Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

I can't believe this is actually unpopular. But here goes. The Switch version of Link's Awakening makes all prior versions objectively obsolete in every conceivable fashion. The remake is one of the best looking games on the switch period. It's art style is absolutely incredible and exactly what a faithful remake of Link's Awakening should look like. Also every person who complains about the frame rate is fine with the drops in BoTW and TotK. Further, having only 2 buttons to work with in the original makes it nearly unplayable in 2023. And being yelled at by an agonizingly slow text box every single time you brush up against a pot without the power bracelet actually makes the original an unbearably tedious game to play. In my view there are only two reasons that anybody makes the delusional claim that they prefer either of the Game Boy versions over the Switch one. Reason 1: They played it back in the 90's as a kid and have a nostalgic soft spot for the original. This makes them more willing to overlook the flaws of the original and ignore the vast improvements in the Switch version. Reason 2: They hate the absolutely perfect clay chibi art style. They're exactly no different from the losers in 2001 who lost their minds when Wind Waker was shown to have a new cartoony look. I absolutely refuse to accept any other reasoning for someone liking the original more, as the Switch one is an objective improvement in almost every aspect.

Almost every songs created by Naoki Maeda from DDR, Beatmania IIDX, DrumMania, Para Para Paradise, Pop'n Music, etc are way much better than the songs from Rhythm Heavens.

@Ultimapunch Agreed, the remake is great. Not liking Chibi art is a totally valid opinion though, just like not liking any other specific art style. Plenty of people don't like pixel art too. Personally I hate the 'hyper-realistic' but weirdly not realistic at all art a lot of PS5 games have. Some people don't like the washed-out art style BotW uses. I find it funny that e.g. Alex at NintendoLife always complains about Chibi art games in his YouTube videos, but he is an example of someone who doesn't dislike Chibi art just because of changes in a remake, he just usually dislikes that type of style in general which is understandable even if you and I have different preferences. I would be a bit annoyed if I had to play Link's Awakening in, like, the Last of Us art style. Honestly, that sounds nightmarish.

@FishyS I get that it's a valid opinion. But I really think it's an incredibly shallow one. I would still argue to the death that the Remake's art style is actually incredibly faithful to the original. But, even if I were to grant that it isn't faithful and that it is a terrible art style, I still think its a shallow opinion to write off the Remake as the lesser version simply because of its look. Especially when it does so much else to improve on the original version. Like, I think Twilight Princess is the worst looking 3d Zelda game by a mile. The realistic art style has aged like a stale donut. But that game still has the best dungeons in the series and arguably the best character in the series. Just because I might not like the look as much as other games in the series doesn't mean I'm gonna write off all the amazing qualities it has. I feel like with the Link's Awakening remake people do that though. And don't even get me started on the Diamond and Pearl remakes. They are objectively the best versions of those games, but people absolutely hate them. Almost entirely, as far as I've been able to gather, due to its Chibi look as well. Just seems incredibly reductionist to me.

@EaglyPurahfan thanks for this. Rock on.

I love the Link's Awakening remake but I have a couple of counterpoints.

1. 100% the game notably hurts the pacing in the remake. Just the Danpe dungeon mode alone has made my playtime probably 33% longer than it would've been otherwise, in order to consistently do rooms I've already done and thus rarely offer that much interesting challenge. Not to mention the overuse of the crane game, that's also rarely any sort of interesting challenge (and I'm being nice when I say it even has that).
2. The charm of Link's Awakening's sprite work and how it adds to the charm of the story and world is a nearly irreplaceable element. If anything, my opinion is that it took considerable work and artistic talent to find an art style that could even come as close as it did. But it got close, it did not magically make every single element as good as the original. Same with the music.
3. The game is clearly a Gameboy game based off of its simplicity and map design, no matter how more impressive it looks and sounds, and that makes it inherently surreal and sometimes awkward. Not bad but different in a way that I don't find it to be a replacement for the original.

Doing an accurate but qol improved Link's Awakening remake with such modern graphics and sound still inherently makes it different, and thus I don't think it replaces it. Beyond the reasons give, if for no other reason than I tend to experience and appreciate Gameboy games from 1993 different than modern HD games from 2019 (this is also basically why I prefer Blaster Master to Blaster Master Zero, despite the new one being objectively better in so many ways).

A new hand touches the beacon.
What would you personally count as the cutoff for retro? The Gamecube as a system has been out of use (in terms of last game being made for it) since 2007. The Wii released nearly a year before.

Would you say there's a set generational cutoff, a strict years-before-present cutoff, or a specific technology being involved? Any era with "bit" in it definitely counts on my book and as I get older, the arguments for 6th and 7th gen consoles being retro start applying, but I'd be most comfortable having standard definition resolution through component cables and the expectation of not having an internet connection as a few hard factor check boxes for retro.

While there's no hard and fast definition of retro, I'd think that a console that's been discontinued for fifteen years now pretty much fits that description.

The same goes for its contemporaries, like the Dreamcast and the original Xbox. The PS2 is a bit more debatable, as it remained on the market for a few years longer, but even that's been discontinued for a decade and the games it was getting in its last 3-4 years weren't much to shout about.

This is not gonna be the most unpopular opinion here but I've been playing Team Kirby Clash Deluxe (which is an unmemorable name for a game, as I've never remembered it), and its the best example I've experienced that everything that even leans in a mobile game direction is just a bad idea for good games.

I've experienced the Gacha mechanics in Xenoblade 2, played one of the Pokemon f2p games on Switch and now with this, my main thought process is I don't believe that an actual human being actually likes this direction for gaming. I absolutely believe it is purely based on addiction rather than sincere enjoyment. Not even about the games as a whole but how these aspects are designed, no its a mistake if the point is to make a fun video game. Which it had to have been for Xenoblade because the gacha isn't monetized there, but it was a mistake based on believing that mobile gaming is popular and thus ideas from it are good for a real video game. They are not, they are bad.

And this Kirby game is blatantly made to make you...at least eventually, want to buy "apples" with real money rather than deal with grinding the same fights forever. It is transparent and pathetic. This makes one positive to the eShop being gone in that I don't have to experience f2p monetization in a paid Kirby game now, but the parts where the game is worse off because of it are still here. Anyway, I'm now gonna do my occasional, sometimes daily, 10+ minutes of this game, which is apparently how games should be played.

@EaglyPurahfan I don't think your opinion about pikmin 3 is necessarily unpopular, but It's interesting that your reasons for liking it most are very similar to mine for not liking it as much. Because Pikmin has gone back and forth on aspects like time management, the fanbase seems to have been a bit split.

@kkslider5552000 Gacha mechanics derive from a line of toys that date back to the 1960s. I believe the original creator was Bandai. You'd pop your money into a vending machine that'd spit out a ball containing a random toy, typically in a series of collectables, that you'd trade with your friends in the hope of completing a set.

As such, I'd think that incorporating those mechanics into video games doesn't necessarily mean that they're buying into the same business model that's been destroying mobile gaming for the past decade. Obviously, to us befuddled Westerners who didn't grow up with actual Gacha machines, and only encountered it as a predatory gambling mechanic first, it's only natural to fear the worst. However, in the case of Xenoblade 2 and more recently Tears of the Kingdom, I'd think it's more of a direct call-back to the toys.

Super Kirby Clash though... Yeah, that's definitely the bad kind.

Even through the RNG bs, I like Pikmin 2. It's a hard game, and sometimes unfair, but at the same time, there's just something about it that I really enjoyed. I think it has to be the caves. 4's caves are good, but i wish they were a bit longer. I get why they aren't, given that the caves in 4 are hand-made, whilst the caves in 2 are randomly generated. However, I feel like 2's caves being made that way give me an active reason to want to go back to the game, given each run is going to be different from the others.

I can buy that for Tears of the Kingdom, but I'd bet actual money Xenoblade 2 is based off of gacha mobile games. Like you mostly get commons from crystals in order to try to eventually get rare waifus. It's actually impossible for me to fathom its influenced by anything else.

@kkslider5552000 That doesn't seem convincing in itself to me, as collecting waifu figurines has long been a staple of actual Gacha machines long before aggressively monetized mobile games took up that banner, and yes, there would always be some very rare ones that most people wouldn't get.

It certainly doesn't seem like they designed it as a pay-to-win game and yanked the monetization out at the last minute for some reason though. Rare blades don't give you a massive advantage until well into the post-game - where you can grind for them - or gate off vast swathes of content; they've all got their skill tree unlocking quests, I suppose, but that's about it.

The one thing I'd say that points to mobile gacha gaming as an influence is that it's got a pity system. They're typically included in mobile games to ensure that whales actually get something even when the RNG would otherwise say no, to keep them spending, but that doesn't really serve a purpose in a game where it's just about randomizing your party a bit.

Review scores (likes 8/10) are stupid and too reductive but also the best we have 🤷🏻‍♂️

Is it fair to score lower because side quests are bad but what about games they don't offer them at all? What about crappy multiplayer in otherwise great singleplayer game? And on and on..

@EaglyPurahfan On some of the Pikmin related articles here the comments sections have an interesting mix of people saying 3 is the hardest and others saying it is the easiest and same for 2. Personally I'm in the 3 is hard camp. I haven't actually bought 4 yet, but it certainly seems like it is significantly easier from what I've seen. I guess it depends on whether you consider the time management part the difficult part or the easy part.

The very fact its in this animu as heck video game is nearly all the proof I need, because mobile games made it popular in video games, obviously, so games outside of mobile gaming would obviously notice unless they ignored the entire mobile industry. It would be a truly bizarre and nearly impossible coincidence if mobile gaming didn't come to mind when implementing them into a video game. This was also being developed right around when Nintendo specifically was looking into mobile gaming, so it would be the exact right time for Nintendo devs to be paying attention to mobile gaming if they hadn't before.

And no I don't think it was originally supposed to be monetized, because I think they thought its popular because its fun. They were wrong, just as they were wrong for every needless complication to its side content to extend game time to a game (by merely being a Xenoblade game) was already going to be massively long. It's there in those mobile games, at best, to justify costs as a f2p game, at worst, to cynically get people addicted to them.

@Tounushi @Matt_Barber I liken "retro gaming" (also known as classic or vintage gaming, though "retro" is the one that seems to have stuck) to how historians define things like the "classical era". Since it was introduced many centuries ago, the term has referred to a certain period (~800 BC - 500 AD). This period was defined by the dominance of Greek and Roman civilizations and followed by the middle ages. Specifics are up for debate, but general consensus is that it ended with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. What's NOT disputed is that something doesn't automatically become part of the "classical era" after a certain number of years have passed. It has a start and end date irrespective of what the Current Year is. Some other examples: the New Testament is older than some parts of the Old Testament were when it was designated as such, but theologians and scholars haven't changed the name because of a very important event that distinguishes the two periods. Likewise with cultural history. "Classic rock" refers to the period beginning with the British Invasion in the 1960s and ending with the rise of "alternative rock" (Nirvana-type stuff) in the early 1990s. A rock song doesn't just become "classic rock" after the 10 or 15 or 20 year mark. Likewise, "modern art" (ironically) refers to the late 19th Century up to the 1970s (newer styles of art are called "postmodern").

So where does this leave retro gaming? We can neatly draw the line with a major historical event between the fifth and sixth generations: Sega permanently left the hardware market and Microsoft joined it. In late 2001, the big three console companies were Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. In 2023, the big three console companies are Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. The sixth generation also saw the beginning of online gaming, and the decline of couch multiplayer. All of the big three had some sort of online capability (even though the Gamecube only supported a handful of obscure games). Even offline and single-player games changed forever when it became possible to know everything about any given game by going on the internet, which became extremely widespread in the early 2000s. It was also the end of counting bits and of massive graphical improvements between generations. If you were to compare the graphics for Zelda: Twilight Princess (a late Gamecube game) to Tears of the Kingdom (a Switch game), an observer completely unfamiliar with Zelda would have a hard time telling which one went with which console. But Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time are clearly from an earlier, less technologically advanced generation. The same goes for just about any series. Super Smash Bros. Melee looks more like Ultimate than Smash 64. In Mario Odyssey, there's a costume that turns Mario into N64 Mario. There is not a costume for Gamecube Mario, because they look so similar (apart from Fludd and Cappy of course) that nobody would actually care. The sixth gen also featured publishers appealing to older males with extra violent and sexually-charged games. There were violent and controversial games in the 1990s but, unlike with any previous console, the #1 best-selling games on PS2 and Xbox were M-rated.

So the Dreamcast is either the last retro console or the first modern console. On the one hand, it was meant to be Sega's answer to the PS2 and Gamecube as it had online gameplay and modern graphics (making it arguably an early sixth-generation console). On the other hand, it was off the market before Nintendo and Microsoft had even released their consoles (making it chronologically an honourary fifth generation console). The N64 and PS1, however, are clearly retro consoles. The Gamecube and PS2 are not.

@Euler Like I said, there's no hard and fast definition of retro and you're wasting your time trying to impose your own one here. I suppose it is the unpopular opinions thread though.

While history might seem neatly organized into eras with set end dates, that typically only takes place centuries after the fact when the dust has long settled. If there's a hard and fast dividing line to be drawn, we're not the ones with the objectivity to do so, so it's probably best not to try.

There absolutely are things that are defined by their age rather that a particular span of years too. Antiques, for instance, are over a hundred years old. Vintage clothing is over twenty. The idea that retro games are anything over, say, fifteen years old - which is what Retro Game magazine goes by - wouldn't be at odds with such conventions.

As for a landmark event that could constitute and end of an era, I'd think it somewhat arbitrary to pick the end of Sega's console business, as there are several other candidates you could have, of even greater historical significance. The collapse of the early US console industry followed by the rise of Nintendo, perhaps? Or maybe the final gasp of Atari Inc and the rise of Sony in the mid-90s? They all happened in my lifetime and gaming wasn't ever the same again.

Or maybe we could do it on a technological basis such as the switch from primarily 2D games to 3D, the mainstream adoption of online play, or the arrival of HD video. Merely attaching a console from the pre-HD era to a modern set generally takes some conversion and special cabling, after all.

In terms of changes in graphical techniques, the most obvious dividing line is between predominantly 2D and 3D. While someone who is severely short-sighted might not notice the huge increase in detail from Twilight Princess to Tears of the Kingdom, as well as the fact that the latter is playable on a handheld, there's absolutely no mistaking A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. That's despite there only being seven years between them.

Also, if you want to refer to video games in terms of historical periods strictly defined in years, the concept of console generations already exists.

Zelda's have gotten too big, BOTW, TOTK especially. They're great. I loved them both, but they're so big that I can't recommend them to my nieces. I simply can't recommend them for a kid in school that has a life. Before the switch, I think I could have recommended zelda titles. But BOTW and TOTK are wayy too time consuming. I think TOTK pushes too far into addictive & overwhelming with distractions. For a family friendly Nintendo console, I think maybe new zelda games need to be reined in. There's too much resource farming needed. I haven't minded the non-linear exploration, but I find myself wanting to go back to a zelda game that can be completed in less time, a more finite game.