Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

I think the only reason why TotK isn't forgettable to me is because it has two of my favorite moments in the series. The scene with Ganondorf being sealed, and then the scene at the end of the game after you beat the final boss. These two were genuinely great scenes.

I've always said that Tears of the Kingdom feels like it'll be one of those Zeldas that will be done waaaay better when they actually get around to writing a manga for it. There's a lot they can do to play around with Link as a character, and a good few jumping off points to have him deal with. Things like losing his arm or having to deal with the fact that he failed Zelda again, only to realize that she became a dragon for him. Hopefully it'll get a Twilight Princess-like Manga.

Don’t know if it could be one, but is it bad that I think the gameplay of a game is way more important than graphics or art style? While a game having a nice and pleasing art style and top notch visuals is a nice addition and I definitely do like games having nice graphics, I think having fun and engaging gameplay to keep the player invested is important above all else, as well as how it controls too, like a button scheme. I don’t actually care a lot about the game’s graphics when I play, I only really care if it’s fun to play. Even if the game has bad or older-looking graphics, I’ll still play it anyway if it’s super fun. I know some people are going to come for my head now…

@Pastellioli I care about game longevity a lot. Stories are awesome in games, but it’s much harder to come back to a game with a story I already experienced compared to just gameplay. I think content, mechanics and whatnot also eventually make me ignore story problems, while gameplay problems are usually harder to ignore. It’s a lot easier to get excited for me about gameplay I never experienced but not story.

I think the problem with story vs gameplay discussions is how self-defeating it is and how it boxes both traits separately rather than acknowledging the fact they build on one another. Gameplay is a foundation, presentation and story help it come to life. It’s an aid, not something separate. I never pick up games because I wanna see their story, the gameplay has to be fun too. It’s all one package.

@Pastellioli Great controls, but the art style is a 100% black screen 😝

Joking aside, art style often contributes to something being fun and engaging. That doesn't necessarily mean modern or non-modern graphics, but it often means a fitting, coherent, and pleasant art style which meshes well with the controls and action, whether that means 8-bit graphics or photo-realism. Stardew Valley may have retro graphics, but if the art style was making the characters and items ugly blobs rather than aesthetically pleasing low-bit pictures, I don't think anyone would play the game.

There are also aspects of the art style such as bad hit boxes (e.g. not consistent with the art) or wildly fluctuating frame rate which can interact with controls and turn great controls in theory into impossible to use ones in practice.

@FishyS Interesting, I never really thought about stuff like the hitbox aspect!

Yeah, I do think the art style plays a role in sort of convincing the person to play. Even just bad looking art styles or graphics can be enough to turn away someone who wants to play a game. I’ve heard a lot of people bringing that up. It hasn’t really happened for me even though there have been some games I’ve played that don’t have the best art styles (like Nuts and Bolts, though if I’m being honest the art style isn’t extremely bad-looking like others make it out to be) but I don’t think the art style of a game is really brought up in reviews of games, it usually is graphics that are mentioned. Though, there are of course games that do have bad art styles and graphics intentionally for comedic effect, like Goat Simulator.

I think the one time I probably would be super concerned or feel something about graphics is if it was a big triple-A game from a big company with an endless amount of money having bad graphics, because the company has a lot of money and can put in the effort to make great looking visuals but they didn’t and wanted to be lazy. That is where I’d criticize it a lot.

Playing Modern Combat Blackout on Switch recently, I actually like it more than Call of Duty. I remember a few years back playing the beta to Modern Warfare II on Steam, and didn't enjoy it as much. I remember getting Modern Combat Blackout on sale years ago because it looked similar to COD, whenever I play it, I have a good time with it.

Plus, unlike the PC version, the Switch version has no microtransactions and lootboxes only open with credits earned from playing, instead of paying real world money. Plus, I still notice some people still play online.

Unpopular because Nintendo Life gave it a 5/10, and I know Call of Duty is still popular.

This is something I've thought a lot about in recent years, but I'd much rather a game be reliably good over being horribly inconsistent but being incredible occasionally. Or to be exact, I'll take less high points if it means those low points are much less frequent. Sonic Colors/Generations > Unleashed, Paper Mario > TTYD, Xenoblade 1 > Xenoblade 2, the higher highs did not make them better when the lows are so annoying.

Speaking of which, I think people going nuts for Sonic Unleashed nowadays is largely people who have not actually gone back to the Werehog sections, they just replay the daytime stages forever. The Werehog's not even bad necessarily but it was mid BEFORE Platinum was putting out games and before I had played any other game like that (to this day I've not even touched Devil May Cry nor God of War), so I imagine nowadays going back to the Werehog might as well be like going back to Final Fantasy 1.

@kkslider5552000 I'm not totally sure how you were ordering those games, but Sonic Colors (and honestly a lot of Sonic games) definitely annoy me a bit in terms of consistency of quality. Sonic Colors has some great parts but also some kind of terrible parts. I compare to e.g. Mario Wonder which had some good parts and plenty of medium parts but I would consider it to have only one true low and it's optional. Or like Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which didn't always have the most exciting action but I can't recall even a single true 'low' in the game. Random bad parts in an otherwise good game tends to leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

I've been told Sonic Colors had terrible parts, but considering how I put 15 hours into it back in the day, and only 5 of those were initial playthrough, I'm not sure what they were.

I can tell you that very few parts were as bad as the Werehog, which wasn't even bad.

But I also really liked Sonic 4 episode 1 to the point of getting into the top 10 leaderboard near launch like months before I played Colors so that might nullify my opinion on any Sonic game.

@kkslider5552000 I haven't played Xenoblade so I had no idea whether you were rating Sonic as worst or best in your list 😆 Regardless of personal opinions on specific games, I agree with your general opinion of consistency. Even a mostly great game isn't always worth it if you have to sludge through many bad parts.

I tend to prefer games with higher highs (Paper Mario 64 isn't even in my Top 3 entries in the series for this reason) than games that are consistently solid, but there's definitely a limit for me, especially when it comes to something like Sonic. Ambition alone can't carry a game for me and I'd vastly prefer something boring but competent (Colors, Lost World) over something ambitious but heavily and perhaps fundamentally flawed (Frontiers, Black Knight).

In the case of Xenoblade 2, the lows really take me out of the experience. I can stomach lower lows or lulls in a story-based game, but Xenoblade 2 was just a lot of jokes that felt like bogged the tone of the story down completely. The high points are amazing, with everything after Chapter 7 being great- but in turn the journey to Chapter 7 was god awful.

Xenoblade 3 has a lot of low points, but the higher points make me genuinely love it's narrative.

I do agree the jokes are cringe and bad and take away from being invested in anything going on (the Thor: Love and Thunder of video games), but those paled in comparison to the dozens of hours I wasted of my life just stuck in menus and the like doing tedious nonsense just so I could do a lot of the sidequests.

Not dozens of hours in the sidequests, dozens of hours doing tedious nonsense for the sake of doing sidequests. Not the parts of sidequests that are in any way fun or interesting, just the stuff in-between. The definition of "busy work" and "content" and "mobile game mechanics are the worst". I don't think dozens is even hyperbole.

@kkslider5552000 Ah yeah, Xenoblade 2 has issues with having to go through tons of menus to do things. People always say that it makes the game have more depth, but I feel like it's just more of a hassle. Pouch items and Blade Gacha are two things that genuinely make me never want to touch 2's combat system. 3 and 1 have pretty good systems which don't feel like you're sinking hours into just the menus alone. 3's system is easier than 2's, but it just flows so much better over-all.

I tend to judge games more by their high points. Large chucks of Xenoblade 2 really moved and engaged me, whereas I never really felt very captured by XC1 aside from the inciting incident and the first visit to Prison Island.

Inconsistent excellence > consistent mediocrity.

Thankfully, XC3 exists and I no longer have to 'settle' in that manner.

@kkslider5552000 I'm kinda the opposite. If a game is consistently "good" but doesn't have any exceptional high points, it's not going to stick in my memory. That said, I'm not exactly seeking out games that are highly variable in quality either.

I'm not sure I agree with most of your examples either (I think Paper Mario and Xenoblade are mostly consistent in quality), except Sonic which is on the mark IMO. I can't make it 10 minutes playing Colors - despite the game being highly praised at first release, I find it to be a bland attempt at turning Sonic into Mario that fails to capture the best of either series. It just doesn't do anything for me. Unleashed - I admit - is very flawed, and I do agree that many people probably don't judge it for the full package. But given the choice, I would absolutely slog through the werehog stages to play the few short but brilliant day stages in Unleashed over playing any part of Colors. I think I'd even play 06 over Colors tbh.

@Ralizah For me, the high point of Xenoblade 1 is when you get to the mechonis head. That, and the ending of the game. The first visit to prison island is pretty strong, but it isn't as strong as the twist of Zanza being the whole reason why Shulk is living, or Alvis being a computer processor in a phase transition facility.

In theory I appreciate ambitious games with some great moments even if they're highly flawed, but when it comes to actually playing them I often wish I was playing something more consistent. Case in point: I'd rather replay NSMB2 than Sunshine.

@FishyS Just out of curiosity, what's the low point of Mario Wonder?

@Dogorilla I would argue the invisibility badge is just a troll and making that be at the end of a long level without a recent checkpoint makes the one hard level of the game go from challenging and satisfying to tedious and no longer satisfying even when you beat it. Honestly just bad level design in my opinion. And anyone who thinks the invisibility badge is a good idea should imagine what would be done with it if it was in Mario Maker 3... people already hate the low-visibility setting.

Just that one inclusion made me come very close to changing my score for the game from 10/10 to 9/10 although in the end I decided to round up. But the fact that I am complaining about it really shows how one low can really stick with you in an otherwise great game. 😆

@FishyS Ah fair. I was just grateful that level had checkpoints at all after some of the final gauntlets in other Mario games It was probably my favourite part of the game actually, I liked the pure platforming of the badge challenges so a full level based on that was fun.

It's probably an unpopular opinion to say that I don't think Wonder is that big a step up from the NSMB games. I really like those games so that's not a slight against Wonder, but the lack of boss fights, pointless inter-level dialogue and very easy main game all drag it down a bit for me despite being more charming and creative than 2D Mario had been in a while. It doesn't help that I didn't like the talking flowers or the online mode. I'd still just about give it 9/10 though, which is a testament to how good the basic Mario gameplay and level design is.