too impressed, though I had a fun time stealing and wrecking random vehicles.

I agree 100%. I'm not against violence in games, but beating up someone like a defenseless grandmother is cowardly, IMO.

I can't stand GTA but I do like Saints Row because it doesn't take itself seriously. Its a weird exception to my personality that I find baffling but it is what it is. In general I don't find immoral/criminal violence funny/entertaining yet I adore visceral violence in movies. Yet I'm a mild mannered pacifist (outside the dojo of course)...it is weird.

To add to the thread.
Mass Effect 2 and 3. The story took a complete nosedive and the Reapers lost a great deal of their unfathomable quality starting with 2. The death/timeskip was a poor narrative device. The characters also became much more bland (including returning ones) and the combat took an unfortunate direction (not defending the ME1 combat but railing against the Gears of Mass Effect cover shooter it became) and I felt that Bioware was so focused on making ME a brand that they got lost in their own universe building (seriously the books and comics were a bit much). To make matters worse a few of the VAs started imo overacting a bit which made the Voice acting even more of a chore. Bioware is great at the opening salvo but they can't maintain momentum for me...I have much of the same issues with Dragon Age as well. I tend to fall on the wrong side of games that have been modified for mainstream (ME, DA, PoP, AC to name a few series that I started out a huge fan and can't be bothered now) so I'm sorta used to it by now. I would love to play a trilogy that I enjoyed the entire way through however.

Monster Hunter. Just don't get it at all. Granted I only had it on the Wee You but it just didn't draw me in. It felt slow and my character was cumbersome. May have enjoyed if I'd put the hours in and had a much more skilled character (does that happen?) but never got that far.

@kkslider5552000 yeah, I have played a lot of JRPG's since the SNES era. In general VA isn't that great in those for me but much like BotW it's the 'British' voice acting I found particularly bad in XC, sorry should've been more specific.

Something about Xenoblade Chronicles didn't quite click with me.

Fire Emblem as a whole. There, I said it.

I'm not sure if Mishima is being intentionally stupid or not but he should stop embarrassing himself with whatever he is trying to do. Stop it.

I think I somehow didn't mention this obvious one. Yeah.

Even with my limited knowledge of strategy games as a whole, the original localization of FE was still only the 3rd best GBA strategy game of 2003, with Advance Wars 2 and FFTA right there. Advance Wars was less limited with units available (MAKE AS MANY AS YOU WANT IN LATER LEVELS, YO) and could have so many units and yet somehow didn't take much more time than FE levels (and also didn't have stupid ideas like attacks not always hitting). And if you still wanted a tactics RPG, FFTA was right there. And after playing Sacred Stones...yeah I don't think the FE series, on average, is for me. Echoes seems cool?

Speaking of 2003 Nintendo games outshone by games in the same genre, Mario Kart Double Dash was never as good as F Zero GX or Kirby Air Ride. I know people liked even early Mario Kart and Double Dash was EASILY the best of the series at that point, but I still feel MK DS is when everything felt fun and right about actually playing the game. Something was still slightly off about Double Dash, and quite frankly it was still lacking in features. It's not even like I'm super into F Zero, but there was just...more going on in that game. Partially because story mode was crazy hard but still..

Nah you never get a more skilled character, better equipment yes, but it's up to the player to improve their strategy. The character is meant to be cumbersome, you've got to learn enemy attack patterns and pay attention for visual or audio cues so you can avoid damage. In many ways it is a rhythm game. But I can understand where you are coming from, I couldn't get the hang of it when I played Tri on the Wii. It took another few attempts with 3U on the Wii U for it to finally click.

This was more or less my impression of MH3U when I tried the 3DS demo years ago. I REALLY wanted to like it, and it may be wrong for me to base most of my impressions on a demo (and a little on what I've read about the series), but something just didn't click for me. I'm still unsure if the series is for me and have no desire currently to pick up one of the games.

You can't play Monster Hunter like other games. It has high animation priority, so it isn't all about reaction and quick button presses like other character action games. It's about learning your weapon's combos, the intricacies of those animations, the monsters' animations, and especially how the dodge roll works (it has a very brief i-frame right after you press the button, for example).

Most of the FPS genre. Don't get me wrong, there have been some over the last few decades that I enjoyed. My biggest problem is that most of them are the same game with a different title and look. I used to love playing the Metal of Honor games. Call of duty got old for me right after Modern Warfare 2. I don't see how this genre is still so beloved.

@Ryu_Niiyama I know what you mean about GTA. I feel that GTA V has a much more intentionally ironic atmosphere, on top of being a polished experience overall, but the rest of the GTA games just weren't my cup of Tea. Also, I hear Saints Row 1 & 2 wre more serius, though I've only played 3 & 4 (which were hilarious).

@zever I think the problem is that you're playing the wrong games. While the FPS genre isn't as diverse as, say, platformers or RPGs, I don't feel like saying they're all same-y is giving them enough credit. Rainbow Six: Vegas's squad-based approach requires a different mindset than Halo. At the same time, tactics that work in Halo will get you killed in Goldeneye: 007 or Call of Duty 4. People call Modern Warfare a clone of Counterstrike, yet I found that they had pretty different feels to them, despite looking similar. And don't even get me started on the mammoth that is Battlefield. I don't think I'll ever get into that kind of chaos, except for the Bad Company games, which I really wish they tried to make more of. The single player experiences in those were really engaging, especially considering its competition at the time.

Then there's the DOOM, Quake, Unreal, Wolfenstein, etc. classics that emphasized fast-paced combat around maze-like levels, utilizing wide array of weapons who themselves were the real stars of show, all of which contrast drastically to the Half-Life games, where the narrative takes more of a priority while still building on its predecessor's foundations.

And of course, there's the RPG/FPS hybrids, which are a whole kettle of fish unto themselves. Bioshock in particular is said to be a spiritual successor to System Shock, yet I had drastically different experiences with them, as System Shock leaned more heavily on its RPG elements, especially in terms of exploration.

Simply put: it's one thing to say that you're not a fan of FPS games, but it's another to say the whole genre isn't all that, especially if you feel like they're too same-y. Either you aren't looking hard enough, or there's a basic element of the genre that you just don't care for. Which is alright, of course - I personally think I'd enjoy Stealth games more if they were more forgiving when you get caught, and I would like horror games more if they just...weren't so scary. So if you do think there's something that you're frequently seeing in them that you don't like, it might be better to identify what that is so you can home in on those games, thus narrowing your scope. I know I've found several stealth games where the penalty isn't too harsh, and I still feel like I have a chance to escape if I do get caught, so long as I know what I'm doing. So if I see a new Stealth game, and it looks like you're always boned if you're spotted, I can just ignore that off the bat, even that covers a lot of the genre.

...I've yet to find a horror game that isn't scary at all, though.

@Snaplocket Woah, sorry man