Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

I have a couple in the wake of the Callisto Protocol reviews.

Puzzles should be exclusive to puzzle games, I’ve never played a game that uses puzzles as a pacing mechanism where I’ve thought “God, I love these puzzles, they are so fun! I am so glad the entire game I am playing has come to a complete standstill so I can do this puzzle!’.

In almost every game that uses this method, I solve the first couple and am bored to tears, so I then look for the answers for all the rest just to get through them as fast as I can, so I can get back to the real game. I am the player, let me pace my own experience, rather putting the game behind a wall of tedium and just locking me out of progression instead.

Secondly, linear, almost on rails, experiences have become a sorta dirty word in gaming. It is like every game is supposed to be a sprawling open world designed with almost a sole intention of making sure the player gets lost and somehow everything other than that is apparently a disappointment.

But when I think about my favourite games over the years, they are all basically fancily dressed corridors the player is Sheparded along, not those modern bloated open world games. I dunno when or really why linearity became a bad thing, but I honestly wish more games were a 10ish hour, tightly controlled, linear experience I can just play, put down and be done and free to move onto something else. I can think of a bunch of modern open world games that would have been vastly improved had they used this formula.

I don't entirely agree with puzzles, particularly for games where the variety is part of their fun. But there are definitely enough examples where the puzzles are just there to kill the pacing more than anything (first ones that came to mind are that one area of the Earth Temple in Wind Waker and the slide puzzle in RE4).

I 100% agree with smaller games. Nearly all of my favorite games are 20 hours, 30 with side content, at absolute most. One of my top 20 games is just an hour long game with excellent replayability. Maybe if they made more of those, there would've been actual AAA game releases this year. Linear games became bad to people I assume because of the backlash to extreme examples like Final Fantasy XIII and most shooters that gen. I made a joke a long time ago that games need to stop with the extreme ends of being either a hallway simulator or open world in a game the size of a US state, and I think instead of more games with a happy middle ground they mostly just replaced the former with more of the latter.

@Pizzamorg I just look up a tutorial when a puzzle appears in a standard game. I don't want to play Bop It while I'm playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3.

Btw does anyone remember that game? I own it but never played it.

I don't think puzzles should only be in puzzle games. Zelda is a prime example of a game that does puzzles right, and so is God of War (the originals).

@VoidofLight That is a fair statement, and I don't think there should be no puzzles at all in non-puzzle games. I just don't like most of them.

@HotGoomba Yeah, that's fair. A lot of games just do the bare minimum in terms of puzzles, and it makes me question why they even have them to begin with.

Kefka is a lame villain.

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika
Gameplay > Refusing to play a game because of resolution and frame rate (unless they're really bad)

I'll agree with generally preferring linear games with a sub 30 hour runtime compared to 50-100 hour open world games.

I mean I loved XC3, but will admit it was definitely a bit much at times and took me 3 months(!) to complete. That's definitely not something I want to be doing more than once a year. And it arguably isn't even a true open world game (even if it's areas are huge).

The only other open world game I've played this year that I'd rank amongst my favorites (for the year) is Miles Morales, and that was thankfully MUCH more brief than your typical open world game, even when doing everything.

All my other favorite games I played this year are more linear or level based (Kirby & the Forgotten Land, Stray, Astro's Playroom, & I'll go ahead and throw Star Ocean: the Divine Force & Pac-Man World: Re-Pac in there too).

30fps is fine so long as it's a rock solid 30fps with no dips down to single digits, uneven frame pacing, tearing or freezing.

More fps is obviously better, but I don't think it's worth sacrificing visual fidelity for except in very twitchy genres.

There are specific genres where 30 fps doesn’t really matter - like turn based games - and if a game is in a genre better suited for 60fps or higher, but is built from the ground up to be experienced in a rock solid 30 fps - like say Monster Hunter Rise on Switch - then this is also tolerable. I also think if you only play the 30 fps versions of titles, or don’t have the proper equipment to experience 60 fps titles or higher, then you also probably think it is fine because you don’t know any different. Although if you don’t know any different, arguing 30 fps is fine is kind of a void argument, because you don’t know anything else.

However, while admittedly purely anecdotal, I don’t know anyone in my personal life who has tried a game they played on console on a PC, or got a next gen upgrade of a console game unlocking the frame rate to 60 or higher and gone “man, I really wish I could go back and play that 30 fps version of this game again!”. At least when it comes to the genres that matter, shooters, action games, basically any real time games that require any kind of precision.

1440p, 60fps, is the gaming sweet spot and should be the target for every release, console or PC.

Some games are just fine without it, but if it’s a shooter or a high speed game where I need to make quick decisions, yeah heck no 30 is probably not gonna cut it, but if it’s stable, it’s doable.

I still voted 60 fps than 30 fps.

@Pizzamorg Given I go back to play switch, despite owning a PS5, I can say I don't mind the low FPS. Like, sure I'd rather have 60 FPS, but it doesn't bug me if a game is running at 30.

Shenmue III is really good and I hope it will be continued.

That I choose Switch version for multiplatform games instead of the Xbox version sums up my opinion about framerate and resolution very well. While 60fps is preferable, it's definitely not a dealbreaker. The advantages of the Switch like the significantly better OS and the hybrid nature are such that I'm willing to take the hit on resolution and framerate.

I've played many games that run at 30 FPS, and that's never bothered me, either. Especially if it's a consistent frame rate. There are quite a few games that I'd rather have on the Switch as opposed to other platforms, too.

Yes, the hybrid element is worth noting, too. Never before this forum have I met a larger group of people who would willingly sacrifice anything just to make sure they can experience the game on the go. You can show them an objectively inferior port of a title on the Switch, but they’ll reply that they can play it on the go and that is the end of that discussion

For me personally, I only want to play games on the go that are designed with that in mind or games that aren’t demanding in my finger dexterity, like turn based tactics or JPRGs. I remember trying to play Rise in handheld and it sucked, despite it being designed for the Switch. I had to use a Pro Controller and if I was going to do that, I may as well just play it docked. I don’t have much interest in playing modern triple AAA titles in bed. Pokemon SV was an exception because the docked performance was so bad, playing it in handheld was the only way to make it bearable.

In terms of ray tracing, I personally haven’t ever seen ray tracing add enough to justify the performance cost, but the Spider-Man games on PS5 which dabble in a bit of Raytracing, while using adaptive resolution to make sure the target FPS remains as close to 60 as possible is the kind of middle ground I’d happily accept for console titles.

For what its worth, you'd find similar sentiments among the users of the Steam Deck and other handheld PCs. I.e. that it's generally not worth chasing frame rates above 30 for most games, because you'd have to trade away too much in terms of graphical settings and/or battery life to get there.

Obviously we're looking at devices a lot more powerful than the Switch in that market, that can make a better stab at many more modern games, but 720p@30 remains the sweet spot for them in spite of that.

I will usually go for performance over visual fidelity.

Personally it feels that we're really getting diminishing returns when it comes to visual fidelity on the power consoles. Not to say that I see no difference between 1080p and 4k...but the difference is nowhere near as notable as the jump from 30 fps to 60 fps for me. I will almost always choose 1080p/60fps over 2160p/30fps. Performance modes in recent console games are a godsend.

As for raytracing? Not to dismiss the tech entirely, but in its current form I don't see the big deal. I can just about see the difference with side-by-side comparisons. Sacrificing performance for such a minor improvement? Forget about it.

When we're talking lower resolutions...i.e. 720p/60fps vs. 1080p/30fps...things become a bit more difficult. I think I'd have to choose on a case-by-case basis as to whether I'd sacrifice resolution or frame rate.

I'm by no means an fps snob...but definitely do appreciate the smoothness of 60fps. That said, as alluded to by previous posters, I'd happily sacrifice 60fps for the convenience of the Switch for many games.