Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

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.

@WoomyNNYes I'm inclined to agree - TotK is amazing but after 80 hours I'm not feeling the same excitement to keep playing it that I was to begin with. Traditional Zelda games are generally very well paced so you're always pushing the story forward and discovering new abilities, whereas BotW and TotK's abilities are mostly unlocked near the beginning by necessity, and you spend a lot of time just wandering around seeing what you find. And to be fair, they're probably the best ever examples of that kind of gameplay and there is always something new to find, but this time around I'm getting a little tired of the lack of structure, even though I'm still really enjoying the game.

I'm in a bit of a weird position where for a while I thought of BotW as my favourite game ever, and TotK is even better in many ways and I do love it, but it hasn't quite kept me hooked like BotW did (though I think I finished BotW's main story in less time than I've played TotK so far, which I haven't finished yet). It's probably because the world was completely new to me in BotW, or maybe I'm just not as much in the mood for a big open world game at the moment. So would I still say Breath is my favourite game? ...Probably, because exploring that game's Hyrule for the first time was genuinely magical, and even though Tears gave me the same feeling when I first started it, it's worn off a bit after so many hours. Don't get me wrong, it's still a 10/10 game and I'm not disappointed by it, but can the next Zelda game either be shorter or a brand new world please Nintendo?

under-water levels where you are constantly about to drown if you don't find air bubbles or Mario type ones where you are magically breathing water?

I noticed in the Mario Wonder trailer Mario could kill fish under-water by hitting them from above, so the main difficulty of Mario water levels may be gone.

Water levels will never not make my heart lose it lol.

@Matt_Barber I’m not imposing my definition any more than other people have here (by declaring the GameCube to be a retro console and claiming that « 15 years = retro ». I’m proposing one that happens to be more reasonable.

History isn’t always divided into eras « centuries after the dust has been settled ». Modern South Africa vs. Apartheid South Africa is a pretty clear line. Before vs. after Adolf Hitler or the American Civil War are pretty bright lines. Even gradual, secular revolutions (e.g. Quebec’s Quiet Revolution and the Republican Revolution that ended the New Deal Coalition) can be recognized as what they are. The history of music, art, and gaming work on even shorter time scales.

According to US trade law, an antique is actually something of value made prior to 1830. This date corresponds to the approximate beginning of mass production (e.g. a major technological/cultural change). I don’t know where Retro Gamer magazine actually defined « Retro », but a quick look at their site suggests it almost entirely consists of 20th Century games (plus a bizarre contemporary review of Red Dead Redemption because they evidently had nothing else to write about that day). The retro gaming subreddit uses the Gen 5/6 cutoff, and they reject all « it’s retro after X years » arguments.

HD is not a reasonable cutoff. It was a pretty modest change, the leading Ninth Generation console can be played without HD, and it’s quite easy to hook up an N64, GameCube, Wii U, and Switch to the same tv using only the cables that came with the consoles. 4th to 5th gen might be a good cutoff if it were only a matter of graphics. But it isn’t. It’s a cumulative case. The 5th to 6th involved better graphics (the last major improvement; Twilight Princess still looks more like a Switch game than an N64 game) + the rise of online gaming and the internet + major target demographic shift + the establishment of the modern three-party console market. No other generation has that many points on the board.

Good, then we can agree to differ. My stance all along has been that there's no hard and fast definition, after all.

I’m proposing one that happens to be more reasonable.

Reasonable to whom? It's not reasonable to me, or presumably anyone else who was playing video games from older systems prior to the release of the Dreamcast, let alone someone arbitrarily deciding that it should form the dividing line. I can assure you that we were using the words first.

What systems I considered retro in the late 80s are very different to the ones that I consider to be retro now, and I'd fully expect that to change further over time.

Retro is just any game system that's no longer supported, and that most kids today will never experience. Stuff that's older than a decade in my eyes.

I think retro loses its meaning after Gen 6 with the exception of Wii and DS because of the impact of closing a digital store when the vast majority of content for the system is digital only.

Nowadays I'd consider retro to be games before like...the Xbox 360 launch. That feels like the biggest turning point and shift in gaming and...all the SD games released afterwards were released afterwards but I refuse to call Gears of War retro until I have grey hair, so Okami is still not retro to me either. (not to mention how weird it would be for NSMB, a game designed to be a return to retro Mario, to itself be retro)

I don’t know how unpopular of an opinion this is, but it sure isn’t one I see at all so I’m just gonna throw it out there.
Good characters are more important than a good story. Story is still really important, don’t get me wrong, but if the characters in the story are written horribly (whatever a “horrible character” is to you), there’s no relatability in the story and no main reason to keep going. The story could be peak fiction, a perfect 10/10, but if the characters are a 3 or 4/10 at best, is it worth continuing the story if the characters acting out the plot suck? If a story’s awful that can wreck it too, but I think there’s more of a grace period if you have a stellar cast of characters. Personally, I’d say if a story has 10/10 characters and like a 7/10 plot, it evens out to a 9/10 overall.
A good example of this is Persona 4 and its spin-offs, a game I can’t stop talking about! P4’s basic plot is a murder mystery, and a pretty good one. Depending on how much you like the genre, I’ve seen people consistently give it somewhere between an 8/10 and a 10/10. But the biggest thing people praise about P4 is the characters. In my case they’re what made the game my favorite game ever. The game is solid and the plot is solid, but I loved the characters so much that they left a noticeable impact on me that’s stuck with me since I finished it. This general idea carried into the spin-offs which have the same cast, but are usually agreed to have lesser plots. They don’t have BAD plots, but they’re generally agreed to be 8/10 at best from what I’ve seen. Personally I’d give the plot of the first spin-off P4 Arena (and Ultimax the updated version) a 7/10 thanks to huge pacing issues. But people still enjoy the stories because the characters they love are still there like they were in the original game, and even the new characters are pretty great too. P4 has helped me realize that a big reason why I love a lot of the stories I do is because the characters are relatable or interesting or just fun, and give the plot more life as a result.
Anyway thanks for coming to my TED Talk! There’s my Persona 4 propaganda for the week! Apologies for the length, I’m typing this on my phone late at night since I can’t fall asleep really. If it’s a bit rambly or incoherent, that’s probably why😅

@Slim_in_Blue I would argue Mario counts for this. He is a 'good character' in some sense (maybe not the sense you mean above but his creators had to have done something right to make him so iconic) and this makes us completely forgive the awful stories in most of his games.

@FishyS Ehhh. I wouldn't count Mario, since Mario itself isn't even a story-based series. You usually don't play them for the characters or the actual narrative, but rather the gameplay.

@FishyS I can understand why Mario might work, it even works to some extent in the games with story like the RPGs, at least in terms of initial impressions. If you only have time/money to play one RPG and you’re picking between say Paper Mario TTYD and a Final Fantasy, you’ve probably heard that the story is great. But even then you might be skeptical of if you’ll like the characters from what you’ve read, so it might be the safer bet to go with TTYD because of Mario’s status as a mascot. Beyond that TTYD has a fantastic story from what I’ve heard so maybe not the greatest example, but still an example.
@VoidofLight also has a good point though with how most Mario games don’t pride themselves on narrative, at least with the non-RPGs. Usually Mario’s stories are just excuses for him to do a bunch of platforming and beat up Bowser at the end. That’s fine since the series prioritizes gameplay, but it makes it harder to say the characters in Mario are more important than the plot when neither are all that important to begin with.

@EaglyPurahfan Don’t you dare say I’m going overboard! YOU BETTER TAKE BACK WHAT YOU SAID RIGHT NOW, IM NOT YELLING YOUR YELLING!

At this rate, the next game in the series will be called The Legend of Purah.