Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

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.

@Dogorilla The New Sup games were good, there were just too many of them. I rated nsmbu a solid 9 and Wonder was effectively a 9.5 for me. I turned the talking flowers off after 2 minutes and never really bothered with the weird online so I don't hold those things against Wonder. Yeah it's easy but... all the 2D Marios except lost levels are pretty darn easy.

And yeah, the badge challenge was fun until they put the invisibility badge in which makes it less fun platforming and more rng. My favorite level was probably the special world Climb To The Beat level. I enjoyed it during my first playthrough but I have new appreciation for it after a recent co-op play because that level is both more challenging and also hilarious in co-op.

@FishyS That level was good too, I always like rhythm-y gimmicks in platformers. I haven't played Wonder in co-op but hopefully I'll get a chance one day. NSMB Wii was great in multiplayer.

I mean this I do agree with. My examples are more of games that (I think?) most people would agree are of similar quality in enough ways. Sonic Unleashed's day levels are much like the day levels for the two games that followed it, Xenoblade 1 and 2 are of similar qualities in a lot of ways, TTYD is what you'd expect for a more creative Gamecube Paper Mario after the first one. Sonic Unleashed I'm less convinced of as inherently better in nearly any way (I think its just music tbh) but I'd say Xenoblade 2 and TTYD have some major elements and moments that surpass what even a game I loved did, but its the low points that were more frequent and stood out more that make my preferences clear to me. I'd obviously much prefer to play TTYD with all its flaws in the original release over any consistently 7/10 game.

If Xenoblade 2 didn't have all the terrible time wasting stuff that makes even the first game's time wasting seem like nothing, I'd probably like it at least somewhat close to as much as 1, and with a decent rewrite and allowing the English voice actors time to consistently give good performances, possibly even more than 1.

@VoidofLight As you know, I fell off the story in the second half of the game pretty hard. First half worked dramatically for me (mostly). The strength of the Prison Island twist was that it forced you to reconsider everything you thought you had known up until that point, and, of course, it strikes at the heart of Shulk's revenge quest to begin with.

Speaking of XC1, I'm actually heavily considering returning to play the expansion now. Future Connected is the last little chunk of the series I've yet to experience.

@Ralizah Future Connected is fine for what it is. Not my favorite Xenoblade thing though. Just does a bit to tease Xenoblade 3, but without really teasing Xenoblade 3 at the same time.

The part where I usually tend to fall off with Xenoblade 1's story is right after Mechonis head. Something there just feels like there's a lot of struggle to push through. I just personally love the stuff after prison island though. Feels like the points after are where everything starts to pay off. Dunban facing Mumkhar, Shulk questioning his whole motivation and having the monado actively fight with him as his devotion to revenge wavers, and Zanza's hypocrisy for desiring friendship whilst dooming the world into an eternal cycle. Reyn and Sharla dealing with wrapping their own arcs up regarding Gadolt, Tyrea's whole bit of the story, and Melia's hopelessness as her people slowly warp into mindless beasts, leaving her with the last of their legacy. The scene with Dickson at the final dungeon hurts to watch because while he was a bad person, he still cared about Shulk in some regard.

1's characters aren't as strong as 2 or 3's, but I genuinely still really like where all of their journeys end up. The area music is also divine later on in. Especially when you get to Mechonis Field and the Mechonis Capital.

I still think Xenoblade 1's world is the most interconnected in the series. Kinda hope 4 takes more cues from it in some regard.

I don't know if this is unpopular, but maybe it is? When it comes to the big three I'm not really loyal or anything to any specific one if that makes sense? Like I'm not all Nintendo: Sony and Microsoft are worthless in comparison that sort of thing.

Whether be for nostalgia or because its the type of games that person enjoys, I have never been someone to stick solely to a singular brand for my needs whether it be Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft. I just can't see myself just having a Nintendo console and that being my only avenue for games.

I branch out often, and I would consider myself privileged enough to do so. Even when I was a kid I never ever had only one console in the household. I just don't see the reason for it, its not like a company is my best friend or something. They are all fallible in one way or another.

@ShonenJump121 Plenty of people around here have 2 or 3 of the consoles, but most people simply don't have the time or money for more than one. A lot of people stick with what they're used to. I'm sure there exist people who only have a Nintendo one generation and then only an xbox the next generation and only a PlayStation the generation after all without actually disliking any of those consoles... but probably not a ton of them.

My personal ranking is based mostly on how much I like the exclusives.

1. Nintendo — fairly cheap and I like tons of the exclusives.

2. PlayStation — some good exclusives (although most are timed exclusives) .

3. xbox - most of the exclusives look awful to me personally; just not the type of games I am interested in.

All of the consoles of course have plenty of great non-exclusive games but I don't want to spend the money to buy more than 1 or 2 consoles (usually just 1) so I choose.

@FishyS Well that's the thing isn't it? I've had just about everything, so I am very much in a minority. I only had all the time in the world when I was a kid, but I assume that kids that have more than one console nowadays are in even slimmer groups.

Don't know, guess I should consider myself lucky I've never felt indebted or anything to any one of the big three. Allows me to see to the pros/cons of each one without too much nostalgia bias. With consoles having less and less exclusives on the big two platforms these days, many of which on PC it makes the choice easier to make then it was in 2005 or something.

I don't consider myself a fanboy or anything really. I just gravitate towards the things that interest me the most. Feels like too many people these days still subject themselves to console wars and gotchas, since they have to justify their side/purchase to say their console is superior to those other consoles. Like sports teams I suppose.

Peoples keep saying PlayStation get less and less exclusive games to play and they don't consider PlayStation for having less games they want
My thought: "What are you talking about??"
PS4 and PS5 still have tons of 3rd party games to play, especially the kids games.
If you think PlayStation have less exclusive, you can still have more choices from 3rd party games on PS4 / PS5.
My games collection are mostly 3rd party games with a lot of diversity so it made every my PlayStation machine purchase really worthy.

@ShonenJump121
There are still a lot of 3rd party games you can consider for PS4 / PS5 machine.
Even my PS4 & PS5 games collection only consist one 1st party Sony game (Ratchet & Clank games) and 99.99% 3rd party kids games in physical.
My PS4 & PS5 machine purchase were really worthy because of a lot of 3rd party kids games choices.
Peoples always forget this one, either they didn't want to admit if they were not interested with kids games or they were too cool to play other games that might be interesting to play.

They are porting their games to PC, which is fine; I mean I don't really care since I own a PS5. But some would say that because its on PC its worth less now than if it was exclusive.

Weren't people saying during previous generations how exclusives are bad and how consoles should have less exclusives? Perhaps those are different groups of people entirely. They still need to push a few more games out, the beginning of the generation we were still clinging to the PS4 with games like Ragnarok, Forbidden West and GT7. The only PS5 games were Returnal, Demon Souls and Rift Apart.

Spider-Man 2, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Ronin, Helldivers 2 and Astro Bot are PS5 only games now, it would be nice if we finally moved on from the PS4. Although the chances of that are low with so much of the playerbase still having PS4s unless they drop something huge to force people to upgrade like GTA6 or something.

@Anti-Matter To be fair, all the consoles plus PC have thousands of third party games, including many great ones. Which is good, but isn't really a way to decide which of the 4 devices to buy if you have to choose only one.

@ShonenJump121 I don't think it's intrinsically good or bad to have exclusives, but it does mean if you have one device already, why bother buying a second which just has the same games.

@ShonenJump121 The issue is that the people who think exclusives are bad are different people from those who actually see them as good. I've always seen exclusive titles as the nature of the industry as a whole. Something that it doesn't exactly work without. This generation basically just enforces that viewpoint for me, given how lackluster it has been for Sony and Microsoft both.

The main issue with this generation is that Sony keeps backporting their games to PS4 and Microsoft seems to be abandoning the console space entirely, attempting to push people to gamepass and make the XBOX ecosystem one in the same with Windows.

Sure the PS5 has Demon Souls, Spider-Man 2, Stellar Blade, Helldivers 2, and Astro Bot- but Spider-Man 2 is probably going to be going to PC, StellarBlade is already forgotten given how lackluster it was (aping off of NieR without even understanding why people like NieR in the first place, and only selling the game due to marketing to a specific group of people), Helldivers sorta fell off a cliff due to Sony's treatment of the community- and Astro Bot isn't going to stay exclusive to PS5 for long either.

Even with these games, there's still barely any games in comparison to what the PS4 had at this point in it's lifecycle. It's telling as well given that the only Sony IP releasing this year was Astro-bot, with no other big games really being made for the console.

I'm not a fanboy, but I believe Nintendo is genuinely the only company actually doing something of quality right now. Sony has nothing going on game-wise, and neither does Microsoft. Both consoles are in a genuine drought for new games- all while Nintendo is still going strong in the last years of the Switch's lifespan. This year alone for Nintendo we've gotten a Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door remake, a new 2D Zelda game, Mario and Luigi Brothership, a sequel to a visual novel series that hasn't been touched in years outside of remakes, and Princess Peach showtime. In previous final years- Nintendo usually just put out a ton of ports or very bite sized games. Sometimes they wouldn't even release anything at all game-wise.

I don't usually mind what platforms I play games on. So long as it has games that interest me, I'll end up getting them. My main issue though is that outside of Nintendo, I have no real reason to own the other consoles. I have a gaming rig that outpaces my PS5, so I don't even use the PS5 anymore. I gave XBOX a shot with the XBOX One, but ended up selling it after I realized it just sat in my room collecting dust and nothing more. Without exclusives, I genuinely can just make do with my Switch and my PC. In the long-run, PC is cheaper anyways (given the lack of online subscription fees), and if the "All Digital Future" ever comes, PC will be the only way I'll ever feel comfortable "owning" anything digitally. Especially given how Sony has proven that you effectively can get your digital games ripped right out of your library if they deem fit.