Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@Nep-Nep-Freak That's nice, I play games to chill as well. It's been some time since I last played an RPG... I might come back to Xenoblade Chronicles at some point, though I remember some bosses being pretty difficult, so I might have to tone it down to casual mode.

I like playing Animal Crossing as well, it's a perfect game to relax with. Recently, my cousin and I played it online, and we even did voice chat. We both had fun.

I've probably said this multiple times but exclusives are good, and people who are anti-exclusive are weird. Maybe it would've made sense in the past at some point, but it took an entire decade+ of incompetence and slowly throwing away the concept of exclusives for Xbox to have even the slightest risk of not getting multi-console games. Like you could've had an Xbox One and still had the craziest lineup of games if you actually knew what to look for, and its only Xbox incompetence that prevented it from being a good system for exclusives, especially by the time you got to the Series X/S.

Otherwise, every console has an endless supply of quality games so the idea of "missing out" is ridiculous and insignificant and there's still clear value in gaming for exclusives, especially for each system having an actual identity. It's not like the late 90s where if you weren't PS1 you were genuinely missing out more often than not, its a non-issue nowadays. And Nintendo knowing what they're doing has proven the endless profit of being one of the big 3 so they have all the reason, or at least ability, to help give money to projects that could use it. And maybe if that money's spent well on developers that know how to release games before the heat death of the universe, we could get a solid selection of more notable games per console like we used to have.

Like obviously I wouldn't expect the biggest games outside of actual first party titles to be exclusive, but it would be an excellent way to expand on AA games, because those are the games companies will often refuse to make otherwise (and would also be the games presumably more likely to have sane dev cycles). Playstation has no games wouldn't be a meme if Sony was smart about this at all, and Switch 2 disappointing people would be at least less likely among the non-stupid online commentators if Nintendo had even a tiny handful of worthwhile exclusives other than first party.

I do think there's a good chance it would be good for various companies, in that consoles would get more exclusives and also certain AA games could grab an audience via exclusivity (the HD-2D games being the reliable success of SE's smaller games nowadays and usually being temporary exclusives that get major Nintendo Direct focus comes to mind), but I also just want it to happen regardless. People argue against a thing happening purely because it wouldn't be the best business move and that's cringe(especially when often it is based on just assuming that because its the norm that every company is making the best financial decisions currently, which is obviously untrue). I think it is a good thing to happen and I would want it to happen regardless of the business sense of doing it.

We need to ditch physical by now. Digital is more convenient, takes waaaay less room, and lets you take all your games anywhere. VGCs are the worst way to do digital though, bringing the worst thing (no multi-device sharing) to Switch

@Matt_Barber

Nice

@Agent_P
I'm the physical games collector here.
I have a lot of physical games displayed on my shelf, still played and take care of them.
I hate the convenience of digital games.
I would rather swapping my cartridge or disc onto video game machines than tapping the digital games app.
I hate the future like that.

The next 3d Mario should not be open world

Good job at putting an actual unpopular opinion here 😆 I 100% agree with all the positives of digital, although it's ignoring the pretty big positives of physical of being able to sell games, easily lend games to friends, even borrow games for free from libraries. I'm mostly a digital person as well nowadays but I wouldn't want all the benefits of physical to go away for people who want them.

@Anti-Matter The problem with AAA games for me is the lack of variety. It seems every AAA company is so hyper focused on realism and trends, that marketability comes first. Thinking about games like Concord, it followed the trend of hero shooters, when people are tired of hero shooters and live service games. Throw in the fact the Concord cost money, while similar games like it were free-to-play. That game was shut down two weeks after release because of how poor it did.

Will also add, deals AAA companies do. Know the Madden games? Only football (American football) game right now. This is due to EA having the exclusive license to the NFL. Years ago, there was NFL GameDay, NFL Blitz, and NFL 2K. There use to be options for football fans, and now there's only one. I say this as someone who isn't into football.

All because of how AAA companies are.

@D-Star92 Nope, I'm with you on this one. When I want to play games, I want to relax. I play a lot of my games on the easy difficulty setting when the option is there. I have tried Doom's first episode on Ultra-Violence difficulty, beyond that I usually play games on easier settings because I want to relax.

To add to this, I hate the whole "easy mode just hand holds you" mindset. I'm playing X-COM: UFO Defense on beginner difficulty, even though I'm playing on an easier difficulty, the game still provides challenge.

@Agent_P I buy both physical and digital, I do feel that more people might be ok with digital if it was more like physical. When you buy a game, you actually own it. I also play on PC, and I buy games from GOG, DRM-free. Meaning once I buy it, I have the games forever provided I back them up. I just wish people who say "you don't own digital," stop ignoring DRM, because DRM is the reason why people don't own digital games. This is why when a game I like is on PC, DRM-free, I'll always gravitate towards it. Give me the file, and let me keep it, install it, and play it forever.

@Agent_P I love the convenience of digital gaming, but I have one major issue with it, in that once you reach the data storage limit, it suddenly becomes a lot more inconvenient than physical. Whenever I have run out of digital storage space on a system, it just becomes extremely tedious to have to delete games just to play new games (or even old games I want to replay if I deleted them). The only real solution is buying a bigger MicroSD card, but those can be pretty expensive, especially for Switch 2 with its MicroSD Express requirement.

Because of this, I sort of operate on a system where I'll only really buy a game digitally if its a game without a physical (or a more expensive physical) or if it's a game that I expect to return to frequently, like Mario Kart. Single-player games that I'm unlikely to return to outside of repeat playthroughs I'll usually buy physically when possible.

I wouldn't mind a cool overworld map where you can do things but, yeah, it's hard to imagine how a fully open world mario would even work. Like Bowser's Fury but far larger doesn't actually sound good.

@D-Star92 I think easy and enjoyable can totally work, but I have some expectations for certain game series. I expect Mario to have some challenge at least in the end game/ special levels. I haven't played them in years, but I think New Super Mario Bros and Galaxy offer a good amount of hard levels. Super Mario Wonder in the other hand was such a snoozefest with difficulty. I think there were only 2 special levels that gave a good challenge.

@Sunsy
Well, that's why I hate AAA games after hearing from you about something else from AAA games.
The definition of AAA games are the popular stuffs with very limited choice and same patterns (ultra realistic graphic, ultra violence & inappropriate contents, popular stuffs only, etc) and I hate those stuffs as human being.
I hate popular sports like football, soccer, etc.
I hate ultra inappropriate stuffs like ultra violence, blood, coarse language, cigarette, etc.
I hate the micro transactions behind the games like endless DLC, pay to win, etc (I still buy the DLC for The Sims 4 PS4, the only exceptional).
Glad I was born with very different mindset and can stay away from the society which only care with those stuffs that I never like them.

@Anti-Matter Similarly, AAA was different back then. They did have all the kind of games you mention, however, AAA companies made more games back then. Companies like Activision, THQ, Ubisoft were all considered AAA, but still made kids games.

THQ had the Nickelodeon stuff, Activision had DreamWorks stuff, and Ubisoft had Rayman. They were considered AAA back then because of the budgets they used (having played Jimmy Neutron, a lot of the voice actors came from the show, which isn't cheap). The thing that I feel changed AAA into what it is now is greed. They want to make more money so they push for games that can be marketed, or have microtransactions, etc.

@Sunsy How would you personally define AAA?

Nintendo is a AAA developer, but clearly their smaller or even medium games aren't AAA by most definitions; same with many big deveopers, or at least big developers which produce many games.

I believe the first time the term was widely used was with Final Fantasy 7 original where the inflation-adjusted budget was near $200 million and where a remarkably large chunk of that was advertising rather than development.

Marketing has always seemed to be part of the definition of AAA but that's kind of weird since it's not part of the game itself.

I read some analysis trying to define AAA, AA, 'large indie or equivalent' and small indie in terms of game file sizes, but Nintendo completely bucked that trend since they optimize the heck out of their biggest games and often use more stylistic or cartoony art styles.

It's easy to point to games like GTA6 which have insane production costs, insane marketing costs, photorealstic graphics, presumably huge file size, etc. and say 'that is a AAA game'.

But then you have games like Mario Kart World which had huge marketing costs but only AA-level production costs (by best estimates since cost is not actually public)

Or ongoing games like Minecraft or Genshin Impact that have had huge advertising and fairly large production costs spread over many years, but far less when they first came out.

@FishyS To my understanding, when first heard of AAA, I always considered it to be a big budget game or a company with a big budget making the game. I know it's not as in-depth of an answer, that's my understanding of it.

I do consider publishers like THQ, Activision, and Ubisoft to be AAA publishers back then, I'd say the later two are still AAA (THQ Nordic is different than the old THQ AFAIK). I don't think all publishers do publish games that would have a AAA budget. Nintendo is a AAA developer because of their budget, but they have made smaller games. For example, I don't think F-Zero 99 qualifies as AAA.

@Sunsy F-Zero 99 is tiny but a lot of Nintendo published games are 'medium'. I wouldn't count most of their games as AAA tbh, or most Square Enix or Capcom games... but some clearly are. It makes it kind of hard to talk about AAA games in general when it is unclear if there is an agreed on definition. Especially since the normal definiton of AA game is 'fairly big budget' or from a fairly major developer so the cutoff line is unclear. Like I would consider Expedition 33 to be AA, but some people like to call it technically an indie and it has some properties of a AAA game.

AAA is one of many terms that are just "vibes" based. It's only somewhat based on factual information on any level.

Alright, I was typing something in the Switch 2 discussion thread, and I thought it would be good for the Unpopular Opinion thread, so I am copying an excerpt from one of my Switch 2 thread comment here. Enjoy the rant:

"I'm shouting it to the world:
THE WII U IS OVERRATED!!!

Allow me to explain with concise reasoning. One of the Switch 2's few flaws is the continued cancelation of niche Japanese fanservice games like the Hyperdimension Neptunia games that has been happening since the Fall of 2024 (I was really looking forward to the three mainline Neptunia games on Switch, and when Nintendo of America canceled the releases because of a stupid content guidelines change, that was the first time ever that I got really p*ssed at the company, and to this day, I am still mad about it). You may ask how this relates to my opinion of the Wii U. Early on during the Switch generation, Nintendo of America's game content guidelines became lax enough that cool niche Japanese games like Neptunia could be on the eShop (this changed in the Fall of 2024 for some reason). During the Wii U generation, Nintendo of America's content guidelines were as strict as they are now, if not even more strict. Cool fanservicey games like Neptunia never came out on the Wii U anywhere except Japan. Hear me out: I honestly think that Nintendo of America's strict game content guidelines in the early 2010s are part of why the Wii U had a lack of games (there are other reasons too, of course). Notice how up above, I said that one of the flaws of the Switch 2 is that Nintendo of America has tightened their game content guidelines more once again. If I said that I disliked that sort of thing about the Switch 2, but glazed over the "amazing Wii U", I would be a total hypocrite. And at least the Switch 2 can play the Neptunia games that came out on the eShop before the stupid guidelines change. It can also play imported physical copies of the Neptunia games that got their American eShop releases canceled. And those physical copies from Asia even have English language support (I'm getting those imported physical copies for my birthday present this year, btw). They can be played on the American Switch 1 or Switch 2, thanks to those consoles not being region locked like all previous Nintendo consoles were. The American Wii U can't even play a single Neptunia game, or any other cool niche Japanese games that I'm starting to enjoy more and more as I get older. And the Wii U didn't have the well-designed Nintendo Account system that exists now, or save data cloud support like what exists now if you have an online membership. It didn't even have a single mainline Pokémon game. Also, for every game of a Nintendo series on the Wii U, there is a Switch (or in some cases, Switch 2) entry that is genuinely better (at least in my opinion). The only things that the Wii U has going for it are the following:
Home menu music and more home menu themes (I actually would like to see optional stuff like this for the Switch 2 in a future system update)
Free online play (though I don't mind paying $20 a year for online play on Switch)
Zelda Wind Waker and Twilight Princess as physical copies (which may or may not happen on Switch 1 or 2 in the future)
The Virtual Console games that you could buy once and have indefinite access too (the one thing that I don't like about NSO is all the classic games being gatekeeped behind it, I would love to just pay $15-20 for a digital copy of Zelda Ocarina of Time and have indefinite access to it without needing to pay an online subscription to play it, even offline. I refuse to pay more for the Expansion Pack, since I'm not generally not a big fan of online subscriptions).

Other than those few things that I listed above, the Switch 1 and 2 beat that overrated machine by a freaking country mile.

@Nep-Nep-Freak I mean, this reasoning is very specific to your tastes, which is fine, but I'm not sure the word 'overrated' can be applied to the Wii U of all things. Maybe disliking it is a somewhat unpopular opinion on this website in particular, as the Venn diagram of 'Nintendo Life users' and 'Wii U fans' probably has quite a lot of overlap, but the general attitude towards the console is apathy at best (I say this as someone who loves it). Most people who like it would say it's underrated, so I guess you could say the people who think it's underrated are overrating it, but... this is the point where language loses all meaning

Mainline Pokemon games were always handheld-only before the Switch (unless you count Colosseum and XD) so of course the Wii U doesn't have one. That's the thing with comparing an older Nintendo console to the Switch - they always shared a generation with a handheld, so it's not a like-for-like comparison unless you factor that in as well. If you look at the Wii U and 3DS together, their combined library is much more comparable to that of the Switch - at least if you narrow it down to original games made for those consoles, otherwise the Switch's insane number of ports from previous generations skews things a lot. Still perfectly valid to prefer the Switch, of course, but... am I right in remembering from things you've posted before that you didn't even have a Wii U?

@Nep-Nep-Freak
Wii U is actually underrated console due to poor sales and lack of 3rd party games support.